This is in reply to CaptainAlone’s post on feeling lonely while going through self-improvement

The truth is, this is something that I am struggling with as well, but it is getting easier as each month goes by and I continue to improve. I really don’t have a solution for this–or if there is one, I don’t know about it.

Here’s the thing. When I was FA, I, too, would have a bad day here and there, but it was different. I was lonely, but I didn’t feel that crushing loneliness, if you get what I mean. Then, after I started my self improvement, when I’d have a bad week, the loneliness I felt would be as bad as ever.

This sounds counter-intuitive, and it is. Would even lead people to question why they are doing this in the first place (and I asked myself these questions a number of times).

But the reason why we feel the way we do is because we are shedding our Forever Alone status. Let us not forget that Forever Alones are comfortable in their depression. Loneliness is the comfort zone. Forever Alone is a drug that we are addicted to. When we start having success, that crushing loneliness we feel is actually withdrawal symptoms of FA. This is an important concept to grasp right here:

Forever Alones neither succeed, nor fail in social situations. They are completely neutral as they sit in the comfort of loneliness.

Because they neither succeed, nor fail (and I will get into what failing really means here in a second), they aren’t subjecting themselves to that full range of emotions that someone who is improving themselves has to face every time they go out and practice.

As self-improvers, we are pushing ourselves further beyond our boundaries than we’ve ever been before. We can have a great week, feel amazing at what we accomplished, and then the next week feel crushing loneliness. Why? Because we started to get that taste of success. The more we improve, the more we see how capable we are at excelling as social creatures. Then, on a bad week, we are extremely hard on ourselves. We feel like we had a setback. “I had success last week, why do I have nothing this week? What’s the matter with me?”

You are so very correct, that getting that feeling of success is like a drug as well. But I prefer this drug over the Forever Alone drug. When we are “in state” or feel awesome while we are out, come back home and wonder why we can’t be like that 24 hours, 7 days a week, it feels like a punch in the gut.

On Failing. As the months go by and you start having more and more success, you will also have more and more failures. The number of failures will outweigh the number of success. This is a fact. This is also completely okay. But even knowing this, I’m still very hard on myself. “Damn it, why couldn’t I get in state? I know I can do this, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Couldn’t generate attraction” and I go home upset.

You have to remind yourself that you did not fail though. You learned. Every time you get rejected, it is a learning experience. The sad people in /r/foreveralone do not learn from their rejections. They go home, blame the world, blame the girl, their looks, and their lack of money. They do not actually sit back and analyze the truth as to why it did not go the way they wanted it to. But this line of thinking is to be expected. As I mentioned earlier, ForeverAlones are comfortable in their depression. The reasons they generate for the rejections they receive are 100% in line with their comfort zone that there is nothing they can do to help themselves. But for us, when we fail, we know what we did wrong, and we know we are capable of so much more — that is why the loneliness is exaggerated for us.

We go out, and we succeed and fail. We feel the whole range of emotions when we try to be social because we set goals for ourselves. We are no longer apathetic ForeverAlones.

So, although I don’t have a “solution” for this, I do have my core belief that I never, ever want to go back to being a ForeverAlone. I know that in the last seven months, I am a much better and social person than I ever was. To go back to being FA is to throw away all the self improvement I’ve been working towards. It’s to go back to being a sad person, with little excitement in ones life.

This takes years to reverse, but the resources in the advanced section really hit home on that.