One Face of Loneliness

When we feel isolated, we perceive ourselves as doing all we can on behalf of our relationships, even when all objective evidence indicates otherwise. It is the lonely roommate who throws around snide comments all evening, and then when she meets resistance to the insults says, “You’re always criticizing me!” When this leads to an argument, she may be the one who starts to yell, requiring others to raise their voices ever so slightly as they try to reason with he. “Stop yelling at me!” is a not-unlikely response from someone whose social cognition perceives a world that is threatening on all sides, and whose ability to self-regular has been disrupted by those same perceptions.

The same sort of distortions can affect intimate relationships and persist for years. One partner in a relationship has a higher need for connection than the other currently fulfills—perhaps than the other can fulfill. Maybe this other partner is cold and narcissistic, but then again maybe his or her genes and life experience have simply provided a different (and lower) level of need. The point is not to assign “blame” to one or the other, but to recognize that there is a mismatch. Unfortunately, the partner who need is unmet may begin to act in ways that the other considers “difficult” or “too demanding” or “needy”, which causes him or her to pull away even further, leaving the partner who already feels lonely feeling even more neglected and isolated, which propels the patten spiraling downward toward greater unhappiness. Seeing this familiar dynamic through the lens of loneliness, and sometimes through the lens of genetically biased—and individually different—levels of need for connection, can allow us to address the problem and the search for solutions at a deeper level.

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But even as dismal as this interpersonal dance may appear, the fact that loneliness makes us unwittingly contribute to the choreography is actually a plus. The same social cognition that amplifies the problem also gives us a point of access. The way we frame reality through the filter of our own thoughts is something that, with effort, we can learn to modify. The sense of threat we unconsciously rachet up is something we can learn to very consciously tone down.

– Loneliness, John T. Cacioppo & William Patrick