Living alone, yay or nay?

Kirby42

In the past I've had a lot of different roommates, some amazing, some terrible, plenty in between. I moved into my own place last summer. At the start it was great, I could invite whoever I wanted whenever I wanted, I arranged the place as I liked, no rows or disagreements that can sometimes arise with other roommates, no mess.

However, several months later I've found it to be quite lonely. Especially during the holidays or long weekends (I'm single and my family live in a different country).

What's your 2 cents?

Rmgblue

If you can cover the cost of living alone please enjoy your own space. I wish I could.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Why hidden results?

I've hidden my opinion and experience to match.

Dardania

It's great for a week, but I get a bit lonely later, and also find myself quite selfish - a bit like Father Fintan Stack mango hammering in the middle of the night

anewme

I bought my house with the proviso that if I struggled to pay the mortgage I would take in lodgers. Never needed to!

Downside is you get very contrary and set in your ways and intolerant.

Solomon Pleasant

I think the ideal situation for many is to have your own room in a shared house with people who you can live happily with.

This provides the social aspect which people need but also private space which I think most people also need at certain times.

Plenty of people aren’t fortunate enough to be in that position though.

cantdecide

I thought I'd love it but did it for six months and absolutely hated it almost from the beginning. I realised I needed the interaction with others (outside of work) to kind of escape being stuck in my own world.

Trotters

Alone is best. You can go out for a drink or a natter with your mates. Bring a friend home for coffee or a meal etc or whatever ;-)
Not stiuck with someone who chats and plays music and makes a mess and drinks all the tea.
Loner for me
PS I am not a "loner" like a hermit or an anti-social weirdo. I just like being in charge of my own space!

KERSPLAT!

I have a housemate but we work opposite shifts to each other so I only see him a few times a month. It's great in that it's like living alone and having control of most things but only paying half the rent/bills however just before Christmas I hit a bad patch and found myself increasingly lonely and bored.

That has pretty much passed now and I'm back to being delighted with the set up but I can definitely see why it's not for some.

I've a lot of family and friends very close so in reality, if I'm lonely I can feck off to multiple places for a chat and cup of tea or go for a few pints any time.

John_Rambo

anewme wrote: »

I bought my house with the proviso that if I struggled to pay the mortgage I would take in lodgers. Never needed to!

Downside is you get very contrary and set in your ways and intolerant.

Spot on. I had a house to myself, everyone that hasn't lived alone has this idea that it would be amazing. But we're primates and didn't evolve living alone and we thrive on interaction and company. As you say, we tend to get very particular and socially inept with long periods of living alone. I ended up renting one of my rooms out much to my social advantages.

Table Top Joe

Lived alone for a year or so before meeting and moving in with my gf and I loved it, I love my friends and enjoy their company......but I love my own company too and need time away from people to unwind and recharge to be honest



Having lived with my gf a few years now though Im much happier living with her than I was alone, she's very laidback like myself so theres absolutely nothing I can't do now I could before (and same for her, as in she wants to watch a movie only she wants to see Ill be reading in bed next to her and vice versa, we don't need to do the same thing all the time), I hear of a lot of people complaining they miss having time to themselves but were fine for that thankfully, we both do whatever we want


So......living alone was great but I have to say if you can find the right company thats better(id rather no company at all than someone i wasn't 110% comfortable with)

Duckworth_Luas

I live alone in the bee-loud glade.

Bloody nightmare!

Wanted to do a spot of bean farming but it's all buzz-buzz-fcuking-buzz!

House is a kip too. Made of clay and fcuking wattles!

RacoonQueen

I live alone and it's the bees-knees. Didn't realise how unhappy I was in my house share until I got my own space.
I'm an introvert though and really need the me time. Between work and training I'm only really alone between 7:30/8pm and bedtime so only really a few hours a night. Plenty of people nearby I could visit/invite over if I needed company.

If I ever have to house share again or meet a guy stupid enough to deem me a good catch, readjusting to living with humans will be hard...

Great being able to have people over anytime you like, have the place as you want it, not have to clean up after other people, walk into the kitchen you cleaned an hour ago and see that some di*kwad has left it in a state etc...

Outlaw Pete

I went from relating to Chandler in Friends.... to relating to Ugly Naked Guy.

That's what 20 years can do to someone.

Kirby42

I can understand where people are coming from about bad roommates as I've had some very messy ones who made life really difficult. But living alone in my experience is just depressing, I need to socialise and chat to people. Maybe I think that because I work from home a lot too and was lacking the social environment that comes with the workplace. 

For me, my preference would look something like:

Living with partner > living with good roommates > living alone > living with bad roommates

Kirby42

I can understand where people are coming from about bad roommates as I've had some very messy ones who made life really difficult. But living alone in my experience is just depressing, I need to socialise and chat to people. Maybe I think that because I work from home a lot too and was lacking the social environment that comes with the workplace. 

For me, my preference would look something like:

Living with partner > living with good roommates > living alone > living with bad roommates

RobertKK

I have lived alone for a while now, I love it.

CelticRambler

Been living alone-ish for a good few years now. In the beginning, it was great, for all the reasons listed above, but this last year I'm feeling the lack of having someone around. It's all very well being able to organise the place how you want, and have no concerns about your own comings and goings, but I miss the challenge of trying to do stuff for someone else (or get it done before they find out!). :pac:

Maybe if I had an every-day's-the-same-as-the-last kind of job it'd be different, but I travel all over the place for work, meet a lot of different people, and thought I'd enjoy a bit of solitude on my weeks off. These days, the feeling of wishing there was another person in the house kicks in sooner and sooner.

andekwarhola

Live with my partner and kids and love getting the place to myself for a few nights although I end up feeling lonely after that but that's different.

If I was so single though, living alone all the way. The idea of housemates again would chill my blood.

Nomis21

This seems like a good thing to do if you live alone:

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/couchsurfing-in-offaly-a-free-of-charge-way-of-life-1.2326872

RacoonQueen

Kirby42 wrote: »

I can understand where people are coming from about bad roommates as I've had some very messy ones who made life really difficult. But living alone in my experience is just depressing, I need to socialise and chat to people. Maybe I think that because I work from home a lot too and was lacking the social environment that comes with the workplace. 

For me, my preference would look something like:

Living with partner > living with good roommates > living alone > living with bad roommates

I used to love working from home when I shared as was only time I'd get to be alone in the place. Now I live alone, hate working from home.

Vela

Alone for sure. I've lived alone for the past 2 years and only moving to a shared place now to save some money - the rent is a bit mental in Dublin.

bertsmom

I bought the house with my then boyfriend and we lived together for 9 or 10 yrs here. We split up about 4 yrs ago but lived together as friends for another 2yrs then roughly 2yrs ago we went our separate ways as wanted to move in with his girlfriend so we came to a mutual agreement on mortgage repayments act.
I have lived here with my dog alone ever since and I really love living alone. I work full time so I do see people every day but at heart I'm definitely an introvert. My boyfriend calls over most weekends but as a carer for an elderly parent we dont get a huge amount of time together but to be honest as much as I love when we are together I could never live with a partner again. I would just get too irritated by small habits etc and I love that we share holidays and nights out and days away but at the end of day I love this living alone far too much to give that up anytime soon!

anewme

anewme wrote: »

I bought my house with the proviso that if I struggled to pay the mortgage I would take in lodgers. Never needed to!

Downside is you get very contrary and set in your ways and intolerant.

John_Rambo wrote: »

Spot on. I had a house to myself, everyone that hasn't lived alone has this idea that it would be amazing. But we're primates and didn't evolve living alone and we thrive on interaction and company. As you say, we tend to get very particular and socially inept with long periods of living alone. I ended up renting one of my rooms out much to my social advantages.

I never rented a room.

I’m a socially inept narky Fokker who drinks g&T s naked on the couch at 3am. Even on a school day.

And I love every. Fckin. Minute Of it.

I lived alone until six months ago, loved it. I had friends very close by, so I never felt lonely. I liked the control over the place, I'd put stuff in the refrigerator and it stayed there until I wanted it. I'd tidy up before work and it was still perfect after work. No one grabbed the remote the minute I went for a pee. I could watch The Walking Dead with the sound muted during the zombie scenes, and no one laughed. I could sprawl over the whole bed and drool to my hearts content, and no one took pictures of me stuck to the pillow. I could scratch myself in a very unladylike manner and no one knew my uncouth ways. Ah, those were the days.

These days I live with two male persons, one a relative and the other a partner. They eat stuff I hide, they change the channel when I leave the room, they take pictures of me sleeping with my mouth open. To be fair, they're both tidy and do their share and we're all easy going, and I love them both around though my cousin will be moving out soon enough. But it's definitely different to living alone and it's probably better for me as a person to be making allowances for other people and compromising on things more. I'm a very organized person and can be a little rigid if I'm not careful, years of doing things exactly the way you like them will do that to a person and it's not necessarily a good thing.

I love not living alone, but...when I get the place to myself it's like a special treat and the urge to do the Risky Business dance is real. It's nice to only have to think of yourself. It's really nice to have people you want to think of before yourself too.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

Bambi985

My preference is to live with (the right) partner, but failing that live alone. House-sharing sucks balls for me, even when my flatmate is a lovely person, as I just hate living with a relative stranger and not being able to do what I want when I want. I also need a lot of me-time to de-stress from my job and you often won't get that in a house-share.

My last flatmate was really nice, but she was a total home-bird and was perpetually camped out in front of the TV in the sitting room. I'd join her from time to time and have the chats, but I worked long hours in a pretty all-consuming job so when I'd get in the door at 9pm most of the time I just wanted to chill and not have to put on an act for yet another person. I spent a lot of time in my room secretly hating her for hogging the sitting room :pac:

Sephiroth_dude

I'm an introvert so Would prefer to live alone if I could afford it.

beveragelady

The single greatest luxury I allow myself in life is that I live alone. I have done so for about 12 years now, and there's no way I'd go back to sharing with anybody. I've lived alone in cities and now I live alone in the wilderness. I absolutely bloody love knowing that when I get home in the evening I won't have to deal with anybody's bullfhit or drama or mood-tyranny.
I made the mistake of acquiring cats along the way, they're worse than people for complicating things, but luckily I have dogs to restore the balance of happiness.
If somebody made me choose between never living with a human again and never living with a dog again I wouldn't even have to consider it.

Zaph

Lived alone for years after I bought my house and loved it. Was quite happy with my own company and can't say I ever got lonely. Then I met my wife and after she moved in I loved that even more, so it definitely all depends on who you're living with as to whether or not it's better than on your own.

rainbow kirby

Lived alone for 2 years before moving in with my now-husband. Absolutely loved it - always great to close the door behind me in the evening and know I'd have my peace and quiet. I'm a bit of an introvert so it really did suit me.