9 Things People Don’t Realize You’re Doing Because You’re Completely Fine With Being Alone
You're picky about who you date. Your ability to set standards stems from your ability to be alone when you refuse to lower them.
1. Things people typically do with others, you don’t mind doing by yourself.
Going to a movie alone is no big deal for you. You don’t mind being responsible for consuming a giant bag of popcorn all to yourself, or sipping a soda with only one straw. Things that people normally do with other people you have no problem doing alone. The word normal means nothing to you anyway, so if normal people find going to a movie theatre alone strange, you don’t care.
2. You’re picky about who you date because you only want to date someone who you consider worth your time.
You’re not the type of person who starts a relationship simply to avoid being single. You don’t believe in settling, and you’re not going to settle down and commit to someone until you know they’re someone who’s worthy of your commitment. To others it might sound like you think too highly of yourself, but your ability to set standards stems from your ability to be alone when you refuse to lower them.
3. Just because you’re fine with doing things alone doesn’t mean you always want to be alone.
You enjoy your alone time, but you don’t want to be alone all of the time. You’re not necessarily a painfully shy person, and you don’t necessarily consider yourself a complete introvert. You like to get out and have fun, and be social, and the fact that you’re able and comfortable to do things on your own does not take away from that.
4. You have alone time ‘recovery’ days.
When you have full weeks and weekends spending all of your time surrounded by other people, you need a recovery day thrown in there so you can decompress and hear your own thoughts. Your independence is important to you simply because you need it to feel like yourself.
5. You have no problem being a ‘third wheel’ because you don’t ever truly feel like one.
When you go to a carnival with your best friend and her long-term boyfriend wins you a giant stuffed giraffe it’s not because he’s trying to make you feel like less of a third wheel, it’s because they’re used to you being unafraid to join them on date nights that aren’t actually dates.
6. Spending the night alone is more fun for you than spending it with people you don’t actually want to be around.
There’s no such thing for you as ‘pretend friends,’ you don’t pretend to like people you don’t, and you definitely don’t spend time with them. You’re happy because the people you spend time with are people who nourish your happiness, not prevent it. You’ll spend the night in your bedroom alone before you spend it with people who make you wish you were in your bedroom alone.
7. Declining an invitation isn’t anything personal against whoever invites you.
When your best friend who you’ve known since middle school asks if you want to go to a karaoke bar for drinks with her and her new roommates you decline because a) you’re a terrible singer and b) you’d rather binge watch Grace and Frankie all night than be forced to listen to her sing Aretha Franklin off-pitch. It’s nothing personal, you still love your friend, but your couch and Netflix just feel like a better option tonight.
8. You’re not embarrassed when you run into people you know while you’re doing something by yourself.
When you see a group of friends day-drinking mimosas four tables down from you at your favorite local brunch spot you don’t hide behind a drink menu out of embarrassment, you continue to happily eat your boujie ricotta fig flatbread and you’ll gladly say hello if they see you. They’ll most likely ask who you’re there with, and you have no shame in saying, ‘Just me.’
9. You enjoy being alone but you don’t enjoy feeling lonely.
Alone is a state of being; loneliness is a feeling. You have no problem being alone, because you don’t feel lonely while doing so. You have your moments when you feel lonely, everyone does, but they don’t have to happen when you’re physically alone. We all know it’s possible to feel lonely in a room full of people, which is why it’s wrong to assume that the people who enjoy being alone the most, are the loneliest. 