There are two kinds of freedom from loneliness. One type is dependent and the other is independent.
Loneliness comes from being alone, but this does not necessarily mean physically alone. A feeling of aloneness can exist in any environment.
There is a genuine freedom from loneliness and there is an artificial type. The difference is not noticeable so long as the counterfeit freedom can retain its dependent factors. Once the dependent factors are removed, loneliness takes over. This is why genuine freedom from loneliness can last irregardless of circumstances. It might not feel like its there 100% of the time, but for the most part, it is.
Deceptive freedom from aloneness gets its power to capture you into loneliness when you fill your life up with people who are bits of familiar reflections that you pre-consciously recognize as elements of yourself. If those people you feel connected with (because they contain likenesses of you) disappear (or your imagined ideas of them vanish), you will undergo a grieving process involving loneliness.
People overcome this loneliness at different rates of time and some never recover. Often times, new people replace this void and then the process can repeat itself. Clearly, that’s the dependent type of freedom from loneliness.
What’s dangerous about this dependent type of loneliness freedom comes from how a person reacts to having their heart’s affections removed. Depression is the common result. However, since depression is anger turned inward because self is not getting satisfied anymore, anger can fester. That anger can either become self-destructive, make self want to destroy another (or others), or both.
Statistics show that if a first marriage breaks up which doesn’t result in a self-destructive person committing suicide without killing other family members, then the risk for a second marriage ending increases the likelihood of that self-destructive person killing other family members before he kills himself.
Stalkers also are driven by loneliness, even though on the surface it may seem its due to lusting the power of being in control. Insane people are out of control because they’ve allowed themselves to be a victim of their own self-deception. There is no treatment program or mediation which can truly remedy this, because the cause is not ultimately psychological or physical. Such behavior is a spiritual symptom of anyone not saved by the grace of God.
Once someone has become saved from their own worse enemy (i.e., self), he is then enabled to experience the genuine freedom from loneliness that’s independent of anyone in this world. Without this gracious act of God, Satan plots to have a person occupy his life by being filled up with people that are mirrors of self. This way he can control the unsaved soul by having him cling to those people, so that if and/or when they disappear (depending on whether or not they help to keep the lost soul away from God), destruction can subtly follow its course.
Too often the category of “needy” people is defined in an overly narrow range. Need is not just based on how intensely a person craves someone else; its also based on the level of fear a person has for being viewed as ‘weird’, ‘unpopular’, or ’socially incorrect’.
When you distortedly occupy yourself with people who mirror bits of yourself, there is no vacancy for God. What’s more is that when you have your own perception of reality rule, you can use your imagination to fit these significant others into a self-satisfying mold.
This explains why those who are single (or married to someone that no longer gratifies self) can get lonely. This puts them at risk for twisting someone they’re attracted to into a perception which will fill the gaps of their soul that need to be accommodated. Their imagination polishes up the illusion which enables them to “fall” in love. It’s true they’re falling. They’ve dived off a cliff of solid ground because their water below can hide whatever is beneath its surface. If you’re not expecting rocks, you’re bound to be wounded.
Loneliness is not the right motive to build a relationship upon, because you’re coming into it bankrupt without anything of yourself to give to the other person. Two lonely people uniting can only put each other deeper into an emotional debt that only God can satisfy. People pray for a ‘Mr. Right’ or ‘Mrs. Right’ to come into their life. When do you ever hear of someone desiring to know how to be the ‘Mr. Right’ or ‘Mrs. Right’ for someone else?
Most who have abandoned a personal relationship know the experience of being forced into seeing the other person the way he or she really is. That’s when the kind of mistake you may have made becomes a painful reality. Its doubtful that you’re going to realize why you’re feeling miserable after you’ve been together for a long time (any length of time is long when you’re not happy). When its easy to blame the other person for not being who you want him or her to be, there is little motivation to take an honest look at yourself to see how imperfect your own self is.
Someone who has been abandoned in a personal relationship might not ever know why he was left, especially if he doesn’t want to know. On the flip side, he could also just as easily believe he is guilty for things which, in reality, he shouldn’t be feeling guilty at all for.
There are several ways to end up feeling lonely, but there is only one way to protect yourself from this demonic self-pity. God has promised He will never leave us if Christ abides in us. Every human being is made in the image of God, but not every human being will live in that image. With man, that is impossible. With God, all things are possible.
