Real Talk about Traveling Alone, Camping Alone and Finding Companionship on the Road

Hey friendlies it's Carolyn and welcome back to our RV life. Today let's talk about relationships and the solo nomad. I want to answer the questions that I get asked the most about being alone out here and number one is do I ever get lonely and number two and do I have friends and family and how does that all work into a your nomad life and number three what do you do about being lonely and being alone. For those of you who are thinking about coming out here and don't want to be alone I get questions a lot about how do I find people to travel with so I'm going to talk about that I'm going to talk about that too as number three. People always ask me well don't you get lonely being on the road by yourself all the time and the answer I can honestly tell you is not very often. Being an introvert I really like being alone. I really like my own company. I find that I am more at ease. I'm more relaxed. I'm more at peace. I'm more energized. I'm more especially I'm more creative when I'm by myself and I think those are some of the signs of being an introvert. What I learned about introversion versus extroversion is that extroversion not extra virgin is that is how we draw our energy and an introvert and people constantly confuse me for an extrovert because I'm very outgoing. I'm very what they used to call me bubbly. I used to do a ton of public speaking. I go to networking events. I'm very outgoing. I'm not very shy. I can be but I've learned to overcome that so people often mistake me for an extrovert but an introvert can be very outgoing. The difference is in how we recharge and as an introvert I can be outgoing as outgoing as I need to be for limited periods of time so when I'm outgoing when I'm bubbly when I'm on like if I was doing a full I used to do these boot camps if I was doing a seminar or even if I was speaking for an hour or going to a networking event or even just being with friends especially really bubbly outgoing extroverted friends I would then need time alone to decompress and recharge and that's what an introvert is. We can be out and we can we can be social but we need time alone. We need quiet time to recharge our batteries to get us ready for the next time that we have to be out. An extrovert on the other hand and I dated an extrovert a few years ago oh my god he drove me nuts he constantly had to be going and doing he was constantly arranging dinners for us and cocktail parties and events with other people and let's go to the baseball game and let's go here and let's have this dinner and let's oh my gosh enough no more it was completely overwhelming to me oh completely overwhelming I just exhausted me uh but that's how an extrovert operates extroverts where an introvert needs to recharge needs to be alone to recharge extroverts draw their energy from being with people they draw their energy from other people and that's the main difference between an introvert and an extrovert so I get emails from a lot of people who say oh my god I could never do what you could do I could never be out there by myself well you're probably an extrovert uh there are a lot of extroverts in this community and I can think of a few youtubers they all travel together they love company so there are both you can be an introvert out here and you can have as much company as you want or you can be an extrovert and find groups to travel with for me uh I like being by myself and as you know I over the last year I had a friend or two that I would travel with on and off but about 80 maybe 75 percent of the time I traveled and camped alone with my beloved dog wherever he is um and that's just how I choose to live my life it's how I lived my life before I lived in an RV and it's how I choose to live my life now and for so yeah so I don't really get lonely uh for me part of the challenge and what I'm kind of the phase I'm in right now in my life and I'm going to share this personal with you because um I hear from women all the time and in relationship I seem to have I seem to be challenged with holding on to myself uh my I was married for 13 years and I became in those 13 years everything my ex-husband wanted me to be you know I was his drinking and drugging buddy I learned the starting lineup of the San Francisco Giants every year the pitcher's ERAs I learned the difference between a tackle and a safety and football I learned all his classic rock bands and went to his classic rock band concerts and I took care of his kids I had step kids that I raised part-time and um I basically just cooked all you know became the Suzy homemaker remodeled the house cooked the meals you know brought home the bacon the whole nine yards you know I did all that and in the meantime I didn't do anything that feeds Carolyn I didn't do any backpacking I didn't go do the things that that stimulate me creatively intellectually uh and I lost myself 12 years into the marriage I woke up quit drinking and realized who the heck is this person um and it was almost a year to the day after quit drinking that I asked him I told him I wasn't happy and it was you know I had been in therapy for a couple of months hoping that it would be couples counseling hoping that we could maybe work on the marriage and it took me a while to get up the nerve because by that time we were living like roommates and it was so hard to talk about anything real and I finally blurted out I'm not happy and he was like well yeah I kind of sensed that and he said well um I think that some things need to change I had quit drinking he hadn't and I never gave him an ultimatum I never said he had to quit drinking and he's like well what's going on and I said well it might help if you took a look at your drinking get a life get off your butt go make some friends I told him get a go get some friends go out do something get interesting again you know um maybe come to the gym with me uh just just try to maybe live a healthier life alongside me I had lost 50 pounds I'd quit drinking I was working out I was building my business my life I mean I was thriving and I just wanted him to come along and be a part of that with me his answer was will you stay with me if I do that and I wasn't gonna lie I said I don't know I don't know who you would be I don't know who I'm gonna be um but why don't we try and he basically said no he basically said if I couldn't guarantee that I was gonna stay with him what's the use why bother and he kind of walked away and said boy and I thought we were soulmates still hurts a little bit to talk about it to this day our 13 year marriage ended in a 20 minute conversation of me for the first time in 13 years asking for something and that's what it felt like so I have learned over the last seven or eight years that I have been divorced it's been a process for me of learning how to be in relationship without sacrificing who I am and what makes me happy and what I need to thrive and being an introvert this phase that I'm in right now I'm loving being alone sure if I could find someone who I can be with and still be Carolyn still be adventurous and curious and creative and energetic and giving and loving and get some of that in return that's the big one I have a really bad habit of giving and giving and giving without expecting we're getting a whole lot in return and sure you know if I could find someone and maybe that's the secret to relationships and the secret to being happy in a relationship is finding that balance and I think the most successful happy couples find that balance and of give and take that one person can't be doing all the giving like I did in my marriage at the end of 13 years I had zero left to give zero and I tried to turn the baton over to him and say here can you give for a while and he said no and so here I am out on the road well you know I'll spare you seven years of bad bad bad relationships in between many bad relationships but you know I guess looking back they weren't bad with every relationship I learn something about myself I get I feel like and now that I'm clean and sober everyone I see something new I learn something new I'm more aware and even though I don't need a man in my life even though I am very content being by myself I do feel that someday if Mr. Right walked through my door and you know and was willing to share the responsibility of the relationship with me and lifting each other up and sharing you know and having more balance I want to be ready for it and maybe I'm not ready for it yet and that's why I'm out here by myself working on myself just because I'm out here by myself I'm still in therapy once a week by phone I am still working on myself and I am still trying to learn and grow and so every once in a while I do get lonely and I think the longer I'm out here I think the more it's happening I'm coming off the end of Labor Day weekend and some of the loneliness comes around holidays since I was in a campground seeing other people I left my that's another thing so yes I do have friends I have a few very very close friends one of my best friends I've known her for 25 years in the Bay Area I have a couple other really close friends in the Bay Area you know but I can't just drive down the street and go knock on their door and say hey or call them up and say hey let's go for coffee or let's go have dinner you know so the best I can do now is stay in touch by email and text and phone calls and and and that's that's what I do and I stay in touch with all of you and honestly a lot of the the the and a lot of the contact that I get online is usually enough for me so I'm pretty content most of the time like I said I travel alone maybe 80% of the time maybe more now it seems like lately I've been traveling more alone maybe 90% of the time and most of the time I'm pretty content with that so but for those of you who don't want to be alone there is a you know the RTR the rubber tramp rendezvous is coming up in January there's the escapees club there are I think there's a couple other ones escapees is a big one but there are just google rv clubs or full-time rv clubs or go to campgrounds or even some of the more popular boondocking spots or some of the other youtubers even you know I know my friend Bob always welcomes people in his camp and some of the other youtubers I think welcome people in their camp so you can always find community if that's what you want out here you're only alone as much as you want to be out here and there's plenty of opportunities for both to be alone and to be with community so if you want a little bit of both I know that people often travel together for a little while and then they go off by themselves for a while and they travel together and they come together and you know or they they group hop maybe so those are all the those are all those are some of the things that you can do and as far as relationships I do get emails from from people who ask about relationships actually a couple people have suggested I set up a single site for um for for solo nomads solo rvers so like why don't you start a dating site and I'm like yeah in my spare time sure I need another project like I need another hole in Matilda right um I but if any of you want to do that there seems to be a need for it more than a few people have asked me if I would do that uh you know it's not something I really want to do dating sites are so part of my past and definitely not something I ever wanted to do again uh but it but so some people do ask well what about relationships and romantic relationships out there and and how do people do that I don't know actually I think I've heard at the RTR actually I heard of a couple of um relationships that started uh actually yeah now that I think about it I can think of like maybe two or three different relationships that started out here they met at the RTR or they met in a boondocking spot or whatever and they've lived happily ever after as a nomad couple actually now that I'm probably like four different couples um so yeah I mean I suppose you can find love out here too if that's what you're looking for and I think maybe the concern is that they are going to be so far removed from society and people that they're just going to be alone forever and and that scares some people it's just not what they see for their future so they wonder what's out here as far as um you know possibilities for relationships I will say that I meet a lot of single men I meet a lot of single solo men out here and I will say that one of the things that I cherish most in my life since my marriage and that is my male friends I have three or four male friends that I value very much a couple backpacking buddies and of course my nomad friend Bob and I just love the men that I meet and I love having the male friendships that I have made along the way for me that kind of feeds the need the need for male companionship in my life I joked with a couple girlfriends a couple years ago I was like oh my gosh now that I'm not trying to date every man I meet I really like men so a lot of you want to call me man hater and all the other things uh I'm not but far far far from it I'm definitely not a man hater I love men and I actually found that I really love men male friendships very much and actually in college I had three male roommates and that was the best experience uh roommate experience I ever had just so easy they were just so you know no drama just really easy to live with of course their tolerance for for dirt was a lot higher than mine so I did most of the cleaning but um so I guess that's my my little talk about relationships in the solo nomad we all come out here with our own histories our own stories our own needs some of us are introverts some of us are extroverts some of us love being alone some of us don't like being alone some of us are looking for love some of us aren't um you know it we are our community is as diverse as the real world community and I think that whatever you're looking for you can find out here whether it's friendship whether it's companionship whether it's love I think if you're looking for it you can probably find it and um as far as what I do to what I do when I'm lonely uh for those of you who do think you want to spend most of the time alone like I said my online world really feeds a lot of the need um I a lot of my need for companionship I have a couple pen pals now that I communicate with who are just so supportive of all of my work on YouTube and really just become my support group big hugs love you guys and I have my friends in the Bay Area that I talk to not as often as I'd like one of the things that I will say that I didn't realize is how um how this lifestyle was really going to kind of isolate me uh from my a lot of the conveniences or the friendships and the conveniences in of my life for example if I wanted to go to Greece I would just drop Capone off at my ex-husbands we shared custody of Capone like that for a while uh I can't do that now I'm in Tennessee I'm 2,000 miles away from the Bay Area and so if I want to go somewhere I have to drive to the Bay Area to drop Capone off at my ex-husbands and so uh what 15 months out here now I haven't gone anywhere I can't backpack because he can't go with me so the things like that that I really didn't think all the way through and didn't really consider when I came on the road and and how limited I am partly because he's an older dog um and partly just because he's a dog and what am I gonna do with him you know I can't go I want to go to Patagonia that's my next one I really want to go backpack in Patagonia and I can't just go there uh I'm not gonna leave him in a kennel at this point maybe if he was younger I'm not just gonna go drop him off at a strange kennel uh no that's not gonna work and uh so the the only option for me is to drive back to the Bay Area where I know I can leave him someplace safe and I actually might do that sometime in the next year so um and the other thing is I can't just call up a friend and say hey do you want to go have coffee I have friends I have nomad female friends and we just haven't been able to connect we had planned on connecting this summer but I came to Florida to support my friend instead but ladies I know you're out there and I do look forward to seeing you soon and hopefully getting to travel with them soon I am kind of hungry for female companionship right now so that's all I have that's my spiel about living alone on the road in an RV with my dog and how do I deal with loneliness how I deal with companionship and uh you know and and is there a potential for is there a potential for a romantic relationship in my future maybe I don't know we'll see I'm not looking honestly I'm not actively looking if it happens it happens I'm not averse to it that's for sure um so we'll see I don't know what the future holds but I think that the real peace came for me a few years ago when I realized that I don't need a man to be happy and that if I live the rest of my life without a significant other that'll be okay it'll be okay all right but I love you guys my YouTube buds my friendlies I don't know I hope that was helpful for you uh for those of you who are thinking about coming out here I hope that did give you something to think about some inspiration some food for thought until next time I will see you soon and in the meantime be happy be free and be kind and I will see you down the road puppy I love my puppy so do I get lonely how could I get lonely with this guy