There’s a kind of loneliness that’s hard to speak about—not because it’s rare, but because it’s so familiar. So woven into our social fabric that it almost becomes invisible. You’re at a dinner party where all the others have paired off, talking about holiday plans or parenting dilemmas. Someone says, “We should do a couples dinner some time,” and you smile and nod, already receding. The conversation moves on. But something inside you quietly contracts.
Being single in a world that orbits around couples can feel like standing on the outside of a glass dome – present, but not quite included. For many, this isn’t about envy or resentment. It’s about a recurring ache. A sense of being left behind while others move on, hand in hand, booking trips, leaning on each other’s shoulder. You comfort yourself with thoughts of your other single friends and upcoming plans, and still – part of you watches from a distance, unsure where you belong.
We are not meant to do this alone
There’s a reason this hurts. From an evolutionary point of view, we are not designed for disconnection. We are social mammals whose survival has always depended on closeness, proximity and cooperation. Our nervous systems are build to co-regulate. Love, touch, shared sleep – these aren’t just cultural luxuries. They are biological strategies shaped by millions of years of human evolution.
Despite our immense cognitive development, our prefrontal cortex cannot simply override what is deeply encoded in our biology. As John Bargh’s work on the unconscious mind reminds us, the vast majority of our emotional and behavioural responses happen below the level of awareness. Trying to will ourselves out of the need for connection is not strength. It’s futility. And sometimes, it’s arrogance.
Yet in modern Western culture, we’ve become increasingly suspicious of closeness. Trust is no longer the default. As Malcolm Gladwell explores in Talking to Strangers, the shift from assuming truth to assuming deception may be a reaction to past overreliance on belief, particularly in eras governed by fundamentalist religion and blind faith. But if our new norm is mistrust, scrutiny, and self-containment, are we actually thriving? Or are we slowly eroding the very fabric that allows us to feel safe and seen?
There’s a cost to this cultural mistrust. When we stop assuming truth, we sever the bridge to connection. Without trust, intimacy becomes impossible. And without intimacy, we may survive but thriving is much harder.
The paradox of privilege
Of course, being single does bring real freedoms. In the West, those who are economically reasonably secure can choose a single life. We can design our routines, protect our time, invest in our careers, travel alone. We can leave our families and past entanglements behind, and explore the world alone. That freedom is real, and for some, deeply fulfilling – at least up to a point.
But here’s the paradox. While we idolise self-sufficiency, we quietly punish those who don’t conform to the unspoken rule of pairing up. We glorify independence until the dinner guest list is drawn up or the holidays are planned. Then we return to the gold old logic: pairs, not spares.
This leaves many people caught in a silent loop. You want the spaciousness and flexibility of single life – control over your space, your time, your energy. But you also long for someone to come home to. We want to have our cake and eat it: full independence and deep intimacy, self-protection and vulnerability. And yet, intimacy requires interdependence. It requires some loss of control. That’s the very thing that makes it meaningful.
Emotional pain in disguise
The pain of singlehood often doesn’t arrive as heartbreak. It shows up quietly as low-level anxiety, restlessness, or shame. There’s a quiet sense of falling short, even though your life appears successful and full.
I work with many high-functioning and emotionally aware clients. Just the other week, someone said to me:
It’s embarrassing to admit but I think I just don’t know how to really be in a relationship. Or find one at this stage. I thought I did but clearly I’m getting something wrong, they never last.
And they’re not alone.
Just to be clear, this isn’t a character flaw. It’s often the result of hidden relational patterns formed long time ago. Perhaps your path was paved with traumatic events, or your early caregiving was inconsistent, emotionally absent, or overwhelming, so much that on an implicit level you never fully got to experience and thus learn how to trust closeness, or how to remain in it once it arrives. Instead, you may have learned to perform, to guard, to protect. These early strategies help us survive but they can leave us ill-equipped for intimacy. We crave closeness but don’t know how to tolerate it. We long to be met but subtly push others away.
In therapy, we sometimes think of this as difficulty in reaching relational depth – those rare moments Mick Cooper describes, where both people feel fully present, real, and emotionally met; and as with all true connection, it takes two to tango.
It’s also a reflection of a wider cultural distortion – a society that prizes logic over emotional intelligence, productivity over connection. We know more about our screens than our nervous systems. We have apps for sleep, glucose, and steps but few tools for the slow, messy work of becoming known.
So when my clients speak of the dread of booking a solo holiday, the sting of being the only one not invited to a “plus one” event, or the ache of returning to a silent flat – it’s not about logistics. It’s about attachment. Our bodies are wired to seek proximity. The nervous system doesn’t easily adapt to prolonged aloneness. Cortisol rises. Sleep becomes fragmented. The amygdala flares, perceiving social exclusion as threat.
We think we can out-reason this. But the body doesn’t lie.
This kind of grief is often invisible. There’s no mourning ritual for the love that hasn’t come, no acknowledgement of the relationships that never had a chance. So we cope: we overwork, scroll, stay busy. But somewhere deep down, we ache – for company, for contact, for continuity.
And we are not wrong to long for this. Longing is not weakness. It’s the body remembering what it means to feel safe.
If you’re reading this and feeling the sting of being left out, left behind, or left wondering if you’ll ever be chosen, know this: You are not alone. Your pain is valid. Your longing is human. And your capacity to connect has not expired. Therapy can be one place where that ache begins to be met. A relationship where you are not required to perform, please, or protect. Just to be – curious, gently, honestly. And in that space, something begins to repair.
If this article resonates and you would like to find out how we can help you, contact us to schedule a confidential enquiry call today.
Written by Veronika Kloucek, Senior Psychotherapist, Trainer, Supervisor, and founder of The Village Clinic with support from AI tools for grammar and clarity. All editorial ideas and authorship remain fully human.
References:
Bargh, J. A. (2008). Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do.
Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2008). Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection.
Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why it hurts to be left out: The neurocognitive overlap between physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 294–300.
Gladwell, M. (2019). Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know.
Lieberman, M. D. (2013). Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.
Mearns, D., & Cooper, M. (2018). Working at relational depth in counselling and psychotherapy (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.