The Difference Between Being Alone and Feeling Lonely

It's Sunday lunch at your sister's place. There are eleven people around a table meant for eight, the cousins are arguing about the cricket and someone's telling the caravan story again. You laugh in the right places and pass the potatoes. Then, somewhere between the roast and dessert, you notice you feel very far away from all of it, as if you're watching the afternoon through a window. On the way home someone says, "That was nice, wasn't it?" and you agree, because it was.

And then there are the other times. A Wednesday when everyone's out until late and you have the house to yourself. You make a sandwich, eat it on the back step and don't talk to anyone for hours. You feel more like yourself than you have all week. Part of you wonders whether you're meant to feel bad about that.

Something I hear a lot in my work is some version of "I'm hardly ever on my own, so I don't know why I feel so lonely." Almost as often, I hear the opposite: "I really love time by myself. Is that strange?" Both make sense to me. Being alone and feeling lonely tend to get talked about as if they're the same thing, and very often they aren't.

Lonely in a full house

Loneliness doesn't really count heads. You can spend the whole day with people and still go to bed feeling that nobody quite knows how you are. A lot of the people I talk with are surrounded by others from the moment they wake up: kids, a partner, colleagues, the school pickup group chat, a parent who rings every evening at six. Their days are full of conversation, but very little of it is about them.

Often it's the person who looks after everyone else's feelings who ends up here. You know who's nervous about the swimming carnival and which friend is having a rough week. You ask the questions and remember the answers. It's less common for anyone to ask you back, and when they do, "Yeah, good, busy" comes out before you've had a chance to think about it.

It makes sense that you'd feel lonely when so much of you goes unseen, even by people who love you. Plenty of people feel bad about it too. You have people, after all. So it can seem ungrateful to feel lonely, and that makes it even harder to say out loud.

Alone, and glad of it

Time on your own is a different thing altogether. For a lot of people, especially those whose days are full of other people's needs, an hour alone is where they finally hear their own thoughts. Nobody is asking for anything. Your face can do whatever it likes.

Some people feel a bit uneasy about how much they enjoy it. They wonder if liking their own company means they're antisocial, that something's wrong at home or that they don't love their family enough. I don't see it that way. When someone tells me how much they look forward to time by themselves, it usually tells me they've been giving a lot and need a bit of room to come back to themselves. You don't always need a reason for wanting it.

For me, it might be a walk with the dog, a coffee somewhere quiet or simply a little time without anyone needing anything from me.

What loneliness might be asking for

If being alone and feeling lonely are different things, then more company isn't always the answer. Plenty of people try that first. They say yes to every invitation and fill up the weekend, then come home feeling just as far away. Often what's missing isn't people. It's being known by one or two of them.

When someone tells me they're lonely, I'm often curious about who they'd ring if something went badly wrong and who they'd ring if something small and silly happened. Those aren't always the same person, and sometimes there isn't anyone for the second one. That can be the part that hurts. I also wonder whether there's someone already in their life who would be glad to hear a bit more, if they were given the chance.

It can go the other way as well. Time alone that once felt restful can slowly turn into something lonelier, after a move, a separation or when the kids leave home. The house is quiet. That used to be a relief, and now some evenings it's just quiet. That sounds hard. It makes sense to feel unsettled by it, especially when being on your own used to be the easy part.

You can love your own company and still miss being close to someone.

Some people find it helps, when the feeling comes, to notice which one it is. Am I wanting some time to myself, or am I wanting someone to really know how I am? The answer can point in quite different directions. One might mean protecting a couple of hours on a Saturday. The other might mean saying something a little more honest than "good, busy" to one person who'd want to know.

Whichever one you're feeling at the moment, I don't think it means something is wrong with you. Wanting time to yourself is allowed. So is feeling lonely when, on paper, you have plenty of people around you. You don't have to justify either one before you let yourself do something about it, even if that something is very small to begin with.