ALONE: The Badass Psychology of People Who Like Being Alone

My latest collection of articles has just been published. ALONE: The Badass Psychology of People Who Like Being Alone is available in paperback or as an e-book. The preface (below) offers a preview of the book. At the end of this post is the Table of Contents, where you can see the titles of the 62 articles included in the book.

The preface to ALONE:

A loneliness panic has swept the nation and the world. For years, the popular press and the annals of academia have been spewing out warnings, in increasingly alarmist tones, that loneliness has reached epic proportions, and that it is killing us.

But amidst all the angst about loneliness, something profoundly important has been overlooked: Some people like being alone. They like their time alone. They like living alone.

In many nations all around the world, the number of people living alone has reached record levels. More and more people are also dining alone, traveling alone, and making their way in public places alone. Studies of married couples in the U.S. show that their lives are less enmeshed than they once were. Some couples are even living apart, in places of their own, not because far-flung jobs or other externalities have forced that upon them, but because they want their own space.

For unknown numbers of people, being alone is not just a preference – it is a craving, a need. Deprived of their time alone for too long, they begin to fantasize about it. Nothing feels quite right until their need for solitude is replenished.

Who are these people who like being alone? Stereotypically, they are the weirdos and the freaks, the scary loners planning shocking acts of violence. New thinking and fresh research upends those caricatures. We now have a better idea of the true personalities of people who like being alone, and they are, well, totally badass.

In June of 2017, I published a post to my “Living Single” blog at Psychology Today called “The badass personalities of people who like being alone.” Immediately, it took off. It was shared and re-shared. It was republished over and over again, with and without permission. It got picked up nationally and internationally.

That made me realize that there is a real hunger for a different story about the time we spend alone, one that acknowledges that not all people who live alone or spend time alone are lonely or doomed to an early death. Some, in fact, are spectacularly happy and healthy.

I’ve been writing about people who live single or live alone or like their time alone for decades. In Alone: The Badass Psychology of People Who Like Being Alone, I have collected more than 60 of the articles I have published at places such as Psychology Today, Psych Central, and the Washington Post. Sample what you like or read it cover to cover. Either way, you will come away with a whole new understanding, grounded in research, of what it means to like being alone.

• Why People Who Like Being Alone Are Badasses

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• The True Meanings of Alone, Loner, and Lonely

1. The Happy Loner
2. Alone in the World or Alone in Solitude?
3. Why Alone is Not the Same as Lonely
4. What is the Opposite of Loneliness?
5. 6 Psychological Insights About Solitude
6. 20 Varieties of Solitude

• Why People Who Like Being Alone Are Badasses

7. The Badass Personalities of People Who Like Being Alone
8. Can You Check Off Many of These Signs that You Are Perfectly Happy with Solitude? That Makes You a Badass
9. You Don’t Get Coupled Just to Get Through the Holidays: That Makes You a Badass
10. Can You Happily and Unselfconsciously Dine Alone? That Makes You a Badass
11. You Are a Badass Because You Like Being Alone with Your Thoughts and Most Other People Can’t Stand It
12. Some People Need to Learn to Be Alone. You, Dear Badass, Are Not One of Them
13. Those Poor People Who Are Not Badasses: Time Alone Saps Their Willpower

• The Positive Psychology of Solitude: What’s So Great About Being Alone

14. The Psychology of Spending Time Alone
15. The Benefits of Solitude
16. Another Great Thing About Being Alone
17. What’s So Great About Solitude? People Who Are “Single at Heart” Explain
18. The Deep Rewards of a Deeply Single Life
19. Are There Times When You Want to Be Alone, But No One Else Understands?
20. Home Alone: What the Gilmore Girls Got Right
21. A Story of Single Life You Haven’t Heard Before
22. Why Whoopi Goldberg Doesn’t Want Anyone to Complete Her

• Time Alone: Craving It More Than Ever

23. The American Psyche: Tipping Toward Solitude?
24. What’s the #1 source of joy in the lives of 25-to-39 year-olds?
25. What Does the Richest Person in the World Want?
26. What Does the Most Powerful Person in the World Want?
27. What Do Many of the Most Influential Philosophers in History Have in Common?
28. Why So Many Romantic Partners Want to Be Both Together and Single
29. Why Would Committed Couples Live Apart If They Don’t Have to?
30. Quiet Time: Do We Need It Now More Than Ever?
31. A First for Humans? People Now Eat Alone More Often Than with Others
32. How Many People Say It Is Important to Have Times When They Are Completely Alone?

• Alone in Public: Dining Alone, Traveling Alone, Alone in a Crowd

33. More Americans Are Dining Alone and Traveling Alone. Here’s Why.
34. The Psychology of Being Alone in Public
35. Has Dining Solo Lost Its Stigma?
36. What’s So Great About Traveling on Your Own
37. What Do You Really Know About the Experience of Traveling Solo?
38. Alone in a Crowd: There’s Something Special About It

• The Demographic Trend Sweeping the World: Living Alone

39. Individualism Goes Global: More People Around the World Are Living Alone
40. The Many Different Ways of Living Alone
41. Living Alone: 11 Things You Didn’t Know
42. Best Things About Living Alone
43. Not Monitored, Not Judged: One of the True Joys of Living Alone?
44. The Least Appreciated Perk of Living Alone
45. How Living Alone Will Transform Men

• How People Will Try to Scare You About Being Alone – and Why You Should Blow Them Off

46. I’ve Been Single All My Life. I Rarely Get Lonely.
47. Is a Solitary Life a Lonely Life? It Could Be Just the Opposite.
48. Are Americans Becoming More and More Isolated? Debunking a Claim that Went Viral
49. Isolated People Who Are Not Lonely and Connected People Who Are: A 20-Year Study
50. But What If You Are Lonely?
51. Spending Holidays Alone: The Saddest Thing Imaginable or Totally Badass?
52. Aging on Your Own: 5 Things They Never Tell You When They Try to Scare You
53. Will You Grow Old Alone If You Are Single? The Not-Very-Scary Results from 6 Nations
54. Is a Solitary Life a Shorter Life? Here’s What’s Wrong with That Claim
55. The Ultimate Threat to Single People – You’ll Die Alone
56. Who Gets Spooked by Stories of Single People Dying Alone? It’s Not Who You Think
57. The Stunning Appeal of a Story about a Man Who Died Alone
58. Brilliant Author and Hospice Worker Makes the Case that Some People Want to Die Alone

• Keep on Reading: Insights from Great Books on Solitude

59. Insights from the Most Renowned Book on Solitude
60. How to be Alone: 14 Quips and Tips
61. “Liberty Is a Better Husband”
62. Why True Loners Are Awesome – And Why So Many People Thought They Weren’t

Happy reading!