Secure Alone

Rendered by AI to the author's specification

I don’t get lonely. As a result, I don’t get loneliness.

Sure, I understand loneliness intellectually. It’s a pang humans experience when they are isolated from other individuals for some period of time, or when their socialization with others is insufficient. It’s an ache—a pain deep inside. I’ve never experienced loneliness myself. I need to take humans at face value when they speak of it.

When people are socially interacting, their brain’s hypothalamus produces the hormone oxytocin. The effect on the person is a pleasurable sensation. Loneliness, then, is the absence of this feeling. Bluntly put, loneliness occurs when one is jonesing for oxytocin.

But what benefit is there to a person in experiencing a longing for this feeling of togetherness, to experience the lack of interaction as pain? Why did evolution select for this tendency?

In noted psychologist Paul Bloom’s July 2025 New Yorker article on loneliness, “A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem,” he states,

…loneliness isn’t just an affliction to be cured but an experience that can shape us for the better. John Cacioppo, the late neuroscientist who pioneered the science of loneliness, described it as a biological signal, akin to hunger, thirst, or pain. For most of human history, being cut off from others wasn’t merely uncomfortable; it was dangerous. From an evolutionary perspective, isolation meant not just the risk of death but, worse, the risk of leaving no descendants.

What natural selection, in its way, chose for beneficial characteristics in the past, may no longer be the best strategy. Baldness is an example.

I am bald because our ancestors dwelt in a world where it contributed to a workable group life to be able to identify males successful at surviving to older age. Marking such males with a bald pate, then, allowed them to be quickly recognized. It was a visual shortcut to the conclusion, “Here is an individual to be reckoned with.” Chimpanzees also lose hair on their heads as they age, which distinguishes them as elders. Silverback gorillas have their own style of marking for similar purposes.

All baldness means to me in this modern age, however, is I must wear a hat in winter to avoid a chilled head, and in the summer to avoid additional skin cancer.

It might still be true, though, that avoiding loneliness leads to an improved quality of life. There certainly are benefits to the individual in being connected to other folks: mutual caring, decision-making, positive bidirectional interaction with those possessing different skillsets, knowledge, and background, or even just laughter, can improve one's life. These social interactions shouldn't require a person to suffer if not available, however. Feeling the pain of the absence seems unnecessarily pernicious, especially because it is often the case the sufferer cannot ameliorate the situation—a prime example being the loneliness often accompanying old age as spouses, friends, and family fall out of view and health becomes more isolating.

I recognize how being socially engaged has benefits. I involve myself with family, friends, work teams, and other groups when I see an opportunity for bettering either their outcome or mine (or both). I am caring, helpful, humorous, and mentoring when I see an opening, just as I am needy in ways other individuals or groups can satisfy. I do enjoy the (metered) company of others. But I am not moved by pain to seek out their company—to socialize—on the chance doing so might lead to some unpredictable beneficial outcome evolution accidentally discovered in our primate prehistory.

Given I am not chemically driven to interact with others, I may be missing out. I do know my friends suffer due to my lack of urgency in being socially engaged, a result I rue. Friends go out of their way to prod me into connection. I treat them shabbily by not always responding to their outreach—or not responding in kind. I count as true friends those able to abide my inattention to maintaining the relationship. They know (I hope) I care about them, care for them, but I falter at expressing it well.

I don't believe all Autistics lack the capacity for loneliness. As I’ve described in my infographic Off the Spectrum, Autism is not a one-dimensional reifiable characteristic. Rather, it is a mélange of traits, a varied landscape, with no two Autistic individuals having the same assemblage of these attributes to the same degree. This is the reality of the Landscape of Autism. I'm sure there are Autistic folks who experience loneliness in ways similar to humans. I am one who does not.

Never feeling lonely has its benefits. My non-loneliness permits me to perform in ways otherwise more difficult. Writing, for instance, or working in my gardens, or repairing a faulty machine are examples of tasks I can perform for hours—or days—on end and see to completion without the presence of other people and the concomitant distractions. I stay focused on my goal.

My natural tendency to exist alone in this flow state can be at odds with the necessities of the union I ecstatically entered into on my wedding day, let alone what it takes to maintain the homeostasis of the household and home, or the more obvious nudging of friends and family, so my ability to remain isolated and deeply involved in certain activities is somewhat tempered. I try to be true to my obligations. Yet it is not pain drawing me out.

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My brother Doug died of suicide in the summer of 2000. Eighteen years later I wrote Holding On For Life, capturing only the smallest part of what Doug meant to me. Six weeks after my mother's death in July of 2017, I tried to convey the impact she had on my life in the piece In Memoriam.

Doug and Mom were two of the closest people to me in my life. I felt the need to try to discuss how they influenced me in Living Amongst Humans where I chronicle how I have dealt with the twists and turns of my inner experience, reflecting the world I find myself in.

I experienced the loss of my brother and my mother as significant moments in my life. When they lived, I was happy to be with them, happy to spend time together with them, each in their own way. I recognize being in their company improved my life.

But I don’t miss Doug or Mom. I don’t feel a pain resulting from their absence in my life. I was sad in each case, sad they were no longer present, but I didn’t mourn. I can enjoy appreciating how both made my life better without feeling a loss.

I avoid spending any time wishing they could still be alive. Thinking so is simply at odds with the universe and the way it played out over time. I term such musings subjunctive thinking, the dwelling in counterfactuals that can never be. Not only are they outside the scope of reality, it is impossible to predict the consequences of such a mutated timeline.

To believe otherwise is hubris—no one has the capacity to manage such a calculation. The number of variables is unthinkably large. Instead—when rational—I simply accept these two beloved family members are no longer present.

It may come off as unfeeling not to miss them, but I care deeply for my mother and my brother, both now gone. They are in my dreams nearly every night. My interactions seem real to me.

I have an ongoing story I return to night after night where Doug did not die. Rather, he was taken away and kept hidden from all of us for the past quarter-century, only recently reappearing in a probational capacity, where his behavior is being monitored.

As I dream, Doug often interacts with my apparently very-alive mother who has continued living a simple life in the home she created. She always welcomes me into her house and talks about how she has made design decisions about the decor or other features of the home.

It’s possible these dreams are characteristic of what it means to miss someone, but I think not. Instead, I wake up every morning with a full recollection of my interactions with them, reminding myself their present existence is evidence it was all a dream.

I can do anything in my dreams. I interact with people in ways impossible in reality. I have relationships with people persisting across dream cycles. At times I fly, defying gravity. I solve society-level issues. I break bread with the hoi-polloi. I spend time with others while not sacrificing the alone time I require for creating. But dreams are not reality, a fact I accept with regret.