What is the root cause of loneliness?

This explains why you can feel lonely in the midst of lots of people you know.

We know that there is an epidemic of loneliness affecting society.

But as I read article after article on the Internet about this epidemic, I get the sense that no one knows what its meaning is. First, loneliness is not easily defined. The conventional definition of loneliness goes something like this:

But that definition cannot explain why someone can still feel lonely even when surrounded by many people. It cannot explain why some people feel lonely even when they have lots of friends. It cannot explain why leaders can feel lonely. It cannot explain why popular people can feel lonely. It cannot explain why people at the workplace feel lonely. So, if there is no precise diagnosis of the cause of loneliness, then there is no way a cure can be produced.

As I reflect upon the ups and downs of my life, there are periods where I felt lonely even though superficially, I should not be lonely in the first place. Technically, I belonged to a community of people, and yet, I felt alone. How could it possibly be? As I thought through over the years, it finally dawned on me what the root cause of loneliness is. It explained why I felt lonely despite being in a community.

So, what is the root cause of loneliness?

At its very essence, loneliness is caused by the extended and acute feeling that no one cares about you.

For example, you can be in a place where you feel that no one cares whether you are dead or alive the next day. It does not matter whether that place is a supposedly-caring community, or that you are surrounded by lots of people who know your name. But if you feel that if you were to drop dead the next day, people in that place will just shrug, then you will suffer from loneliness in due time.

That explains why people in leadership positions can feel lonely. That is because they find themselves in a position where they are the ones doing the caring for so long and feel that there is no one to care for them because ‘everyone’ is looking up to them as the leader.

That explains why even people with lots of friends can feel lonely. That is because the quality of their friendships is so shallow and superficial that in the end, they do not feel that enough people care about them.

That explains why highly popular people can feel lonely. That is because popularity can be highly transactional and fleeting in nature. Popular individuals are ‘liked’ because they offer ‘something’ to lots of people. If that ‘something’ ceased to be offered, the popularity can vanish overnight. When that happens, it exposes the fact that all these people do not really care about the popular individual in the first place. Popular individuals who become aware of the precarity of their popularity will experience loneliness in due time if they do not have the support of genuine caring relationships.

It explains why people at their workplace can feel lonely. In a highly dysfunctional workplace, where you feel that if you drop dead, do not turn up for work the next day, and your colleagues will not bother to care (let alone attend your funeral), then you will feel lonely in your workplace in due time.

How loneliness develops

So, the epidemic of loneliness in society can be an indicator of widespread relationship breakdowns in society. When a relationship falls apart, two people ceased to care about one another. If multiple relationships in a person’s life fall apart then that person will be sliding towards loneliness.

Loneliness can also be caused when the relational bonds between people are allowed to weaken, due to distance and busyness. When a relational bond is weakened, two people care less about one another. If it weakens enough, eventually both of them will cease to care. If too many of a person’s relational bonds are allowed to weaken too much, then in due time, loneliness will creep in.

How to stop loneliness from happening?

Basically, there are a few things:

• Strengthen your existing relational bonds. It takes effort and sacrifice to maintain relational bonds, let alone strengthen them. Strengthening your existing relational bonds is easier than trying to build one from scratch. I have more to say about this here.
• Do not let your relationships break down in the first place. This is a big topic in itself.