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Comment by brncsk | Hacker News Reader

This year, after a tumultuous breakup (that quite literally plunged me into my deepest crisis to day), I’m practicing being alone. Mostly because what lead to said breakup in the first place, was me being a relationship-addict, which at this point in my self-awareness journey I understand to be a transgenerational issue. Thus being with family does not help at all (even though I did my fair share of being with them yesterday). As opposed to OP, I’m less than happy about the whole thing understandably.

What helps is hiking, I guess, trying to get a grip on whether doing it alone or with others helps more.

I guess this is close to being rock bottom for me at this point, hope you guys feel at least a tiny bit ok.

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I went through a breakup this year, which was (objectively looking) not too bad, because we managed to end on good terms, but left me personally very very sad and full of regrets. I'm also going through therapy right now, and these two things combined made me realise that I'm completely unprepared for being alone and that I very much resent it and think of being alone as a failure.

And while in general I think that it's great and fulfilling to have good relationships with people, in my specific case I think I was similar to you - I have completely linked my personal happiness to being with someone and I paid too much attention to approval from other people. So I think I can partially relate.

Right now I'm trying to find what I actually want from life and learn how to be alone and at peace. And I agree that hiking or simply wandering around the city alone is a great meditative experience that brings me some joy at least.

I just wanted to say that I believe that with time it gets better, and trying to dig up from the lowest points of our lives is a big and rewarding challenge to have. I wish you peace and love; sending virtual hugs. You are not alone.

Thank you Matt - your insight on thinking about yourself as a failure while being alone hit me quite hard, but also provided a piece of self reflection I did not have until now.

As for this experience being an opportunity and a challenge - I totally agree, even though it does not seem so ATM.

Let us both embrace this challenging-but-worthwile part of it, I guess, while also acknowledging the hard ones. Wish you love and peace as well along your journey!

What I've found is that building a relationship is like building an orbital spacecraft: there are an infinite number of ways to do this which leads to failure, but very few which leads to success.

Our extant societal memeplex makes it seem like relationships are the default setting, and available to the majority with just a bit of effort. However, this could not be further from the truth in my experience. Very few relationships are successful, and most are in some stage of slow motion RUD. Often, the fallout from a failed relationship is worse than not having been in one in the first place.

There are solutions to this, but they will seem anachronistic to the HN crowd. Turns out that the concept of a marriage is very related to Christmas: it is a religious construct, and as such, cannot be removed from that context. Attempts to do so will more often than not result in immense suffering for all involved.

We, in Iran, have both a Yule (called Yalda here) celebration and the new year Nowruz holidays, none of which are religious.

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