An epidemic of never being alone
The loneliness epidemic has a twin sister made of women aching for quiet, solitude, and nakedness. Do you relate?
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After I had a baby, I went almost three years without being alone in my house.
That first year after I gave birth I was either at home with the baby caring for her, or at work. “Alone time” consisted of sweaty subway rides and FB scrolling while pumping at the office. And then— just when the baby was old enough to go to daycare, the pandemic descended and we were all in lockdown, sheltering in place together in the house, all of us—all the time.
I thought about the claustrophobia of that time again this summer, because I just came off the summer (lack of) childcare scramble. In the summer my partner and I are again either doing childcare, or rushing to work, or rushing back to do childcare. Solitude again becomes a rare, stolen luxury. Now that the school year has finally started here in NYC, last week I finally found myself with a few precious hushed hours of alone time working from home.
Being home alone may seem inconsequential, but it’s not. Being alone at home is the only way to have privacy—the state of being unobserved and undisturbed. Being deprived of privacy is so corrosive to mental well-being that prisons that deprived people of privacy have been outlawed as inhumane.1 According to science, there are debilitating effects to being deprived of alone time and privacy in everyday life as well.
And I’m thinking about this again not just because we’re finally at the end of the summer childcare scramble, but because consigning women to full-time, around-the-clock domestic labor with little or no relief is a major part of our national discourse right now.
From homeschooling trad wives who swear off childcare for their eight children being held up as models of virtuous womanhood, to politicians telling us that if we are worried about school shootings that we should just keep our kids home 24/7, to V.P. nominee J.D. “women should stay home and stay pregnant” Vance. What all these cultural messages have in common is not serving women and children or family values, but keeping women in positions to serve patriarchal values—preferably every waking hour.
What do we lose when women have no privacy or solitude to maintain their mental health, and to stay in touch with and develop a self? What are these men afraid will happen if women are allowed to know themselves fully and flourish?
Here’s how I started to find myself—my self—again, after years without being alone, and re-discovering solitude freedom from the gaze, and nakedness.
It was a Tuesday. That’s how clearly I remember it. My partner, after 1.5 years of pandemic lockdown and remote work, finally went back to work in person. I had the house to myself for the whole day for the first time in years.
I dropped my toddler off at preschool, and then I headed home and wasn’t even sure what to do. The prospect was exhilarating and overwhelming. So much privacy!
When I came into to my apartment, it had that delicious hush of a space that is unoccupied. How I had missed that stillness. There was no one on a Zoom call in the other room. There was no waiting for the silence to be pierced any moment by someone bursting through the door.
Before me lay a long, luxurious stretch of being alone, in my own home, for hours on end. I mean, I still had to work from home, it wasn’t a total holiday. But it still felt like some kind of spa day.
When I did the math, I actually couldn’t remember spending a day home alone since I had a baby, three years ago.
Do you relate to this? If so, you’re not alone. Many parents, especially women, are deprived of any time to themselves.
Much has been written about the epidemic of loneliness, even before the pandemic, when loneliness coverage reached a fever pitch. I don’t mean to downplay the impacts of loneliness, which are extremely serious—ranging from mental health crises to predisposing us to physical illness like cancer and heart disease.
In my heart this makes perfect sense—I have no trouble believing that not having a place to belong, or feel seen, is debilitating and actually changes us on a cellular level.
I’m also wondering, what happens to our spirits and bodies on the flip side of loneliness. What are the debilitating effects of never having the space or stillness to be alone, to be with and create your self?
There doesn’t seem to be nearly as much research on the impacts of never being left alone (and I can’t help but suspect that this is because this is a problem that largely afflicts women, whereas loneliness is more likely to impact men). But science does have some answers.
If being deprived of alone time makes you feel stressed and irritable, that’s because research shows that solitude reduces stress and helps us regulate emotions and come back to ourselves to help us thrive mentally. A recent study found that solitude improved emotional well being, and actually made it easier to relate to other people, when participants were able to choose to be alone when they wanted it.
Researchers found that alone time provides “a temporary haven to withdraw and self-regulate, after which one can rejoin society better equipped to relate positively with others.”
Anyone who has ever felt the life-giving satisfaction of laying on the couch alone, wrapped in a blanket and eating a bag of chips, knows this intuitively. But it’s nice to see it supported by peer-reviewed research.
We sometimes think of those activities as “guilty pleasures” instead of essential, healthy alone time. Research also shows that alone time improves empathy, boosts creativity, and allows us to know ourselves.
There’s a very large body of work showing that solitary activities like mindfulness and meditation actually re-wire our brains to be calm and resilient.
In the largest study ever done on rest, an online survey called the “Rest Test,” respondents reported that the things that they find the most restful are usually done alone. Reading came in first, followed by being in nature, being alone, and doing nothing in particular.
Being alone is the key to being rested, the researchers found.
What also struck me about the survey responses, which include 18,000 people from 134 countries, is how many of the top 15 survey responses to the things that people find most restful are things that are usually done alone at home: reading, taking a bath or shower, “doing nothing,” listening to music, being with animals, doing creative arts, meditating.
Many of us have found ways to be alone outside the house. I go for walks and listen to podcasts, do yoga in my room with the door closed, or just sit in my car with music on. But it’s just not as restful as being alone inside my house.
It turns out that to feel rested in our minds and bodies, humans want to be alone at home.
Here is a short list of things that I missed the most about being alone in my house:
Noticing the way that the light shifts in my home, and the way that my mood fluctuates over the course of the day when I’m not interrupted.
Eating an apple (or eating anything, really) as loudly and messily as I want.
Composing a meal of nothing but the weird snacks in my fridge that I like to eat, and not worrying about feeding anyone else. (Hummus toast, anyone? Yogurt and toaster waffles for lunch?)
Hearing my neighbors padding around upstairs and feeling not alone, but also deliciously alone.
Trying on clothes and hairstyles in my bedroom mirror with the door thrown open, not waiting for someone to knock or burst in.
Gossiping and laughing on the phone in privacy.
Crying in privacy.
Looking forward to being reunited with my partner at the end of the day; the anticipation of walking to meet him at the subway and catching sight of him on the sidewalk before he catches my gaze.
I asked people on my personal Instagram account and the Matriarchy Report Instagram what they suggested I do with my precious, new-found alone time. There were lots of great suggestions for baths, naps, and blasting music. I waited for the first person to suggest healthy masturbation practice (she knows who she is; gold star!).
But there was something in the results that I didn’t expect: a surprising number of women enthusiastically endorsing casual nakedness.
“Walk around naked drinking coffee!” one wrote. “Work naked,” “Run around naked, blast your fave music.”
A lot of women, it seems, long to be naked by themselves.
This struck me as amusing at first, and then more profound. One of the things about being home alone that is most restful is the singular lack of surveillance. We want to be home alone to be free of guilt, to not be judged, to be free of being seen. Being seen has weight for everyone, but especially for women.
This week I’m watching John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing,” with my uni students. The celebrated art and culture critic describes the way that women have historically been presented as objects for display, first in nude European oil paintings, and now in images of women that we see everywhere.2 Women constantly meet glances, he says, that “remind them of how they look, or should look.”
As a result, women have been socialized to see themselves as a sight in public, and even within their own homes. “When she is walking across a room, or weeping at the death of her father, she cannot avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping,” writes Berger. He notes that women as depicted in art are not naked, which means to simply be oneself without clothes, but are “nudes” to be consumed by a viewer. Ergo, I think, the only time a woman can be free of the gaze of others is when she is alone, and therefore, the only time she can be truly naked is when she’s alone.
It makes sense to me that women right now might be longing to be alone, free of any gaze, in order to really rest. And being naked alone—to be oneself but without clothes on, without anyone’s judgment—might be the greatest experience of freedom a woman’s body can have.
One Tuesday, after years without privacy, I spent the day alone in my house. That evening, when I finally left to meet my partner at the subway stop and pick up my daughter, my house felt a little more like my home. I felt like I had reclaimed some of it as a space of respite and privacy.
I felt a little more like myself, a little more like a woman, a little more comfort in my own body. My body felt more like it was my body.
I may or may not have done various activities naked, or danced to loud music, or napped, or eaten snack food as entire meals. Nobody knows what I did that day. And that’s what made it good.
A version of this essay was originally published in February, 2022.
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MATRIARCHY REPORT is written by Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter.
Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU who has won fellowships and many SPJ awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues. She has an MFA from Columbia University. She was raised in Utah and lives in New York City with her partner and young daughter.
Allison Lichter is associate dean at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She has been a writer, producer and editor for radio and print, covering the arts, politics, and the workplace. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter.
Instagram: @matriarchyreport Twitter/X: @laneanderson @allisonlichter
Original art by @joolsannie; see her work here. Used with permission.
About a year ago, after 10+ years of motherhood and marriage to a controlling partner (that is now ending), I started making solo retreats to a small second home owned by my mom. These retreats were and continue to be short and infrequent- 2 or 3 days no more than once per month (max). During these retreats, when I’m not performing my day job remotely, I don’t do much. I read, go for walks, stare at the sky, journal, and yes, sleep naked. They have unequivocally saved me from “going off the deep end” amid utter and complete mental exhaustion and pathological levels of frustration.
I’m trying to figure how to explain this fact to my husband, who is deeply resentful that I do this. As we attempt to negotiate a co-parenting schedule amid our separation, he insists that we swap duties “every other day” in a clear bid to prevent me from leaving town, ever. He claims that it’s “not equitable” that I have easy access to a space outside our home. My attempts to encourage to him to book airbnbs anytime he wants, or take extended trips to visit friends and family (he works remotely so this is totally doable) are met with more resentment.
As I ponder this situation, there’s a quote from Marianne in the show “Normal People” that constantly runs through my head: “From my experience, men are more interested in limiting the freedoms of women than they are in exercising their own.”
Same here, Marianne.
Thank you for sharing - every bit of this is incredibly relatable! One thought: there is something different about being in your own home and alone - different from a hotel room on a work trip, etc. I tend to think it's the Peace and Freedom that comes with that privacy and solitude in one's own, hopefully safe, space. We can be our completely authentic selves. We don't have to even subconsciously wonder or worry if those close to us need something. We can focus solely on our own needs. That feeling and experience is way too infrequent for most women but so needed to hang on to and embrace our own sense of Self.
Second, for those who have the resources for an extra room in their home: Claim that room as yours! It's your place where you can escape and get some solitude even when someone else is in the house. No one can come in until they knock and are granted access. Even better if that room has an attached bathroom. My male partner and I have rolled this way since August of 2020 and it works stunningly well. Just my .02.