{and I should really wear my glasses/but my hindsight's twenty-twenty}

[kaberett]

On Thursday night I was at a friend's tiny opera show, and in the interval I burst into tears all over That One Lady and couldn't quite work out why, beyond a general feeling that I was isolated (and a whole lot of brain going "what? no you aren't!").

I have worked it out some. A large part of it is that I am spending an awful lot of my energy (motive and social) just getting into work and managing office niceties. But there's another contribution, and that is getting to just sit very quietly in the same room as someone I know well and like a lot. When I'm living at my parental abode, my mum and I play Scrabble most evenings: I sit with a book or some work, she reads or bimbles about doing housework while I'm thinking about my move, and we talk only intermittently. For most of undergrad, Awesome Housemate C was camped out on either my sofa or my bed, quietly getting on with her stuff while I got on with mine, plus - again - occasional bits of chat/making each other tea.

(Additional issue: my mum is offline at the moment and will be for another week or so, probably, so I'm Predictably Fretting about not hearing from her even though I know why. It is at least less intense than normal.)

I think I either need to work out how to build more of this kind of time into my life, or work out how to notice when I'm already getting it outside the kinds of structures that I'm already used to interpreting that way. Also, probably, to grit my teeth and actually use my wheelchair more, which will result in less exhaustion.

Deeply curious as to how you all manage this (and if this kind of social time is a thing other folk need!).

Comments

[pipisafoat]

i do need that! and atm time-in-room-with-dog (or cats) suffices if there's lots of it, which there is. other options for me are watching tv with people (or reading while they watch tv: more common) (but the tv gives me migraines some days so that's not always actually an option) or things like going to a movie together, where there are people but you don't have to interact to be doing the Socially Appropriate Thing.

[killing_rose]

I live with three other people. The only time I actually have the house completely to myself is Monday evenings for about 3 hours.

We spend much of our time with each other, and if we're not actively in the living room together, we're on IM to each other.

[jjhunter]

stultiloquentia and I do a lot of parallel computing, where we are both on the couch or hanging out in her room & doing our own things on our respective laptops, with occasional cross-pollination of fannish squee or poetry or meta or adventure possibility, etc. etc.

I very much need this kind of time & company in my life. See Needy for a more poetical way of putting it.

[silverhare]

Partner and I spend our evenings doing mutual computer use with our headphones on. He watches Star Trek; I watch stuff and blog; we both play Minecraft, sometimes on the same server. It's super comfy not having to interact but being in the same room. I am not great at being alone, but comfy silence is the best.

We're both autistic, so- uh. Perfection.

[el_staplador]

Oh, yes, definitely. Back in September, when CTony moved up to Cambridge and I was alone in the flat in Woking, I was surprised how much I missed having him around - not because we used to interact much outside dinner and bedtime, but because it was just nice to have someone to wave at every now and again. In fact, we are doing this now: I am computering at the dining table, and he is reading The Folklore of Discworld in an armchair, and occasionally one or the other of us makes a small contented sound and the other one looks up and smiles...

It will be so good when we are living together again. I am extremely grateful to my current housemate for putting me up, but he does seem to have his social interaction meter set permanently to 'polite small-talk' - of which I can do about twenty minutes one-to-one, less if I've had a long day...

[silveradept]

Oh, yes, it's needed time, because I still try to maintain a life that is not completely dependent on housework, paid work, Significant Other's perpetual fear that our relationship is somehow going to implode because I don't necessarily want to spend all of my time at home with them, or taking care of animals. Parallel TV time would work, but Significant Other gets mad at me that I'm not "watching the show" - meaning giving it my full attention - and so it doesn't quite work as quiet supportive time.

[birke]

I work from home and spend most of my time alone. I have a friend who also works from home, in the same field, but thousands of miles away. My version of the "quietly working together" is to have Gchat open and his green-light presence there. :-)

[kaberett]

I wish I could get my brain to accept that as a thing; apparently it's really not willing to, though :-/

(Hence, like: refreshing DW [evidence of people!], or hanging around in IRC channels [ditto!]. But the resulting anxiety if no-one is talking... yeaaaaaah.)

[cadenzamuse]

I don't know how you get on with Skype, but I have occasionally used it for the "just having another body sharing some time with you" purpose.

[birke]

Oh, yes, I can understand that. Even for me, it's not as nice; but it alleviates the loneliness.

[littlebutfierce]

Yeah, I find that kind of time v. useful -- it's one of the many things I am looking forward to whenever dingsi & I manage to live together. Way back in high school, when me & my best friends (from nerd camp & thus not local) got together, we'd always spend some time just in the same room reading (whatever books we'd splurged on buying together) & occasionally telling each other interesting bits. I like having people around, knowing that they are there, but not feeling constantly compelled to have a conversation (this is most painful around ppl I am not entirely comfortable around: like when visiting my family!).

[umadoshi]

I very much like that kind of semi-social time, although I don't tend to have it all that often and I see to get by, so I probably can't say I need it the way I need actual alone time. I mostly get it when my friend Ginny is visiting us, or vice versa, and it's very comfortable to know we can just quietly do our own thing in the same room.

I do like knowing my husband is down in his office when I'm upstairs in mine, but that "knowing someone else is home" feeling isn't really the same thing.

[thefairymelusine]

It's not a thing that I can frequently get at the moment, (although it, or something like it, and being able to quietly do my jigsaw while other people watch TV is a reason I go to the ancestral a fair bit at the moment), but I do recognise it, and also miss it when it's not there. Like birke, I use the "having Skype open in a corner" option as a substitute.

I will probably have more thoughts on this later, but wanted to say something.

[cadenzamuse]

Spouse needs waaaaay more of this time than I do (I need way more concentrating-on-each-other time than Spouse does). When we were dating, we scheduled out our days together (I am the J-est of Js sometimes).

Monday--at the same activity in the evening, but not really together
Tuesday--apart
Wednesday--hang out in the same space and ignore each other
Thursday--apart
Friday--date-type-things (in the same space paying specific attention to each other)
Saturday--at the same activity some mornings, but not really together
Sunday--relationship discussion in the evening, no more than 1 hour

This worked because I needed specific days scheduled not to spend time with him or to spend time with him, or I had a tendency to wait by the phone and then be peeved that he got to decide whether we were hanging out or not. It was also a 1:1:1 ratio for us of time-with-other-people : time-together-and-with-other-people : time-exclusively-together. (A ratio we still check occasionally to try to maintain.)

And at the time alone-together time ratio of 1:1:1 in-the-same-space : deliberately paying attention to each other : discussing relationship was good too. But that changed when we got married, and our mostly-comfortable ratio is now more like 10:5:1.

[glass_icarus]

♥ That kind of time is amazing, and I also find it incredibly productive- I started co-working with a friend over Skype last week, and even when we spent 45 minutes at a time not talking to each other, things just went so much better for both of us. I don't know if the same strategy would help you, but maybe worth a shot? There aren't so many people I can just sit and share silence with, so I really value the times when I can get it- even when it amounts to a virtual library study session, lol.

[khronos_keeper]

I'm feeling this pretty hardcore at the moment, too.

On one hand, I'm the type of person who's kind of a loner by nature, and I like to have my own little bubble that people can't come inside.

But on the other hand, I also get spells of feeling suddenly very alone and isolated. Usually after having spent a few days without having personal interaction with anyone. I still haven't figured out a perfect solution to this.

Usually I can rouse my twin on chat, and we can talk over video chat. A lot of the times, it's really just me wanting to feel secure and what I really want is An Adult, and more often than not my Mom. Yesterday I got to video chat with my mom, and I instantly felt 1000% more comforted than I had within the past week or so.

I also do self comforting things like water my plants, and talk to them. Everything likes to hear how beautiful they are, and it makes me feel better to compliment my miniature daffodils on how much progress they've made.

[mair_in_grenderich]

If it's a datapoint - I can't relax or focus with another person in the room. I can't read, concentrate on work, or sit quietly staring into space. I can watch TV while discussing it, or hang out doing not-much on the internet.

I don't need that kind of time or particularly want it. But I have fairly low social interaction needs.

[sylvaine]

I know that feel. I really miss living with my family for exactly this kind of companionable side-by-side living. (Among other things. :P) I'm mostly dealing with it by trying to find a flat together with a friend (though tbh I doubt that is actually going to happen) and by having a few people on whatsapp that I talk to a lot basically every day. Twitter can also sometimes serve that function for me. And, yeah, it's a poor substitute for having someone physically around, but it's a lot better than the alternative. *moment of gratefulness for modern tech*

[quirkytizzy]

I am actually trying to navigate this RIGHT NOW. I'm not a social person by nature (except when I'm manic, which I'm doing everything in my power to NOT BE right now, because that's a recipe for disaster), so when I say I want to "socialize", what I often mean is "I want to be in a room with people but not have to talk to them but still want to see and hear them."

And that's not the socializing that most people do.

Very frustrating. Going to read the comments other people have left. Maybe they have an idea!