Why Do I Like Being Alone So Much?

Why You Want to Be Alone and Why That Matters 

Are you one of those people who like spending time alone? If so, you probably already know that there are some people who will stigmatize you for it. They think you are alone because you are anxious around other people and just don’t have very positive relationships with humans. They assume you are lonely and depressed. 

That has been the prevailing storyline about spending time alone for far too long. More recently, scholars are increasingly recognizing and documenting the value of solitude. They believe that spending time alone can be good for creativity, self-insight, self-development, relaxation, and spirituality. 

One of the most important determinants of whether time alone is a good experience or a fraught one is whether you choose to be alone. If you are spending time alone because that’s what you want, then that will probably be a psychologically healthy experience. If instead you are home alone feeling despondent because you really want to be with other people, that’s much more problematic. 

Different Reasons for Being Alone 

In the Motivation for Solitude Scale, participants begin with the prompt, “When I spend time alone, I do so because…” and then indicate the importance of each of the 14 reasons. Items from the two categories of reasons were all mixed together when participants answered the survey. I’ve separated them, you can see the differences. 

As the researchers had predicted, the results were very different for the people who spent time alone for positive reasons compared to those who did so for negative reasons. 

People who are alone for positive reasons have a profile that is almost entirely positive or neutral. Overall, for both adolescents and young adults, spending time alone for positive reasons had essentially nothing to do with loneliness. The correlation between loneliness and wanting to be alone for positive reasons was close to zero. For young adults, spending time alone for positive reasons also had nothing to do with social anxiety or depression.  

The authors speculated that “low mood may drive adolescents to seek solitude to gain insight into their thoughts and feelings.” They point to other research showing that over time, adolescents who spend time alone by choice feel less depressed. 

For young adults, spending time alone for positive reasons was linked to some healthy psychological experiences. They were more self-accepting, they developed more overtime. (The measures of self-acceptance  and personal growth were not included in the surveys administered to the adolescents.) 

People who were alone for negative reasons had a more worrisome profile. The results were troubling for both the adolescents and the young adults who chose to be alone for negative reasons. They were more likely to experience loneliness and depression. In the group of young adults, who also answered questions about anxiety, they were also more socially anxious. 

The people who were alone for negative reasons were especially unlikely to have other positive experiences. They were much less likely to have positive relationships with other people or to have a clear idea of who they wanted to be. They scored low on autonomy, too. 

Only the young adults were asked about self-acceptance, personal growth, mastery, or purpose. Those who spend time alone for more negative reasons scored lower on all of those positive experiences.