Life looks good on the surface - so why are we all so lonely?

‘But you can’t be lonely,’ a friend tells me crossly. ‘You’re out every night.’ The backhanded compliment makes me laugh. But it also makes me sad. 

On paper my life sounds glamorous. My Facebook and Twitter updates show evenings spent at film premieres and West End first nights. Last weekend I was at the seaside reviewing an exhibition in newly cool Margate. Next Saturday a friend and I are staying at a boutique hotel in Hay-on-Wye.

An acquaintance recently wrote on my Facebook page: ‘Liz Hoggard, I follow your glittery life in awe.’ But I think perhaps she shouldn’t. I’m not saying my carefully curated social media output isn’t true. Just that it edits out stress, tears and rejection. And the pockets of real loneliness.

I have a job I love, my own flat in London and strong, enduring friendships. On paper, every box is ticked. But just occasionally I ask myself, why aren’t I part of a tight-knit group of friends who live in each other’s pockets, cook together, and go on holiday every year?

If you’re single at 50-plus, you hate imposing on couple friends around high days and holidays, especially if they are busy with family and ageing parents.  

I suspect my friends would be astonished to hear me say that. They tease me for being a workaholic and double-booked all week. But I, too, have uneventful weekends, and often prefer to work over Christmas and bank holidays. And I’m not the only one who feels this way.

A new national commission investigating loneliness in the UK, launched in January (and planned by West Yorkshire MP Jo Cox before she was murdered last June), shows that a fifth of the population privately admits they are ‘always or often lonely’. But two-thirds of those would never confess to having a problem in public. We effectively have a silent epidemic affecting people of all ages and backgrounds. 

Researchers now recognise that loneliness is a serious public health issue. As a predictor of early death, it eclipses obesity. Some studies argue that it is a bigger killer than cancer or heart disease. And it increases the risk of premature death by 26 per cent, according to a 2015 study. Feeling lonely is a double whammy: it hurts physically and emotionally – and we also feel social shame.

Five top tips | To beat loneliness

But why are so many of us lonely? There are a handful of reasons for feeling like this. First, my romantic life isn’t my strongest suit (my last relationship ended three years ago). I’ve never assumed I’d be defined by The One but if you’re single and live alone (and I really like living alone) you lack a 3D witness to your life.

There is no one person who effortlessly gets you, who sees you every day… with wet hair, tired, messy, jubilant. Someone who understands that you’re terrified of your new smart TV, and have a guilty love of red Bounty bars.

In many ways, my life has been a journey to be at peace with aloneness. To accept that there will be episodes of feeling a slight outsider but that if I hold my nerve – and then hold it some more – it will recede.

Second, I know my experience of feeling lonely stems from childhood bullying. At school I was a bookish child in National Health glasses with poor social skills. I became so worried about being liked I forgot to focus on liking people myself. My little band of female friends were, like me, outsiders.

We watched with envy other glamorous teens going to parties. University was a revelation – full of smart people debating books and ideas – and yet in some ways my social awkwardness grew worse. 

I worried I’d say the wrong thing, drive people away with my eagerness. While flatmates lay curled up together on the sofa, gossiping, I’d always choose the furthest armchair. It was almost as if I worried about being too ‘close’ to people.

My friends teased me about my self-conscious body language, or spiky repartee. ‘I do admire the way you are so confrontational with men,’ a female friend laughed. Confrontational? I thought I was being flirtatious! 

However, there is a greater reason for the modern loneliness epidemic that runs far deeper: it is a wider problem with modern society, in which individual freedom is prized more than community.

‘The freedom of our age is that you can be alone,’ says philosopher Alain de Botton. ‘The price is that you might also have to feel lonely.’

But humans are hyper-social animals who need people. And the way we connect with others in this day and age has changed. We boast about having 350 friends on Facebook, but by building friendships through social media we aren’t allowing ourselves the time to have rewarding connections.

In his book Intimacy, psychologist Ziyad Marar says there are four ingredients you need for a ‘true encounter’ (or rewarding connection) to take place: kindness, heightened emotion, reciprocity and conspiracy (that lovely sense of being the only two people in a crowded room).

Essentially, no matter how many people you interact with and how many parties you attend, unless you have a ‘true encounter’, nothing important is really exchanged – and the cycle of isolation continues.

This can translate to friendships and relationships too, explaining why even those with long-term marriages and wide friendship networks can feel lonely. Psychologists say people who fear rejection can look for ‘quick fix’ friendships and love affairs with surface emotions rather than real intimacy. Unsurprisingly, I found romantic relationships tricky.

In my 20s I would fixate on emotionally unavailable men, which is always a good way to avoid intimacy: you have all the excitement of unrequited love without ever needing to reveal yourself. In my 30s I’d try to rescue men who battled depression. Sometimes I’d be swept off my feet by someone declaring that I was The One after a matter of weeks… the trouble is that lonely, proud gals don’t always spot a fantasist.  

In her book Overcoming Loneliness and Making Friends, Marianna Csoti explains that we also need to have a mix of different friendship types in our life to combat loneliness. These include ‘isolates’ (confidential one-to-one friends); ‘close-knits’ (who hang out with each other); and ‘loose cliques’ (those met through work or a hobby, who may never turn into anything deeper).

Ideally we should have a mix of all three. However, many of us lack that fantasy ‘isolate’, which explains why even those of us considered popular, with heaps of friends, can still feel lonely. 

We dream of true friendships, where we can share private jokes and finish each other’s sentences. One friend I envy greatly has a best friend she has known for 40 years. They see each other every Saturday without question, holiday together, speak most days.

Don’t get me wrong, I have lovely friends who bombard me with texts, Whatsapp messages and Twitter ‘likes’ when I have a new piece in the newspaper. Who take me out to dinner if I make a mistake at work or a tentative romance fails. But at 4am I’ll sometimes wonder: is there anyone I can call on unconditionally in my life?

Yet saying, ‘I’m lonely’, doesn’t sit well with the upbeat image we like to project. Many of us worry that admitting it may be indulgent. But researchers think we shouldn’t downplay the pain. John T Cacioppo, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, who has been studying loneliness since the 1990s, has said, ‘Denying you feel lonely makes no more sense than denying you feel hunger.’ 

It can be hard feeling like an exile in your own life. Over the years I’ve tried grown-up cures: therapy, retreats, self-help literature, workshops. I’m proud of the work I put in. I’ve had to confront some tough home truths, but I’m much better at intimacy now.

Recently I redecorated my flat – having a decorator, a neutral witness, ask questions about my life has been oddly moving, and I now have a space I might actually want to spend some time in. I’ve also edited my address book, standing down friends who are less reliable.

Plus I have decided to stop online dating for a while; I want to meet people in 3D. I try to reassure myself that I still have time to find that person who I’ll always feel at ease with, to establish a para-family of people to share new experience with. After all, us 50-somethings, in our Zara buys and Converse trainers, look nothing like our grandparents and we (rightly) refuse to believe the party’s over.

Five things you only know when youre single and in your 50s

Even so, my journey to ‘refashion’ my loneliness is still a work in progress. When I have a bad day at work, or find I don’t know anyone at a party, I can shoot back to that gauche 12-year-old. But I’m learning to live with it. The danger is that we can mask our loneliness by being madly busy.

So I have been trying to sit still and ponder what I really want. It’s important to distinguish between aloneness (enjoying a period of solitude, chosen or enforced) and real, grinding loneliness. And when, at times, I am filled with small pangs of real loneliness, I allow it to just be.

It is a strange, hollow feeling that is instantly recognisable, but I have plenty of moments of excitement and curiosity to balance the scales. 

I suspect modern loneliness is triggered by the feeling that none of us is quite in the same place at the same time. And you know, that’s OK.  

Heads Together

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