Why You Can Feel Lonely Even When You Are Loved

I liked Steve.

He and Jane had been married for 50 years. He wasn’t cruel or emotionally absent, and Jane did not describe their marriage as dysfunctional. There was love, companionship, and loyalty between them.

Jane and I sat in the living room for our interview. She waited for Steve to drive away in his Mercedes.

“I met him—Steve—at one of the posh political functions my father used to organize,” she told me. “We only went out once, and the next time I met him, he said, ‘I think we should get married,’ and I said, ‘You better go and see my father then.’ I was 18!”

“My father said, ‘I have decided to invite all the Commonwealth ambassadors.’ I had no choice. We had this enormous, extravagant, beautiful wedding. I wouldn’t have dared object! My father would have gone mad!” she continued.

She went on to describe a materially privileged married life and a loving husband, but also an underlying sense that she’d always had to edit herself around the decisions and wishes of others. Her feelings, desires, and needs tended to take a back seat.

She had recently been attacked and robbed while out walking near the retirement community where they lived. She’d noticed a man lingering near the entrance and approached him to ask whether he needed help.

“I thought he looked lost,” she explained. “So, I walked over and said, ‘Are you alright? Do you need some help?’ And then... he simply attacked me.” After a struggle in which she was roughly pushed to the ground and had her handbag and keys stolen, she made her way back to the community reception.

She leaned closer to me. “You know,” she said, “I was so badly bruised afterwards. My shoulder, my arm, my leg… I was covered in bruises.”

“Steve still doesn’t know about any of that. And he’s not going to.”

I was surprised.

“Oh, don’t worry. That’s exactly how I wanted it,” she continued. “I didn’t want to burden him. I’ve always dealt with things like this myself.”

Jane’s marriage was not, as far as I could tell, emotionally cold or unloving. It seemed clear to me that Steve cared for her deeply. And yet, something inside her appeared unable to trust that there might be space for her suffering and vulnerability. Perhaps Steve would have received these parts of Jane with tenderness. Or perhaps he wouldn’t.

Part of her loneliness lay in the fact that she had learned not to risk finding out.

Why Love Doesn’t Always Mean the End of Loneliness

Listening carefully to people’s experiences of loneliness, I have learned that it so often lives inside close human relationships too.

There is a dominant narrative around loneliness that tends to position it as the inverse of connection. That is, if you’re socially connected, in a relationship, married, or surrounded by love, then you’re somehow insured against loneliness.

Many of us imagine that when we find love, a partner, or more friends, our loneliness will evaporate. In my experience, while there’s no doubt that human connection can relieve certain forms of loneliness enormously, it does not necessarily eradicate loneliness itself.

This is because loneliness cannot be reduced to the simple absence of people, or even of love. Researchers commonly understand it as a discrepancy between the relationships we have and those we desire. In experiential terms, it is the felt distance between the connection we have and the connection we need. That distance can be felt both inside and outside human relationships.

How Loneliness Changes Shape

Before entering a relationship, for example, our loneliness may focus acutely on the perceived absence of a partner. We may long for someone with whom to share our days, our bodies, our thoughts, or the unwitnessed details of our lives. The imagined relationship becomes the answer to our loneliness.

Yet research confirms that even married adults can experience loneliness, and inside relationships other, more particular forms of loneliness can take root.

We may no longer be lonely for somebody, but for our partner to understand a particular part of us. We might long for a conversation that never quite happens as we need it to, for a form of intimacy our partner cannot offer, or for permission to reveal a part of ourselves we keep concealed.

It’s as though loneliness is often not eradicated by connection but transmuted by it. Sometimes, the closer we are to a loved one, the more acutely we feel the limits of how far they are ultimately able to enter our inner world. Closeness can soften our existential loneliness, but it can also make the remaining distance between two people more visible.

Of course, relational loneliness can sometimes indicate neglect, coercion, or incompatibility - but it does not automatically prove that love is absent or that a relationship has failed.

What This Shift in Understanding Makes Possible

Recognising this possibility can release us from the expectation that the presence of another person will automatically eradicate loneliness. It allows us to approach the feeling with curiosity rather than shame, without immediately concluding that something is wrong with us or the relationship.

Instead of wondering: How can I possibly be lonely when I have a partner, a family, or people who love me? we might ask: What form of connection am I longing for here? What part of me feels unable to reach—or be reached by—the other?

On the afternoon we spoke, Jane seemed to need a space in which the quietly suppressed parts of her could finally be expressed, given words, and witnessed. Loneliness inside love is not necessarily a verdict on the love. Sometimes it is an invitation to let a previously hidden part of us become known.

I explore Jane’s story more fully in Loneliness Also Lives Inside Love at The Inner Room, where I write free essays about loneliness and the quieter dimensions of inner life. You’re warmly invited to subscribe.

References