What to do when lonely
 

What do you do when you find yourself lonely on a Friday night?


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My husband is a few time zones away at the moment, and I'm finding the apartment pretty quiet. I keep trying to think of things to do that will keep my mind off of the fact that he's gone, aside from working.
So far I've...
- cleaned the apartment
- cooked
- eaten chocolate cupcakes
- gone grocery shopping
- prepared snacks to enjoy throughout the week
- played with pets
- reorganized my desk
- listened to NPR
- ran
- hiked

I've got another month without him, and if it's anything like the past few nights, I'm not going to do much sleeping. Oh, and the town is basically shut down since the students left for the summer. I'm just not used to relaxing without him around. Tips/advice would be great.

tfp video chat always works for me :)

No friends you can call up?
When I find myself in that situation, I usually get online to chat with some friends...or numb my brain with lots of movies.

Hot bath.

Look out the window.

Count your blessings.

Run around your coffee table until you get dizzy or laugh.

Search for cool youtubes to post on TFP that might entertain a guy like me.

I'm not sure what you can do right this instant but enjoy it!
There are two things you can do in life that will make it so you never have another bunch of free time:
1. Buy a house.
2. Have children.

Once you do those things you will longingly look back at the time you have right now.

Read a book.

When I'm lonely I kinda just sit around and wallow in my loneliness.

I don't know you very well GG, but I think you're far too independent and accomplished to actually not have anything to do with your time, or not know how to fill it. I suspect that what you're calling lonely, is actually you missing your husband. Just accurately naming the feeling sometimes helps.

It's a good thing that you miss him when you're apart, a reflection of how much you love him. So if it's any comfort, think of it as a healthy relationship emotion, you wouldn't want not to feel it. Something along the lines of that hopelessly romantic, though slightly saccharine, line - "I have always loved being alone - I never knew loneliness until I met you".

So it's not that you're asking what to do stop being lonely, you're asking to what to do to stop missing him. I'm suggesting you don't want to stop missing him. Accept that particular feeling. Besides, nothing helps with missing someone other than the passage of time and then their return. Try to remember what you used to do and enjoy when alone before you met him.

Same. The video chat has helped me get through some pretty lonely evenings this last school year.

My SO is gone a lot because of school. Once he gets a job as an engineer I don't expect this to change much. I read a lot, I cook, I bake, I read food blogs, I post at TFP, I exercise, I clean the house, I garden, I play video games, and I've signed up to volunteer for an event at the end of the month. I also take my netbook to places like the local coffee shop and hang out when I feel like I need a dose of people. I'm kind of thankful I have a house to take care of; if we just had a tiny apartment with no yard/garden I surely would have gone crazy by now :lol:.

Good luck, and remember, there are almost always people in chat on random evenings, and you don't need a webcam to participate. We'd just be happy to see you.

Hey! You just described my typical Friday!

I find that a little escapism can help pass the time away: video games (esp. MMOs), books (esp. masterful fiction and poetry), and movies.

Thanks, Madli. I think you hit it right on the button.

I love to go to a bookstore and browse for hours!

Or take a long walk in the park or my neighborhood.

Sketch or sew something.

Play old CDs and clean the house buck naked.

Call old friends that I seldom call or email.

I often find myself alone on a Friday night. Often times I'll go out to a local bar with friends or even alone. Then again I know anywhere I go I can get a drink and find someone to talk too.

When I stay home I do this...

- Watch movies/tv
- Mess around with linux
- TFP Chat
- Read interesting stuff on the net
- Video Games
- Cook
- Masturbate
- Drink

Uh... drink myself into a Jack Daniels coma while watching Law & Order reruns?

The answer we were looking for was "booze-induced coma while reading The Myth of Sisyphus."

I don't know, I usually just head into the city and see if I can't find something to do. Catch a new band, see if I can sit in anywhere and play, drink my body weight in whisky...get high...try to pick somebody up...try to get arrested...call up friends...sex...usually by the time I run through that list I'm not feeling so lonely and bored anymore.

Although I guess with the small town blues setting in (I know how that can be)...movie night? Dig into a good book (hitting up the library is always fun), I always enjoyed drunken target practice in the back yard, that probably doesn't work so well with an apartment though. Actually when I lived in bumfuck Maine I used to love night time drives when I was lonely and bored, put on some good mellow music, hit the gas and just see where you wind up. Discovering a new lake or beach I'd never visited before was always a good distraction. :)

God do I miss sitting on a quiet beach under a full moon, joint in hand, fire, surf, the smell of salt water, a couple of good friends...those were great times.

I think a key way to avoid that lonely funk is to get outside. It doesn't really matter what (people watching in the city, bird watching in the country) but a change of scenery can work wonders.


Failing that, a big pair of headphones and Led Zeppelin's White Summer/Black Mountainside

I work out. Call people. Hang out with them. Sleep. Visit this site ... NSFW

Catch up on all your shows/movies on your DVR. Sign up for netflix, there are tons of streaming movies and shows you can watch instantly.
Either that or start a hobby, particularly one that has activity and collecting in one so you are always busy. I chose guns and 90s console games.

Oh and another thing I do is call up some friends and smoke some hookah or if no one is available, smoke it myself. Very relaxing, although if you don't already smoke anything I'm not encouraging you start.

Have you written him any letters? Real letters, with a stamp. Letter writing is becoming more and more of a lost art, which is a shame. There is something about that little bit of extra effort which makes it seem much more intimate than an email. They also can make nice keepsakes for years down the road. You can also add perfume and such, the right smells can provoke vivid memories and make the distance seem less.

Common activities include the following.

-Preparing a staple recipe or testing a new one, then sitting down to a previously selected film, next of which is Y tu mamá también.
-Browsing internet forums and other seedy e-stablishments for cheap amusement.
-Slipping into bed and comfortably situating myself for a lengthy reading session, my present book of choice being Pale Blue Dot.
-Immersing myself in the latest game to catch my interest, currently Distant Worlds, World of Goo, Dragon Age, and Dark Age of Camelot.
-Downloading and listening to music through SoulSeek or torrent trackers.
-Editing photographs and designing graphics in Photoshop.
-Inspecting the yard and tending to my plants.
-Visiting Leu Gardens for a leisurely stroll through nature, or possibly a more strenuous hiking trail elsewhere.
-Numerous other activities which are too irregular to mention.

I'm sure there are many things you can do to fill that empty space, for example:

- Think about re-organizing your apartment so he'll have something new to be surprised with when he gets home.

- Call up some old friends, see if you all can go on a 'girls night out' to dinner, a movie, just somewhere to sit, talk, laugh and have fun.

- Continue with the workouts, the runs (if you have dogs, I'm sure they'd love to go!), the hiking... see if you could interest a friend to go with you.

- Get tangled up in a good book, which could fill hours of free time.

It's just some of the little things that can make your time fly by. All the best!