The scene: Heartbroken and devastated from being dumped, Peter Bretter walks into a restaurant while vacationing alone in Hawaii, trying to forget about his ex.
Bretter: “I’d like to grab some dinner please.”
Host: “Is your girlfriend joining you?”
Bretter: “No.”
Host: “You’re just by yourself?”
Bretter: “Yeah.”
Host: “We’ve got a loner! … Yeah, just clear the other stuff off. It’s one man.”
Peter Bretter — the loner in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — is not alone. Like Bretter, many Chicagoans muster up the courage to eat alone at restaurants and do other things by themselves. But they’re not anti-social. They’re comfortable flying solo, while others are horrified by the idea of being alone and recruit a partner for every activity. Experts say there’s a healthy balance between spending time alone and with friends.
What do you do when friends bail on plans to go to a concert, or no one else feels like seeing that artsy French movie or trying the new Indian-Cuban fusion restaurant with you?
For Jennifer Hochstatter, the choice is clear.
“It’s either do it by yourself or sit at home alone and not live life,” said Hochstatter, 32, of Lakeview.
Hochstatter, a project analyst downtown, didn’t enjoy doing things on her own until she went alone to Cancun in 2001 because her friends were afraid to travel after 9/11. “It was scary, but I wasn’t going to lose out on my money,” she said of the non-refundable trip.
Since then, Hochstatter has gone to museums, seen movies and even traveled to China and Africa — all on her own.
But don’t feel sorry for her. Loners shouldn’t be pitied or mistaken for being lonely or friendless, said Anneli Rufus, author of “Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto.”
“The definition of a loner is someone content with their solitude, someone who can be perfectly happy without anyone else there,” she said.
Some people struggle with being alone, said psychotherapist Melanie Lynn Madigan, who has an office in Lincoln Park.
“They’re worried about how others perceive them as having no friends and being a loser,” she said, adding that going it alone at times is healthy.
“When it becomes a problem is when people do everything alone and they start not wanting to gain other people’s perspectives in topics and matters of their life,” Madigan said.
Emily Joyce, 19, is almost always among a group of friends.
“It’s not that I’m afraid to [be alone]. I’m not afraid of my image. It’s more like I view things as a social activity,” said Joyce, a student living downtown. She said she walks, hikes and shops — even for groceries — with friends.
One of the benefits of spending time alone is getting to know yourself better, said Rufus, the author. “It inspires a certain calm, a certain creativity. You get to go into your thoughts,” she said.
For Bretter, being alone on his adventurous vacation helped him figure out how to mend his broken heart, snag a new girl and — more importantly — forget about Sarah Marshall.
———-
lvivanco@tribune.com
