No company is better than bad company.
As I drove home last weekend, or perhaps the weekend before, I happened to hear some of LBC's sex and relationship show.
An anxious 72-year-old woman called in to ask for advice on her relationship with a 46-year-old man. They had met online and had a virtual relationship. They had seen each other in person only twice in 10 years. They had been intimate during those encounters. He had promised they would meet again but had never made the effort. She knew he had been seeing other women; but despite wanting to end the relationship, she had found herself going back. She had been in a physically abusive relationship for 30 years in the past.
The presenter, Lucy Beresford, pointed out that whilst the caller's current relationship was not physically abusive, it was so in a different way. She asked the woman why she was still with that man, reminding her that being with someone who did not want to see her was not healthy. Perhaps, suggested Lucy, she had called that night because she was ready to move on.
I wonder, is loneliness better than bad company? Is it easier? Does it do us less harm? Leaving someone can be very difficult when there is no one else to fill that hole. It does not have to be a partner, it can be just a friend. Being alone is not easy. I suppose things are never black and white, there is some good with the bad and some bad with the good. Ultimately, when the bad outweighs the good, walking away becomes necessary to protect ourselves if we believe that the place we are walking to is better than the one we are leaving behind. But what if we don't?
I remember a friend expressing the worry of no one showing up at his funeral. 'What do you care? You won't be alive to see it!', I had replied obliviously. But I suppose I understand it now. The worry was of there being no one who loved him enough in life to want to honour him in death.
An anxious 72-year-old woman called in to ask for advice on her relationship with a 46-year-old man. They had met online and had a virtual relationship. They had seen each other in person only twice in 10 years. They had been intimate during those encounters. He had promised they would meet again but had never made the effort. She knew he had been seeing other women; but despite wanting to end the relationship, she had found herself going back. She had been in a physically abusive relationship for 30 years in the past.
The presenter, Lucy Beresford, pointed out that whilst the caller's current relationship was not physically abusive, it was so in a different way. She asked the woman why she was still with that man, reminding her that being with someone who did not want to see her was not healthy. Perhaps, suggested Lucy, she had called that night because she was ready to move on.
I wonder, is loneliness better than bad company? Is it easier? Does it do us less harm? Leaving someone can be very difficult when there is no one else to fill that hole. It does not have to be a partner, it can be just a friend. Being alone is not easy. I suppose things are never black and white, there is some good with the bad and some bad with the good. Ultimately, when the bad outweighs the good, walking away becomes necessary to protect ourselves if we believe that the place we are walking to is better than the one we are leaving behind. But what if we don't?
I remember a friend expressing the worry of no one showing up at his funeral. 'What do you care? You won't be alive to see it!', I had replied obliviously. But I suppose I understand it now. The worry was of there being no one who loved him enough in life to want to honour him in death.
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