Enjoying Your Own Company
When a relationship finishes, you might find yourself spending much more time on your own. If you are still mourning your last relationship and feel unable to move on, you may be filled with a sense of loneliness, and the quiet around you may serve to draw attention to your loss and feelings of restlessness. However, if you are able to consider the past and are resolved to move on, this time alone can offer you a feeling of freedom and space and you may very well find yourself enjoying your new-found solitude.
Learning to enjoy your own company can be one of the greatest pleasures in life. After all, this is the one relationship that you're going to have for your entire life. Taking plenty of opportunities to indulge in some 'me' time not only keeps the loneliness at bay, but will also help you to learn to love yourself, making you a more interesting person to spend time with.
Being lonely is quite different from being alone. Loneliness is a state of mind and has nothing to do with physical proximity to other people. People can be also be lonely when they're part of a couple or even in the middle of a crowded room.
If you learn to be happy in your own company and love yourself, you will also forget the idea that you need a relationship to feel complete. Although we all know that it can feel fantastic to be part of a couple, it's unhealthy to feel miserable or unworthy without it. Too many people stay in unsatisfying relationships because they feel too insecure to be on their own.
Anyone who is feeling lonely will need to turn this situation around and start to feel better about being alone. It's a good idea to try and think of being alone as a challenge - a change from the normal routine that can open up all sorts of possibilities that may have previously been available. If you're feeling lonely, take up some activities that you enjoy or that you weren't able to do when you were part of a couple. Take up pottery, learn a language or join a gym; whatever makes you feel good. However, it's important to take things slowly; don't suddenly take up ten new hobbies to fill up your every waking hour; you'll only become exhausted as you dash from one hobby to another, with no time to yourself. It's also important not to surround yourself with other people all the time; you need to learn to feel comfortable being alone.
Look upon this time of being alone as a valuable pause in the dating game. Take pleasure in doing whatever it is that makes YOU happy. Relax in the bath for 3 hours, listen to loud music, shop 'til you drop, watch all six Star Wars films in one sitting, read in bed all day or spend the entire afternoon cataloguing your CDs. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's what YOU want to do; there are no compromises and there's no one to please but yourself.
