How not to be alone

Lara Eggleton

People’s capacities for cooperation are far greater and more complex than institutions allow them to be.

Richard Sennett

I’ve always found it easier to be alone. There’s a point in most conversations or group situations when I start to feel a strong urge to wrap it up and be on my own again. As if I might turn back into a pumpkin, or at least a less sociable version of myself. But when I retreat to a private space, I become restless and yearn to be around others again. So, neither situation is entirely satisfying.

My mother boasts about how independent I was at a young age. I was rewarded for showing self-initiative at school and independent study suited me well at university. Whether I started off that way or not, I think I gradually learned to be self-reliant and that it was better, and easier, to achieve things on my own. It was only later, as an adult, that I realised that I could equally thrive through collaboration, and that being and working with others brought out other sides of my personality. 

Richard Sennett talks about how in our societies (read: the Global North), dependency on others is seen as a sign of weakness or a failure of character. Our institutions promote autonomy and self-sufficiency, creating a myth that the autonomous individual is somehow free. [1] As a result, we cultivate the skills that make us stronger as individuals and neglect those that would make us good co-operators.

If I hadn’t been encouraged to be independent might I have grown into a more cooperative person?

Maybe. 

Sennett argues that mutual support is built into the genes of all social animals, and that they cooperate to accomplish what they can’t do alone. Cooperation becomes a conscious activity at four or five months, as infants begin to respond to verbal cues from their mothers during breastfeeding, snuggling up and getting into the optimal position. This teaches them to adapt their behaviour and to anticipate responses. Later, toddlers build towers and dens by working together, even when parents don’t encourage it. At four or five years old they start to negotiate the rules of games. 

It’s interesting that Sennet sees breastfeeding as the starting point for cooperation, as it can be extremely difficult. The first few weeks with my son were frustrating and painful, and it took us a while to settle into it. Some mothers give it up because they find it too exhausting, or it simply doesn’t work. It’s hard on babies too, and all the effort can get in the way of bonding. 

Still, I think breastfeeding is a good example of cooperation, precisely because it can be so challenging. As a first-time mother you are struggling with a new, sleep-deprived version of yourself, and a helpless hungry baby. You don’t have language to fall back on and so you’re forced to find new ways of communicating. 

If breastfeeding doesn’t work, then a syringe or a nipple shield or bottle must be negotiated. As parents you must keep learning, developing new skills. Part of that is letting go of expectations or ideals and facing the reality that it might not go the way you’d hoped. It’s humbling. At its best, cooperation should be like that - it should push your boundaries and transform you through the process.

Sennett claims that early forms of cooperation lay foundations for the ‘harder work’ of cooperation in adult life, things like 

listening well

behaving tactfully

finding points of argument

managing disagreement

and avoiding frustration in difficult discussions. 

In our day-to-day lives there’s no real incentive to develop these skills, and we avoid them because they can make us feel inadequate and awkward, among other things. Even if we are born with cooperative impulses, we aren’t encouraged to practice and refine them. 

This could explain why I feel limited in social situations. Through my encounters with more accomplished communicators, I’ve realised that I don’t really know how to listen. I mean not just going through the motions of conversation but properly listening so that a person feels truly heard. In long or challenging meetings, I can become frustrated and negative, which makes it hard to empathise. My analytic skills are sharp, but they don’t easily translate to group participation.

When I moved into a cohousing cooperative seven years ago, I was confronted with a very different, collective way of living and being. I became aware of methods of communication such as NVC (Nonviolent Communication) and consensus decision making. By using these we are attempting to overcome the inequalities and power dynamics that prevent healthy, productive exchanges. They aren’t taught in schools or universities, maybe because they’re seen as ‘soft’ or intrinsic. In fact, they take a long time to master and require a lot of patience and perseverance, like any complex skill.

Living in cohousing stretches you in ways that living alone doesn’t.

Reaching consensus can take a long time, hearing so many views and positions, but I usually come out the other side with a better understanding of other people’s needs, and how they’re different from mine. Sometimes people change their minds through the process, or a better solution is found. Then it feels very satisfying and worth the effort.

While most of us learn to negotiate and empathise at a young age, it’s tempting to stop challenging ourselves as adults, to opt out when we feel uncomfortable or threatened. It’s not just potential conflict we’re avoiding, but also having to deal with others, especially those we might disagree with. 

Most of us are too busy and distracted to give others our full attention, and we usually get away with it. Early parenthood changes that. Suddenly you have no choice but to give this tiny person your whole, undivided attention, day and night, and for some parents it can feel completely alien. I was horribly torn between the pleasure of being so close with my baby and a fear that I’d never be alone again. You are an inseparable unit, especially if you breastfeed, and for a lot of mothers this is a rude awakening. Self-sufficiency doesn’t prepare you for motherhood.

Sometimes I wonder if people’s squeamishness about breastfeeding in public is connected to this, almost as if it’s a too overt reference to our innate interdependence or a painful reminder of what we’ve traded for an individualised existence. There’s so much anxiety around connecting with others, a fear of the complexities of interaction. 

The Care Collective talk about ‘promiscuous care’, which recognises that all people have the capacity to care, not just mothers and women, and that our lives are improved when we care and are cared for, and when we care together. [2] Instead we turn inward and claim we don’t have time or energy to give to others. In the end, I think this leaves us feeling guilty and remorseful…

…That we could be doing more, connecting more, giving more of ourselves to others. We live in a society that doesn’t recognise or reward caring and cooperative behaviour and traps people in work-buy cycles so that they can’t stretch beyond their individual or household needs. It leads to a lonely existence.

I also struggle to accept care from others. After I gave birth, we had ten days of homemade meals delivered to our door. I remember being overcome with gratitude toward my neighbours but also a sense of obligation to everyone who cooked for us. It took me ages to accept that for them, feeding us was enough. Perhaps because I didn’t experience that kind of care previously.

There wasn’t really a culture of giving in our house. We always met our own needs first. I think after a while it became an inconvenience to think about others. I still feel strangely ‘put out’ when I’m buying gifts; it feels like hard work rather than a gratifying thing to do. I feel guilty about that too, and sad that I’m having to learn how to care for others so late in my life.

Before joining a community, I lived on my own for nine years. I had a very part-time housemate, so not entirely alone. The flat was big and near the Uni, and rent was cheap. I lived by my own rules and decided when and how I wanted to be social.

I suffered there, too.

It was freezing in the winter months. My curtains would blow in the breeze, even with the windows shut. Hot baths and double socks were my most constant friends. By the time I left, the parts of me that needed other people and that wanted to be needed were deeply neglected. I think a lot of people live like this, in a state of denial about their loneliness because they have a social life that doesn’t actually meet their needs. In hindsight, I know I would have benefited from more interruptions, inconveniences and messier interactions with people.

I grew up in the countryside with minimal contact with neighbours or community.

Rural Ontario is vast and houses are very spread out, making it hard to form communities and impossible to get around without a car. We lived in an old farmhouse with overgrown fields and a derelict barn, and I remember feeling very lost in all that space. My siblings and I were mainly dependent on each other for social interaction.

I felt alone, even with my family.

I don’t think I had enough variety of experience. There was too much pressure on us to entertain ourselves, and as the oldest sibling I recall a heavy feeling of having to make everything up from scratch. I didn’t learn how to be with other children my own age, to negotiate and collaborate, to work together to achieve things. Thinking about it, I don’t think we learned how to care for one another as a family, or how to work out our emotional needs together. Maybe that’s too much to ask of the nuclear family, and we need community to teach us how to care. 

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about care. The authors of a book called Radical Care describe it as ‘an affective connective tissue between an inner self and an outer world… a feeling with, rather than a feeling for, others’. [3] It’s sad to think what happens when that tissue isn’t allowed to grow... 

… We effectively become a closed circuit, or a feedback loop, cut off from the world around us. We need people and community to grow this tissue, to learn the skills of caring and cooperation. At four years old, my son is comfortable asking for support and caring for others. He sometimes gets frustrated and overwhelmed by the multiple dynamics that he’s a part of, but I can see how it’s shaping him, giving him tools to make and maintain connections. 

It probably wasn’t possible for my parents to create these conditions for me. The Care Collective argue that it’s increasingly hard to cultivate community ties in a culture that places profit over people, with shrinking resources and a political landscape that encourages us to focus on our individual selves. [4]

But you don’t need to live in a housing cooperative to benefit from community. Perhaps what’s needed is a revival of cooperative skills in our everyday lives? Tools and strategies to help us reverse our self-centred behaviours and challenge, or at least bypass, the systems that keep us apart.

What if we were all offered a kind of basic ‘interaction training’ as citizens?

Compassion and empathy are essential to healthy communication, yet most of us are stuck in a sort of blind reactive mode, not understanding our own needs or anyone else’s. The world would be different if we simply learned to pause and reflect before reacting. Kate Soper talks about how the competitive (capitalist) mindset discourages sharing and co-owning. We are all so deeply entrenched in the cycles of individual ownership that it prevents us from helping others. Inequality makes this worse, as it undermines the mutual trust necessary for successful sharing and cooperation. [5]

A lot of people see sharing as a transaction, a sacrifice. They don’t see how it could meet their own need to be generous or provide care. 

I guess generosity can be taxing, especially when you already feel emotionally drained. Being and working with other people requires more energy and commitment up front, whereas being alone gives the illusion of ease, of freedom…

… But we deprive ourselves when we hide away. If cooperation was a perfectly comfortable experience, it wouldn’t challenge us in necessary ways. Sharing, cooperation, intimacy – these are the channels through which we can meet our own emotional needs. Without them our cooperative tissues begin to weaken, disintegrate. We lose our connection with the world. 

We must re-learn how to be uncomfortable with one another. To open ourselves up to inconvenience. 

To choose not to be alone.