Spending time alone is better for relationships

Intimacy is about transparency, authenticity, and vulnerability. It’s about taking down the mask you wear and the fortress you’ve built to protect your heart, your self-esteem, and your feelings. And it’s pretty normal to find it challenging to allow others to see us as we truly are — faults and all. It’s a relational risk, and so there are a lot of people who hold tight to their defenses, because of the power that letting them down allow others to affect their own feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours.

However, there’s another type of intimacy that can be just as difficult for some — self-intimacy. This is about making time to reflect on who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. It’s about letting down your guard and giving yourself permission to stop telling yourself the lies you think you need to hear. It’s about acknowledging the fears that limit you, the selfbeliefs that keep you from truly believing in yourself, and the imagined obstacles that keep you from attempting to reach the goals you value.

Self-reflection also helps you reconnect with the person you are (or were) when you show up in relationships. Making time for healthy solitude gives you space for honest self-assessment as well as self-acceptance — even for past choices you now wish you hadn’t made.

Self-reflection and healthy solitude are not about ruminating over the negative experiences in your life. They’re about accepting what is true, and determining what you want to be no longer true.

They say that happiness is a choice — and choosing to let your past mistakes and failures

By giving the opportunity to develop a stronger level of intimacy with yourself, you are giving yourself a boost

weigh you down in the present moment is also a choice that you are intentionally making.

How do you make time to do something that others might consider self-indulgent? One habit that encourages healthy solitude is a daily reflective walk — whether you log 10,000 steps or just a few hundred. When your body is in motion, you are spurring the creative process and fighting any tendencies towards depression.

Another opportunity is found at the beginning or end of your workday. Get to work a little early or stay a little late. Using this space for quiet self-reflection can help you identify the goals that are truly worth your pursuit. Creating a space for journaling also provides a dedicated opportunity to turn over the rocks and stones of daily life to see what’s hidden underneath or building up within. Vision boards and dream boards and gratitude lists and all of the ways in which people are encouraged to map out their hopes are similar activities to journaling in that you are giving a space to feelings or thoughts that you have not yet crystallised into shape or form.

By giving yourself the opportunity to develop a strong level of intimacy with yourself, you are also giving yourself a boost into the depths you can take your relationships with others. If you can’t look yourself in the eye and see yourself for who you are, you may have a hard time accepting another’s faults or foibles. It’s okay to be human: It’s a condition we all share. —Psychology Today Suzanne Degges-White is professor and chair of the Counseling, Adult and Higher Education

department at Northern Illinois University