Netta Weinstein

And even when we look at languages around the world today, what we see is that many languages don't have a word for solitude that doesn't also mean loneliness.

So the way we talk about solitude in society in explicit ways, but even in these subtle ways where we have these associations that we're not even fully aware of, we tend to conflate the state of being alone with the emotion of

of loneliness, of being actively disconnected from other people.

And that's an unnecessary conflation because we can feel really connected to people in our lives even when we're away from them.

We're likely to think of people who prefer to be alone or who like to spend a lot of time on their own as if there's something wrong with them or maybe they don't have something in their life.

So why are you alone on a Friday night?

Well, it has to be because nobody wants to spend time with you or you don't have anywhere else to go.

And

this kind of stigma that we have about solitude, it really is because we're set up to think of ourselves and others as, you know, naturally social.

We're out there to live and function in society.

It's how we contribute to societies by being with other people.

It's where we learn how to be, you

functional members of society.

We learn that from other people.

So a lot of the way that we develop and the way that we learn how to think in a way that benefits society, that all comes from our social interactions.

And we're set up to think if somebody wants to be away from all that, gosh, they might be a little bit different.

Maybe they think a little bit differently.

And yeah, maybe there's something wrong with them.

Researchers have historically found that actually people who prefer to be in solitude are showing some of the kind of mental health concerns that we might have where they're dysfunctional.

But at the same time, a lot of the way that we've measured preference for solitude in psychology has changed.