Understand why people choose to live alone and how it affects society

If you still believe that those who live alone are because they haven’t found a partner, it’s time to change your mind. Thirty years ago, people entered therapeutic offices wanting to know who they were. Today, all my patients invariably suffer because they have too many options and they can’t choose one of them, without suffering from the others left – the phenomenon of frustration. This is the reason for at least 8 out of 10 patients seen in the psychoanalytic office.

Interference of social demands in autonomous life

Living alone is not a fad or something isolated. Is life option that crystallized in Brazil in the last 50 years and probably in other parts of the world. However, many people suffer from not supporting another marriage, for which they have already realized that they have no appreciation, or because they do not even think about entering one of these because they already know, in advance, the inability to manage one.

That is, they live in fear of what they will say or think of them and end up suffering for not having enough strength to choose what they can take forward in life. In that case, they choose to please others and psychic suffering arrives sooner or later. Those who choose to live an autonomous life, as I prefer to call it, do not experience this indecision.

New constructions in the way of life

That image of a spinster aunt living alone in her parents’ house back in the 70s, who knew, was the great revolution in the world of Brazilians. This revolution that we can see today in research, such as those of the IBGE in the last demographic census.

Today the elderly who live alone, travel, consume, spend on leisure and have quality of lifeare partly made up of these “spinster aunts” of the 70s and 80s. They, in a silent way, built a revolution in the way of life, especially if we consider the idea of ​​Latin Americans that one cannot live alone and that “each pot it has its lid”.

The numbers of Brazilians who live alone do not lie, however, the greatest proof of this phenomenon is the change in population dynamics. There are many people around us flaunting the autonomous life, men and women living alone, without formal marriage and children, and often without stable relationships.

Why do people choose to live alone?

The first thing that comes to our mind is that people who choose to live alone do so because they cannot fit into the collective standards, they are selfish and have different relationship difficulties, sharing and altruism. In the case of those who live alone not because of the option, but because of the lack of it, because their peers have already died or had another end, it seems that the social perception is always the same – they live alone because they have no option.

But understanding this phenomenon needs to go much further. It is not possible for this fact to go unnoticed by public policies, by churches and, above all, by the notion of collective health to which all of us, therapists and health professionals, are connected.

It is necessary to rethink the entire offer of therapies and psychological support for this group because they are not yet understood and our therapeutic techniques for them they are obsolete, since the majority do not suffer from depression or loneliness, as the numbers point out; and 72% of them, for example, believe that living alone gives more freedom to spend money, that is, the autonomous subject has a passion and behavior to have.

Impact of the population living alone on the market

Consumption is a part of their daily lives. And that number, although it seems a problem for shallow psychology, it is not for the world of work since 6 out of 10 of these self-employed people are employed. They have excellent qualifications for the job compared to their peers of the same age and social status.

The living population only consumes, but why do they consume? This is still an unanswered question. If you risk saying that it’s to compensate, you’re wrong on the way out. Those who live only want to say that they have a life plan, a goal of well-being, a choice to walk – to be alone in the world and happy, without children, without marriage, without fixed affective relationships.

Autonomous life and social relationships

It seems sad to some, but it is the option of these adult Brazilians that needs to be observed so that orientations from different segments can accept this population, and not simply evaluating and judging them with criteria of exclusion or prejudice. The new religions have already discovered this population – of Buddhists, Hares, mindfulness (almost a religion) -; this population is already finding its place in religions that do not oblige marriage and traditional family models.

Commerce and industry as well. They consume everything, consume a lot and have learned, forever, that consuming is also being happy and they throw themselves into this action without guilt: they travel, take courses, complete higher education, consume technologies, fashion, etc.

And when they get old, they will continue to consume even more, because they will inherit the goods from their parents, without having to share them with anyone. This generation has a different mental organization that psychology needs to adhere to, urgently, at the risk of abandoning them in their choices.

Psychological modifications on solitude

Today there are already portions of individual foods, ranging from organic to fast food. Health plans, club memberships, cars and goods of all kinds designed and built for those who choose to live alone. I mean, society is already presenting solutions for this group, however, when it comes to psychological support, prejudice prevails.

It is necessary to combat, among mental health and education professionals, first of all, the idea that those who live alone are sad and unhappy and have problems with living together. This is an urgent and essential action. What this self-employed population presents is:independence (25%); sense of freedom (23%); peace (12%); loneliness (10%), sadness (3%), abandonment (1%),privacy (50%). That is, loneliness and abandonment are definitely not their most important characteristic.

They want and seek something else that we still don’t understand, but for that very reason it is urgent that you look into these subjects to understand them. You humanies (people who chose to be alone), which is what I call them now, are our challenge in the therapeutic field. They are unimultiple in the senses and homo mobilis in actions. Now we need to listen to them.

By Prof. Dr. Geraldo Pecanha de Almeida

Psychoanalyst by the International Society of Psychoanalysis of São Paulo. Practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and facilitator of Buddhist studies. He has more than 70 books, among them “In search of inner peace” and “Meditations to start the day”. Founder and director of Projeto Coração de Pólen – Center for Treatment, Study and Research in the area of ​​mental health, in Curitiba.