
Loneliness Is a Warning Sign to Be Social - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/loneliness-is-a-warning-sign-to-be-social
======
pmoriarty
As I've gotten older I've become more and more picky about who I want to spend
time with.

It used to be, when I was a lot younger, that I would be pretty
indiscriminate: as long as someone wanted to spend time with me, and they were
nice enough, and we could find something to do together that we enjoyed, like
watching a movie, playing a game, or just hang out and talk about something
(usually meaningless), that would be enough.

But as I got older, I started to see that as a waste of time, and started to
notice how little I had in common with the people I spent time with, and how
rarely we talked about or did anything that was really meaningful for me, and
it started to bother me.

So, over the years I've lost touch with most of my old friends.. and, as I'm
not very social, and I'm usually quite content with my own companionship, I
really haven't gone to the great trouble of finding new friends, especially
now as my standards have gotten so much higher.

The result? I've pretty much no friends left. Occasionally, someone at work
reaches out to me, but, really, I recognize that we have little in common, and
I usually don't respond in kind. So I'm pretty much alone, and probably will
remain so for the rest of my life. Usually I'm ok with that, but sometimes I
notice some couples or groups of friends around me, having fun, laughing
together, and it bothers me. But not enough for me to make a big change in my
life.

~~~
Benjammer
>started to notice how little I had in common with the people I spent time
with

What do you mean by this, specifically? I've wrestled with the idea of finding
people I have more "in common with," but I've ended up at a place where I
think the idea of "best friends" is kind of an overblown myth, or at least
it's a LOT rarer than people think it is. What's the fun in hanging out with
someone who's the same as you, anyway?

I'm come to realize that, while I tend to think I'm losing touch with old
friends because "we don't have a lot in common anymore," it's far more often
just because one or both of us is being a shitty friend and the relationship
isn't giving enough satisfaction in return to continue investing in
maintaining it for one or both parties.

>how rarely we talked about or did anything that was really meaningful for me

But really, if you always did "meaningful" things and always had "meaningful"
conversations with your friends, then nothing would actually stand out as
"meaningful." Maybe there are other reasons to converse and hang out with
people than finding deep meaning in everything. Most people seeking out that
deeper "meaning" tend to have to find it for themselves, they don't just
discover a perfect group of like-minded individuals who can evoke the meaning
of life from their deep, intellectual conversations with each other.

>sometimes I notice some couples or groups of friends around me, having fun,
laughing together, and it bothers me

I think this is sort of a social darwinism version of the imposter syndrome.
It seems so easy when you see a group of people laughing together. It seems
like they just effortlessly entertain each other, but nobody sees the inner
workings behind the scenes. Nobody sees the fact that Jenny secretly hates
Stacy, but hides it because the group is fun to hang out with and Stacy is
always there, or that Steve is dating Brian's ex and Brian says it's fine but
really secretly hates it, etc...

This idea where you see couples or groups of people who just seem to
effortlessly get along, and it seems like they aren't even trying is totally
false. Sure, there are people for whom social skills come far more naturally,
but relationships of any kind take effort by both parties to maintain and
grow.

~~~
pmoriarty
> What do you mean by this, specifically?

Well, I guess I can elaborate a bit. I have a bunch of obscure interests, and
most people haven't even heard of them, much less share them or are nearly as
interested in them as I am. I used to be ok with that, and would hang out with
people who would want to talk about and do things that I have absolutely no
interest in, but after a while I realized that I was wasting my time doing
that.

I'd rather just spend the time by myself, reading about, learning, or doing
things that I was interested in. One thing I take great refuge in is reading
old books by or about truly great authors and people, and they're always
interested in and talk about exactly the things I am interested in, simply
because I choose to read only those books which are about what I'm interested
in (or am open to becoming interested in).

From time to time, I've joined clubs or gone to meetups of people who are
interested in one of the things that I am interested in, but then it's rare
for them to be interested in the other obscure things I'm interested in. And I
guess that's where I get too picky for my own good, as there's really little
chance of finding people who share all or even a significant fraction of the
obscure stuff I'm interested in.

Not that it has to be all about common interests. If I could somehow make a
deep connection with someone I could see myself getting interested in some of
the things they were interested in, or vice-versa. But that's hard to do if
you don't already have something in common to begin with.

As to your point about what's happening behind the scenes of a superficially
happy looking group of people, I recognize that it may not (and probably
isn't) quite as idyllic as it looks on the surface, and that recognition gives
me even less reason to seek companionship with other people. There's often a
lot of pain and effort involved, and for me it's just not worth it. It's so
much easier and simpler to just stay my own best (and only) friend.

~~~
Ixiaus
There's nothing wrong with the path you've chosen for yourself but I can say
based on my anecdotal experience that human social dynamics, particularly in
groups, can be counter-intuitive and are definitely a "you get what you put
in" kind of thing (not to be confused with being a doormat for your
"friends").

I think it's remarkably important to surround yourself with people that are
_meaningful to you_ ; that to me is different from _things in common_. Having
things in common helps provide a medium for bonding but it's rarely the
specific activity that is the focus for bonding, it's the shared experience
that is.

There are lots of people that I call friends with whom I have little in-
common, but there's a specific experience I've had with them or perhaps one
specific thing to bond over that has created a strong connection.

Meaningful conversation is important too but I often find that _trying_ to
have a conversation _I want to have_ can be productive. Many people are
actually very interested in different ways of thinking or approaching life.

------
wry_discontent
I moved into an apartment alone about a year ago now. I absolutely delight
living alone and being by myself in a way that I didn't think was possible. I
was worried that I'd be lonely and miserable, but I'm not. Sometimes I want
some company, but usually I'm content to spend time alone reading or coding
or, hell, just thinking.

~~~
nilkn
I experienced something similar. Having my own small apartment was one of the
best feelings I've ever experienced in my life. I'm a bit antisocial, but not
severely so. I'm more introverted than anything else, and I discovered that
I'm incredibly productive when I have a space to myself that I can retire to
whenever I want and over which I have complete control.

All my life I struggled with issues related to introversion, and having my own
apartment basically solved all of them overnight. I've never been more social
in my life than I was when I lived alone. The reason is simple: I was always
able to recharge and never got to the point of being consistently drained.

I've been conflicted ever since with how I want to live the rest of my life,
as living alone is in conflict with a lot of other goals that are also very
important to me, like marriage.

~~~
kayla210
I'm currently dealing with if I want to rent out an apartment by myself or if
I want to find a roommate/friend to share it with. On one hand, YAY NO PEOPLE
AND FULL CONTROL OF THE PLACE; on the other hand, I don't want to get
depressed when I start missing seeing people when I get home. I feel like
living on my own would help me so much socially/physically/emotionally than
finding someone to room with.

~~~
Klinky
Roommates should be seen as a business transaction. I would not rely on then
for social interaction. Some of the horror stories suggest they could be very
detrimental to your mental health. Also a quick way to find out you don't like
your friend as much as you thought you did is to live with them 24/7.

~~~
kayla210
That's true. I believe I make enough to manage a decent-to-nice apartment on
my own, so I won't have to have a roommate to make rent. Right now, I'm just
saving up and paying off student loans and my credit card and casually looking
at apartments near the city and my work.

------
alexmorenodev
About living alone: There's a huge difference between being alone because you
want to, and being alone by lack of choice. At first time I lived alone in my
hometown it feels marvelous. I can study, work or bring anyone I want to my
home without nobody pissing me off about whatever I do. Nice. But I tried the
same living in São Paulo and I felt absolutely depressed. Reason? Simple: Lack
of company when I want to. At my hometown I could visit my brother and my
friends whenever I wanted to. I can't say the same about São Paulo (800km far
away). Then I learned the lesson and share my home since then. At the moment I
live with 3 people, which feels nice and balanced. My own privacity, my
silence, my space, plus people to talk to when I want to.

~~~
throwaway_java
that's the difference between solitude and loneliness. Sometimes you need
solitude.

------
Swizec
I miss being alone so much I could cry. It wasn't long ago that I could get up
in the morning to my empty apartment, stay in my apartment all day (I worked
from home), and only see people when I felt like it. Throwing massive parties
for 50+ people every month or so works amazingly well for both socialization
_and_ increasing your social standing.

Nowadays I work from an office with a bunch of other people around me at all
times. When I come home, there's my girlfriend. Sure I love her and I
definitely can't afford my own rent, but sometimes I just wish I could come
home to an empty apartment, you know?

Late nights are the last bastion of aloneness I can get. But how long can I
maintain a schedule of going to bed at 2am or 3am and being bright and ready
at the office by 10am? it works for now, but I'll be 30 next year. Surely
there are limits.

The funny thing is that this prevalence of forced-upon social contact makes me
too tired to build a real social network. I just don't have the energy to hang
out with friends, or even much inclination to see them. This often makes me
feel lonelier than I ever did when I spent 90% of my days alone.

~~~
nibs
My fiance is extremely introverted. We eventually realized that she needed
this "apartment to myself" feeling at least once a week in order to function
in the real world and do the extrovert obligations she needed to do. So we
instituted "introvert time", where I work late until around 10PM and leave our
place to her for about five hours after she gets home.

This is enough for her to take the time to walk around undressed, read
articles, make some food, watch junk TV and enjoy the silence before I get
home. Relationship-defining quality of life improvement. I similarly enjoy
working late knowing it is creating value (as opposed to feeling guilty and
conflicted, which eventually becomes burnout). Highly recommend it.

~~~
whoozhat
curious... what are you guys gonna do when you have kids?

~~~
benologist
He currently works overtime to give her time alone. Only thing that changes is
work stops solving the problem of how to be out of the house.

~~~
nibs
This. I will take the kids somewhere to do something while she is alone.
Otherwise same deal. It is worth it net net.

------
unabst
This is one of those things that just can't be reiterated enough just for the
sake of those who need to hear it -- either for the first time or again.

> Loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed,

Our modern obsession with failure is really the problem. If "failure" wasn't a
thing, we'd get up and do something, but instead we give ourselves reasons to
attack ourselves and make it some existential threat, all the while thinking
exercising our intellect will solve all our problems.

Thinking of loneliness will only make you lonelier. Instead, if one acted on
it, the natural progression would lead to relationships, love, and babies.
Perfectly natural course of action.

Fuck failure. Whoever got you thinking you are a failure is an idiot, so punch
them in the mouth, even if that person is you. At least that's doing something
about it!

------
labrador
I work at home and program for a living. I just went to an AA meeting for the
first time in a long time. I quit going 6 mos. ago because I disagree with the
program's focus on god, but the loneliness of being isolated at home drove me
back. My AA friends welcomed me back. When I got home, I took my blood
pressure (I have high BP) and noticed it was much lower than I expected. Edit:
I like solitude and can handle and enjoy a lot of it, but there is such a
thing as too much for me apparently.

------
120bits
I moved out from Bay Area, where I had tons of friends. I would go out every
other night to hang out with my friends. Talk about startups and upcoming tech
stuff and lots of beer off course. But then I found myself in a loop, same old
routine. I decided to move some other state, where I am complete stranger. Its
been 5 years since I left. Do I get lonely? Off course I do. I would be lying
if I won't. But, I don't get depressed. I don't let my brain get in "trap" of
convincing myself that I need 100 friends and I need to socialize more. I
picked up lot of other activities. Started learning french. Playing guitar and
tons of other stuff I thought I would never get time to do.

~~~
LeanderK
well, as always, this is generalisation and individual experiences may vary ;)
(is this grammatically correct?).

This is not a critique of your argument, but most of the time if discuss these
kind of articles (or general psychological things) there are always
counterexamples. This is the real world, not math.

~~~
lucb1e
Since you asked for feedback:

> this is generalisation

Should be: "this is a generalization". It's understandable though.

> This is not a critique of your argument

Again understandable, but should be something like "I am not criticizing your
argument".

The rest is correct I think. Hope I got everything right, I'm not a native
speaker either :)

~~~
M2Ys4U
As a native en_GB speaker, "This is not a critique of your argument" sounds
perfectly idiomatic to me

------
yigitcakar
I think it wouldn't be wrong to guess that HN hosts a larger loner base than
the general public. Most of us are introverts and we start life with a
hindrance when it comes to interpersonal relationships. As we grow older, the
gap between our communication skills and general public's grow wider. (It
seems very similar to relative age effect.*)

In a different world where communicators are scarce, we would be forced to be
better communicators by our peers and elders; like we push children to learn
math and science, or (lately) programming. To our detriment world is full of
able communicators and they can't understand why we can't communicate better.I
think of it this way: I sincerely can't understand why a person fails to
understand basic programming concepts like a while loop and the communicators
(extroverts if you'd like) can't understand why we can't handle small talk.

The problem grows bigger and harder to handle because our natural inclinations
are toward subjects that are deemed smarter(scarce I'd say) and we start
seeing ourselves smarter and more skilled which leads to superiority complex:
We start thinking and behaving as if we are above the things that make us feel
inferior in the first place. We start to think that we create tangible things
while others babble all day. We become living examples of Dunning–Kruger
effect when it comes to interpersonal relations.

Nobody likes a smartass, so people leave us alone with our huge Egos.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect)

~~~
borplk
I strongly disagree with most of what you have described.

A lack of interest in certain topics or unwillingness to engage in particular
activities does not automatically imply that I think those are below me or
that I'm superior. I'm simply indifferent.

This is a popular misunderstanding that people keep repeating over and over
again "Oh he doesn't like X he must think he is too good for that.".

Second I disagree with the notion that complying with the social norm is
"social/communication skill" while an unwillingness to conform, or being
slightly different from the norm somehow means defective or low "communication
skill".

I know damn well how to conform and make everyone approve of me and praise me
for "communication skills" but I simply don't want to.

If I don't dive into the smalltalk that's because I have no desire to do so,
not because of my communication skills.

It's like a bunch of introverts blaming the others for not having good
"solitude skills".

How come we don't fault extroverts for not being able to shut up for a while?

~~~
yigitcakar
My point to take was communication is a skill and like every other skill,
there is a gap in understanding between masters and novices. It happens
everywhere; expert carpenters forget how they first started so they can't
relate to their apprentices. In every practice, the basics are ingrained into
master's psyche and they can't understand how you can't handle such a simple
task.

In every skill there are protocols to learn as a beginner and small talk is
where you start when it comes to communication. I think that people are like
programming languages. Each one of us are Turing complete, but each one of us
are suited better for different tasks.

Small talk is the "Hello World" of human interaction. You start understanding
other people's syntax and how they function through small talk. Extroverts
understand that innately. You can't move on to deeper subjects with another
person until you understand what they are made of.

We tend to dismiss small talk as unimportant so we fail to build rapport with
our peers. Without rapport, our relations and the topics we discuss stay
shallow. We start misjudging other people as shallow based on our
interactions, failing to recognize our indifference toward other people is the
root cause of this shallowness.

Communication is the pillar human society is built upon so it is a good idea
to master its intricacies. Especially in this age if you want to build
anything worthwhile, you have to have a deep understanding of how to
communicate with others. If you have that understanding kudos to you.

We generally fail to understand that, and my first comment was exploring why I
personally failed and became lonelier over time, hoping that it might help
someone in a similar situation since being and feeling lonely is not good for
the long term.*

To answer your last question; I think "mindfulness" is just introverts blaming
others for not having good solitude skills and doing something about it.

Thank you for this interaction.

* There is a longitudinal Harvard study on happiness, you might want to watch the TED talk of its director : [https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good...](https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness)

------
shruubi
As someone who has bad social anxiety, I find that forcing myself to be social
seems to have a much more negative effect on my health than being lonely.

~~~
rak00n
It goes away after you have tried talking to strangers a thousand times.
Living in a big city helps. You won't see them twice if you fuck up. State
something obvious and see how it goes.

------
zappo2938
I only feel lonely when I'm with people.

~~~
riprock
This resonates a lot with me. Whenever I participate in a social gathering
there are already long-established "cliques" and they just talk among
themselves. I feel this especially at wedding receptions -- I find myself
awkwardly walking around while everyone is chatting, and I'm just wasting time
until I feel ready to make my irish exit.

------
PhasmaFelis
What on earth is with that headline? It's like saying "hunger is a warning
sign to eat." Gosh, really?

~~~
alashley
Maybe it has to do with the fact that Western society emphasizes
individualism?

------
panglott
The article was fine, but what an unhelpful headline. It's like saying
"Depression is a warning sign that you need to start being happier."

The time in my life where I most struggled with loneliness, I had just moved
to a new big city. I went out looking for social experiences literally all the
time, but never found the people that I could form deep friendships with.
Transient social interactions and passing friendships, sure, but deep social
relationships just take a long time to form. Eventually I moved to another
city where I had more friends, and now I'm much happier.

Loneliness is just psychologically crushing.

------
Kenji
Who would have thought that feeling bad about something is a warning system.
It's just like physical pain, it's emotional pain. Pain acts as a regularizer
of the learning functions that the brain optimizes.

------
rfugger
Does loneliness cause depression and loss of mobility, or vice-versa, or is
there another causative factor behind all these things...? Intuitively, it
probably works differently for different people.

------
adrianlmm
It is the contrary to me, the older I get the more I want to be social than to
spend time alone, I used to be a lonely wolf, now I like reunions.

------
jebernier
Duh

