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I think I'm in a similar state as you. I loved living alone. Then I got married and had kids, so now I have three roommates, two of which frequently need interaction/help/etc. I crave solitude. The most blissful vacation I can imagine is just being alone in a cabin on a lake sitting coffee and reading. I spent two days driving to see the 2016 eclipse and living in my truck alone and it was absolute bliss.

At the same time, I find it easy to project that desire too far. I get less solitude than I would like now, so I feel that need, but I definitely don't want infinite solitude. While I liked living alone, I also remember getting quite lonely at times. It's easy for me to take for granted my social needs because they are being (more than) met right now.

One thing I do find a real challenge is a life that feels both socially full and shallow. With all of the tasks of being a full-time employee and parent today, my social calendar fills up quickly. I can really only see a couple of people a week. Kid birthday parties and other events like that overwhelm it. Because my kids are constantly making new friends, there is this parade of parents that enter and recede from my life. They're all nice people, but over time it gets harder to invest effort into friendship with them because I only see any given one of them every couple of months and even that may fade if our kids stop being friends. Not quite the "single serving friends" of Fight Club, but close.

At the same time, it's hard for me to maintain my own independent friendships on top of those acquaintances because there just isn't that much time. If I've already got a birthday party on Saturday and a playdate on Sunday, it's really hard to enjoy another social activity with my own friends on top of that. Even with people I consider close friends, I sometimes only see them once every couple of months.

I try to be mindful that this phase won't last forever. As my kids get older, they'll do more drop-off parties and eventually will get to their own social functions without me at all. They'll want less of my time until one day I'll wake up and the nest will be empty. I try to enjoy this time for what it is while it lasts.

My biggest worry is that by the time the kids are older and I have more room for my own close friends, those bonds will have withered along with my skills at socializing and I'll fail to reinvigorate them.

That was a fantastic post. I feel exactly the same way.

My kids sometimes feel too needy. Oftentimes I never get the desired downtime.

My wife got mad at me one day and said "You need to listen to Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle. Then come talk with me." It's a shock to listen to that song, because it's true. It would be easy to end up like that and no one want it.

I've always thought the best thing would be to have a time-travel machine. You could spend a day with your kids as infants and enjoy it. The next day you could spend with them as teens and enjoy it. Then the third day spend with them as 11 year-olds and enjoy it.

Each of those ages are incredible and filled with irreplaceable experiences. It's easy to get jaded when you move through them so slowly.

What I wouldn't give to be able to bank days for my future self.

"You know, I feel like having a me day. I'll hand this one off to 60-year-old me."

My 60-year-old self magically time travels in and has a blast with the kids he hasn't seen as children in decades. Meanwhile I get to relax. Then, twenty years from now, when the nest is cold and empty, the memories of my kids' childhood is fading, and I long to feel their little arms wrapped around me, I get zipped back in time to live a whole day of it afresh.

They say youth is wasted on the young. Sometimes it feels like parenting is wasted on young parents too.

Ha, I think about that song easily once every couple of months.

It's a very challenging balancing act especially in today's America which expects parents to spend tons of time with their kids.

Yeah both parents have to work 40 hours plus, maintain a home, eat at least one sit down meal together, spend time with children, time with each other to maintain a relationship. I as introvert have no time for being alone. And I need that. I try to walk to and from work as often as possible now just so I can have a quiet 20 minutes to myself with no demands or obligations on me. I find myself staying up late just to have it quiet.

I'm not sure how this works - do you have to be there for the birthday party and playdate too?

> I may be in the minority, but the older I get the more I want to be alone. I love my wife and kids, but there is almost too much pressure anymore to do this, do that. There are too many hands on my time.

Do you think that could at all be attributed that you are actually more alone now?

What I mean is, most families aren't interacting much with people outside their immediate family, whereas in the past the extended family was around and built a support system for those immediate families. If you had your parents, siblings, cousins, etc... around, you might actually have more time to recharge because child rearing wouldn't exclusively be put on the shoulders of the parents.

The way that our kids are raised now is incredibly different than the way I was raised. Although predominately raised by my parents, my grandparents, aunts, great aunts, etc... all had an influence and played a part in that upbringing due to the geographics of where everyone lived.

It might depend on the culture, but for a lot of people socializing is considered relaxing, and the more people you have around the higher the chances for any of them to have that belief.

Aside from going out and physically isolating yourself, having family around usually doesn’t help.

Now family could help looking after the kids when you take time away, but once your kids can stay aline for a few hours, having more people taking care of them might not help that much (now you’re managing a fleet of care givers, creating a “too many cooks” situation)

> the older I get the more I want to be alone

That was my first thought, as well - I have a wife and two teenaged kids, and they drain absolutely all of my free time. I keep reminding myself that I should be taking advantage and enjoying this time that I have to spend with them because in a few years, they’ll be away and I won’t see them very often, but I do feel like I would like just an hour here and there to pick what channel to watch and not have to debate about it. I wonder if I’ll feel differently when I finally get to that point, though - I am sure that I’m going to miss my kids when they move away, because I already miss having little kids running around the house (even though they sort of drove me crazy at the time then, too).

I've found it a hell of a lot harder to actually enjoy time with my kids since we went past one. It's frustrating because I'm not getting alone-time or doing exactly what I want to, as one without any kids might, but I'm also not getting to deeply, mindfully enjoy a very high percentage of time spent with my kids, as I could so easily when we just had one. All it took then was an occasional gentle reminder to myself to stay present. Now... man, it'd take some next-level Zen shit to achieve that with three kids on any kind of regular basis. Even two was a pretty big hit to that kind of quality time. It's achievable with some planning and luck now, basically, when it was just natural and almost constant before.

For me, I think that frustration's the source of my "oh god just drop me on a deserted island with some books and leave me" fantasies. I'd rather be around my kids and enjoying high-quality parent-kid time because it actually is pretty great, but that's so rarely and unpredictably available that the loner route becomes more appealing.

> It's one of the reasons I like hunting. Just me and the great outdoors.

Recently I watched the Liam Neeson version of "Cold Pursuit".

In its honesty and humor, both of which I appreciate to no end, Neeson's character's wife opines in grief on their dead son. "Did you even know his favorite movie? All of those hunting trips, what did you talk about?!?"

"... Hunting."

So very true and honest in many respects.

Hunting is a very social exercise. My sons are not yet old enough to go without prattling on about this or that, spooking any game worth taking. I'm planning on next season taking one at a time and teaching them the craft and all that goes into it, which is great bonding. My dad was not much of a hunter, but my grandfather was, and because of that, some of my fondest memories are of us hunting doves and rabbits, and the countless fishing trips we did.

My hunting trips are just day trips. I'm not like some guys I know who fly to Colorado and Alaska, leaving the family behind. I want my sons to be involved, but they are not quite ready. My wife will sit in a deer stand with me and like to shoot, but will not shoot at animals. She likes the resulting venison, however.

Our early ancestors hunted in parties of several to dozens of men, often for safety against predators, both two and four legged. I like the idea the British use, several people driving birds, a good hunt, and cigars and gin and tonics afterwards in the game room. Done it. It's great.

You realise “British hunting” isn’t egalitarian and the cigars and G&T aren’t going to the people driving game?

I also don’t think the person you replied to was doing down hunting as a social activity but that the movie makes it a stand in for anything done to avoid that social activity.

In the olden days you would be right, but today's drives are fair. Everyone takes turns driving and shooting. Everyone in the clubhouse after the hunt. It would be anathema to leave someone out and that would not be my scene.

Introversion/extraversion is a spectrum. It's about recharging batteries and having a balance between a social life and a solitary life. You seem to get a good share of social life, so obviously you need to seek solitary experiences.

The problem is that for many, there is a trend where social life is hard to obtain for several reasons.

I think everyone needs some time by myself. My wife takes the kids home for a few weeks in the summer and I get the house completely to myself. ITS THE BEST THING EVER. Its great to have them back at the end of it though.

You have a wife and kids and a job. You have s full, rich social life, and are not who this discussion is about. Congrats :)

Kids will move out, wife will get old and both of you will need help.

We become people who need help once again later in life.

>I also dearly miss when IT was in the data center and not accessible to the general office staff.

If you ever find such a magical place again, please let me know if they're hiring!

> People think we're weird that we like it dark

I certainly don’t, I chose the office with no windows on the opposite side the building to everyone else with the lights out and the AC cranked to the max I’m happy.

I have a small led desk lamp so I don’t walk into things and that’s it.

You are not in the minority. Everyone needs time to be alone. You will start feeling alone when you get back from hunting and nobody is waiting for you.

When I get home Saturday afternoons, I'm mobbed by my sons who are looking forward to riding on the mower. :) It's one of the things we all look forward to: lawn work. I pay my sons to pick up and rake. I pay them to use the blower and take out the trash. I teaching them that they should be paid for their efforts, but also that if they don't work, they don't get paid. One of my sons is eager beaver and on fire for anything physical involving power tools, riding mowers, tractors, 4-wheelers, etc. The other is very cerebral and prefers computers and gaming. I cater to both, liking both myself. I want, more than anything, for my sons (and daughter) to look back on their childhood and say it was really just one big daddy/son and daddy/daughter project that involved fun and learning. I don't coddle my children in any way, shape, or form. I grew up military and still abide in much of that lifestyle. My children know they are loved beyond measure, but they also know they have serious home expectations.

Can you be my dad?

The scarcity of it makes you crave it