The Super-Meaning of Romantic Relationships

[Rayaan]

Relationships have always had a sort of super-meaning to me, meaning that relationships are what makes everything else meaningful.  In my scientific work I've often thought to myself, "What's the point of doing science when I come home to an empty apartment every night?"  This seems to hold true for most things in my life, including sports and fitness, social life, hobbies, etc.  It feels like these activities are meaningless if they don't lead to me to what I really want, which is a romantic relationship.  I've learned to surf in the last two years, but it feels meaningless because my surfing skills haven't gotten me a girlfriend.  

Having an intimate relationship is no doubt a good thing for your emotional and psychological growth.

But at the same time, remember that some amount of solitude in our daily lives is necessary, too, no matter how old you are. Some psychologists have said that one's capacity for solitude - i.e. being okay with being alone with yourself - is in fact an important marker of psychological health (see below).





Transcript:

A lot of people fear solitude yet the great psychiatrist Winnicott said that the capacity for solitude is one of the greatest markers of psychological health. So if you can develop your capacity for solitude that means that you are okay being alone with yourself.

As Cal Newport who wrote the book Deep Work notes some of the most meaningful things we do in our life add unique value to the world that are not replicable as he puts it. Are operated under the conditions that are complete distraction free where we try to eliminate as much as possible that ringing, you know, from our phone that we have a new text or we have a new email or looking on Facebook and checking the likes. Disconnecting from the outside world as much as possible and get in a situation where we’re in complete solitude that we can get completely immersed and really follow through to completion something in a very deep way. He argues that is very conducive to a good life as well as a meaningful life.

It doesn’t mean because you’ve developed your capacity for solitude that you’re a misanthrope is what I want to say. It doesn’t mean that. That’s a false dichotomy. You can develop your capacity fully for optimal deep work but you can also develop your capacity to collaborate with others so that once you come up with ideas or generate things that are deep you can then share and get feedback and then go back. It’s a constant process, constant cyclical process where you go back and forth between getting feedback from the world and seeing what your sense of audience. It’s very important to know what your sense of audience, get a sense of your audience when you’re producing a creative work. But it’s also very important to have moments where you go into solitude and you embrace the beauty of silence.