Introduction
Good news.
If you’re reading this, you’re a little bit crazy.
You’re not totally insane. If you were fully delusional, hallucinating and living so far divorced from reality, they would have locked you up by now.
But you are here reading something aimed at people who, in one way or another, are labeling themselves as Forever Alone to some degree. There are various assumptions to be made from this label. One is that a person identifying with this feels isolated, and the other is that it makes them unhappy, they wish they had more connection and the last is that they feel that the situation cannot be (easily) changed.
Is that it, essentially? Because if, overall, I just hit the nail on the head, then it’s crazy, as I was like this once, and now I am not. As far as I know I’m not a divine being and there is certainly nothing special about me. I’m unattractive, lightly disabled, not rich, dark skinned and of average intelligence. I spent over four decades calling myself Forever Alone, then found out how to easily obtain sexual partners, swung the other way and became sex addicted — and finally healed and became (my definition of) ‘normal’, i.e. having a normal sex life, friendships and connections — and certainly not the main focus of my attention constantly.
I don’t mean to be rude by suggesting that you are insane, although looking back, I was. The thing is, in an insane world, crazy is seen as normal. Labeling myself Forever Alone was clearly delusional, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to change. There was some kind of inner-dialogue in me, self-talk, where I was misunderstanding my isolation and celibacy, that it’s because of this and this and this and whatever – but it wasn’t immutable, I changed it.
Of course, four decades earlier when I started telling myself this Forever Alone insanity, or constructed an insane inner-story/explanation within myself, I could have drawn all of these sane conclusions back then. Thinking: “I can never be with a partner because of this and this.” and then I could have looked for evidence, more importantly I could have looked for CONTRARY evidence. I could have reasoned it through and not kept this story of insanity in my mind, because changing it was the first step to changing my situation.
Forever Alone – the causes
There are two issues with the problem that I had (and you possibly have). One is that the insane ideas are coming from society, images from media, films and so on — about perfect romance and perfect bodies and endless discussions about what women and men want — and so on AD NAUSEAM. it is largely insane (devoid of logic) and went into my mind without being challenged or controlled because my consciousness was like a sponge that just, consciously and unconsciously, allowed all this to seep into my mind and construct all my moment-to-moment thinking, mental pictures and inner-talk.
Then there’s the second issue. Once I was ‘infected’ with the madness, then all this lunacy was within. Think about it. When someone is insane, it’s in the black box of their skull, you cannot see thoughts, mental pictures, daydreams or literally hear inner-dialogue, which is a huge shame, as it is US, it is our experience of life. Yes, we are in a context, we look into the world and experience that world out there, within. The senses report what is out there but everything we actually experience is within.
When a person is totally insane, 100% nuts, then it’s obvious – from their behaviour. Their inner-world, of thoughts, feeling, mental-pictures and inner-talk is so deluded (far from reality and logic) that they act totally crazy, going around talking to themselves, screaming at people that no one else can see, thinking they are millionaires when they are actually penniless and trying to spend that imaginary money anyway.
Yes, madness is a spectrum. They are at the far end of extreme. At the other end of the scale are the intelligent, educated and awake, sane people who really have their s*&^ together, running world-wide empires or raising beautiful families or jetting round the world living the high-life or smiling in meditation in spiritual centres and all the other things that sane and successful people do.
Behaviour comes from consciousness. This constant stream of (mostly unexamined and unchallenged (and often unconscious)) thoughts, feelings, mental pictures, daydreams and inner-talk, decide how we behave, what we look at, focus on, decide to see in the world, how we interpret it, what we do in relation to it and ultimately: how we act and what happens to us. Successful and connected and content — or isolated and unfulfilled, all from our inner-life.
You already have some of the skills needed to transform yourself and your life to how you want things to be. Take a person who is totally isolated and assume the cause is that they are unfit, overweight, with an odd body type. Now this is no reason to be Forever Alone. It would be fairly easy to find someone who looks physically like this but is fulfilled and in a relationship, and perhaps you could point this out to them, ‘Look, what about that guy Bobby BigBottom, he’s overweight, has a successful business, pretty wife.’, and they’ll answer, ‘Yeah but____’ and fill in the blanks, but the contrary evidence would be discounted from their habitual consciousness, daydreams, unconscious imaginings, self-talk. All the habits of thought that make up their consciousness filters their sane experience to control what they see and how they act.
Now if I put the argument to them like this: human women like fit, slim men from planet earth. You were born on the planet Saturn. Therefore, no woman will ever want to be with you and you will never find a partner. It’s clearly insane/illogical. If I argued this point, they would refute, saying clearly that the second part is wrong. They were not born on the planet Saturn, they were born on earth, the same as everybody else.
The funny thing is that insane people never know they’re insane… or they wouldn’t be insane. They’d be sane people with cranky thoughts. If someone said that there’s this thought in their mind about a pink elephant that’s talking to them, it would just be a powerless daydream. But if a person is listening to a talking pink elephant and letting it guide their life, then they are crazy. It’s all obvious when we talk about extremes like this, but the issue is not only that most peoples’ insanity is actually harder to spot because it’s less extreme, it comes across, unchallenged, as normal. But also, it mirrors what we are being constantly told all around us, by media and people and Hollywood and whatever. In the crazy world the crazy are considered sane.
Ways to change Forever Alone status – step one awareness and mindfulness
There is a path to sanity, and change. The first step is to ‘capture’ your mind. If you felt physically unwell and a doctor thought that there might be something wrong inside, then the first thing they would do is take a few scans and x-rays to have a record of what is going on. Once they can see what is wrong, say some huge mass that isn’t supposed to be there, then they have a map to guide them in its extraction.
So, the first thing you can do is to write down your ‘conscious story’. A person can write down why they are Forever Alone. This guiding philosophy and understanding of life is within their mind, in the form of ever-repeating thoughts, mental pictures, imagined scenarios, conclusions, affirmations, self-talk repeating over and over again, explaining the way that life is, guiding understanding of how one perceives the world, and the whole thing is unexamined.
That is insane off the bat. Imagine if you had a pain in your stomach throughout the day, there was some issue there just causing pain, you were doubled up and hurting. Now if we lived in a alternative universe where this was a part of the human condition, then you would accept it. Everyone would be the same so perhaps you could join some kind of a support group to find other people who understood the pain and you could help each other through it. But in this universe, very few people live with untreatable stomach pain. You would conclude it was abnormal and decide to do something about it. You would look into it and expect to find a solution and to be able to return to normality.
But with the mind, no one does that. Someone is unhappy because they are Forever Alone, and their mind has the story that it is normal for them and cannot be changed, even though if looked for, there would be contrary evidence. So a first step would be to get this inner-world out the darkness of the black box (skull) that the mind resides in. This inner-understanding, knowing, philosophy of life, stream of consciousness, does emerge from the black box of the skull into the world via one’s behaviour, the things we say, actions, gestures — everything. Imagine a shy person alone in the corner at a party, looking down unable to catch someone’s eye or strike up a conversation, slow, trembling voice, frowning, going home early, all the actions, choices, expressions, poses, everything, are shining out from this inner-story.
But there is another way this understanding/story/philosophy that is guiding everything can shine into the world, and that is to write it down. Such a central thing in life, why is it allowed to go unexamined? And the thing is, once it is written down, then some of it is clearly absurd. A bit like when something is bothering you and you confide to a friend what is on your mind. When it had been spinning around unvoiced in your mind it bothered you, but once you say it out loud, then it becomes objective and it’s easier to see the absurdity of absurd things. SEE THE ABSURD AS ABSURD.
However, even once it’s written down, then many things that are totally illogical will actually seem logical, because the messages that we are given, in childhood, from the media etc. are actually illogical and unreasonable. So in this instance, and this will be much of the work, we need to understand the rules of logic (sanity) and fallacies (insanity, untruths) so we can spot them in our thinking, and also when we come across them in the world, in media, conversations, articles, advertisements. All the stories and pictures and messages of people trying to (consciously and unconsciously) control our thinking (and so us) because we don’t have the tools to challenge them. So we need to have these tools, and to know them so well that we can discount the insane, within and without, the minute that it arises — either as a crazy thought inside or a piece of unconscious lunacy that someone is trying to shove down our throats from outside.
If you want to build a house, simply having the tools to do so won’t get the job done. First, you have to dig the foundation, and then put the work in. Many of the contents of the mind are unconscious, like memories, they aren’t there all the time but they keep coming up habitually. You don’t know what’s in the ground until you dig the foundation. You need to develop mindfulness, to watch your consciousness throughout the day to find out what is going on, what thoughts, mental pictures and self-talk is your mind and consciousness (and so you) consisting of. This record of your understanding/philosophy is actually an ongoing record as new thoughts, daydreams, negative affirmations etc. are uncovered and added to it.
After a period, usually a couple of weeks is enough, then the record is largely complete as anything new that arises will be a variation of something previously recorded. Now, there are going to be distortions and a little bit of craziness in much of what is recorded, but the goal here is to stick to the issue at hand, to observe this central, repeating, partly unconscious philosophy of life, especially regarding relationships and sexuality that is creating the isolation and unhappiness. There might be some resistance to doing this because it is “just how it is, obviously”, or “my childhood made me like this, obviously” or “it is like this, because if the world is not as I think it is, then why am I alone, isolated with no sexual experience or a partner who is willing to form a relationship with me?”.
Maybe… Maybe you’re not living with any fallacies. Maybe you’re forever alone because it’s just how it is and how could it be any different. All the people you know or see who are like you are alone and unsuccessful, so why would you be any different?
But there’s no harm in trying, right? What if you are wrong? This inner-philosophy is so central and controls so much of your life and consciousness. Why not simply write it all down and just check that it makes sense, objectively; that this core of mental activity that makes you who you are is all logical in essence and backed up with evidence.