Very few people are able to truly enjoy loneliness - as a rule, most of us are weighed down by this state. However, there are ways to help deal with these feelings. Almost all people are afraid to be alone, and this is absolutely normal, since a person lives in society. Experiences about the life of a hermit make even children think. With age, anxiety increases and turns into fear. Any thought of loneliness often terrifies us. It is these feelings that push people to commit rash acts. For example, a woman can marry someone she doesn't even like very much, just to start a family. However, men can do the same.
Under what circumstances can a person feel lonely
People who do not like to communicate with others are very rarely afraid of being alone, they have no need to build relationships with others. Most often, they have enough correspondence with a person who lives in another country, or rare meetings with almost their only friend. If you have a lot of friends and like to spend time with them often, then most likely you are worried about how you will feel when this is all over. In fact, this fear exists only in the head of a person, and in fact, he does not threaten to be cut off from society. Under what circumstances do we feel lonely? Most often, the thought that you were left completely alone comes after the loss of someone close. It can be like parting with a loved one or just a quarrel. At such moments, it is important to remember that your position is temporary, and soon you will either restore relationships or start new ones. It is much more difficult to overcome the fear of being hurt again and learn to trust. You may also feel lonely after a major change, such as moving or changing jobs, when you lose a strong connection with people you love.How to tell if you are truly lonely
There are far fewer truly lonely people than those who consider themselves so. The fact is that we often look at our own life drunk, that is, under the influence of emotions. It happens that a person only thinks that no one needs him, and none of his acquaintances wants to keep in touch with him. In fact, everything may be far from it. To understand this issue, you need to spend a lot of time on introspection. Try to calm down and think about whether there is at least one person in your environment to whom you can tell what is going on in your heart. It is also possible, on the contrary, that someone opens up in front of you. If you can be sincere in the presence of someone, then you are no longer alone. And if your friend or acquaintance pours out his soul before you, then he trusts you, which means that you are dear to him. Also, try to test your thoughts and assumptions. There may be many more people who want to take care of your emotional experiences than you imagine.4 stages of loneliness
In turn, there are different types of loneliness. Everyone goes through a period in their life when they are all alone, but the situation soon changes. This is temporary loneliness. Everything is much more complicated if a person cannot establish any kind of relationship with others for a long time. Also, loneliness can be divided into several stages.
How to deal with feelings of loneliness
If in fact there are a lot of people around you, both close and not, but at the same time the feeling of loneliness does not leave you If there are always a lot of people around you, but none of them is your friend, support and support, then most likely you Just don't let the people around you. That is, you yourself cannot be sincere with them, and also do not allow them to open up. Try to remind yourself that even if someone hurt you in the past, they are not in your life now. Most likely, right now next to you is that girl who will never hurt, as well as a friend who will support you. Relationships with people are always a risk, but it is almost always justified.How to deal with loneliness and is it worth it at all
Of course, being alone isn't always bad. You can try to come to terms with your situation or change the situation. To decide for yourself which position to choose, you need to weigh all the pros and cons of living alone, and then decide what type of life suits you personally. Few people know that loneliness negatively affects health. Hermits almost always suffer from alcoholism. In addition, they overeat or vice versa, forget to eat normally, and also smoke. There are also problems with the nervous system, since all feelings and emotions remain unexpressed, and oppress a person. Because of this, singles are constantly depressed. Also, his self-esteem drops sharply, and distrust of others also increases. On the other hand, loneliness allows a person to analyze himself, his worldview. Many hermits go to the mountains or other remote areas to find harmony in themselves, to meditate. Also, the life of a loner allows you to take a break from the fast pace of life in the world. Some people associate loneliness with fresh air. It is during this period of life that a person begins to truly understand what personal space is, and also learns to appreciate it.Psychologist's advice: how to overcome depression amid loneliness
Many people believe that they can overcome long-term depression if they communicate a lot with others. This is true, but there is a small condition. Support from the outside is definitely needed, but it is also necessary that a person suffering from loneliness began to change his inner world. Start with your own thoughts, analyze them. Once you realize that your thoughts are only depressing at the moment, stop them. Try to think positively and it will soon become a habit. Also, step by step, start solving your problems, you can ask your loved ones for help in this. Also start talking to a psychologist. To get started, set up face-to-face meetings, and later try to attend group sessions where you can make friends and perhaps get rid of loneliness forever.
The feeling of loneliness arose at least once in a lifetime in every person. Someone benefits from this state, while someone, on the contrary, suffers and suffers from it. Is there a way to help deal with loneliness? There are many answers to this question, which we will discuss later.
The most common is female loneliness. Any girl takes this condition hard and may even experience an inferiority complex because of it. Although, there are also ladies who, on the contrary, choose a lonely life quite consciously and do not suffer from it at all.
How to deal with loneliness for a woman? To make everything much easier, you need to realize all the advantages of this state and take care of your own appearance or career.
Single men are much less common than single girls. Usually these are inveterate bachelors who are convinced of all the advantages of their own freedom. But there are also such representatives of the stronger sex, whom the state of loneliness depresses. How to come to terms with loneliness for such men? According to the advice of psychologists, you just need to enjoy life. Attend various events, make repairs in the apartment, go on a trip, and life will sparkle with new colors.
Of course, it is much more difficult to come to terms with such a state as loneliness for life. But it also has its advantages. Although there are also many disadvantages in this case.
Pros and cons of loneliness
How to deal with complete loneliness? First of all, don't despair. Loneliness has many positive aspects. Imagine for yourself: you come home, no one makes scandals for you. You can not be scattered on family problems and devote yourself to moving up the career ladder. No one will be indignant at the fact that you came late or spent little time on your partner. The advantage of loneliness is that you are completely on your own. You devote all your free time to what you really like. You achieve professional success, educate yourself, travel, spend money only on your own needs and can always be alone with your thoughts.
If you are single now, try to make the most of this state and in no case despair. Loneliness is temporary - remember that. Life is fun and exciting. Behind every turn of fate you are waiting for new meetings and acquaintances, new friends and loved ones. Time will pass, and you will no longer be alone: somewhere very close is a person close to you in spirit, and you will definitely get to know him soon.
When a person feels lonely for a long time, he may experience health problems. Therefore, brushing aside the feelings that arise about this is not the best way out of this situation. It is better to deal with the problem once and for all and cope with loneliness so that this condition no longer has a negative impact on your life.
Often people believe that only those people who are alone suffer from loneliness, those who have no family, friends, relatives. In fact, this is just a feeling, sometimes not reflecting reality. After all, people are lonely among people, and being married, and having children.
Since for many people loneliness is not the joy of feeling free, but a big problem, often accompanied by depression and sadness, we decided to analyze such an important question: how to survive loneliness, or rather, how to quickly cope with loneliness. Go?
What are the causes of loneliness
Lonely because you don't need it?
If you do not know how to cope with loneliness, it is very difficult to return the joy to life again. To do this, it is important to understand what reason or events made you feel lonely. Perhaps due to lack of support, misunderstanding, indifference, isolation, a person believes that no one needs him, that he is not important to anyone.
How to deal with such loneliness? Everything is much easier than you think. You can make sure that this is not the case by joining a community of volunteers who help homeless animals, save nature, plant trees, collect garbage, put out fires, hold events and lessons of kindness, visit orphans, help people with disabilities opportunities, children and adults with serious illnesses.
In any city there are people whose kindness extends to all the disadvantaged and needy. They can be found using social networks, today there are many groups in which people communicate and solve various problems together. Someone helps them from afar, living in another city or village, someone joins them personally, where they meet new people for whom mercy, compassion and sympathy are not an empty phrase, but a way of life.
And then a person immediately feels that in fact he is very needed and important, it is only necessary to make a little effort to look around the world in search of those who need his help. Pets are saved from loneliness, especially those picked up on the street or taken in a shelter. A cat will give so much love and warmth that will help heal all wounds, and a dog will teach you a healthy lifestyle and increase your chances of meeting fellow dog lovers, among whom there may be a person who will become your companion if you are still free and not in love.
Loneliness as an opportunity to retire
It is also important to realize that lack of privacy negatively affects mental health. People who are constantly running somewhere, suffering from loneliness, being afraid of it, all the time trying to fill their day with something, will someday overwhelm their soul with a mass of negative emotions and impressions, and all this, after an insignificant event, will fall on them and those who nearby at this moment, like an avalanche, destroying everything in its path.
It is dangerous when people cannot or do not want to be alone, afraid to look into their souls and put things in order there. It is for this reason that some people often create such discomfort in their souls from resentment, disappointment, claims, unfulfilled desires, that at one fine moment they break down.
Silence - return the path to suffering and loneliness
The wife, who was silent and endured, trying not to think about what did not suit her in her husband, pretending that everything was fine, did not think so deep in her soul, and after a while she comes to the realization that she remains misunderstood, unheard. At the same time, her husband can be a very good person, but how can he hear her when she does not say anything, does not express anything. And if he is a soulless tyrant at all, then it is not surprising that she did not want to be alone with herself, just not to face the truth and not be in a situation where she had to decide what to do with her life.
And in such situations, loneliness is often perceived as a threat to an established life, although there is nothing good in it. Therefore, it is very important to understand that one cannot turn the soul into a sewer, where all the negative and discontent accumulates. Loneliness allows you to deal with what is happening in life and in time to free the soul from the accumulated deposits for some time. Therefore, for those who understand what the constant desire to be in the thick of things threatens, loneliness is a real salvation, which makes it possible to protect yourself and adjust your life path in time, make an important decision and take the first step towards your dream.
To survive loneliness, look for positive aspects
In order to cope with loneliness, as soon as you feel lonely, think about what opportunities this opens up for you. You can put things in order in your soul, make sure that everything is fine with you. Determine what goals you have and how relevant they are. Choose the dream that you want to fulfill the most and develop a plan for its implementation. There is not enough knowledge, so look for them, the whole world is in front of you, you just have to go online. Analyze what you have learned, try to apply it to your life and make a plan for how you can get what you want. Break it down into several stages, and proceed with the implementation of the very first.
Social life helps to cope with loneliness
Participation in important social projects that change life around for the better helps you survive loneliness, realize your importance, feel self-sufficient, understand that there are more kind people, and some of them will definitely want to communicate with you, and rude people and unpleasant personalities can always be avoided.
A person for whom someone else's pain and grief is not an empty phrase cannot be lonely, he can be confused and not yet see his own path. But it is the feeling of loneliness that becomes a signal that it is time to look at your life and think about whether you are doing everything that is important to you. Are all your dreams fulfilled? Have you chosen the path that you wanted and which brings joy?
Analyze your dreams and desires
In order to survive loneliness, think about your hobbies, try to find out if there are people where you live who are also interested in this. And if you want to learn something, look for courses where you will definitely find like-minded people with whom you will have something to talk about. They can become good friends for you.
Become a good conversationalist
Are you worried that an uninteresting interlocutor? In vain. If you know how to listen, are sincerely interested in what the other is saying, believe me, you will not go unnoticed. In addition, as psychologists say, people are more fixated on themselves, their mistakes, so they don’t notice much at all. Those who scoff at others by carefully watching them are ill-mannered and unhappy people, the sooner you realize that this person is like that, the sooner you exclude him from the list of those with whom you should associate. And you don't have to take everything personally. A person misbehaves because he is bad, not you. More self-confidence. A good interlocutor will never suffer from loneliness, because when there is someone to talk heart to heart with, there will be no time for loneliness.
Expand your social circle
Suffering from loneliness in your personal life, think about how you can expand your social circle to meet the right man.
Loneliness as personal freedom
But, of course, the main advice on how to cope with loneliness is considered to be this - change your attitude towards loneliness. Accept it not with hostility, but try to look at it from the other side. Stop taking it as a punishment, as a sign of your worthlessness, isolation from the world.
After all, at some point it is important for everyone to be alone with themselves in order to analyze thoughts, feelings, emotions, live them, experience something and let go.
Thanks to the so-called loneliness, you are left alone with yourself, there is no need to rush anywhere. You can finally read an interesting book that, who knows, will change your life, or you can visit an exhibition, a museum, go to a park, join charities or pay attention to them online, spreading the word among online acquaintances about their activities.
To survive loneliness, realize that this is your chance to finally understand yourself, to understand what you really like, what you would like to do, or vice versa, to understand that you are really on the right track, no matter who tries to convince you otherwise, to rejoice at this and appreciate their achievements, instead of criticizing themselves.
Don't be afraid to feel lonely. Loneliness is not scary. There is nothing wrong. This is just a moment in your life when it's time to figure out what is important for you in life, what you really want to do. This is an opportunity to be alone with yourself and analyze your path, dreams and aspirations. Many live their lives, eventually realizing that they have lived someone else's life. Because they ran away, hid and tried with all their might to get rid of the loneliness that scared them. They could not realize that this is a chance to get to know themselves better in time, to understand their true desires, to find and set foot on the path that will make them happy, so that it would not be insulting and painful that life was wasted in pursuit of something that was completely unnecessary. .
You are alone? Do you have no real friends or do you feel alone among people and can't do anything about it? Then this article is for you. From it you will learn how to deal with loneliness
1. Accept your loneliness
Let go of resentment about being alone. Do not torment yourself with sad thoughts that once you had many friends and acquaintances, and now there are few people you can talk to. Accept what is. And concentrate not on negative experiences, but on how you can cope with loneliness.
2. Look for the reason in yourself
Perhaps you are lonely because you are afraid of communication, or you have too high demands on other people. Or something different. Ask yourself: “What is the reason for my loneliness? And change in the right direction.
3. Want to truly be not alone.
In order to change your life in any direction, you first need to want it very much. Your wish deal with loneliness should motivate you to take action. And if you don’t do anything special, then it’s beneficial for you to be alone.
4. Find something to do
Thoughts of loneliness come when you have nothing to do. When you are not interested in being alone with yourself. Therefore, you need to find interesting activities for yourself that will bring you positive emotions. This will help you deal with loneliness.
5. Get a pet
Pets are great friends who will relieve you of sad thoughts about loneliness. You will start playing with them, taking care of them, walking, feeding them. They will meet you from work and give you joy. This is one way to deal with loneliness.
6. Get out more often
Find places where you can go. It can be courses, trainings, sports clubs, a library and many others.
Learn ways to spend time alone
7. Change your thoughts
If thoughts like “I am doomed to loneliness”, “No one needs me”, and the like are spinning in your head, replace them with the opposite ones using self-hypnosis formulas.
8. Help other people
This is a good cure for loneliness. It will help you not only feel your importance, but also make new friends and acquaintances.
9. Learn to be happy right now
Do not justify your bad mood by the lack of loving communication. Give yourself moments of joy today. Learn to be a happy person in the company of yourself. Sing songs, dance, walk, do whatever you would do if you weren't alone. If you want to go to the cinema, go. If you want to go to another city, go ahead. Take action and love yourself.
Causes of loneliness
To cope with loneliness, you need to go inside yourself and find the cause. As a rule, the absence of a relationship of any nature is associated with the following factors:
1. Low self-esteem.
2. Fear of loneliness.
3. Fear of people.
4. Corruption.
5. Karma.
6. Inaction.
7. Not love for people.
Once you've found your reason for social isolation, start working on it. Increase self-esteem, act, go to your fears, and of course love people.
How to deal with the karma of loneliness according to astrology
Every person, one way or another, at least sometime in his life met with disappointment and wished to stop feeling lonely as soon as possible. In order to get rid of this terrible feeling, you can use several methods.
To begin with, you should at least try to make yourself feel happy - find the positive aspects of your life, remember and list the meaning of life to yourself. Try to mentally send an impulse to another lonely person, imagine how you will meet. If the desire is very strong, you should try to imagine this person, following the points:
Description of the soul of a person (do not describe the figure and appearance of a person, you need to concentrate and give the most attention to his soul and inner world. It is necessary to imagine a kindred soul, with the owner of which you can find something in common).
Trying to strike up a conversation with her/him (At this point, the lonely person should imagine having a conversation with someone they consider to be a close friend, sharing their feelings and plans for the future. Then imagine what the other person is saying. This helps. stop feeling lonely, occupy yourself for a while.However, you should not get too carried away with this - you just need to imagine that a non-existent friend is nearby, you should not think that he really exists, unless of course this is a copy of someone you know).
Awareness of his existence (In fact, this item does not mean at all that a fictional friend can replace a real one or the truth can become real. You just need to understand that in order to overcome the karma of loneliness, you should imagine yourself not alone - this illusion will kill the feeling of loneliness.)
It is worth noting that usually people come up with images of those people who are closest to their dreams.
In order for the energy work to go off with a bang, you need to follow a few rules:
There is no need to concentrate much and pay all your attention to creating an image - in thoughts at this moment there should be calmness and tranquility, a person should feel as much joy as possible, emit light.
It is important to imagine the soul with which a person will look harmonious. You should not imagine a person who will help to cope with material problems - very often such images get out of control and in the end turn out to be not what the person expected to see.
You need to maintain your consistency and not come up with a new image every time the mood changes. The image must be constant, stable, if this does not work out, then it is still too early to do this, and a person who is unsuccessfully trying to find a soul mate is not yet completely alone.
It is worth keeping your inner friend and trying to create it a secret - when someone knows about it, another vibration is involuntarily created, which can negatively affect the work done.
There is no need to doubt your abilities and wonder whether or not you can create an image that will help you not to lose heart. Creating a too implausible and good image, on the contrary, will help you find the meaning of life, look at the world around you more optimistically and rosy.
But it is important to remember that this way of dealing with the karma of loneliness serves only as an incentive to find people with whom it will not be boring to spend your time. Not accepting the norms of this world and trusting only your imaginary friend, who does not even have a clear image, will never play on the side of the person who does this. The invented image only muffles the feeling of loneliness, when a person is in search of himself and his destiny, an imaginary friend can never replace the real one.
If a person denies that he has friends, while trusting only his fictitious friend, this indicates a mental deviation. An imaginary friend should serve as an assistant in difficult lonely periods of life and an incentive to find real friends who will help in quite difficult times much better than a fictional person.
To successfully deal with loneliness, you need to understand that it is due to childhood or genetic patterns that need to be changed.
Therefore, do not sit within 4 walls, take the initiative, get to know each other, invite the first people for walks. Connect with people.
It is also important to do the inner work. Track your thought programs and recode them.
Say to yourself, "People actually accept me" whenever you think otherwise. Change your expectations. Because they attract certain scenarios. Expect good things from people.
The joy of being alone
It's good that you have the desire to fight loneliness. It is natural to associate with others. But it is also important to develop your ability to easily live without society, that is, to be able to be alone and at the same time feel good. This speaks of your inner maturity and self-sufficiency.
Therefore, find benefit in solitude and engage in spiritual development, walk in nature, develop your talents.
Conclusion
To cope with loneliness, it is important to first accept it. Then begin to develop spiritually, improve your soul, work with the causes. Well, the most important thing is to act, to go to people
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And be happy!
This is a letter from R.B. Elena from St. Petersburg, written with pain, about what worries many girls and women today.
“I would like to ask the priest a question. I tried to talk about this with the priests of my church, but, unfortunately, I did not hear anything intelligible. I can't understand God's plan for myself. Who needs my misfortune?
I will soon be forty years old, I live in a small apartment with my mother. I have an interesting job, many friends, I sing in the kliros, I teach at Sunday school. My appearance is ordinary, I have never been a blue stocking in a black scarf - I participate in company events, etc. But I am not married, I have never even had a fiance, as well as children. And probably never will be.
No, I do not promise and do not get tired of praying and hoping, I know examples of happy marriages, I know that, perhaps, I will have time to give birth to a child. But in my case, there is already a higher probability that this will not happen, will not work out, will not work out. I can’t adopt - my mother is against it, and the apartment belongs to her.
In the department at work, all the girls with their families. And every time it hurts me to see how they, happy, announce their pregnancy, go on maternity leave, choose strollers-cots. After a while they come to visit with babies.
I see how other colleagues are relaxing with their husbands and children - everything is fine in their lives. I do not envy - this is a different feeling, but I also want to be like them. And this is not a bad desire - after all, the Lord Himself said: “It is not good for a man to be alone,” and blessed to be fruitful and multiply! And I feel how unkind it is, how much I could give the baby. Even Nick Vuychich has a wife and a son, although he has no arms and legs.
When I do some business related to children's hospitals, I begin to think that everyone has their own cross. I have a cross - the absence of a family. But often I meet happy older people who are doing well. And at the same time they are good, believing people. And none of them died, did not get seriously ill, the family is good, the children are alive and well.
I can't understand why. And the standard Orthodox explanations are not very suitable.
“Pay attention to yourself, Antony,” is said to a person who has already made his choice and asked about strangers. I ask about myself and my life. I myself am not a monastic warehouse, I will not leave my mother either, and she will not let me go to the monastery.
Many say that sorrows are given according to sins. A parishioner of our church firmly said that she had abortions, and therefore her daughter is disabled. But, to be honest, I can’t attribute this “for sins” to myself. I kept my chastity, I didn’t even kiss anyone, especially I didn’t have abortions and didn’t commit mortal sins. Judgment, idle talk and irritation, as well as other sins - they are all in place, yes, alas, but I didn’t do anything really grandiosely bad.
Perhaps another explanation is that she would end up being a terrible wife and mother. May be. But it could be good too! I have an equal relationship with everyone. I love children and work a lot in Sunday school, so I can’t imagine that I would become a completely terrible mother.
Also, the explanation that in this world good people suffer and sinners feast does not suit me, but in the next world everything will be different. I have friends and close good people, many of whom are believers and churchgoers. I think they will be fine in the future.
I do not have the main business of life, for the sake of which one could put up with loneliness. I am not Condoleezza Rice - the work is normal, if I quit tomorrow, then nothing will happen. Although I love my job and I can no longer rush in search of my vocation.
When I listen to pregnant friends and happy wives again and again, the same question continues to torment me: “Lord, I want that too! I would have been a wife and a mother of many children for 20 years! Why did You give me this loneliness?! When I even have no one to talk heart to heart with. There is no one to hold by the hand, except for the grandmothers from the temple. Even though they have children and grandchildren.”
I even think about death and the afterlife ... with sadness. Of course, I understand that I can go to hell in general, but after all ... this earthly happiness, the birth and upbringing of children will not be there. Many live out this happiness here. Almost all acquaintances with many children say that they no longer want children. After their seventh or eighth, even the eleventh child, they do not want and do not regret that they will no longer be able to give birth.
My main question is: how to accept the Will of God for yourself? How to stop wanting a family and children? How to deal with your loneliness?
Thanks in advance,
R.B. Elena, 39 years old, St. Petersburg
Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko, rector of the Church of the All-Merciful Savior in the former Sorrowful Monastery, answers the letter of the reader, in which she talks about how she suffers due to the absence of a family, children and asks how to accept this, how to accept God's will for herself.
Hello, dear Elena!
You are asking a very, very difficult question. I think this is one of the most difficult questions in the world.
There are difficult questions of a theoretical nature that require philosophical and theological analysis. But, as you know, "dry theory, my friend." But you have a practical question, and you need an answer that would help you accept what you have encountered on your life path.
This is not easy to do. After all, the desire to have a family, a child is a natural, innate, strong and noble side of female nature. Ask, for example, a young man: “Do you want to have children?” He looks at you with some surprise. And the girl will immediately answer: “Of course I want!” And when a girl answers, a fleeting smile will surely touch her lips, because this is a deep, innermost and noblest desire of a normal, healthy female soul.
And when this is a normal, noble aspiration of a girl, a woman does not find realization in any way, of course, she suffers from this. But you can not make your suffering something absolute, completely focusing only on it. Where it's hard, it's hard. So you can't relax. When you walk on a slippery road, you cannot afford to look around and admire the beauties of nature.
If you gape, relax, you will slip, fall, you can get bruised, and sometimes break your arm, leg, or get a concussion. You must, even against your will, carry such a test through life, but you want to relax. But you can not relax where it is difficult.
But why is it difficult - this is again a question to which there is no rational answer. As well as many others. Why does evil exist? Why does a loving and all-powerful God allow it to exist? There is no rational answer to this question. All the answers given by the Holy Fathers ultimately lie in the realm of faith.
That is, with the help of only intellectual tension you will not find answers, only with the help of spiritual tension. With the belief that if the Lord did so, then so be it, although we do not understand this. Well, it's not clear why a mother should bury her child. Is it possible to say to her: “You are burying your child because you are such a sinner, but I don’t bury it because, therefore, I am sinless”?! It would be absolutely wrong and just sound terribly ruthless.
How can we accept such grief, completely incommensurable with our sins? Only by faith. Only by saying honestly and sincerely to God: “I don’t understand, this is beyond my mind. Lord, give me the strength to accept." And, I repeat, it is impossible to get a rational answer here. Man is a spiritual being. And with his spiritual component, he can hear the answer from God himself in his soul and accept it.
If, trying to solve the problem: “why are my friends raising children, but I still have neither a husband nor children”, to stand on rational positions, then you can simply go to insanity, or outright madness. Nobody can say why. Not because they are better than you, not because you are worse than someone else. Because it is a secret.
One more thing: we are all connected with each other, whether we want it or not. We live in a "post-Christian world" when many concepts are distorted and inverted. And this is against the background of the fact that human nature is subject to sin. Moreover, the male nature is more prone to sinful inclinations than the female. For example, if we take criminal offenses, then the ratio of imprisoned men and women is six to seven men per woman. So does alcoholism. There is female alcoholism, it is a terrible phenomenon, but it is much less common than male alcoholism. That is, the masculine nature, as practice shows, is easier to change, pervert than the feminine.
Raising a real man is harder than raising a real woman. Our society (and we make it up) cannot cope with this difficult task. Instead of raising real men, we educate lechers, womanizers, criminals, cowards, whatever. I am not saying that all men are like that, my words should not be taken as generalizing, but I am talking about the degree of decomposition of the male and female principles in modern humanity.
However, the question can be asked in another way: who educates our men? Very often - single mothers. Why are there single mothers? Including because our unfortunate, poor, good, beautiful women are for some reason ready to enter into certain relationships with men without entering into marriage. How many such debauchery we have! This is where both sexes are equal and equally guilty. After all, every woman is given a beautiful virtue - chastity. If all women kept this virtue and were impregnable, men from womanizers would turn into knights.
Many women violate the commandment "do not commit adultery." But like I said, we're all connected. Some sin and others suffer. Sin is, to some extent, a cosmic catastrophe. You sin, and someone else will answer and suffer. For example, a beautiful, young woman lives, but she does not come across a man whom she could call her husband. Due to the fact that male nature decomposes more easily, and he was brought up by women who allowed themselves what is unacceptable to allow, other women find themselves without a husband.
It turns out that many suffer not because they are guilty, but because our society is developing so immorally. But, I don’t know if this makes it easier or not, those who, like Lena, who asked us this question, remain deprived of such natural joy as creating a family, having children. It is about asking the Lord for humility in order to accept life as it is. Here you can not fall into either extremes, or inferiority complexes, or despondency and melancholy.
Yes, the question to which there is no rational answer sits deep in the mind. There is no need to look for an answer to it, but you need to pray to the Lord that He will give you the strength to accept reality, to accept His will. Once again I emphasize - there is no rational answer. There is only the answer of faith.
Yes, it is a cross, and a heavy cross. But having a family is sometimes even harder. Of course, a family is a welcome cross, but when children get sick, mind you, parents face the same question: “Why? What, am I worse than others? Don't I love my child?" And there is no rational answer to it either. In family life, there can be the most difficult trials: illness or death of children, spouses ... There is a monastic path, and this is also a difficult cross. Some who embark on this path cannot stand it, they break under its weight. They lack something very significant: faith, prayer, perseverance, constancy. And this is a tragedy.
Everyone who carries his own cross needs to look for a way out of a seemingly hopeless situation. You can concentrate all your will to believe and believe in such a way that a miracle happens by faith. Not necessarily in the outer life - in your soul. And it will happen if a person believes and calls with all his being to the Merciful Lord: “Lord, have mercy.” Take examples of famous old women, for example, Matronushka of Moscow - the blind, Matronushka of Ryazan - contemporaries, and what suffering they experienced. If accepted with faith, then the Lord works incredible miracles. Many saints, following King David, had the strength to sincerely say: “It is good for me, for Thou hast humbled me, Lord!”
Faith is acquired through spiritual achievement. You have to put in a lot of spiritual effort. We all want to live normally, not to sin especially, and to enjoy simple, ordinary human joy. And the Lord calls us to another: the Lord calls us to a feat. Why, for example, is a military feat so highly revered? Because it really requires selfless dedication and sacrifice to the point of blood and death. And the feat of the monks, who doom themselves, moreover, voluntarily, to unbearable hardships!
We must look to our Lord, Jesus Christ, who, being innocent, willingly suffered for the guilty. And He shows us the path of self-sacrificing love.
Being the chosen one of God is very difficult. And the bearing of this cross of election requires colossal spiritual efforts. And we are used to a relaxed life. But the Lord desires that you concentrate, that you intensify, that you take up the feat. Once again, we are mysteriously connected to each other. Just as sin spreads to many, so your feat will be saving for someone.
Undoubtedly, your feat, which you carry with humility and love for Christ, will be saving for those people whom you may not know, but whom the Lord, like you, wants to save. It seems that this is unfair, because you are not asked if you yourself want to save someone.
But our earthly life is a gift that the Lord has given you so that you inherit eternal life. The good that the Lord has prepared for those who love Him is so great, and the joy of fellowship with Him is so radiant that all earthly hardships and hardships will be forgotten.
Priest Sergiy Kruglov answered the cry of the soul of R.B. Elena from St. Petersburg, who asked for help with advice on how to stop wanting children and a family.
Hello, Elena.
How to stop wanting a family and children, you ask, how to come to terms with loneliness?
I don't think so. It is impossible to come to terms with this, especially since the word “humility” in the Christian sense does not at all mean “give up everything and surrender to the enemy.” Loneliness is one of the faces of our enemy, death, that enemy whom Christ the Lord defeated with his death and Resurrection, in the victory over which we are all called to take part. All our Christian work is devoted to the fight against loneliness - to get out of ourselves, out of the shell of our “I”, to our neighbor, to God, to recognize and unite with them in love. Love is the most important commandment of God to man, striving for it, a person overcomes loneliness.
Your words: "How to accept the will of God for yourself?" I think it's wrong in this context. . It is not God's will that we be lonely and suffer, His will is that we be happy. I speak sincerely, and not at all because the priest, they say, has such a job - to “shield” God. God does not need our protection, especially when we explain the misfortune that is happening by His will, we blame everything on Him. In the fact that your heart does not accept various Orthodox-stamped answers to painful questions, I see a manifestation of the will of God. After all, the Lord gives each of us the strength and ability of the mind, heart and body to fight for our happiness.
Christians must fight for happiness, and not just "pleasing God." There is undoubtedly a healthy grain in our notion that we should “please God” by our fasting, prayers, confession, communion, doing good deeds. After all, it is joyful for a child to please mom and dad. But there is also a bias: firstly, if we consider all this an end in itself, and not just a means to something more.
Secondly, if for us God is not so much a Father who loves us and sympathizes with us, but a formidable Lord and Head, then pleasing turns into slavish doing from under the stick, that is, completely opposite to what God wants from us.
Why are we unhappy, why do we have to fight for happiness, that is, the fulfillment of God's commandment of love and overcoming loneliness - sometimes it is hard, painful, to the point of bloodshed? Because we were born into a fallen world full of evil, sin, imperfection and danger. Life is such that it does not spare anyone, rides on us indifferently and blindly, not paying attention to someone's cries and groans, the crunch of the bones of the righteous or sinners under the wheel.
The fact that we are still alive despite a million dangers can be considered a real miracle, a miracle of the manifestation of God's care for us.
He went to the cross for us and always puts His hands under the blows of life that befall us. Why and for what all this evil is a meaningless question, what God created has meaning, but evil has no meaning. Another question is appropriate - what to do with this evil and how to fight it.
How do you, Elena, fight for your happiness? I, of course, do not give any advice, especially since I only know about your circumstances what you yourself said in a letter, here absentee advice, which we sometimes easily and willingly distribute to each other right and left, can be “missing the mark”, are simply harmful. The idea that the priest knows the exact answers to all questions is fundamentally wrong. Life, alas, raises many more questions than it answers. But it is also important to ask the right questions. After reading your letter, the questions may be:
“I’m used to relying on the “will of God” in everything - it sounds Orthodox, but doesn’t this really mean, as it often happens, alas: I want God, the Highest Authority, to decide for me, to guide me - but without my participation that I'm afraid to take responsibility for my life?
So I wrote that I am not a blue stocking in a black scarf, I go to companies, but I don’t mention those men who were with me in these companies, in general about those that I met in my life. Do I really live on some fantastic planet where there are no men at all? Could it be that the men still met, but “didn’t work out” with them? And if so, why didn't it work out?
Let me remind you once again: I am not talking specifically about you, Elena, but I am only giving you information for consideration. With questions like yours, many women come to the temple, and the leitmotif of their complaints is about the same: I want to have a husband, but such men who meet do not suit me, one is infantile, the other likes to drink, there is no spiritual intimacy with the third. What to do?
If we put aside tears and complaints, then there are two real ways. Or do not exchange and stubbornly wait for your desired, such as is drawn in dreams. But then you need to soberly say to yourself: I am ready to wait and endure for years, perhaps all my life, but I don’t agree to live without true love. God help me!
Or the second way: to remember that God bequeathed to love real, not invented neighbors, and that the main way to get love is to start loving yourself. And marry someone who is, who really met in life, even if he is not ideal. And tell myself soberly: I am ready to do everything that a lover does for a loved one, give birth to children, be faithful to him, not judge and not tear him away from me for his sins. She is ready to help him get rid of them, without waiting for feelings to come along with deeds of love. God help me!
Both ways are the cross. Not what you called “the cross” in your letter, but exactly this: we carry the cross following the example of our Teacher and Savior, and He accepted the cross consciously and voluntarily. Torment and suffering, unwanted, involuntary, which you only strive to throw off your shoulders, is no longer a cross. And there is no benefit from such torment and suffering.
What will I choose - to continue to sit, huddled in the shell of my unfulfilled desires, to stagnate in my grievances and sores, in a panic watching how the years go by, how dissatisfaction and despondency develop into severe depression? Or take and make steps that are feasible for me? Everyone decides for himself. Only in the first case, God cannot break through the shell of loneliness to us, which we ourselves reinforce with our inaction, and in the second case, God helps us to carry the cross, and life acquires meaning.
Because every cross carried along with Christ, to the extent of one's faith, ends not in death, but in resurrection. I can’t prove this right now - but I can testify that I met those who patiently waited for their love, and those who, on weekdays, day after day, grew it from what was at hand.
Of course, life is full of nuances, and in reality everything is much more complicated than in my thoughts. In any case, I wish you, Elena, not to despair, and I believe that everything will be fine with you. Easily? No, it's not easy, it's not. Everything real, vitally important, in life is always won. In the struggle with oneself - first of all, with one's passions, illusions, phobias, fears, lack of faith. Yes, in the struggle there is a real risk of getting hurt and maimed, but there is also a real chance of winning, because God is for us.
