I think a big part of loneliness is recognition, and it is definitely possible to be loved and not be recognized. There are many more layers, or facets rather, but I think at its core the feeling of connection is a yearning for variance. I can be loved, but maybe my loneliness subsides the most when I'm playing music with my band mates. The action of being loved here is irrelevant, my partner can give me all the love in the world and I'd still yearn to be playing music as part of something.

Part of the struggle of loneliness also comes from sometimes not knowing what exactly that is for the individual, or if there is something that staves it off but does not actually relieve the feeling (I could see online communities and gaming being in this camp.)

Great read, thank you for sharing.

And when you don't have even that love.... freinds... or family, what is truly left of you that means anything finally dies. The Cynicism sets in and who you were is finally over. You are virtually a walking still "alive" corpse... absolutely empty...and the only thing you know to want or desire is the end.

So I started to feel extremely lonely about a month ago. That feeling coincides with falling in love with a person, that is close to me and that person wasn't interested in entering a relationship with me. That alone is something to chew on But that feeling of lack and loneliness stayed even weeks after I talked openly about my feelings for that person. It's not just rejection; it's also that I feel in love for the first time. (I mean violently, past the point of return. I am also a late bloomer.) I desire romantic love now. That is my new need. That article changed my perspective on the matter.

Lonliness is internal: we are brainwashed to believe that if we aren't having someone, we then are lonely, iow, "alone" and "lonely" are falsely drummed into us as being identical.

If one has emptiness in one's self, then another loving one can't undo that: we have to earn honest self-acceptance, ourself.

I think most of the "relationship" and "mental illness" problems of the current world are really produced by preventing people from earning self-understanding & self-acceptance.

People who live among nature, nature may force them into knowing themselves.

but with all of our lives, not just all of our adult lives, but all of our lives, for-profit distraction doing everything it can, to prevent us from turning from consuming to instead understanding ourselves .. why would it be surprising that loneliness becomes rampant?

It took me years to break the "alone == lonely" programming, and self-acceptance was the key to doing it.