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New loneliness study shows that people care about you more than you think

A recent study on loneliness shows how your loneliness underestimates how loved you are.

Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash
woman hugging other woman while smiling at beach

A new study published by the American Psychological Association is revealing more about how loneliness affects our brains. Published in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Dr. Edward Lemay Jr. of the University of Maryland and his colleagues decided to test previous research that indicated that loneliness increases negative biases in social perception and heightens a person’s social sensitivity.

The hypothesis was that lonely individuals would hold onto negative biases and perceptions towards their closest friends, family, and partners. These negative biases doubting and questioning a loved one’s responsiveness and care would explain why loneliness can feel like a persistent cycle since it further reduces relationship satisfaction and intimacy. In short, it would explain why some lonely folks feel lonelier and lonelier over time.

Man feeling lonely as a small crowd is in the backgroundYour lonely feelings are real, but your isolation might not be.Photo credit: Canva

Lemay and his team tested this theory with three different studies. The first one included 255 undergrad students who identified three close relationship partners including family, friends, and romantic partners. The participants would self-report their levels of loneliness and answer questionnaires designed to measure their perceptions of each relationship partner’s regard, responsiveness, and communal motivation. Meanwhile, the relationship partners named in the study would self-evaluate their regard and care of the participant.

The second study was focused on 236 romantic couples who completed similar self-reports while also including two friends who were familiar with their relationship providing their independent assessment of each partner in the relationship. The third study had observers track 211 romantic couples, recording their daily interactions along with taking each partner’s self-assessment of the relationship within a two-week period.

All three studies ended with indications that loneliness was linked to negative bias towards care and regard displayed by the people they were closest to. In the first study, lonely participants underestimated how much their relationship partners cared about them, with data showing discrepancies between the participants’ reports and the reports from their family, friends, and romantic partners. In the second study, loneliness predicted lower perceptions of partner regard and care in romantic relationships when compared against partner self-reports and friend informant reports. The third study? Lonely individuals underestimated their partners’ responsiveness, in spite of when their third-party observers rated the partners as supportive.

Woman alone in a crowdPeople who felt lonely in the study underestimated the care their loved ones felt for them.Photo credit: Canva

So all of that means that while the feeling of loneliness is real, the perception of it might be greater than reality. However, if you have experienced loneliness you know how hard it can be to tell yourself that people around you actually do care about you. But the truth is that even if you are truly lonely, scientifically speaking, you’re probably not as isolated as you perceive yourself to be. Loneliness itself is hard on a person, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and depression among other physical health issues.

So what can be done to combat loneliness? Well, that’s when effort needs to be put in. Reach out to your loved ones, as that they likely care more than you believe. Be honest with them about how you feel and let them know what they could do to help you feel better.

Woman hugging two womenBeing candid about your loneliness with your friends and family could help you get out of the pit.Photo credit: Canva

You should also do your best to interact with others more, whether it's outside in the public or online. Take a class in something you enjoy to learn more about it around other people who share your interest. Even if you still get that lonely feeling, you will have learned something. Get involved in volunteering. If you still feel lonely, you’ll still feel good about helping those around you. Your loneliness might not magically, instantly disappear doing such social activities but it should wear down over time. If you are still struggling, there are professionals near you that can help you combat it, too.

Oddly, when it comes to fighting loneliness, we’re all in this together.

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The beautiful thing that happens in Amsterdam if you die and have no one to attend your funeral

The Lonely Funeral project was started by poet Frank Starik, who wrote, "Everyone—and this is the point—every person deserves respect."

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Every life deserves to at least be acknowledged.

Funerals can be many things—a sombre mourning, a celebration of life, a time for family to honor a loved one—but one thing they should never be is unattended.

But the reality is that some people simply don’t have people. Maybe they’re estranged from their family and have outlived all their friends. Maybe they fell into a life of drug addiction and lost all of their close connections. Maybe no next of kin can be found or they just happen to die in a life stage when they have no one around to attend their funeral. Whatever the reason, some people's send-offs from earthly existence are purely legal affairs with no personal touches whatsoever.

Two decades ago, some poets in the Netherlands decided that was an unacceptable ending for a human life. In 2001, a poet named Bart Droog began attending the funerals of people who had no one to attend them and honoring the dead with a poem based on whatever was known about their life. A year later, Dutch poet and artist Frank Starik took the idea even further, launching The Lonely Funeral project to ensure that someone who cares consciously acknowledges the life of a person who has died.

The idea was to create a network of poets who would find out whatever they could about the person, write a custom poem about their life and read it at their funeral. As of 2018, over 300 "lonely funerals" had been attended by poets in Amsterdam and Antwerp (where Flemish poet Maarten Inghels launched a Lonely Funeral project seven years after Starik's).

The Lonely Funeral project has continued to expand to other countries as well. Scottish poet Andy Jackson has begun writing poems for "lonely funerals" and attending them in his hometown of Dundee and he hopes to expand the project to the rest of Scotland.

"I feel everybody deserves something humane at the end of life" he told the BBC. "Nobody should be completely unmourned. If we want to live in humane country these are little things we can do for people. It becomes the job of the community."

A natural question is how the poets know what to write if the person was all alone.

"They would have a passport, some details from the police or from social services, a photograph or some information about their life maybe," Jackson explained to the BBC. "Something that would give away something of who they were that a poet then could use to form the basis of a piece of work that would actually celebrate the real person—not somebody you couldn't identify."

Starik and Inghels have even published a book, The Lonely Funeral: Poets at the Gravesides of the Forgotten, which includes poems for 31 forgotten lives and descriptions of their funerals—a small piece of dignity offered to perfect strangers.

There's perhaps nothing more beautiful than the impulse to recognize someone simply for the sake of their humanity. It's a reminder that we are all connected in some way, even if it's just by the reality of life and death.

As Starik wrote in his preface to The Lonely Funeral: "We do not know to whom we say goodbye, so we feel no pain. But everyone—and this is the point—every person deserves respect."

Leave it to the poets to remind us of the inherent worth of every human being and to honor it with such a simple, selfless service.

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Why 'weak ties' are more important than best friends, according to a friendship expert

There's more to life than besties.

@thefriendshipexpert/TikTok

Go say hello to an acquaintance today

What is the cure for loneliness?

One might be tempted to say close, intimate relationships. Which is true to a certain degree, but as counterintuitive as it may seem firsthand, those more distant friendships can be just as meaningful.

In fact, according to friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson, those in our outer circle can contribute even more to our happiness than our besties.

Bayard Jackson is a go-to source when it comes to creating healthy, fulfilling platonic friendships. Her advice has been featured in the “New York Times”, “Wall Street Journal,” “Washington Post” and “Psychology Today,” just to name a few.

Being an expert in the realm of close bonds, it might come as a surprise that Bayard Jackson touted the benefits of what she calls “weak ties” in a recent video posted to her TikTok page. But she brings up some great points.

"There are close friends, and then there are... acquaintances, associates," she explains. "The sociological term for people who are not our besties, but with whom we have, like, pleasant enough relationships is weak ties. Those are people who you enjoy, but who you see more infrequently and you have less intimacy with."

For example—coworkers, parents you only see at certain school functions, neighbors, maybe even classmates. The NPCs of your life, if you will. We might not consider these people close friends, but they still play a vital role to our wellbeing, Bayard Jackson attests.

"According to research, people with more weak ties are happier and are less likely to have depression,” she said, adding that people with a lot of weak ties have more access to resources and critical information needed to improve their life.

@thefriendshipexpert

The beauty of “weak ties”

♬ original sound - Danielle Bayard Jackson

Not only that, but those with a bigger friend circle receive a wider variety of perspectives, “making them feel like their world is bigger,” as well as affirmation for the “various aspects of their intersectional identities,” meaning they probably “feel seen” more often.

In other words—“close friends are not the only kind of relationships that offer value to your life.”

Some of the research Bayard Jackson alludes to might include that of sociologist Mark Granovetter, who first began pioneering the theory that weak ties could strengthen job opportunities, since they introduce new ideas and broaden one’s social network.

Subsequent studies on the subject have confirmed that, regardless of nationality or age, weak ties also help one feel a sense of belonging, and contribute to a sense of emotional well being.

It’s an interesting take, especially coming during a time when it might feel like weak ties are all we have, thanks to social media. After all, most of us are probably much more likely to comment on an audience's Instagram post than we are to actually call up a close friend to have an hour long in depth conversation.

via GIPHY

But it’s also undeniable that outside of the social media watering hole, our weak tie friendships might have severely dwindled during the pandemic, and have probably continued to go unfostered as we’ve navigated a shift towards working from home. Maybe this is partially due to the fact that we haven’t acknowledged how important they are.

It’s not often that quantity trumps quality, but this seems to be one of those rare cases. If we really want to start feeling less lonely, and a little bit better about ourselves, we might want to consider putting the effort into strengthening those weak ties. Luckily, it doens’t have to be that hard.

As Bayard Jackson suggests, "stop giving a stank face to your neighbors and your coworkers and those people who stand next to you at the dog park, and instead, I need you to start saying hello. Because it will be worth it."

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Woman gets emotional while admitting she feels 'so jealous' seeing girl best friends

Her tearful confession elicited a lot of responses from other women who felt a similar loneliness.

@via..li/TikTok

"It's a different kind of pain."

From the gal pals in “Sex & the City,” to besties Romy and Michelle, to even a casual scroll through #bffsforever on social media, we are inundated with images of female friendships brimming over with glamor, intimacy, laughter, connection…sort of like the grown-up version of sugar, spice and everything nice.

And while it’s lovely to see examples of women lifting each other up rather than putting each other down, it can feel painfully isolating for the many women who simply don’t have those types of friendships.

Loneliness is something that nearly every person deals with in some capacity due to our increasingly technology-driven, post-COVID world, but it’s the particular juxtaposition of girl squads constantly showing up in pop culture against the very different reality of many, if not most, women that is its own unique type of suffering. Friendships, friendships everywhere, but not a drop to drink lattes with.

This is why so many women are resonating with a TikTok NYC-based Via Li made after seeing two girlfriends chatting at a cafe and feeling intense longing for that type of platonic relationship.

“I just got to this cafe and I saw these two girls just sitting next to each other. You know, they had their laptops out and they were just smiling with each other,” Li says as her eyes well up with tears.

“Why am I crying? This is so embarrassing, oh my god!” she exclaims. It’s okay Li, we’ve been there.

She continues by describing how the two girls seem so comfortable around each other, giving her the inkling that they probably even live together. “I think it’s just so great to have this best friend that you can do everything with…It just seems so happy, you know?”

Meanwhile, Li is sitting there by herself and “literally about to have a mental breakdown.”

She then explains that seeing those two friends together is a “different kind of pain” than seeing a couple together. “When I see couples, I don’t even get jealous,” she says. “But when I see two girl best friends…I literally look at them and I just feel like I’m gonna start crying.”

@via..li

why tf am i so emotional today oh my god

♬ original sound - Via

Though Li felt alone while filming the clip, she is certainly not alone in her sentiment. Shortly after posting, several other women flooded the comments with similar feelings of this specific kind of loneliness, whether they once had a friend group and lost it or never seemed to belong to one.

“Same it’s hard to find someone who matches your energy, humor and morals,” one person shared.

Another added, “I miss having girl best friends. Everything was so easy omg this makes me sad.”

“I know exactly how you feel. I crave it so badly and never experienced the full thing” wrote another.

Feeling envy is part of being human. It’s a way of remembering that we truly care about something. Friendship envy is no different. And the good news is this thing we care about can be achieved with some effort and attention (though it still may never look like a well-crafted sitcom).

Psychologist and Forbes contributor Mark Travers suggests being proactive by initiating conversation with neighbors, organizing a movie night, starting your own book club, etc., and committing to creating your own community that way. He also emphasizes the power of being honest about your personal life with others in order to form connections. Even those who are more introverted can “start off small,” he writes.

Considering tons of viewers reached out to offer Li friendship after she was so vulnerable, perhaps there is something to this strategy. Regardless, her story is one that nearly all of us can relate to. You never really grow out of that desire to have a sleepover, paint your nails and share your feelings with a chosen tribe that feels like family.

Looking for more friend-finding tips? We actually have some here.

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