People who prefer solitude over socializing may not be lonely—they’ve discovered that the quality of their own company is higher than what most social interactions provide

by Lachlan Brown | May 13, 2026, 10:53 am

Picture someone sitting alone in a coffee shop. Small table by the window, no laptop, just a good cup of coffee and their own company. No phone in sight, just a book and a look of total contentment.

Most of us would glance over and wonder if they’re lonely. But watch long enough and you might see them politely turn down an offer to join another table. A smile, a shake of the head, and right back to the book.

They’re not alone because nobody wants them. They’re alone because they’ve chosen it.

There’s a huge difference. And behavioural scientists are finally catching up to what a lot of us have quietly suspected. People who prefer solitude over constant socialising aren’t suffering. They’ve just worked out that the quality of their own company is higher than what most social interactions offer them.

Solitude is not loneliness.

This is where most people get confused. We use the two words like they mean the same thing. They don’t.

Dr. Thuy-vy Nguyen, who runs the Solitude Lab at Durham University in the UK, has spent over a decade studying this. In her piece on the importance of solitude, she draws a clean line between the two. Loneliness is the painful feeling of wanting connection and not getting it. Solitude is the deliberate choice to spend time alone. One is a wound. The other is a resource.

People who prefer solitude haven’t given up on connection. A lot of them have rich friendships, marriages, families. They’ve just noticed something most of us refuse to admit. That a lot of social interaction, the small talk, the group chats, the obligation dinners, drains them more than it feeds them.

Their own company actually pays off.

In an APA podcast on solitude, Dr. Nguyen and her colleague Dr. Netta Weinstein explain something that surprises a lot of people. Even short stretches of alone time, about 15 minutes, have a calming effect. High-arousal emotions like stress, excitement, and agitation go down. Feelings of calm go up.

That’s not nothing. That’s a built-in nervous system regulator most of us ignore because we’re scared to sit by ourselves.

And here’s what people who prefer solitude understand. Once you’ve tasted what a quiet afternoon can actually give you, and compared it to the mental clutter of yet another group hang, you start making different choices. Not out of bitterness. Out of experience.

They’ve raised their internal standards.

There’s a line I keep coming back to from a conversation with a friend: “The older I get, the harder it is to tolerate a bad conversation.”

That’s not snobbery. That’s honesty about how finite our attention has become.

The British Psychological Society published an excellent piece on the benefits of solitude that captures this well. One of the findings worth sitting with: people who’ve learned to enjoy their own company tend to have higher emotional stability and a stronger sense of autonomy. They’re not antisocial. They’re just harder to impress with empty interaction.

It makes sense when you think about it. If your internal world is already pretty good—thoughtful reading, quiet morning runs, a slow breakfast with someone you love—then a mediocre social encounter doesn’t feel like a net positive. It feels like an interruption.

They can hear themselves think.

Most of us are so wired to external input that we’ve lost the ability to listen to our own thoughts. Phone in every pause. Music every commute. Background TV whenever the house gets too quiet.

People who prefer solitude have pushed back against this. They’ve discovered what happens when you let the mind settle. Ideas you didn’t know you had surface. Problems you’ve been avoiding quietly present their own solutions. Feelings you’ve been stuffing down finally have room to speak.

The Pali word paṭisallāna roughly translates as “seclusion for the mind,” and the Buddha considered it essential, not a luxury, for anyone serious about understanding themselves. It’s not about retreating from life. It’s about giving the mind a chance to breathe.

You can’t hear the quiet truths if you never turn the music off.

They’ve stopped performing.

One thing I’ve noticed about people who genuinely crave solitude is how honest they are when you actually talk to them. There’s none of the “how are you, I’m fine, you” conveyor belt. They’ll tell you they’re tired, or overwhelmed, or genuinely curious about something random, without the usual social filters in place.

I think that’s because solitude trains you to stop performing. When nobody is watching, you stop editing. And once you’ve had enough hours of being just yourself, it becomes harder to slip back into the socially approved version of you.

Some people read this as coldness. It’s not. It’s just someone who stopped pretending because the pretending got too expensive.

How to find your own quality company.

If you find yourself drained more often than lifted after social events, that’s worth paying attention to. Not every introvert needs more solitude. But a lot of people have never really tested what being alone, by choice, actually feels like.

Start small. Take yourself to a coffee shop without your phone. Go for a walk without a podcast. Sit somewhere quiet for ten minutes and just watch the world go by.

At first it will feel weird. Boring, even. Your mind will protest and reach for stimulation. Let it pass.

What comes after, a kind of steady, grounded calmness, is what people who prefer solitude already know. That the quality of their own company is something they built, not something they were born with. And definitely not loneliness in disguise.

It’s just the quiet reward of finally getting comfortable with yourself.

Lachlan Brown

Lachlan Brown is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Brown Brothers Media, a digital publishing network reaching tens of millions of readers monthly. He holds a Graduate Diploma of Psychological Studies from Deakin University, though his real education came afterward: a warehouse job shifting TVs, a stretch of anxiety in his mid-twenties, and the slow discovery that studying the mind is not the same as learning how to live well. He started experimenting with Buddhist principles during breaks at the warehouse and eventually began writing about what he was learning. That writing became Hack Spirit, a widely read personal development site, and his book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism became a bestseller. His work breaks down complex ideas into frameworks people can apply immediately, whether they are navigating a career change, a difficult relationship, or the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Lachlan splits his time between Singapore and Saigon. He writes about high-performance routines, decision-making under pressure, digital innovation, and the intersection of Eastern philosophy with modern life. His perspective comes from having built things from scratch, failed at some of them, and learned that clarity comes from practice, not theory.