Joanna Mathers talks with New Zealander Stephanie Dowrick, author of Intimacy and Solitude, about myths about loneliness, sex, love and Valentine's Day.
Lockdown was a lesson in loneliness. Isolated inside our homes or on socially distanced streets, many experienced its sting. But loneliness isn't just a Covid-19 phenomenon. In an epoch characterised by connectivity, it's ubiquitous.
Covid threw our loneliness into sharp relief. Lockdowns in New Zealand were short and we have the luxury of physical connection; the rest of the world is still suffering. But it exists beyond physical isolation. Fixed to screens where popularity is measured in clicks, 21st century "connection" often comes at the expense of real relationships.
"Never more people alive on this earth, never more loneliness," Stephanie Dowrick surmises in the introduction to her magnificent, re-released Intimacy and Solitude.
First published 30 years ago, in 1991, this treatise on the understanding of self provides vital signposts for navigating our interconnected, but fundamentally disconnected age. And it completely reframes the experience of aloneness.
New Zealand-born Dowrick is chatting over Zoom on a warm Sydney morning. The writer, psychotherapist and ordained inter-faith reverend explains that the reprint came about when many "emotionally literate friends" urged her that now was the perfect time for a re-release.
"[They were saying] 'what's needed for this Covid time, when we are all re-examining how it is to be alone and to be with others, what we're missing in our communities, what we need in our communities ... you wrote about in Intimacy and Solitude.'"
Loneliness is an epidemic. A survey last year (conducted by health insurance firm Cigna in the United States) revealed that over 50 per cent of respondents were lonely.
Intimacy and Solitude faces this loneliness head-on. It dares the reader to look behind the guards they put up to protect themselves: to dive into the self to face truths that can be painful. And, coming from that place of honesty, to find a way out from damaging patterns, to nurture and care for yourself and to create rewarding relationships with others.
To understand Intimacy and Solitude you need to look at Dowrick's own experiences of pain and disconnection. When she was just 8, her mother died of cancer. It had a huge impact on her development as a human.
"I found it difficult well into my 30s to locate any real sense of myself beyond my professional and intellectual identity," she confesses in the new introduction to the book.
This professional and intellectual life, which included founding London-based publishing house The Women's Press, appeared immaculate. But she was adrift.
"The unmet grief [of my mother's passing] forced me to have a big look at myself, my behaviour and my choices; and to do it through fairly intense psychotherapy," she shares over Zoom.
This coincided with massive shifts occurring within her professional life. At the time (the early 1980s) she says there was a huge reframing of expectations and experiences within her intellectual community.
"People were asking questions like, 'What does it mean to be fully human? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to look into our sorrows and what is sustaining in our lives?' and 'How do we gain more of these sustaining periods and share them with others?'"
As she experienced, both personally and professionally, a truer understanding of self, she began to realise this experience wasn't unique. Others desired wellbeing and connection. To understand themselves. To love and to be loved. Thus, Intimacy and Solitude conceived.
Thirty years on from its first publication, Dowrick believes its lessons are more pressing than ever.
Mental health problems are soaring. Loneliness is an illness and it can be deadly. A study published in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in 2020 found that social isolation and loneliness was associated with a 29 per cent increase in heart disease and a 32 per cent increase in the risk of stroke.
The cause of this 21st-century loneliness is complicated.
"We tend to have smaller families and they are often widely dispersed; 'individualism' and competitiveness are normalised from early ages, rather than community and co-operation," says Dowrick.
"More people than ever live alone, and the way people are 'valued' is relentlessly superficial in much media, which affects the way people see themselves and what they can give and contribute, as well as how they can receive companionship and affirmation from others."
Then there's the myth of the "one"— the romantic ideal that, on days like Valentine's Day, is pumped into a crude caricature. It swirls around in media of every form, a Holy Grail of fulfilment. And those "without" are left feeling that they are lacking. That their singleness is a "fault".
"Because of the idealisations around romance, many people feel intense shame if they are lonely or desolate," she says.
But such idealisation isn't played out in reality. Sexually intimate relationships aren't the panacea for all life's ills. And treating them as such is problematic. Dowrick says it is important to unpackage what lies beneath our often desperate desire for romantic love.
"Very often, when people are longing for an intimate relationship, longing for 'the one', there's often a whole bundle of needs are projected on to that," she says.
"That it can make it extremely fragile."
It takes a lot of reflection to gain true insights into self. Intimacy and Solitude discusses how the exploration and understanding of "self" underpins any meaningful experience of solitude and intimacy.
This "self" is not how we look on Instagram, nor is it our professional persona. It's multifaceted and exists beyond superficialities; and allows us to experience life, even when its unbearably hard, at a much deeper level.
The process of understanding self involves the ability to self-reflect, a process many of us go to great lengths to avoid.
"The fact is that life will sometimes be incredibly hard," says Dowrick. "The levels of addiction around the world indicate people terrified of sitting with pain."
This understanding involves the development of what Dowrick calls "emotional literacy". The elegant term is defined by Dowrick as the ability to "see things as they are"; rather than what we think they ought to be.
"It is not emotionally literate to put someone down all the time or to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Or wanting people to like you but treating them like rubbish. You need to question your own assumptions and the way you treat other people."
She says that we can learn from the people around us who make people feel happy and comfortable for clues on the use of emotional literacy.
"How are they behaving? Why do they make me feel really good?"
Solitude is essential for such self-exploration, says Dowrick. And solitude, as opposed to loneliness, can be embraced as an experience of healing and contemplation.
"The difference in experience [between loneliness and solitude] is immense," says Dowrick. "Think about times when you are missing a particular someone or longing for a quality of connection you don't have. Or you're feeling unnoticed or even unloved. That's loneliness. And it can be agonising."
Solitude, according to Dowrick, can be magical.
"Times of reverie, daydreaming, 'collecting your thoughts' are beautiful benefits of solitude."
She says that many of us are afraid of this process, of what it may reveal.
"Many people fear such times, perhaps because they are afraid their thoughts will be anxious or even self-harming. If that's your situation, or if you feel the need for constant distraction or stimulation, then turning to social media — or any media — will feel necessary and urgent."
She recommends a mindfulness experiment as an illustration of the joys that solitude can bring.
"Take just a few moments to be present to the sensual reality of the moment you are in can be surprisingly calming and refreshing. You might be waiting for a bus. How does the air feel on your skin? What colour is the sky today? How does your body feel when you relax one side, then the other? The beauty of this is not just a brief version of mindfulness, it's also playful and creative. It brings you closer to your surroundings and closer to yourself."
When being alone loses its ability to frighten us, life can be appreciated for all its depth and richness. And it's at this point, Dowrick explains, that true intimacy can occur.
"For a successful romantic relationship to occur, their needs first to be an understanding of self from each person. They need to come as an individual meeting another individual and making something, a third, which is the relationship."
"They [the couple] are not merged, they are distinct individuals. When there is a neurotic possessiveness, intrusiveness, then there will inevitably be appalling problems."
As a reverend and a psychotherapist, Dowrick works with groups of people who may be experiencing painful loneliness. She stresses the importance of paying attention to their relationship with their self to the world, rather than obsessing with finding that "perfect" person.
"The more you notice in your own world, the more varied your friendships become and the more engaging you will be. If you are putting all your passion into your desire for an intimate relationship, it's taking away your power to engage with your life more completely."
Dowrick doesn't believe that there is anything wrong with desiring intimacy, unless it becomes an obsessive need. But she also urges people not to idealise them.
"Yes, it is a wonderful gift to have a loving, committed relationship. It is certainly wonderful to be someone's special person and to give that devotion in return. But does that ever come without complications? I don't think so! It's a profoundly false binary to imagine that single people lack something that those in committed relationships inevitably have."
There are relationships outside of sexually intimacy that can also offer great richness, says Dowrick. And by having a mindful appreciation of these connections and moving away from a fixation on a romantic ideal, we can learn to find great value in these.
"If my own life has taught me anything, it's to value all of my relationships, to give as much time as I can to friendships, community, colleagues; to find richness through connections across the spectrum, and to grow in understanding of how 'single' and singular we all are – and how inevitably connected."
Intimacy and Solitude (Allen & Unwin, $37) is available at bookshops nationwide.
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