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It is commonly accepted that the true Alpha Male must learn to deal with and tolerate occasional bouts of loneliness. Guys like Franco and others talk about how being an Alpha “is a lonely business.” Other guys like Roosh regularly report regular stints of dealing with loneliness. Guys on blogs, forums, and in my own email often describe long dry spells where they don’t date or have sex with anyone. Other guys often report to me about how they’re only having one night stands or FBs and nothing else, and how lonely this makes them feel.
-By Caleb Jones
Does living the Alpha life automatically mean you must deal with loneliness from time to time?
Let’s get this out of the way first. True fact: I have not experienced the emotion of loneliness for about 15 years. Yes, I’m serious. The last time I experienced loneliness was when I was married.
So are you doomed to have to forever put up with being lonely from time to time if you choose this lifestyle? No. Does this mean if you just do certain things you’ll never be lonely? Also no. The situation is a little more complicated.
I would love to tell you that the reason I haven’t felt loneliness in so long is because I’m some kind of super self-aware badass who does all the right things. I’d love to tell you that, but I can’t. That’s part of the reason, but not the entire reason. There are two reasons why I haven’t felt lonely while other Alphas often do:
1. I have an introverted, self-entertaining personality that really enjoys being alone. Yes, I’m still a human being and still crave human contact and connection just like everyone else, but my threshold tolerance for loneliness is higher than most other personality types.
I didn’t hone this or practice this. It has nothing to do with skill or ability. It’s just a personality trait I was born with. I lucked out there.
2. This next reason is because of skill and self-awareness. I have purposely and consciously structured a lifestyle where I am never lonely. I always have regular, ongoing relationships with FBs and MLTRs, and often either a high-end MLTR or OLTR whom I really like and who at least feels like a girlfriend. But even when I don’t have this person (and often I don’t) I’m still not lonely, or even close.
This is very different from the monogamy guy, who will usually reach the point where he feels either bored, trapped, or resentful, as well as the player one night stand guy, who will always have to put up with loneliness and dry spells. I don’t have dry spells or loneliness, literally never. My system ensures I don’t. I’ve discussed this in more detail here and here.
Every man whom I have ever seen (or read about) who experiences loneliness has the inverse of one or both of the above items. I shall explain each and how to overcome them. How To Manage Personality Types More Conducive To Loneliness
Some men have more emotional personality types than others. Guys on the higher end of the emotional scale tend to feel a larger range of feelings (both good and bad), feel happy feelings more easily, and feel bad feelings more easily. These men need more consistent and personal human contact than men like myself who are on the lower ends of the emotional scale.
A second scale is how extroverted or social you are. If you’re on the higher end of this scale, you tend to talk more often, hang out with people more often, talk with people on the phone more often, leap into serious or pair-bonded relationships faster, have more friends, and spend time with people more often.
As I always have to when I discuss topics like this, I need to clearly state that where you fall on the scale is not good or bad. There are strong advantages to being on the high end of the emotional scale or the social scale. For most of my life I have envied men who had the natural social skills that I had to work on for decades to master. My son, for example, is high on both of these scales, and he’s one of the most charismatic men I’ve ever known. At age 6 he already had the same social skills it took me literally 30 years to acquire. I was amazed. High-emotion / high-social guys can pull off some really amazing things that guys like me can’t (or at least can’t without years of work and practice).
So please don’t think I’m saying men who are high on these scales are somehow “worse” than men like me who are lower on these scales. As with all personality types and traits, there are always pros and cons to both sets of extremes. So today we’re talking about loneliness, and in that respect you need to understand and accept that if you are on the high ends of the emotional scale or the social scale, one of the “cons” of your personality type is that you are more susceptible to feeling lonely.
Just being aware of this gives you the edge. Most men who are like this have no idea they have this problem, and go through life suffering loneliness for reasons they don’t understand. Your job is to be aware of this weakness, and do your best to manage it and mitigate it in your life as best you can for maximum, long-term happiness.
Genetically, I have a very bad, very slow metabolism. It really sucks. It’s something I’ve had to wrestle with my entire life. More importantly, it’s something I’m going to have to mange for the rest of my life, whether I want to or not, if I want to live a life of long-term consistent happiness. Yet as I write these words, I am the skinniest (or should I say, least chubby) I’ve ever been in my adult life. This is because:
1. I identified the problem and admitted it was a weakness I had, even if my manly-man ego didn’t want to.
2. I made a solemn pact with myself that I would take the time, effort, and if necessary, money, to combat and reduce this weakness as best I could, since my goal is to live a long and happy life.
3. I followed through on my promise to myself, even on days when I didn't feel like it.
4. I realized that this was a problem I would have to manage literally for the rest of my life. It’s not the kind of problem I can address once and it goes away.
If you are higher on the emotional or social scales, you need to do the exact same thing in terms of your susceptibility to loneliness. Admit you have this weakness, take the time and effort to address it so you can live a happy life, and realize you’ll have to manage this for the rest of your life. (If you want to be happy, that is. If you’re a drama-lover or don't consider your own happiness as your highest priority, then you can stop reading my stuff right now.)
So are you doomed to have to forever put up with being lonely from time to time if you choose this lifestyle? No. Does this mean if you just do certain things you’ll never be lonely? Also no. The situation is a little more complicated.
I would love to tell you that the reason I haven’t felt loneliness in so long is because I’m some kind of super self-aware badass who does all the right things. I’d love to tell you that, but I can’t. That’s part of the reason, but not the entire reason. There are two reasons why I haven’t felt lonely while other Alphas often do:
1. I have an introverted, self-entertaining personality that really enjoys being alone. Yes, I’m still a human being and still crave human contact and connection just like everyone else, but my threshold tolerance for loneliness is higher than most other personality types.
I didn’t hone this or practice this. It has nothing to do with skill or ability. It’s just a personality trait I was born with. I lucked out there.
2. This next reason is because of skill and self-awareness. I have purposely and consciously structured a lifestyle where I am never lonely. I always have regular, ongoing relationships with FBs and MLTRs, and often either a high-end MLTR or OLTR whom I really like and who at least feels like a girlfriend. But even when I don’t have this person (and often I don’t) I’m still not lonely, or even close.
This is very different from the monogamy guy, who will usually reach the point where he feels either bored, trapped, or resentful, as well as the player one night stand guy, who will always have to put up with loneliness and dry spells. I don’t have dry spells or loneliness, literally never. My system ensures I don’t. I’ve discussed this in more detail here and here.
Every man whom I have ever seen (or read about) who experiences loneliness has the inverse of one or both of the above items. I shall explain each and how to overcome them. How To Manage Personality Types More Conducive To Loneliness
Some men have more emotional personality types than others. Guys on the higher end of the emotional scale tend to feel a larger range of feelings (both good and bad), feel happy feelings more easily, and feel bad feelings more easily. These men need more consistent and personal human contact than men like myself who are on the lower ends of the emotional scale.
A second scale is how extroverted or social you are. If you’re on the higher end of this scale, you tend to talk more often, hang out with people more often, talk with people on the phone more often, leap into serious or pair-bonded relationships faster, have more friends, and spend time with people more often.
As I always have to when I discuss topics like this, I need to clearly state that where you fall on the scale is not good or bad. There are strong advantages to being on the high end of the emotional scale or the social scale. For most of my life I have envied men who had the natural social skills that I had to work on for decades to master. My son, for example, is high on both of these scales, and he’s one of the most charismatic men I’ve ever known. At age 6 he already had the same social skills it took me literally 30 years to acquire. I was amazed. High-emotion / high-social guys can pull off some really amazing things that guys like me can’t (or at least can’t without years of work and practice).
So please don’t think I’m saying men who are high on these scales are somehow “worse” than men like me who are lower on these scales. As with all personality types and traits, there are always pros and cons to both sets of extremes. So today we’re talking about loneliness, and in that respect you need to understand and accept that if you are on the high ends of the emotional scale or the social scale, one of the “cons” of your personality type is that you are more susceptible to feeling lonely.
Just being aware of this gives you the edge. Most men who are like this have no idea they have this problem, and go through life suffering loneliness for reasons they don’t understand. Your job is to be aware of this weakness, and do your best to manage it and mitigate it in your life as best you can for maximum, long-term happiness.
Genetically, I have a very bad, very slow metabolism. It really sucks. It’s something I’ve had to wrestle with my entire life. More importantly, it’s something I’m going to have to mange for the rest of my life, whether I want to or not, if I want to live a life of long-term consistent happiness. Yet as I write these words, I am the skinniest (or should I say, least chubby) I’ve ever been in my adult life. This is because:
1. I identified the problem and admitted it was a weakness I had, even if my manly-man ego didn’t want to.
2. I made a solemn pact with myself that I would take the time, effort, and if necessary, money, to combat and reduce this weakness as best I could, since my goal is to live a long and happy life.
3. I followed through on my promise to myself, even on days when I didn't feel like it.
4. I realized that this was a problem I would have to manage literally for the rest of my life. It’s not the kind of problem I can address once and it goes away.
If you are higher on the emotional or social scales, you need to do the exact same thing in terms of your susceptibility to loneliness. Admit you have this weakness, take the time and effort to address it so you can live a happy life, and realize you’ll have to manage this for the rest of your life. (If you want to be happy, that is. If you’re a drama-lover or don't consider your own happiness as your highest priority, then you can stop reading my stuff right now.)
This means you need to be more careful about loneliness management than a guy like me does. This means I can push the envelope in my relationships with women in ways you probably can’t, or can’t yet, just like you can probably eat some pizza and won’t get as fat as I do when I eat the same thing.
Be aware, and address it. How do you address it? This leads us into the second thing you need to do.
Live A Lifestyle That Is Not Conducive To Loneliness
The second reason I haven’t felt lonely in about 15 years is because I purposely live a lifestyle that is not conducive to loneliness entering into the equation. One of the many benefits of living the Alpha Male 2.0 lifestyle is that loneliness isn’t part of the system. That’s something monogamous men or player men have to deal with, not open/poly men (unless they’re doing things wrong).
Let’s look at the last two times I remember feeling lonely. The last time was when I was a married, monogamous, family-man beta male. I remember being in my house while the wife was away and the kids were at school. I wasn’t miserable in my marriage, but I felt trapped in a scenario where I couldn’t feel as happy as I wanted to be. I was with a woman I loved, but I felt like I didn’t have the joyous connection with a woman I could truly feel. I felt lonely. Very lonely.
As I talked about above, I’m a happy guy, on the low ends of the emotional and social scales, so I bounced back from this feeling pretty quickly. But the point is I felt it, even though I was in a serious relationship with a woman I cared for.
People often assume that as long as you have a girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse or whatever, you won’t ever feel lonely. This is false Societal Programming. I have known many people in serious, pair-bonded relationships who felt quite lonely.
The other times I felt lonely were the more obvious ones. These were when I was a very young man, way before I was married, when I was single and truly alone. I didn’t feel lonely very often, but there were times I did feel it.
In both scenarios, I was living a lifestyle conducive to loneliness. Every time you feel lonely, or any time you see someone else complaining about loneliness, I promise you that person is either:
1. Monogamous or strongly wants to be monogamous.
2. Single and completely alone.
3. A player who sometimes is having lots of sex, but other times is going through dry spells.
4. An extreme Thrill of the Hunt guy who avoids any relationships (or is incapable of relationships) that last longer than about a month or two.
I don’t live any of those lifestyles, because none of those lifestyles are long-term sustainable, nor conducive for long-term consistent happiness. If you get monogamous, you’re going to eventually cheat or break up / get divorced. Even if you don’t, odds are you’re in for some problems that will make you less happy and possibly lonely. If you’re single and completely alone, obviously you’ll be lonely there as well. If you’re a player who gets laid a lot but doesn’t have any long-term relationships, often you’ll be very happy sometimes, lonely other times. It can’t not happen unless you're a rare exception to the rule.
I have multiple, long-term, nonmonogamous relationships. Some are serious, some are casual, sometimes one is super serious, but all of them are ongoing and make me feel very happy. I get plenty of sex and sexual variety, at all times, literally whenever I want. I don’t have dry spells and literally have never had one. I get plenty of connection and, if I want it, love. I am literally never alone unless I choose to be.
My lifestyle, while not perfect (no lifestyle choice is), is structured to reduce loneliness to its absolute minimums at all times. If you don’t want to feel lonely, you need to structure a lifestyle where loneliness doesn’t happen. You can use mine as a proven example, or come up with something else on your own.
What you don’t want to do is automatically go along with the standard societal structures which are conducive to loneliness (monogamy, being a player, etc).
What Loneliness Is and Is Not
We need to clarify what loneliness is. Just because I’m never lonely doesn’t mean I never feel dissatisfied or possibly have other negative emotions in my personal life. I’m a human being and a little of this is unavoidable no matter how good you are at making yourself long-term consistently happy. The issue is whether or not these feelings are loneliness or something else.
The definition of the word loneliness is “sad from being apart from other people” or “sad from being alone,” i.e. not with a special someone of the opposite sex. You could have lots of friends, and even get laid a lot, but still be single (more or less) and feel alone because you lack that connection.
I don't ever feel this emotion. Haven’t in about 15 years.
But what I have felt before is a dissatisfaction that my relationships, or perhaps a certain relationship, isn’t exactly what I want, and a strong desire for something I don’t have, at least at the moment. I haven’t felt this way in quite a while, but I admit I’ve had this feeling.
But this feeling still isn’t loneliness. So just because you feel a sense of frustration or dissatisfaction in your relationship(s) doesn’t necessarily mean you’re lonely. I think people, and men in particular, misread their own emotions something and assign this label of “loneliness” to a feeling that is not.
Another feeling that is not loneliness is unrequited love or unrequited oneitis, when you really want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with you. This may feel like loneliness, but it’s not. It’s oneitis and neediness (which are also very bad and something you need to work on managing and/or avoiding, as I’ve discussed before).
As always, everything in your life is your fault, so if you ever feel loneliness, you have only one person to blame, and there’s literally only one person who can fix it. It’s that guy in the mirror.
Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.
Be aware, and address it. How do you address it? This leads us into the second thing you need to do.
Live A Lifestyle That Is Not Conducive To Loneliness
The second reason I haven’t felt lonely in about 15 years is because I purposely live a lifestyle that is not conducive to loneliness entering into the equation. One of the many benefits of living the Alpha Male 2.0 lifestyle is that loneliness isn’t part of the system. That’s something monogamous men or player men have to deal with, not open/poly men (unless they’re doing things wrong).
Let’s look at the last two times I remember feeling lonely. The last time was when I was a married, monogamous, family-man beta male. I remember being in my house while the wife was away and the kids were at school. I wasn’t miserable in my marriage, but I felt trapped in a scenario where I couldn’t feel as happy as I wanted to be. I was with a woman I loved, but I felt like I didn’t have the joyous connection with a woman I could truly feel. I felt lonely. Very lonely.
As I talked about above, I’m a happy guy, on the low ends of the emotional and social scales, so I bounced back from this feeling pretty quickly. But the point is I felt it, even though I was in a serious relationship with a woman I cared for.
People often assume that as long as you have a girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse or whatever, you won’t ever feel lonely. This is false Societal Programming. I have known many people in serious, pair-bonded relationships who felt quite lonely.
The other times I felt lonely were the more obvious ones. These were when I was a very young man, way before I was married, when I was single and truly alone. I didn’t feel lonely very often, but there were times I did feel it.
In both scenarios, I was living a lifestyle conducive to loneliness. Every time you feel lonely, or any time you see someone else complaining about loneliness, I promise you that person is either:
1. Monogamous or strongly wants to be monogamous.
2. Single and completely alone.
3. A player who sometimes is having lots of sex, but other times is going through dry spells.
4. An extreme Thrill of the Hunt guy who avoids any relationships (or is incapable of relationships) that last longer than about a month or two.
I don’t live any of those lifestyles, because none of those lifestyles are long-term sustainable, nor conducive for long-term consistent happiness. If you get monogamous, you’re going to eventually cheat or break up / get divorced. Even if you don’t, odds are you’re in for some problems that will make you less happy and possibly lonely. If you’re single and completely alone, obviously you’ll be lonely there as well. If you’re a player who gets laid a lot but doesn’t have any long-term relationships, often you’ll be very happy sometimes, lonely other times. It can’t not happen unless you're a rare exception to the rule.
I have multiple, long-term, nonmonogamous relationships. Some are serious, some are casual, sometimes one is super serious, but all of them are ongoing and make me feel very happy. I get plenty of sex and sexual variety, at all times, literally whenever I want. I don’t have dry spells and literally have never had one. I get plenty of connection and, if I want it, love. I am literally never alone unless I choose to be.
My lifestyle, while not perfect (no lifestyle choice is), is structured to reduce loneliness to its absolute minimums at all times. If you don’t want to feel lonely, you need to structure a lifestyle where loneliness doesn’t happen. You can use mine as a proven example, or come up with something else on your own.
What you don’t want to do is automatically go along with the standard societal structures which are conducive to loneliness (monogamy, being a player, etc).
What Loneliness Is and Is Not
We need to clarify what loneliness is. Just because I’m never lonely doesn’t mean I never feel dissatisfied or possibly have other negative emotions in my personal life. I’m a human being and a little of this is unavoidable no matter how good you are at making yourself long-term consistently happy. The issue is whether or not these feelings are loneliness or something else.
The definition of the word loneliness is “sad from being apart from other people” or “sad from being alone,” i.e. not with a special someone of the opposite sex. You could have lots of friends, and even get laid a lot, but still be single (more or less) and feel alone because you lack that connection.
I don't ever feel this emotion. Haven’t in about 15 years.
But what I have felt before is a dissatisfaction that my relationships, or perhaps a certain relationship, isn’t exactly what I want, and a strong desire for something I don’t have, at least at the moment. I haven’t felt this way in quite a while, but I admit I’ve had this feeling.
But this feeling still isn’t loneliness. So just because you feel a sense of frustration or dissatisfaction in your relationship(s) doesn’t necessarily mean you’re lonely. I think people, and men in particular, misread their own emotions something and assign this label of “loneliness” to a feeling that is not.
Another feeling that is not loneliness is unrequited love or unrequited oneitis, when you really want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with you. This may feel like loneliness, but it’s not. It’s oneitis and neediness (which are also very bad and something you need to work on managing and/or avoiding, as I’ve discussed before).
As always, everything in your life is your fault, so if you ever feel loneliness, you have only one person to blame, and there’s literally only one person who can fix it. It’s that guy in the mirror.
Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.