Never alone, but never really together either

It was at a flatshare party, on a balmy summer night, and we were standing on the balcony. She, in her late 20s, a good friend, nice to everyone, usually in a good mood, with what you might call charisma. Always with people around her, probably admired by many. Now, a good bit after midnight and a few beers, she started talking.

About how she could rarely really talk. About her two closest friends who’d moved away. She didn’t have any friends. Then about the uncertainty and shallowness that characterized most of her relationships with other people. And finally, she said the sentence that it all boils down to, which I never thought she would say, “Sometimes I feel lonely.”

widespread disease loneliness — even in younger people

Loneliness is often referred to as a widespread disease in modern societies, a legitimate successor to diabetes, high blood pressure, and back pain. In Britain, the first Minister for Loneliness was appointed a few years ago. “Loneliness is the sad reality of modern life,” said then Prime Minister Theresa May on the occasion. But often we only think of people over 60 whose partners and friends have died and whose children live their own lives.

Yet loneliness is at least as pronounced among young people — if not more so. The corona crisis with contact restrictions and the need for isolation has once again focused attention on this. According to a survey in Great Britain, 37 percent of those surveyed spent several days without social contacts during this period. A quarter of respondents say that during the lockdown it felt as if they had no real friends at all.

But even before that, loneliness was a constant feature of many young people’s lives. A representative survey in 2017 found that young adults are the population group that suffers most from it. 17 percent between the ages of 18 and 29 stated that they feel lonely all the time or often, but only one in ten people do not know what it is like.

There are many reasons for this. In a fragmented society, in which everyone looks for and goes their way, the traditional mechanisms of belonging to families and social classes are less and less effective. We move away, lose contact with our previous friends, get to know new ones, who then move away and with whom we lose contact again.

Who do we know? And who knows us?

This seems absurd because we have countless opportunities to get to know people — whether in real life or online. We are all networkers. And each of us knows hundreds of people. Family, school friends, fellow students, work colleagues, roommates, neighbors, people from the sports club, or whatever else we do. But who do we know? And who knows us?

Many of these relationships get stuck on a superficial level. You can spend many hours with someone without really getting to know them. Without knowing who he is or what’s on his mind — and vice versa. We have so-called friends for watching and playing football, for cinema and concerts, for dancing and hipster restaurants. But if all that was taken away, we would no longer have anything in common with many of them. We would not know what to talk about, the friends would have lost their function.

This is exactly what annoys many young people: There’s hardly anyone who doesn’t want to be alone. It’s just that together you’re never really. Everything remains to show, misunderstood, bumbling. Just don’t get too close, just don’t let anyone get too close. This creates a social hole in many people that cannot be filled quickly. And which gets bigger and bigger.

Being alone does not mean being alone

In reality, there is “a difference between being alone and feeling alone,” says not only the American psychologist John T. Cacioppo, who has done a lot of research on the subject. Not even a love relationship is a panacea. The crucial thing is to have a place and (at least) one person with whom you can be as you are, with whom you feel understood. No matter how many non-binding meetings and big events take place during the week, this cannot outweigh the benefits.

We don’t like to talk about it. It’s hard enough to explain to someone why you would want to volunteer to spend an evening alone. Hardly anyone dares to admit to involuntary solitude, the definition of loneliness. And so this effect is intensified again and again: everyone believes to be the only one who feels this way.

It is important to raise awareness of the problem — and not just among senior citizens. According to current scientific studies, loneliness is even more dangerous to health than obesity. Seen in this light, loneliness is even “only” a signal to warn against worse: “Physical pain protects people from physical danger. Loneliness has developed for a similar reason: Because it is meant to protect man from the danger of remaining isolated,” writes scientist Cacioppo in his book “Loneliness.

Quality in relationships is crucial

So how do you escape the spiral of loneliness? For this purpose it can be helpful to recall once again the sobering insight of Niklas Luhmann, probably the most important sociologist of the 20th century: “The personal element in social relationships cannot be extensive, but only intensified,” wrote the author in 1994 in his well-known study “Love as Passion”. In German, this means: Depth is decisive in relationships, not time. Quality instead of quantity. And — an almost equally sobering insight: If you can’t find a boyfriend, be one yourself. If you hope to find openness and honesty from others, you should perhaps start to raise your friendships to a level worthy of the name yourself.

John Cacioppo knows many people who suffer from loneliness — and many who have found their way out of it. He has four tips:

Greater range of action: don’t remain passive, but meet new people yourself.

positive experiences: Those who notice that they are well received by others also dare to interact with other people more often.

Practice perception: Through more frequent contact with others on a certain level, we learn to react to them appropriately

positive thinking: expect the best in every contact with other people. The more positively we approach others, the greater the likelihood that they will respond positively to us.

Nor is it just about spending time with other people or getting support. It is true: “When you’re at war, you need a small army around you.” But it’s just as important to do something for others.

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Interestingly, there is no word in either German or English for the opposite of loneliness. But British literature student Marina Keegan, who died in 2012 in a car accident at the age of 22, has found a nice way to describe it. Her texts were published after her death under the title “The opposite of loneliness”. One sentence from it probably speaks from the heart of many of her generation: “We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if there was one, I could say, this is exactly what I want in life.”