What's the difference between being lonely and a loner?

[Don]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8703173.stm

Loneliness - most people have or will experience it at some time in their life, according to a new report published by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF).

Young or old, male or female, rich or poor, it doesn't matter - loneliness is indiscriminate.

One contributing factor included in the Lonely Society report is the rising proportion of people living alone. The figure doubled between 1972 and 2008, going from 6% of the population to 12%, according to government figures. But not everyone who is alone is lonely, so what's the difference?

Loneliness is not about being physically alone, it's about a person's individual experience of isolation and how they evaluate it, says the MHF. A loner gets pleasure and satisfaction from solitude, a lonely person doesn't.

While human beings are sociable animals by nature, personalities vary and at the opposite ends of the spectrum are extroverts and introverts.

"For an extrovert it is all about seeking stimulation from other people but an introvert's replenishment comes from solitude," says psychologist Ros Taylor.

"A loner can be perfectly content with their own company, while being alone will make another person utterly miserable."

Professor Jenny de Jong-Gierveld defines loneliness as an "unpleasant or inadmissible" lack of certain relationships in your life. Essentially, you can be surrounded by friends but still feel lonely because you aren't emotionally intimate with any of them.

If you don't feel the same loss from not having close relationships it's not necessarily a problem. In fact, some are in favour of being a loner. The renowned psychologist Anthony Storr argued that solitude is necessary for mental health and creativity.

Crucially, loner or lonely, problems start when both become extreme.

Most of us experience loneliness at some time, but what makes it harmful is when "it settles in long enough to create a persistent, self-reinforcing loop of negative thoughts, sensations and behaviours", says American psychologist John Cacioppo.

Problems start for a loner when they isolate themselves too much, says Ms Taylor.

"Humans need a certain level of interaction because we are basically sociable animals," she says. "If you remove yourself too much from others you lose communication and social skills and that's when problems start.

"You can't go through life not interacting with anyone, you have to talk and deal with a certain amount of people to function in everyday life. You need to know how to do this appropriately and successfully."

So while it is just as natural to enjoy solitude as it is to feel lonely, like many other things in life it's is all about moderation.

[Michigan Girl]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

[G.I.Jim]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

I hear you. Sometimes I like "alone" time too!

[Blueskies]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

I hear you. Sometimes I like "alone" time too!

I'm right with you, MG and Jim.
Jim, I think you will also agree that creative people NEED alone time.
Their family and friends may not always be understanding of that.
It's not that we want to be away from them it's because alone time is necessary to be creative.

[Suzanne]

I agree with Mg & Jim but I think I know where Jim was going with that and I'm not going there.

I was/am a loner and am perfectly content being alone- read: no man in my life OR being alone with my own company. I do have a man in my life now and I love it but cherish the alone time. He does NOT care for being alone and cannot understand how I can. I would rather be with just him or by myself than always around other people.

[steveo777]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

I hear you. Sometimes I like "alone" time too!

Alone....nothing but yourself and a little bottle o Jergen's
The bell rings and it's Rosie....Rosie Palm
She's brought her five sisters

[Michigan Girl]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

I hear you. Sometimes I like "alone" time too!

I'm right with you, MG and Jim.
Jim, I think you will also agree that creative people NEED alone time.
Their family and friends may not always be understanding of that.
It's not that we want to be away from them it's because alone time is necessary to be creative.

Well, I don't know how creative it is, but I prefer to be alone when I'm doing something as
simple as opening a fresh jar of peanut butter!!

[Michigan Girl]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

I hear you. Sometimes I like "alone" time too!

Alone....nothing but yourself and a little bottle o Jergen's
The bell rings and it's Rosie....Rosie Palm
She's brought her five sisters

Say it ain't so, Jimbooooooo!! ...

[Voyager]

Isolation is always detrimental to the human brain. Check out this excerpt from an online article:

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.

Children provide the clearest demonstration of this fact, although it was slow to be accepted. Well into the nineteen-fifties, psychologists were encouraging parents to give children less attention and affection, in order to encourage independence. Then Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, produced a series of influential studies involving baby rhesus monkeys.

He happened upon the findings in the mid-fifties, when he decided to save money for his primate-research laboratory by breeding his own lab monkeys instead of importing them from India. Because he didn’t know how to raise infant monkeys, he cared for them the way hospitals of the era cared for human infants—in nurseries, with plenty of food, warm blankets, some toys, and in isolation from other infants to prevent the spread of infection. The monkeys grew up sturdy, disease-free, and larger than those from the wild. Yet they were also profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves.

At first, Harlow and his graduate students couldn’t figure out what the problem was. They considered factors such as diet, patterns of light exposure, even the antibiotics they used. Then, as Deborah Blum recounts in a fascinating biography of Harlow, “Love at Goon Park,” one of his researchers noticed how tightly the monkeys clung to their soft blankets. Harlow wondered whether what the monkeys were missing in their Isolettes was a mother. So, in an odd experiment, he gave them an artificial one.

In the studies, one artificial mother was a doll made of terry cloth; the other was made of wire. He placed a warming device inside the dolls to make them seem more comforting. The babies, Harlow discovered, largely ignored the wire mother. But they became deeply attached to the cloth mother. They caressed it. They slept curled up on it. They ran to it when frightened. They refused replacements: they wanted only “their” mother. If sharp spikes were made to randomly thrust out of the mother’s body when the rhesus babies held it, they waited patiently for the spikes to recede and returned to clutching it. No matter how tightly they clung to the surrogate mothers, however, the monkeys remained psychologically abnormal.

In a later study on the effect of total isolation from birth, the researchers found that the test monkeys, upon being released into a group of ordinary monkeys, “usually go into a state of emotional shock, characterized by . . . autistic self-clutching and rocking.” Harlow noted, “One of six monkeys isolated for three months refused to eat after release and died five days later.” After several weeks in the company of other monkeys, most of them adjusted—but not those who had been isolated for longer periods. “Twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially,” Harlow wrote. They became permanently withdrawn, and they lived as outcasts—regularly set upon, as if inviting abuse.

The research made Harlow famous (and infamous, too—revulsion at his work helped spur the animal-rights movement). Other psychologists produced evidence of similarly deep and sustained damage in neglected and orphaned children. Hospitals were made to open up their nurseries to parents. And it became widely accepted that children require nurturing human beings not just for food and protection but also for the normal functioning of their brains.

We have been hesitant to apply these lessons to adults. Adults, after all, are fully formed, independent beings, with internal strengths and knowledge to draw upon. We wouldn’t have anything like a child’s dependence on other people, right? Yet it seems that we do. We don’t have a lot of monkey experiments to call upon here. But mankind has produced tens of thousands of human ones, including in our prison system. And the picture that has emerged is profoundly unsettling.

Among our most benign experiments are those with people who voluntarily isolate themselves for extended periods. Long-distance solo sailors, for instance, commit themselves to months at sea. They face all manner of physical terrors: thrashing storms, fifty-foot waves, leaks, illness. Yet, for many, the single most overwhelming difficulty they report is the “soul-destroying loneliness,” as one sailor called it. Astronauts have to be screened for their ability to tolerate long stretches in tightly confined isolation, and they come to depend on radio and video communications for social contact.


The problem of isolation goes beyond ordinary loneliness, however. Consider what we’ve learned from hostages who have been held in solitary confinement—from the journalist Terry Anderson, for example, whose extraordinary memoir, “Den of Lions,” recounts his seven years as a hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Anderson was the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when, on March 16, 1985, three bearded men forced him from his car in Beirut at gunpoint. He was pushed into a Mercedes sedan, covered head to toe with a heavy blanket, and made to crouch head down in the footwell behind the front seat. His captors drove him to a garage, pulled him out of the car, put a hood over his head, and bound his wrists and ankles with tape. For half an hour, they grilled him for the names of other Americans in Beirut, but he gave no names and they did not beat him or press him further. They threw him in the trunk of the car, drove him to another building, and put him in what would be the first of a succession of cells across Lebanon. He was soon placed in what seemed to be a dusty closet, large enough for only a mattress. Blindfolded, he could make out the distant sounds of other hostages. (One was William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief who was kidnapped and tortured repeatedly until he weakened and died.) Peering around his blindfold, Anderson could see a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. He received three unpalatable meals a day—usually a sandwich of bread and cheese, or cold rice with canned vegetables, or soup. He had a bottle to urinate in and was allotted one five- to ten-minute trip each day to a rotting bathroom to empty his bowels and wash with water at a dirty sink. Otherwise, the only reprieve from isolation came when the guards made short visits to bark at him for breaking a rule or to threaten him, sometimes with a gun at his temple.

He missed people terribly, especially his fiancée and his family. He was despondent and depressed. Then, with time, he began to feel something more. He felt himself disintegrating. It was as if his brain were grinding down. A month into his confinement, he recalled in his memoir, “The mind is a blank. Jesus, I always thought I was smart. Where are all the things I learned, the books I read, the poems I memorized? There’s nothing there, just a formless, gray-black misery. My mind’s gone dead. God, help me.”

He was stiff from lying in bed day and night, yet tired all the time. He dozed off and on constantly, sleeping twelve hours a day. He craved activity of almost any kind. He would watch the daylight wax and wane on the ceiling, or roaches creep slowly up the wall. He had a Bible and tried to read, but he often found that he lacked the concentration to do so. He observed himself becoming neurotically possessive about his little space, at times putting his life in jeopardy by flying into a rage if a guard happened to step on his bed. He brooded incessantly, thinking back on all the mistakes he’d made in life, his regrets, his offenses against God and family.

His captors moved him every few months. For unpredictable stretches of time, he was granted the salvation of a companion—sometimes he shared a cell with as many as four other hostages—and he noticed that his thinking recovered rapidly when this occurred. He could read and concentrate longer, avoid hallucinations, and better control his emotions. “I would rather have had the worst companion than no companion at all,” he noted.

In September, 1986, after several months of sharing a cell with another hostage, Anderson was, for no apparent reason, returned to solitary confinement, this time in a six-by-six-foot cell, with no windows, and light from only a flickering fluorescent lamp in an outside corridor. The guards refused to say how long he would be there. After a few weeks, he felt his mind slipping away again.

“I find myself trembling sometimes for no reason,” he wrote. “I’m afraid I’m beginning to lose my mind, to lose control completely.”

One day, three years into his ordeal, he snapped. He walked over to a wall and began beating his forehead against it, dozens of times. His head was smashed and bleeding before the guards were able to stop him.

Some hostages fared worse. Anderson told the story of Frank Reed, a fifty-four-year-old American private-school director who was taken hostage and held in solitary confinement for four months before being put in with Anderson. By then, Reed had become severely withdrawn. He lay motionless for hours facing a wall, semi-catatonic. He could not follow the guards’ simplest instructions. This invited abuse from them, in much the same way that once isolated rhesus monkeys seemed to invite abuse from the colony. Released after three and a half years, Reed ultimately required admission to a psychiatric hospital.

“It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—more than two years of it spent in isolation in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, unable to communicate with other P.O.W.s except by tap code, secreted notes, or by speaking into an enamel cup pressed against the wall. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” And this comes from a man who was beaten regularly; denied adequate medical treatment for two broken arms, a broken leg, and chronic dysentery; and tortured to the point of having an arm broken again. A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam, many of whom were treated even worse than McCain, reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered.

And what happened to them was physical. EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

On December 4, 1991, Terry Anderson was released from captivity. He had been the last and the longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. I spoke to Keron Fletcher, a former British military psychiatrist who had been on the receiving team for Anderson and many other hostages, and followed them for years afterward. Initially, Fletcher said, everyone experiences the pure elation of being able to see and talk to people again, especially family and friends. They can’t get enough of other people, and talk almost non-stop for hours. They are optimistic and hopeful. But, afterward, normal sleeping and eating patterns prove difficult to reëstablish. Some have lost their sense of time. For weeks, they have trouble managing the sensations and emotional complexities of their freedom.

For the first few months after his release, Anderson said when I reached him by phone recently, “it was just kind of a fog.” He had done many television interviews at the time. “And if you look at me in the pictures? Look at my eyes. You can tell. I look drugged.”

Most hostages survived their ordeal, Fletcher said, although relationships, marriages, and careers were often lost. Some found, as John McCain did, that the experience even strengthened them. Yet none saw solitary confinement as anything less than torture. This presents us with an awkward question: If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?

It's a long and very interesting article - here is a link to it:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009 ... ct_gawande

[ohsherrie]

Being a "loner" is usually a choice. Being "lonely" usually isn't.

[bluejeangirl76]

Being a "loner" is usually a choice. Being "lonely" usually isn't.

Precisely what I was going to say, only I was probably going to be really long-winded about it.

[Blueskies]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

I hear you. Sometimes I like "alone" time too!

I'm right with you, MG and Jim.
Jim, I think you will also agree that creative people NEED alone time.
Their family and friends may not always be understanding of that.
It's not that we want to be away from them it's because alone time is necessary to be creative.

Well, I don't know how creative it is, but I prefer to be alone when I'm doing something as
simple as opening a fresh jar of peanut butter!!

Peanut butter??? LOL! Well I guess you become "one" with peanut butter. To each their own. Say no more.

[The Sushi Hunter]

To me a loner is someone who's nature it is to be alone, basically does not have the feelings of being alone, and a lonely person is someone who can feel alone if they are not with others, or in some cases can even feel alone when other's are physically around them.

[Jana]

To me a loner is someone who's nature it is to be alone, basically does not feel alone, and a lonely person is someone who feels alone, regardless if they are with others or not.

Wow, I usually NEVER agree with you, but great insight on that one.

[MBPL]

IMO being lonely is a mental state of mind. Thankfully, I do not feel isolated, but I do not mind cohabiting alone, been a "loner" pretty much all my life even with a younger sib.

[Arkansas]

"I'm a loner, but I'm never alone."
- Foreigner, Dirty White Boy

What a great lyric!


later~

[Ehwmatt]

I like both - I live alone right now and love it. I do have my family and many of my friends within a stone's throw though and don't necessarily ALWAYS like being alone. I'm just in the middle I guess. I can probably handle being alone and hangin out by myself a whole weekend better than your average person, as there is a lot I can do to entertain myself [guitar, videogames, reading, workin out, internet], but I could never live without friends and family, either.

[stevew2]

I like both - I live alone right now and love it. I do have my family and many of my friends within a stone's throw though and don't necessarily ALWAYS like being alone. I'm just in the middle I guess. I can probably handle being alone and hangin out by myself a whole weekend better than your average person, as there is a lot I can do to entertain myself [guitar, videogames, reading, workin out, internet], but I could never live without friends and family, either.

I like being alone at times, but i like having some one to hang out with to ,and wont delete my posts

[Andrew]

I like both - I live alone right now and love it. I do have my family and many of my friends within a stone's throw though and don't necessarily ALWAYS like being alone. I'm just in the middle I guess. I can probably handle being alone and hangin out by myself a whole weekend better than your average person, as there is a lot I can do to entertain myself [guitar, videogames, reading, workin out, internet], but I could never live without friends and family, either.

I like being alone at times, but i like having some one to hang out with to ,and wont delete my posts

LOL

[stevew2]

I m glad you got a laugh Andrew,you need to do that shit mate

[G.I.Jim]

I'm not lonely nor am I a loner, but when I get the opportunity
to be alone ...I love it!!

I hear you. Sometimes I like "alone" time too!

Alone....nothing but yourself and a little bottle o Jergen's
The bell rings and it's Rosie....Rosie Palm
She's brought her five sisters

Say it ain't so, Jimbooooooo!! ...

A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!

[annpea]

In my world, i'm surrounded by other people day and night so i'm never alone; but sometimes I feel so lonely in the middle of all this uproar like i'm not a part of it.

[mikemarrs]

i've been with my girlfriend 13 years in june but about seven years ago she caught me messing around online packed her shit and left for out of state.for a whole year.a week or so after she left i moved across town to a new place and indulged in some very dark and sex filled times.at this point in time i had just come into an insurance settlement so i had quite a bit of money tucked away.

i spent a whole year alone holed up in this place getting blasted and using the local escort service like they were baskin robbins.spent my days sleeping and my nights with different female company.i had these gals over on average three or four nights a week.almost a year later of doing this i had a gal over one night and right before we started to do our thing i had a breakdown.i cried my soul out to this person i barely knew and i realized i hit my breaking point as far as being alone.i was ready to be with one person finally.i had my fill.it was fun for me at first being away from my girlfriend during that time but after almost a year i realized i did have a heart and it got old after a while screwing mary,jill and angela nine kind of different ways.

i finally asked my girlfriend back but we were having a rough patch the first few months so one night we decided it just wasn't going to work.well the next day before i took her to the airport she got really sick and had to go to the hospital.for some reason we couldn't decide if we were really ready for her to leave or stay so i told her to go on to hospital and get checked out.i went home to take a nap when my mother called and told me to get to the hospital.while there a nurse informed me my girlfriend was pregant.well that pretty much sealed our decision to stay together and now we have two children.

i enjoyed that year alone until toward the end when i did get lonely and got bored getting screwed up and screwing around.nowadays i wouldn't won't to be away from my family period for no reason.

[G.I.Jim]

i've been with my girlfriend 13 years in june but about seven years ago she caught me messing around online packed her shit and left for out of state.for a whole year.a week or so after she left i moved across town to a new place and indulged in some very dark and sex filled times.at this point in time i had just come into an insurance settlement so i had quite a bit of money tucked away.

i spent a whole year alone holed up in this place getting blasted and using the local escort service like they were baskin robbins.spent my days sleeping and my nights with different female company.i had these gals over on average three or four nights a week.almost a year later of doing this i had a gal over one night and right before we started to do our thing i had a breakdown.i cried my soul out to this person i barely knew and i realized i hit my breaking point as far as being alone.i was ready to be with one person finally.i had my fill.it was fun for me at first being away from my girlfriend during that time but after almost a year i realized i did have a heart and it got old after a while screwing mary,jill and angela nine kind of different ways.

i finally asked my girlfriend back but we were having a rough patch the first few months so one night we decided it just wasn't going to work.well the next day before i took her to the airport she got really sick and had to go to the hospital.for some reason we couldn't decide if we were really ready for her to leave or stay so i told her to go on to hospital and get checked out.i went home to take a nap when my mother called and told me to get to the hospital.while there a nurse informed me my girlfriend was pregant.well that pretty much sealed our decision to stay together and now we have two children.

i enjoyed that year alone until toward the end when i did get lonely and got bored getting screwed up and screwing around.nowadays i wouldn't won't to be away from my family period for no reason.

Mike, that was a sad but very cool story. Thanks for sharing that, and I'm glad you two worked it out.

[Behshad]

I like both - I live alone right now and love it. I do have my family and many of my friends within a stone's throw though and don't necessarily ALWAYS like being alone. I'm just in the middle I guess. I can probably handle being alone and hangin out by myself a whole weekend better than your average person, as there is a lot I can do to entertain myself [guitar, videogames, reading, workin out, internet], but I could never live without friends and family, either.

I like being alone at times, but i like having some one to hang out with to ,and wont delete my posts

I think you misread the topic header,,,,
Its "What's the difference between being lonely and a loner?" not "What's the difference between being lonely and a boner?"

[Michigan Girl]

i've been with my girlfriend 13 years in june but about seven years ago she caught me messing around online packed her shit and left for out of state.for a whole year.a week or so after she left i moved across town to a new place and indulged in some very dark and sex filled times.at this point in time i had just come into an insurance settlement so i had quite a bit of money tucked away.

i spent a whole year alone holed up in this place getting blasted and using the local escort service like they were baskin robbins.spent my days sleeping and my nights with different female company.i had these gals over on average three or four nights a week.almost a year later of doing this i had a gal over one night and right before we started to do our thing i had a breakdown.i cried my soul out to this person i barely knew and i realized i hit my breaking point as far as being alone.i was ready to be with one person finally.i had my fill.it was fun for me at first being away from my girlfriend during that time but after almost a year i realized i did have a heart and it got old after a while screwing mary,jill and angela nine kind of different ways.

i finally asked my girlfriend back but we were having a rough patch the first few months so one night we decided it just wasn't going to work.well the next day before i took her to the airport she got really sick and had to go to the hospital.for some reason we couldn't decide if we were really ready for her to leave or stay so i told her to go on to hospital and get checked out.i went home to take a nap when my mother called and told me to get to the hospital.while there a nurse informed me my girlfriend was pregant.well that pretty much sealed our decision to stay together and now we have two children.

i enjoyed that year alone until toward the end when i did get lonely and got bored getting screwed up and screwing around.nowadays i wouldn't won't to be away from my family period for no reason.

Mike, that was a sad but very cool story. Thanks for sharing that, and I'm glad you two worked it out.

A truly amazing story, I believe this would make a great book and/or movie ...

[Behshad]

i've been with my girlfriend 13 years in june but about seven years ago she caught me messing around online packed her shit and left for out of state.for a whole year.a week or so after she left i moved across town to a new place and indulged in some very dark and sex filled times.at this point in time i had just come into an insurance settlement so i had quite a bit of money tucked away.

i spent a whole year alone holed up in this place getting blasted and using the local escort service like they were baskin robbins.spent my days sleeping and my nights with different female company.i had these gals over on average three or four nights a week.almost a year later of doing this i had a gal over one night and right before we started to do our thing i had a breakdown.i cried my soul out to this person i barely knew and i realized i hit my breaking point as far as being alone.i was ready to be with one person finally.i had my fill.it was fun for me at first being away from my girlfriend during that time but after almost a year i realized i did have a heart and it got old after a while screwing mary,jill and angela nine kind of different ways.

i finally asked my girlfriend back but we were having a rough patch the first few months so one night we decided it just wasn't going to work.well the next day before i took her to the airport she got really sick and had to go to the hospital.for some reason we couldn't decide if we were really ready for her to leave or stay so i told her to go on to hospital and get checked out.i went home to take a nap when my mother called and told me to get to the hospital.while there a nurse informed me my girlfriend was pregant.well that pretty much sealed our decision to stay together and now we have two children.

i enjoyed that year alone until toward the end when i did get lonely and got bored getting screwed up and screwing around.nowadays i wouldn't won't to be away from my family period for no reason.

Mike, that was a sad but very cool story. Thanks for sharing that, and I'm glad you two worked it out.

A truly amazing story, I believe this would make a great book and/or movie ...

Yeah a movie !!! Nick cage could play mike,,, "Leaving Las Vegas - The 2nd cumming " ?

[mikemarrs]

well the thing is i screwed my own self up with all this because for years now my gal don't trust me like i want her to and it all stems back to that point in time.people do change but sometimes the person getting hurt in the deal takes a while to fully trust the other person again.it annoys me mainly because i've had opportunities to go to events and shows but i can't do those type things because of these trust issues.

[stevew2]

I like both - I live alone right now and love it. I do have my family and many of my friends within a stone's throw though and don't necessarily ALWAYS like being alone. I'm just in the middle I guess. I can probably handle being alone and hangin out by myself a whole weekend better than your average person, as there is a lot I can do to entertain myself [guitar, videogames, reading, workin out, internet], but I could never live without friends and family, either.

I like being alone at times, but i like having some one to hang out with to ,and wont delete my posts

I think you misread the topic header,,,,
Its "What's the difference between being lonely and a loner?" not "What's the difference between being lonely and a boner?"

you re never loner if ya got a boner,unless Bobby GYN