does being alone make you immature?
I’ve been thinking about this today after reflecting on both of my parents’ behaviors.
They’re both unpartnered, unmarried, one has absolutely no friends. My mother didn’t have anyone she had to justify herself to for 17 years now, and for 7 years now, lived completely alone for the first time in her entire life.
She isn’t really alone-alone - her job is to meet customers, and she has lots of friends at this point. But she doesn’t have to work in a team, her work is solitary and defined by herself, her superficial friendships never challenge her. There’s no one at home she has to compromise with, no one to consider, to having to work around. No one to complain when she does this or that. No one to impose limits or ask her to change something. No one to answer to.
She has always been a bit immature, but in this case, it hasn’t helped her. It made things worse. She talks and acts like a teen, she is judgmental, hyperironic. She’s not usually confronted with having to consider anyone else’s perspective, so she doesn’t. Not having to parent me has helped in her not having to be someone to look up to, a good example, a mentor. She’s not training anyone at work, either. She sees the world through very limited, naive eyes. She’s hyper because she can’t stand the silence and consuming a lot of short-form Reels/TikTok content, which keeps people like her in their little silos and reinforces that behavior.
My father is similar in the way that he is also immature, but differently. He only has his parents, which believe he can do no wrong and is their good boy, so he’s never been shown limits for decades. He’s always right, you’re always wrong. If you think differently, you’re a sheep. He doesn’t care about facts. If he’s presented with them, he becomes anxious and angry, and because he never has to consider anyone else’s feelings and is always right, he has no interest in controlling them and hasn’t ever learned how to. Because his only points of contact are people who are biased in favor of him, he stays that way. He certainly drives everyone away who bothers once or twice, as he drove me away multiple times and has driven me away forever last November.
Being isolated - even voluntarily - has kept them both stagnant and ignorant. It’s weird, because if you believed the current sentiment online, withdrawing from everything to focus on your betterment, “protecting your peace”, being alone and answering to no one are presented as the ultimate freedom and perfect life. I do think that it can help, but there are simply kinds of people where it is just detrimental. To grow and change, my parents would need to be exposed to a variety of people, viewpoints and cultures, be forced to comply with uncomfortable things, have difficult conversations and endure some hard hitting questions and criticism sometimes while having to look out for others’ boundaries. They won’t, though.
On the other hand, I also know people I think are so well-spoken, kind, mature, considerate, empathetic and educated because they are alone. They decided to exit the noise, even just for a little while, and focus on themselves. What do I want, where am I in life, do I have unreasonable expectations, what do I want out of connections to other people, what should I change? The times of self-reflection and engaging with one’s own actions bore fruits. All the reading of fiction or self-help or autobiographies really paid off in practicing to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Sitting down to learn and find a good routine is helping them keeping stable and being in the position to help others. They’re discerning what they give their attention and energy to.
And likewise, I have seen people whose life is so full of other people, they barely have their own. It’s always about what others want, not what they want. It’s about keeping the peace, about being in alignment with all their loved ones, instead of forging their own path. It’s blindly trusting what your parent says about politics instead of looking it up. It’s uncritically repeating what your sibling said when someone asks your opinion on something. Only doing that sport because your spouse does it. These people don’t know why they do or believe anything - it was just bestowed upon them by outside circumstance, by others, and that also makes them stagnant and immature.
Thinking about this has made me more aware of needing to strike a balance. I want to be more independent and free than many others and need to have time to self-reflect and grow on my own, but I neither wanna be lost in self-obsessed navel-gazing nor be stuck in a feedback loop that keeps me stagnant and immature. I wanna be exposed to different perspectives and limits, even if it’s difficult, but I also don’t want to be swept away by what everyone else in my life is thinking or doing.
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Published 16 Mar, 2025