The study itself linked living alone to poor housing in women and low social support in men (something that has long been found to be a risk factor for single men). However they are understood, the findings clearly point to the vital social role in depression: a condition which is commonly understood to be both internally caused, and in need of only internal treatments (such as drugs and therapies). We need to move to more biopsychosocial (or even sociopsychobio) understandings of this experience.

The bounded self

Social psychologist Kenneth Gergen points towards one idea which may help to make sense of findings like these. In his book, Relational Being, he argues that in the past few centuries we have come, in the west, to see ourselves as ‘bounded beings’: as singular and separate from others. This is a culturally peculiar belief, according to Clifford Geertz, but one which we generally take for granted as a ‘fact of life’.

Gergen argues that if I accept this view of myself:

‘I must always be on guard, lest others see the faults in my thinking, the cesspools of my emotions, and the embarrassing motives behind my actions … I must worry about how I compare to others, and whether I will be judged inferior.’ (xiii-xiv)

He argues that this view underlies our education and organisational systems which evaluate us individually and encourage constant competition from the start.

Importantly, for our explorations here, Gergen suggests that depression can be located in this way of viewing ourselves The inner critics and overwhelming fears of failure which are so familiar to us are part and parcel of this view of the human being. As well as the relentless self-evaluation, toxic comparison and defensive withdrawal of depression, the familiar sense of meaninglessness and pointlessness can also be linked to disconnection from others since meaning, for most people, is associated with their relations with others.

Speaking specifically about living alone, Gergen proposes that this is something which only really makes sense under this view of ourselves as fundamentally isolated. Alongside statistics on the numbers of people choosing to live by themselves, he cites evidence for decreases in close friendships and increases in loneliness in recent years.

Gergen proposes that an alternative way of seeing things is to regard ourselves as fundamentally relational rather than bounded. This is a view which is common to Buddhist and existential philosophies (which question the separation between self and others and stress interconnection), and constructionist and constructivist approaches (which point out that we become different ‘selves’ in our relationships with different people, and that our self is something that we construct in interaction).

Bounded selves and living alone/together

Returning to the issue of living alone, we could see this as a situation in which the sense of ourselves as bounded and separated is exacerbated, especially in situations where we are also out of work or retired and have very little human contact day-to-day. It is possible to become very inward focused: listening to the loops of self-judgement and critical commentaries that go on within our heads. A vicious cycle is easily set in motion where our negative view of ourselves makes contact with others a frightening prospect, due to fear that they will confirm our self-perceptions, and we withdraw further into ourselves.

Such challenges are not absent for those of us who live with others. The bounded self view is pervasive and we also relate to other people accordingly: looking to our partners, children or parents to affirm and validate a positive view of ourselves, and fearing that they will do the opposite: seeing us negatively in a way that confirms what we dread is the real truth of who we are. This is what Sartre was talking about when he said that ‘hell is other people‘.

However, given the findings on living alone, it seems that – for many of us – contact with others goes some way towards loosening the tight grip on the self. Perhaps when we live up alongside others we have times when the self-and-other distinctions are blurred: as we share a moment, or physical contact breaks down the barriers, or we recognise our own pain or joy in the eyes of another, for example. Maybe we realise how much our own projects in life are bound up with other people, and how much they need us for their own projects, and a kind of mutuality and reciprocation comes from that.

Also, as we relate to different people in our lives we may notice that they, and we, have different sides in different situations, and also that they, and we, change over time. The recognition of our plurality and fluidity both provide relief from the grip of the bounded self. It makes far less sense to judge and evaluate ourselves (or others) when we know that we are multifaceted, and less sense to compare ourselves against others who are constantly shifting just as we are. If we can find the courage together, intimacy with others may even enable of us to reveal our vulnerability and recognise it as something that connects us rather than being something we have to defend so desperately.

Implications

So what are the implications of such findings on living alone and depression, and this way of understanding them? Clearly they point to the importance of human contact – but importantly contact which encourages a softening of the bounded self rather than further judgement and competition. We should be cautious, as a society, of policies and practices which leave people even more isolated and withdrawn. Such research should feed into current discussions, for example, of benefit systems and of how we treat older people.

Also it would be good to provide more real alternatives to living alone. At the moment, for many people, the decision is between living as a couple/nuclear family and living by yourself (if you are single or separated from such a unit). We need to expand the options and make it both socially and economically viable to live in other arrangements.

It is not that being alone inevitably reinforces the sense of the self as bounded. We can all probably point to moments of solitude in which we felt connected to others and the wider world, and this is something that can be cultivated in meditation and other solitary practices. It is quite possible to respond to the pain of the bounded self by surrounding ourselves with busyness, people and distraction in ways that become equally problematic. It is useful to consider the ways that we all relate to solitude, to being with others, and to wider community. At all levels we can operate as bounded, separate, units, or shift into a more relational, interconnected, mode.

Find out more:

For another perspective on living alone, based on a qualitative research project on those who live by themselves, see I want to be alone: The rise and rise of solo living (The Guardian, March 30th 2012)

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Monday 16^th January 2012 saw the launch of a new Open University research project called Enduring Love? Here I will introduce the project and also summarise the talks at the launch about current thinking on relationships, and the pressures they are under.

There has been plenty of research on break-up, divorce and separation. The team behind this project decided that it was time that we knew more about what makes people stay together as well as what makes them split up.

The plan is to get as many people as possible to fill out the online questionnaire so that the researchers can get a good idea of the diversity of ways in which people are experiencing long-term relationships, as well as anything that people who stay together have in common. At the same time, there will be much more in-depth research on sixty couples who will keep a diary of their relationship, take part in interviews together and separately, and explore the way they live and how they feel in their relationship. The detailed research will consider various aspects of the couple relationship such as emotions, sex, commitment, and the way that their partnership fits with other important relationships in their lives. You can already get an idea of the kinds of things people are saying about their relationships from the video clips and podcasts that the team has put together.

The project is called Enduring Love? with a question mark to give the title a double meaning. The researchers are keen to explore what makes relationships work for those who stay together long term and who find that a fulfilling way to live. At the same time it is clear that some couples feel pressured to stay together even when they are very unhappy. It is useful to know what makes an enduring love, as well as what the experience is like when love itself becomes something to be endured. Of course many relationships include elements of both these things: when times are hard the relationship feels like something to be endured, and when things are going well the ‘enduring’ nature of the relationship is something that may be celebrated. Enduring hard times can build intimacy as well as sometimes breaking it.

At the launch event we heard from a representative from the Department of Education who spoke about ways in which the research could feed into government strategies around relationships. For example, it could help to illuminate the diversity of relationship styles that people are currently engaged in, feeding into relationship education in school PSHE, developing relationship therapy training, and informing programmes which help couples to transition to different forms of relationships (for example, those who continue to co-parent or live together when they are no longer a couple).

After the talk from the DoE, author and journalist, Kate Figes, spoke about her book Couples: The Truth which was based on interviews with a range of couples. She found that people don’t tend to reflect on their relationships whilst things are going well – only when things go badly wrong. People also felt that their relationship had to be private and that it was disloyal to talk about what went on in their relationship to anybody outside of it. Finally, people were very concerned about whether their relationship was ‘normal’.

Of course when nobody speaks openly about the reality of relationships, it is easy for us all to assume that everybody else’s relationship is much better than our own (because that is what they look like from the outside), and to worry that something is wrong with us. One reason that I love the book Mistakes were made (but not by me) is that it argues that intimate relationships are actually one of the most challenging things we can possibly do, because letting someone in so close that they get to see all sides of you is exposing, and often confronts us with difficult truths.

Kate’s ideas resonated with my own thoughts on this topic as she highlighted key pressures that relationships are currently under, many of which I also explore in my book Rewriting the Rules, which is out later this year. She said that there is romantic pressure to find a soulmate who will provide us with our happily-ever-after; there is sexual pressure to have perfect exciting sex throughout a relationship; and there is pressure to be monogamous, with any kind of infidelity regarded as unacceptable. However, the first two pressures make it more, rather than less, likely that people will end up looking elsewhere because nobody can be everything to us, people change over time, and such insularity can leave us gasping for freedom.

Kate reckoned that important ways forward were for people to be more honest about the lows and highs of their relationships, to communicate better with each other, and to recognise the impact of our backgrounds, cultures, and family histories on how we understand relationships (which will inevitably be different to that of our partners). She also argued that the adversarial legal system is very bad for people who are trying to shift their relationship into a different form (co-parenting for example) and that mediation is a better alternative.

We also heard from academics Lynn Jamieson and Ann Phoenix who talked about their own research in this area and what their hopes were for the Enduring Love? project. Lynn spoke about the way our understandings of coupledom has changed over time. An older participant in her research spoke about the way marriage used to be just what people did at a certain age, whilst many now see love as a vital ingredient. Lynne, and others in the audience raised questions about who we count as a couple. For example, many couples now don’t live together some, or even all, of the time. There are also people who are in secret couples which others in their lives do not know about. And polyamorous people have relationships with more than one person so they may be in more than one couple, or in a triad/quad or family rather than a couple at all. In Rewriting the Rules I question the dividing rules that we have between romantic love and other kinds of relationship which are not always clearcut (what about a romantic relationship that has become more like a friendship over time, or a close friendship between people who live together and have intense rows and good times together?).

Lynn suggested that the Enduring Love? research could provide valuable insights into ‘practices of intimacy’: what are the building blocks of relationships that we may not be aware of but which we use everyday to connect with those we’re close to? What is the role of talking (and deciding not to talk about certain issues)? Other practices include practices of caring for each other, learning about each other, spending time together (physically present and digitally mediated), prioritising, and giving and receiving.

Lynn agreed with Kate about the ludicrous pressures of cultural ideas such as ‘The One’ and ‘Mr/Ms Right’, suggesting that we might move towards celebrating more pragmatic arrangements that people have in their relationships. Ann Phoenix went on to explore such ideas further in her talk which highlighted the roles of myths and stories that couples have about their relationships (which draw upon cultural myths as well as family backgrounds). Like Kate she highlighted the importance of recognising that all relationships have dissatisfactions and disharmonies as well as shared stories, even if these are more rarely spoken about with others.

Ann suggested that key areas to consider, when exploring relationships, include the diversity of experiences of those in transnational couples (who may be forced to live apart and/or have different backgrounds and privileges, for example), and same-sex couples. Like polyamorous people, such couples have the additional pressure of frequently having to explain their relationships to strangers, which is a very different experience to those whose relationship is take-for-granted and even celebrated by others and by wider culture.

Ann also discussed change, which is something that I focus on in Rewriting the Rules. She said that over time we are not the same people who we were back when we got together, never mind being the same couple. She also questioned the binary way in which we tend to see ‘enduring’ and ‘breaking up’. As I explore in my chapter on break-up, given the shifts that relationships go through over time we might begin to challenge what it means to ‘stay together’ and to ‘split up’ and what there might be between these two extremes. Perhaps ‘enduring love’ is a love that is flexible enough to shift and change over time as the situation demands it.

Hopefully the sociological approach taken by the Enduring Love? researchers will enable a continued exploration of the psychosocial nature of relationships. Our intimate relationships happen in a wider context of global, economic, political, and social change as well as within wider social networks which may support or constrain our relationships. We know, for example, that social policies influence whether people can live together or not, and economic situations and policies determine who can get married. Clearly cultural ideals about relationships impact our expectations and experiences. Relationships are not something we learn how to do once and for all, rather they are a work in progress operating within a world which is also changing all the time.

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Following the success of the series, Thinking Allowed are following it up with a special episode over the festive period which focuses on shared houses. This form of living arrangement differs from the extended families considered in the earlier episodes, in that the majority of people are not related to one another. Rather they are groups of people who have chosen to live together in shared accommodation.

There are many ways in which such shared living arrangements can manifest. At one end of a spectrum would be a large house where individuals or families independently rent out rooms and have little contact with one another. At the other end would be groups of people who already have close links who decide to live together. Somewhere in between would be intentional communities or communal living situations where a space is set up along certain principles and people who share those values are encouraged to join.

Of course the recent economic situation provides one important reason why there may be an increase in people looking to live in such ways. An alternative to adult children remaining at home, or retired parents moving in with adult children, is a situation where non-related adults share accommodation.

However, people may also deliberately choose such alternative forms of living for other reasons (instead of, or in addition to, this). For example, they may do so due to shared spiritual, political or ecological commitments. It is particularly common, for example, for quakers and Buddhists to set up communities, for those with commitment to eco-politics to explore sustainable ways of living where people share space, and for those committed to anarchism to live communally in order to develop their experiments in non dominant and non-hierarchical forms of relating. Another group who may or may not overlap with such groups are those who form love relationships with more than one person at a time. Some polyamorous people live together in triads, quads, or families. All of the above may, or may not, include children, and of course some people who are not romantically or sexually involved may choose to live together in order to provide mutual childcare (for example, ex-spouses or partners; or lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans [LGBT] people who keep a donor or surrogate as part of their family).

These kinds of arrangements begin to expand out what we mean by family. Writing about LGBT communities has frequently used the concept of ‘families of choice‘ to refer to people who become close due to shared emotional and community (rather than biological) bonds. I personally prefer the term used by Armistead Maupin‘s wonderful character, Anna Madrigal. She referred to the group who rented rooms at her house in San Francisco as her ‘logical family’. As Jacqui Gabb‘s own research has suggested, we may also need to expand out ‘family’ to encompass our relationships with companion animals and the objects with which we share our lives.

Shared living situations also complicate what is meant by home. As people move from place to place to find the people who share their values, or with whom they can live most easily, home may be more about the people (animals and objects) they are with, than about the particular four walls they are located within. Unfortunately in recent years policy and practice around renting and mortgages has often made it more, rather than less, difficult for groups of unrelated adults to share. Also stigma remains around all of the groups mentioned, particularly when unrelated adults are involved in childcare. This is despite evidence of the benefits for children of having multiple role-models, incomes and people to turn to for support, as Elizabeth Sheff has found in her research.

Finally, as anyone who has done it knows, living together is not easy, and additional challenges often emerge with larger groups of people. Perhaps we could look to these forms of shared living to inform our thinking about relationship skills, conflict resolution, and community building, rather than regarding them with suspicion.

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