Many critics called it a "more serious" record, with some of them hinting it included sadder aesthetics and was "built on what John Keats defined as 'negative capability'".

"[2] In an interview with Spin, Chastity Belt's vocalist, Julia Shapiro said: "That's something we realized, that we don't have to play joke songs in order to have fun.

[7] Hardly Art first announced that the tour was going to be ended on September 23, 2017, in Utrecht, Netherlands, at ACU,[7] later added one more show that was on October 18, 2017, in Seattle, Washington, at Chop Suey.

"[16] Spin's Geena Kloeppel wrote the album "flows more smoothly than previous releases," and felt it is the band's "growing up" to see song titles like "Caught in a Lie" and "Different Now".

[23] Mike Katzif of NPR noted it is "a thoughtful, reflective album, constantly searching for direction to and questioning every solitary, restless feeling, yet it's that intimacy that allows us to know a new, perhaps truer side to the artists."

Writing about its instrumental content, he felt the album "doesn't mess with the band's signature fuzzy guitar rock, so much as refine it.

He added that the album "isn't as callow as previous Chastity Belt records, and intentionally so, fully digging up the sadness that always lay ever-dormant beneath their tinny-swigging chaos, and leaving behind biting mockery for something that feels vaguer, and also more universal.

"[20] Giving the album a score of 7.4, Pitchfork writer Sasha Geffen felt the "varied taxonomy of the band gels together as they relay the psychological slog of trying really hard to just be OK."[21] Describing it as a "killer album", Robert Loss of PopMatters felt I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone was "built on what John Keats defined as 'negative capability'" and the band "practices a contemporary version of what the painter and critic Manny Farber defined as 'termite art.'"

's Mackenzie Herd wrote "I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone is an accurate depiction of the lull and forced introspection that follows the second adolescence that is early adult independence; new desires emerge, and on this record, it seems that Chastity Belt wish to be taken more seriously — both by themselves and others."

[19] Giving the album 9 points out of 10, Joe Goggings of Drowned in Sound said it is "pretty in its sonic gloominess and witty in the way that it wears its anxieties on its sleeve, but what makes it special is the way that all of that is grounded by the sturdiest of anchors - the quiet optimism that friendship inspires.