Existential Isolation Is Key to Healthy Relationships

Source: Artwork by Alexi Berry. Used with permission.

“The process of deepest inquiry…leads us to recognize that we are finite, that we must die, that we are free, and that we cannot escape our freedom. We also learn that the individual is inexorably alone.” (Yalom, P.353). In my writing, I have dealt a good deal with freedom and with embracing the fact that we will die in order to make life more fulfilling. But in 10 years of writing, I have not dealt with the idea of existential isolation. This post will remedy that.

In the book Existential Psychotherapy, Yalom lists three types of existential isolation. The first, and most common, is interpersonal. This is a disconnection from others, the loneliness we generally feel because we are not, or cannot, connect with other people. The second is intrapersonal isolation, where one is disconnected from himself. This can happen to anyone, but is often a result of defenses or behaving in ways that are inauthentic or disingenuous. I think this is worthy of further discussion, but this post is not the place for it.

The third, and what I hope to address in this post, is existential isolation. Although there are elements of both of these above forms of isolation in existential isolation, existential isolation is bigger, more encompassing, deeper. It is the realization that one is truly and ultimately alone. It is the awareness that creeps in once all distractions cease (for many this happens, but for some, it may not as the distractions of today’s time are plentiful). Existential isolation is the realization that you are trapped inside of your human shell, and that no matter how many people surround you, you entered this world alone and you will die alone.

This is an unsettling thought. Yalom spends a few pages quoting writers, poets, and philosophers about how unsettling it is. So, one might wonder, what is the point of being so unsettled? Why shouldn’t I just stay distracted? These are valid questions given just how unsettling existential isolation can be. I have never seen a class, client, or colleague react with any positive emotion to it. In fact, I recently put the idea on a picture and sent it to a friend and colleague who advised me not to post it, as it was too dark.

Yet despite this darkness, existential writers and philosophers bring it to the forefront regularly. Are they malicious? Sadistic? Am I for posting this on Valentine’s Day because I am both?

Maybe. A lot of existentialists are perceived as dark. But likely the reason is more positive than that. Just as existentialists believe one who confronts his mortality will live a fuller life, existentialists believe one must confront their aloneness in order to have a healthy relationship. Many have probably heard this. When a relationship ends, many are advised to be alone, to do things for himself and perhaps even to find himself. Most rue the advice, or at best, reluctantly accept it as healthy but unwanted.

Many people cling to relationships and feel lost without one. This is what existentialists seek to help people avoid. There are plenty of adages about not needing someone, but instead wanting them because they enhance your life. Many jumped on the line from the movie Jerry Maguire, “You complete me.” Some see it as romantic. Others believe you shouldn’t need someone to complete you. My guess is the existentialists are more in line with the latter.

In the aforementioned book, Yalom has a section called “Need Free Love.” The section begins: “A relationship, at its best, involves individuals who relate to one another in a need-free fashion” (p.364). He discusses many great thinkers on healthy love, some of whom I have written about previously. For example, Maslow, the Humanistic Theory founder who coined and described the human drive toward self-actualization, discussed two types of love: D-Love (Deficiency Love) and B-Love (Being Love, the love of self-actualizers). As the verbiage Deficiency Love suggests, when you need someone, when they complete you, that indicates a deficiency in oneself another is sought to fill. Part of facing one’s existential isolation is overcoming “needing” another, and rather having both of your lives enhanced by truly “being” with one another.

Being with another is more than existing with him, being around him, or calling him your partner. It takes being present, getting past defenses and old patterns of relating, seeing the person for who he is, not what he provides. Love has been described by Rollo May (another existential therapist/theorist/writer) as “delight in the presence of the other person and an affirming of [that person’s] value and development as much as one’s own” (Feist, Roberts, Feist, 2021, P.358). Deficiency Love looks at the individual of one’s affection more as an object that provides; Being Love sees the individual as such, an individual.

The idea is that ignoring, avoiding, or distracting oneself from existential isolation is detrimental to one and one’s relationships. To truly love in the healthiest possible way, one must face their isolation, realize it, and relate to others not for what they provide, but for who they are. I would like to end with a quote from Bruber in the Yalom book that I believe sums up the purpose of facing your isolation: “A great relationship breaches the barriers of a lofty solitude, subdues its strict law, and throws a bridge from self-being to self-being across the abyss of dread of the universe” (p.362).

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How Your Brain Experiences Different Kinds of Love

Copyright William Berry 2020