Why Does Winter Feel So Lonely? When Everyone Else Seems to Have Someone
There is a strange kind of loneliness that appears when you can hear other people having fun.
Bonfire Night is a perfect example. You can be perfectly content sitting at home until the first fireworks start outside. Suddenly you're imagining families wrapped in scarves watching displays together, couples standing beside bonfires and groups of friends drinking something warm while you're sitting on the sofa wondering why nobody asked what you were doing.
Then Christmas arrives.
Every advert seems to contain an enormous family squeezed around a table. Christmas markets appear to have been designed exclusively for couples. Social media fills with matching pyjamas, engagements, family dinners, children's first Christmases and people's annual traditions.
By New Year's Eve, it can feel as though the entire country has somebody to kiss at midnight except you.
Winter loneliness isn't necessarily caused by winter itself.
Sometimes winter simply makes the things we feel we're missing much harder to ignore.
Why Does Winter Feel So Lonely?
Loneliness isn't simply the absence of people.
You can live alone and feel completely content. You can also sit at a table surrounded by fifteen relatives and feel incredibly lonely.
What we're usually craving is connection.
We want to feel understood, wanted, included or important to somebody.
During ordinary periods of the year, the difference between the relationships we have and the relationships we wish we had can be easier to ignore.
Winter puts those relationships under a spotlight.
Bonfire Night.
Christmas.
New Year.
These are events we're repeatedly told should be shared.
So when your reality doesn't resemble that picture, the difference can suddenly feel enormous.
The "Perfect Family" Problem
Christmas advertising has a lot to answer for.
Apparently every family owns a beautiful house large enough to accommodate eighteen people around an enormous dining table.
Nobody is divorced.
Nobody is estranged.
Nobody is grieving.
Nobody is arguing.
Nobody is desperately checking train times because they want to leave.
Nobody's mum has criticised the potatoes.
Real families are complicated.
Some are incredibly close and some love each other but struggle to spend extended periods together.
Some barely communicate, and others contain actively harmful relationships.
Others have people missing who used to make Christmas feel like Christmas.
The problem isn't that your family doesn't look like an advert.
The problem is that you've been shown the advert so many times that you've started wondering whether everybody else's does.
It doesn't.
Being Single Can Suddenly Feel Much More Visible
You may be perfectly happy being single for eleven months of the year, and then December arrives determined to make it everybody's business.
Christmas markets become "romantic", and films revolve around finding somebody before Christmas.
People get engaged and New Year's Eve arrives with its midnight kiss.
Even relatives who have shown remarkably little interest in your romantic life throughout the year may suddenly ask whether you've "met anyone yet".
It can create the impression that being without a romantic partner means something is missing.
Sometimes you do want a relationship.
It's okay to admit that too.
You don't need to transform loneliness into an inspirational speech about learning to love yourself.
Wanting companionship is human.
But wanting something you don't currently have doesn't mean the life you do have is somehow waiting to begin.
Social Media Makes Everyone Else's Winter Look Better
Winter loneliness existed long before Instagram.
Social media has simply given it professional lighting.
You see the Christmas market photograph, but not the argument in the car beforehand.
You see the smiling family around the table, but not the complicated relationship between the people sitting there.
You see the proposal, but not the three years of ordinary Tuesday evenings that came before it.
We compare our entire emotional reality with tiny edited snapshots from somebody else's life.
The Discovery Journal can be useful when you notice comparison beginning to take over because it encourages you to look at what's actually happening in your life rather than evaluating it against somebody else's.
Ask yourself what the photograph has triggered.
Envy?
Sadness?
Fear?
A feeling of being left behind?
That information is far more useful than simply telling yourself to stop scrolling.
What Are You Actually Missing?
When we say "I'm lonely", it can feel enormous.
So make it smaller.
What are you actually craving?
Do you want somebody to talk to at the end of the day?
Physical affection?
A romantic partner?
More invitations?
A closer friendship group?
A stronger relationship with your family?
Someone to make spontaneous plans with?
A sense of belonging?
These aren't all the same problem, and they don't necessarily have the same solution.
You can have wonderful friends and still crave romantic intimacy.
You can have a partner and still feel socially isolated.
You can have a huge family and not feel understood by any of them.
Instead of treating loneliness as evidence that your life is empty, try treating it as information about the kind of connection you're missing.
You Can Feel Lonely Surrounded By People
This is particularly relevant at Christmas.
Perhaps you're spending Christmas Day with family but don't feel able to be yourself around them.
Maybe everybody else has arrived as a couple, and you're painfully aware that you haven't.
Perhaps you're grieving somebody whose absence nobody else seems to acknowledge, or maybe you're simply exhausted from performing happiness because Christmas is supposed to be wonderful.
Loneliness isn't measured by how many chairs are around the table.
It's possible to be socially surrounded and emotionally alone.
Grief Can Become Louder In Winter
Traditions remember people; that's what makes them lovely, but it can also be what makes them painful.
A particular decoration.
A recipe..
A chair.
A film.
A song.
Something somebody always said.
Christmas is repetitive by nature, which means the absence of somebody who used to be part of those repetitions can feel particularly obvious.
You don't have to erase that sadness to enjoy Christmas.
You can laugh at lunch and miss somebody five minutes later.
Those emotions aren't contradictory.
Create Traditions Instead Of Waiting To Be Included In Them
One of the most difficult parts of loneliness is feeling that life is happening somewhere else.
Everyone else has plans.
Everyone else has traditions.
Everyone else has somewhere to go.
But traditions have to start somewhere.
Go to the fireworks with a friend, arrange the Christmas market trip yourself, invite somebody for dinner, take yourself somewhere you've wanted to visit or volunteer.
The first time you do something, it isn't a tradition.
Do it again next year and suddenly it is.
You don't need permission to create the life you want to participate in.
Make The First Move
This one is uncomfortable.
When we're lonely, we often wait for evidence that somebody wants us.
We wait for the invitation.
The message.
The phone call.
But sometimes the person on the other side is doing the same thing.
So why not, send the message, suggest the coffee, ask if somebody wants to go to the Christmas market.
There is always the possibility they'll say no, but a no isn't proof that nobody wants you.
People are busy.
People have families.
People are anxious themselves.
Connection sometimes requires risking a little vulnerability.
Don't Turn Winter Into Evidence About Your Whole Life
This might be the most important part.
A lonely Saturday night isn't evidence that you'll always be alone.
A Christmas without a partner isn't evidence that you'll never have one.
A difficult relationship with your family isn't evidence that you can't create meaningful relationships elsewhere.
Winter has an annoying ability to make temporary circumstances feel permanent.
They aren't.
Comments