One of the more fascinating things about not dating or having sex in 2023 has been noticing how my experience of loneliness has changed over the course of the year.

I came into this year expecting to experience loneliness. 

I also knew I had a tendency to act out my loneliness. By eating a pint of ice cream. Or swiping on a dating app and talking to women I wasn’t actually interested in. Or binging porn.

What I wasn’t expecting was feeling and identifying distinct types of loneliness.

The first type of loneliness showed up over the first three to four months of the year.

This was in-your-face loneliness. It’s the kind of loneliness I always thought of when I thought of loneliness. I noticed it most often via the recurring thought “I’d really like to get my dick sucked.”

For that reason, I tend to think of it as ‘blowjob loneliness,’ although it might be better described as physical loneliness. I repeat, I am not a scientist.

The second type of loneliness I noticed was more subtle. 

I started noticing it peaking at me around corners sometime in June. I’d catch it out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked it was gone. It was hard to put my finger on, and even harder to define. It took me months to recognize that it was, in fact, loneliness.

It was most present when I climbed in bed alone, again, on Friday and Saturday nights. I started noticing it just before I fell asleep, lurking in the background. Or when I woke up on Saturday or Sunday morning by myself with nowhere to go and no one to see. 

I’ve always had a tendency to avoid my uncomfortable emotions, and this was no different. 

I started unintentionally staying up later, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. I tried to sleep in more on Saturday and Sunday mornings. If I didn’t get in bed I wouldn’t have to confront the emotion. If I stayed asleep I wouldn’t have to notice how empty my bed was.

Weekdays were more tolerable. I had to get in bed so I could get up early to head to work. 

It wasn’t until I stopped to ask myself why I was struggling to stick to a sleep schedule on the weekends that I even recognized that I was feeling this type of loneliness.

I’ve come to think of this type of loneliness as ‘cuddle’ loneliness. Although it could be called emotional loneliness. Or existential loneliness.

The kind of loneliness that made me think how nice it would be to have someone to cuddle before going to sleep. Someone to watch a movie with on a Friday night when I don’t feel like going out. Someone to wake up to on a lazy Sunday morning.

Men don’t really talk about cuddle loneliness. 

It’s not uncommon to hear a guy say to a friend, “man, I really wanna get my dick sucked.” Or “I just need to get laid.”

But you don’t hear “bro, I really need a hug” that often.

We all feel it on some level. And when I started paying attention to it, I realized that I had felt it all along, all the time. Whether or not I was single. Whether or not I was having sex regularly. Even when I was actively cuddling. 

I felt a pervasive sense of loneliness and isolation. It prevented me from truly connecting with my romantic partners. It prevented me from telling the men in my life that I love them.

And it took me a solid six months of being alone to even notice that feeling, let alone do anything about it. 

I wish I could share some magical shortcut that got me over my loneliness.

Three simple tips I used to cure my fear of abandonment. Four unexpected ways to become more comfortable being alone. One wacky way I conquered fear of intimacy.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. As Oprah said, the big secret in life is that there is no secret. 

No amount of cuddling would have cured my cuddle loneliness. And there’s no blowjob that will cure blowjob loneliness. Not even infinite BJs.

We just have to do the work.

So how did I get through it?

I stopped fighting it. I welcomed it in. I started climbing in bed and reaching out to touch my loneliness. I invited it in on my commute to work. I cried until I shook. I cuddled a spare pillow. 

I made my loneliness an ever present companion.

And I got up every day and kept moving forward.

I didn’t let my loneliness and fear determine how I was going to live my life. I proved to myself that I could manage this wild and crazy ride we call life without a romantic or sexual partner to keep me company. 

Like Albert Camus,  in the midst of Winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible Summer.

Sometime in late September, it just…disappeared.

When I reach out for it now, it’s gone. Instead of loneliness, instead of emptiness, I find strength and security in its place.

I know, not in my head but deep down inside of me, that I can be alone.