The Stigma of Loneliness: Why It’s So Hard to Admit We’re Lonely

“I don’t believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it’s about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion which can and should be resisted.”

— Olivia Laing, The Lonely City

I’ve tried it many times, but I can’t. 

When people ask me what I write about, and I say I write about loneliness, I can’t resist the weight of that word. There’s no pride. No confidence. Instead, my voice falters into a somber, shameful tone — as if someone cast a spell of stifling vulnerability on me. As if the mere statement that I write about loneliness implies that I feel lonely when I say it — and as if that expresses something fundamentally wrong about me. 

It’s ironic. Having researched, explored, and experienced loneliness for years, I should know there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I should know that, in many countries, more than half of the population feels lonely regularly. I should know that loneliness is an inherently human emotion.

And yet, the stigma of loneliness seems to be tattooed on my synapses. During the loneliest periods of my life, the L-word felt smeared on my forehead like a bold, flashy warning sign. I was constantly terrified of people finding out about my isolation, of being called a lonely loser.

Where does this stigma of loneliness come from? Why do stigmas make us even lonelier than we need to be? And what can we actually do about it?

How Stigmas Induce Loneliness (and Vice-Versa)

The term “stigma” originated in ancient Greece and means something like “mark” or “tattoo.” But unlike today, Greek stigmas weren’t just figurative. They were actual, physical marks on the body to highlight something unusual and shameful about a person’s moral status.

As Erving Goffman writes in his seminal work Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity:

“The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor — a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places.”

Goffman goes on to explain the modern use of stigmas:

“Today the term is widely used in something like the original literal sense, but is applied more to the disgrace itself than to the bodily evidence of it.”

As for loneliness, it’s a tricky double bind.

For one thing, the feeling of loneliness itself is stigmatized. It’s an invisible and shameful emotion we find hard to admit — even to ourselves. For another, people living with stigmas feel lonely more often. In the UK, people living with disabilities are nearly four times more likely than non-disabled people to experience loneliness “often or always.” Young, gay men in China are eight times more likely than their peers to feel rejected or criticized.

In the 1980s, during the rise of AIDS, people suffering from the disease were almost categorically fired, rejected, and excluded. In her book The Lonely City, Olivia Laing observes that AIDS-affected populations “were confirmed as people to be protected from, rather than people who required care and treatment.” Something similar can be said about loneliness: We want to push away lonely people rather than give them the care and attention they deserve.

All this shows that any stigmatized trait — be it poverty, addiction, mental illness, body type, sexual orientation, skin color, gender — makes us more likely to feel and stay lonely.

This results in a sort of intersectional stigmatization where the stigma of being a minority overlaps with the stigma of feeling lonely. The two feed into each other. What adds to this is that any stigmatized mental health condition — not just loneliness — can make us more reluctant to seek help, less likely to experience support and approval, and feel helpless and powerless. On top of this, loneliness often propels us to withdraw, trust others less, and misinterpret social cues.

In short, stigmas brand us as different and alien. This difference causes loneliness, which, in turn, makes the stigma even more prevalent, thus inducing more loneliness…

Stigmas beget loneliness. Loneliness begets stigmas.

It’s a vicious cycle.

How the Stigma of Loneliness Paralyzes

Perhaps it’s not surprising that I felt the heaviest stigma of loneliness when I was living in Portugal — in a place, where it was evident that I was the estrangeiro, the foreigner. I mostly felt like a turista, a passerby, something external, even though I desperately craved to feel at home.

Soon, the evidence I didn’t belong was gathering all around me. I walked through the streets and couldn’t understand chit-chat. I initiated conversations in Portuguese and would get a response in English. Drug dealers at the São Bento train station stalked me like hungry lions prowling a gazelle because they classified me as a tourist — and tourists are easy targets.

All this reacted with toxic coping mechanisms I’d learned since I was a young boy: Suck it up. Be strong. Get it together. You must learn to be independent. Care for yourself. Don’t show weaknesses. The result? 

A noxious brew of shame and hurt.

I became terrified of openly stating that I felt lonely. I would circumvent the L-word in conversations like taking a grand detour around construction work. On the phone with friends and family at home, I said things like, “Oh, you know, I’m still trying to find my people” or “I just haven’t arrived yet” or “I’m still weaving my social net.” Instead of simply stating the harsh truth, I went to great lengths to conceal the stigma, the mark.

Loneliness?

No — that’s for other people, I thought. Heck, I was naive enough to believe I could shield myself from the L-word as long as I didn’t say it out loud. Talking about loneliness, let alone admitting to it, would decompose my worth, my status. Or so the myth went inside my head.

And yet, by staying silent, things got worse.

I actively participated in spreading the stigma of loneliness. I bottled it up inside me and, consequently, signaled to others that loneliness is something we should hide and push away rather than openly discuss.

Many months later, the fear and shame caused by the stigma of loneliness brought me to a crucial question: If stigmas are signs of difference, then what are we so afraid to be different from? What’s the anomaly we’re trying to escape?

In other words: How did loneliness become something so shameful?

The Outdated Causes of the Loneliness Stigma

Although many unrealistic social ideals turn loneliness into something shameful, a few seem particularly harmful and dominating.

First, there’s romantic love.

One of the most ingrained notions of love is that we should be in — or at least strive for — a relationship with “the one,” our “soulmate.” Real love, so the myth goes, can only blossom between you and this one person. You’ll miraculously find your soulmate, and you’ll both equally fall in love. What’s more, this one person can and should wear all the hats for your needs: co-parent, therapist, sexual partner, best friend, business partner, workout buddy, the list goes on…

Books and movies often suggest these soulmates are the path to salvation. The silver bullet. But, as Fay Bound Alberti notes in A Biography of Loneliness, soulmates aren’t just treacherous. They’re also toxic.

Bound Alberti writes:

“The idea that there is a special someone for everyone, and that wholeness is dependent on finding that person, is incredibly limiting. It also creates a gap between perception and reality, and a sense of failure for those who do not find ‘the one’. Nor is it a vision conducive to community thinking.”

And so, the norm of the soulmate stigmatizes us on both ends. If we don’t have a partner, we feel a lack, as if we aren’t complete as an individual. And if we do have a partner, we’re brainwashed into believing they should be the sole source of our well-being. If we feel lonely in a relationship, we’re tricked into thinking we must keep looking — or simply repress the isolation inside us. Surely, admitting our loneliness would feel like an insult to this one special person.

The soulmate myth is thus a suppressor of loneliness.

But what about friendship? Surely, pop culture spreads healthy messages about friends that can cheer us up when, for whatever reason, we can’t find our soulmate?

Yeah… no.

One common message we see nowadays is that friendships are just… there. They’re effortless. TV shows like New Girl, How I Met Your Mother, and Friends spearhead this idea. These shows tell us that friends come in neat packs of four or five, all living in the same city or apartment, having one big, never-ending adventure. Never mind the fact that living with or near your friends can be logistical, financial, and psychological suicide. Never mind that most friendships — especially in our 20s and 30s — are messy, disparate, and full of personality shifts. That friendships don’t just happen but require enormous commitment.

Is there an alternative?

In the past years, there has been a countermovement: vlogs on being alone. Living alone. Common titles include “Living alone diaries,” “My daily routine living alone,” or “Travel vlog in [insert glamorous city].” And sure, these videos have their place and legitimacy. We can relate to them. It’s soothing to connect to others from the comfort of our couch, behind a screen, and feel better about our situation — at least in the short term.

But ultimately, these vlogs still trap us in expectations and stigmas. We’re now torn between two ideals. On the one hand, we’re supposed to find our soulmates, have perfect friend groups, and weave a stable network. On the other, we’re also expected to be blissfully content on our own, turn our aloneness into productivity, and look damn aesthetic while doing it.

It’s exhausting.

Even if these vlogs acknowledge and normalize loneliness (which they do occasionally), they still neglect the inaccessibility of living alone. Not having to deal with people is a privilege. These blogs — often set in exquisite apartments of the likes of Paris, LA, New York, London — conceal the worst type of loneliness: feeling lonely among other people when there’s no way out.

Finally, at last, there’s the lonely stereotype.

We often picture lonely people as miserable and friendless, sitting in their rooms all day. I dare you: punch loneliness into your search engine right now, and you’ll be overwhelmed by images of sad, bad, and mad loners. Worse, many dictionaries associate loneliness with despair and unhappiness. The resulting lonely archetype is a person who has no friends and is unlovable, unsocial, uninteresting.

The reality is, of course, that nobody is protected from loneliness. The loneliness researcher John Cacioppo observes in his book Loneliness that lonely people “are no more or less physically attractive than average, and they do not differ, on average, from the non-lonely in terms of height, weight, age, education, or intelligence.”

Everyone can feel lonely. No exceptions.

But, because of the distorted lonely stereotype, admitting to loneliness wouldn’t just brand us as an outcast of society. It would also make us desperate, unhappy, and needy. All these things are attributes we learned to hide in an era of suppressed emotions. We’re supposed to have it all together. Always. We need to be strong and independent. Unfailingly. Thus, loneliness becomes something we belittle because we tend to think we’re alone in our struggles or that others are worse off.

In his book Permission to Feel, Marc Brackett puts it best:

“It’s one of the great paradoxes of the human condition — we ask some variation of the question ‘How are you feeling?’ over and over, which would lead one to assume that we attach some importance to it. And yet we never expect or desire — or provide — and honest answer.”

Is it still surprising that we don’t want to admit to loneliness?

Ending the Stigma of Loneliness

You know, it’s funny. As a writer, I put some of my darkest secrets and most vulnerable stories on the internet. And yet, I still find it incredibly challenging to tell another person — face-to-face — that I feel lonely. Heck, I actually find it easier to admit to my depression.

How do we resist and end the stigma of loneliness?

I’m far from having all the answers.

But I do know that there’s hope. A few years ago, gay marriage was still illegal in many countries. Today, gay couples can openly live and display their relationship. Perhaps not in the way heteronormative couples can — but progress has been made. The stigma slowly fades. In the same way, depression was a taboo subject when I grew up. Today, many people admit, share, and get help for their depression.

The stigma has visibly declined.

Yes, my voice may still falter when I tell people about loneliness, and I can sense how the stigma repels many people from digging deeper into the topic. But then again: every time I do talk about loneliness, I normalize it for myself and others. And sometimes, unexpectedly, something miraculous happens. People will say, “I also feel lonely sometimes.” Or “Thank you for speaking up about such an important topic.”

The antidote, I think, isn’t to push away the shame and stigma of loneliness. Instead, we might start by acknowledging that these feelings are perfectly normal. More importantly, we can discover — through mindful conversations and careful self-disclosure — that many people feel the same way. When we feel lonely, we’re in great company.

One day, we might realize that the stigma of loneliness is far less a mark of separation than a beacon of connection.


Oh, hi! Still here? If you enjoyed this, you might love my highly irregular newsletter, The Amateur, where I write about imperfectionism, not having all the answers, and doing what matters. I also give an occasional update on my (writer’s) life.

Completely for free. Cancel anytime.