Solitaries: Who They Are and How They Offer More Than You Ever Imagined

“Those who have the most profound experience of solitude may have the most to teach.”

Maybe you think there is already a word for people who live alone and apart from the world of conventional romantic coupling. Loners, right? Maybe you also have a picture of them in your mind, as all curled up into a ball of loneliness and despair — especially during a pandemic.

There are people living alone who are lonely and despondent. They are the ones who are on their own but wish they weren’t. They are on the outside of the romantic coupling juggernaut that is so relentlessly celebrated, looking in with longing.

In a book I have always loved, Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto, Anneli Rufus reclaims the word “loner.” A true loner, she says, is “someone who prefers to be alone.” Those happy loners are the antithesis of the outcasts, criminals, and the desperately lonely who get wrongly tagged with the loner label.

Now I have a new book that I love with a new name for people who choose to be on their own and a most inspiring discussion of them. It is Fenton Johnson’s At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life and his word is “solitaries.” They have a lot in common with people who are single at heart and embrace their single lives.