Loneliness is so horrible

One of my biggest problems in my life is loneliness. Anyone else?

Yep. I live alone. Won't go into the whole thing. Don't want to bring people further down.

What I try to do is plan little things, things I can afford, to do to try to sort of get busy. Sitting around in this apt. all by myself is not good for the loneliness issue. So, sometimes, I'll just go to the store or for a walk or find some task to do. Trying to fill time with things other than sitting around, thinking about how I don't have anyone.

Before this past year, I lived alone which seems to magnify my loneliness. Even though I had my wonderful cat as my companion. I still could have panic attacks inside my studio apartment.

So, to combat my loneliness, I would walk around my beautiful historic neighborhood during the warmer months (not that winter, oi, it was brutal) and chat with neighbors. I also would go sit in the park across the street and people watch, or bring a book to read while I people watched and talk to people as they walked by me with their dogs or whatever. That helped me a lot.

Living alone is not natural or healthy and for some reason, we all do it. Sociologist Eric Klineberg wrote a book about it in 2012, Going Solo. Living alone is not even considered normal in the rest of the world -- just in America. It didn't become commonplace until the 20th century. Prior to that, families lived together all the time.

When I lived in China, and would visit my students' families on the weekends, their ENTIRE families lived under the same roof together. There was an established hierarchy of who did what in the house and why. But they were all happily living together. Not even my Italian relatives live alone, or my relatives in Australia, Ireland, or England, or my best friend and her family in Portugal.

All the instructors in my apt. bldg on campus lived in their own 1-bedroom apts. I would have regular panic attacks, so I would sleep on my sofa or sometimes go crash on a fellow instructor's couch. I don't like living alone. If my current roommate was not so mentally unstable I think it would be a much healthier living environment for me. Once I can get myself financially stable, I plan to look for a better roommate situation. I just know that I can't live alone because it escalates my anxiety despite all the tools I can use to combat that anxiety. I just hate living alone. It's not good for me.

Have you considered looking for a roommate situation Mat? Even though you are depressed, maybe a roommate situation with a couple of other guys would help you feel better.

I wish I had someone to live with. It’s not good for me to be alone. But I don’t know who that should be. I just wish I could get out of this hellish situation..
In what way is your roommate unstable?

@MatBell: can't you check Craigslist Copenhagen for possible roommates? What's stopping you, do you think? You could always put an add for a roommate for where you currently live if your landlord would approve it. That's the most realistic way to get out of your situation, or to move back in with your parents, until you can find a reasonable roommate situation. I've done that before -- moved in with my mother when I had to. I even lived with roommates in my 20s and 30s (some good, some bad). The only times I've felt my anxiety escalate is when I live alone.

I have written many threads on my roommate. Check my thread statistics for it. The story is too long to go into here.

Not sure what’s stopping me. I just put it off.
Plus I think I’m basically ashamed of me and my life to let anyway get too close to me. But I try...

Look up "loneliness epidemic". You are not alone. Well, not alone in being lonely these days. And in developed countries especially, I guess. So sorry you're having to deal with this and that your group therapy is making things worse.

My brand of loneliness is being married to a great guy (we have been together since high school) and being in school which provides a bit of social contact but is largely a solo deal (I'm working on my dissertation). We have two grown kids who are wonderful people and I have had a great first career. I'm in my 50s. I know plenty of people but have no close friends. I started to realize probably 15 years ago that I'm missing adult friendships in my life. My childhood was ok but not great. I recently worked through the book Daughter Detox, which helps daughters of unloving mothers, and it was very helpful. It helped me to understand that my response to my upbringing was to become very independent. I figured out that my parents were not going to give me certain (emotional) things I needed so I just had to take care of myself. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until years into adulthood that I never figured out how to make friends or how much it would mean to me to have a good friend.

My husband and I were married in our early 20s and started a family almost right away. One consequence of that was we became very focused on the kids and making everything work (e.g. paying the bills) and I didn't understand that I also needed things for myself, particularly adult friendships. My husband is the sort of guy who is very handy and he feels obligated to help whoever wants him to build or fix things for them. He also has problems with anxiety which make it difficult for us to do things together - he doesn't like to travel, he has issues with going out to eat, he doesn't like crowds because of his anxiety. He's tried meds but hasn't been able to tolerate them. He's come a long way with his anxiety, managing it himself with some help from therapy. But we have gotten into a pattern of he spends the weekends doing things for other people and I work on school stuff. We rarely go out or "do anything fun."

I have felt quite lonely off and on for years but I don't know what to do about it. It's very hard to build friendships at my age. How do you tell someone you know as an acquaintance that you are looking for a friend? How does a successful grown woman, a mom and wife and successful career person not know how to make friends? How is it that someone like me is lonely and doesn't have any friends? It makes me feel pathetic.

Thanks for listening.