People often asked if being married is lonelier than not. Maybe because they're up all night with friends, or away to trips here and there, or shagging one women after another. To substitute all these for a lifetime of implied monogamy and less social space is deemed to be lonely.
To me, it doesn't really matter what's your status. Married or not married, single or with a partner, with or without parents.
Because loneliness is a state of being, developed from your thoughts. Now that we share a lot of our thoughts through twitter and fb and other social networking medium, it's not impossible to develop theories on the concept of loneliness based on your twits, comments and status updates.
If you have many friends, and yet you still feel the need for external affirmation (via praise, compliment or seek satisfaction from people commenting on your photos etc.), you are lonely. If you have a lot of activities, and yet still seek more, and cannot stop from inviting yourself to the activities of others, you are lonely. If you join one craze after another, if you hop from one relationship after another, if you can't stop selling yourself short in public, if you like the attention of strangers, you are lonely. No matter how you appear not to be, you are actually lonely inside.
I believe that people can have as many friends as they want and yet be lonely. This is because that true loneliness comes not from the lack of people who recognize you, but from you not really recognizing yourself. Not from people who don't wish you, but from you not wishing yourself. Not from people who don't talk to you, but from you not talking to yourself.
True loneliness comes when you don't acknowledge, and act, like you really want to. It comes from conformity to a norm that you don't really believe in. It comes when you fake your "un-loneliness".
You love sitting by yourself to read books. You enjoy just chilling with your mom watching TV. You absolutely wish you could have 8 hours of sleep every night. And yet...there you go, to Changkat, or wherever the latest hot spot seems to be, with friends whom you smile a fake smile, with partners whom you pretend to find attractive, with people whom you pretend to be impressed with.
Life can be so fulfilling, and not so lonely, once you accept who you really are, and embrace it fully. If who you really are involves a lot of partying, so be it. But if it's not, think hard before saying yes to another drunken night.
Remember, being alone is not the same as being lonely.
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