double quotation markWhen I tell people that I study loneliness, sometimes they ask, \u2018Oh, men\u2019s loneliness?\u2019Michelle Lim<\/p>\n
In 2024, the UK government commissioned research on loneliness<\/a> in boys and young men, even though \u2013 as the final report acknowledged \u2013 girls and women were more likely to report feeling chronically lonely. (Paradoxically, researchers suggested this was further evidence of the crisis in men, because they were less likely to speak up and seek help.)<\/p>\n In the media, it has been conceived as its own specific issue: \u201cThe male loneliness epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I tell people that I study loneliness, sometimes they ask, \u2018Oh, men\u2019s loneliness?\u2019\u201d says Michelle Lim, a principal research fellow at the University of Sydney, chief executive of Australia\u2019s Ending Loneliness<\/a> Together campaign and an adviser to the WHO. \u201cI have to say, \u2018No, no \u2013 everyone\u2019s loneliness.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n From the relative lack of attention on women and girls, you might assume they\u2019re doing fine, or at least better than men and boys. In fact, studies consistently show similar prevalence between genders. \u201cThere\u2019s not really any difference \u2026 They\u2019re equally both lonely,\u201d Lim says.<\/p>\n Comparisons of men and women\u2019s loneliness produce mixed, but insignificant results. Meanwhile, a recent systematic review of the current literature on loneliness among men in the US concluded that<\/a> evidence of a \u201cwidespread epidemic \u2026 is absent\u201d.<\/p>\n What is loneliness?<\/p>\n So why do we have the impression that men are especially or uniquely struggling, and why don\u2019t we hear about the \u201cfemale loneliness epidemic\u201d? In part it reflects a broader misunderstanding, says Lim: \u201cWe do see this confusion about what loneliness is.\u201d<\/p>\n Loneliness is defined as the sense that your social relationships are somehow lacking in quality, quantity or both. Social isolation \u2013 with which loneliness is often confused or conflated \u2013 is more objective, referring to an absence of connection.<\/p>\n Data tends to show that men are more socially isolated than women, meaning \u201cthey have fewer people they talk to\u201d, Lim says. Because men also tend to value physical presence and \u201cshoulder-to-shoulder\u201d socialising above emotional intimacy and disclosure, \u201cthe assumption is that they are more lonely\u201d, Lim goes on \u2013 but that is not necessarily the case, if they are satisfied with those interactions.<\/p>\n Women tend to be more connected, \u201cbut they might feel lonely within relationships\u201d, she says. That might indicate interpersonal ambivalence or conflict, but it could also stem from feeling isolated and alone in their individual experience.<\/p>\n Women can feel lonely within friendships and relationships, says academic and loneliness expert Michelle Lim. Photograph: Goodboy Picture Company\/Getty Images\u2018A very gendered experience\u2019<\/p>\n Women are more likely to be carers than men are, they earn less on average, are less financially secure and are more vulnerable to adverse life events such as redundancy and divorce. \u201cIn many ways, they\u2019re more socially disadvantaged, and that, we know, actually does predispose people to more loneliness,\u201d Lim says. \u201cIt\u2019s an equity issue.\u201d<\/p>\n This became clear early in the Covid-19 pandemic, when loneliness started to gain more academic and media attention. Though both men and women reported feeling more lonely, the rise in women was much larger<\/a>, which experts attributed<\/a> to their increased workload, such as overseeing children\u2019s schooling.<\/p>\n Spending more time on housework and caregiving not only means women have less time and ability to invest in their social connections; there is also likely to be the added loneliness of shouldering the burden, says Manuela Barreto, a professor of social and organisational psychology at the University of Exeter in the UK. \u201cIt\u2019s a very gendered experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Research has found that life transitions, such as becoming a parent, can promote loneliness, but the particular drivers likely differ for men and women, reflecting their different expectations and experiences.<\/p>\n Barreto suggests women are often more affected by children growing up and leaving the family nest, for example, due to the expectation or reality that \u201cbeing a mother is much more central for women than being a father is for men\u201d.<\/p>\n Menstrual health is another particular \u2013 and frequently underestimated \u2013 factor in women\u2019s loneliness. A 2022 Japanese study<\/a> found an association between loneliness and severe premenstrual symptoms in teenage girls. Regular pain can promote loneliness \u201cin a very practical way\u201d, Barreto points out, by preventing women from being fully present with others or even socialising at all.<\/p>\n Conditions such as endometriosis are described<\/a> as lonely, worsened by lack of mainstream and medical understanding. \u201cYou have to cope, and deal with things by yourself,\u201d says Barreto. \u201cThat really can make you feel very alone.\u201d<\/p>\n That was the case for Sasha. She has endometriosis and spent two \u201cvery difficult years\u201d trying for a baby through multiple miscarriages and ultimately IVF. \u201cThat was the first time in my life that I had felt lonely,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Miscarriage in particular, Sasha recalls as \u201cthe loneliest of experiences\u201d, causing her to feel apart from her loved ones and withdraw socially. \u201cIt\u2019s a type of grief that is really difficult for people who haven\u2019t been through it to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time she gave birth to her daughter, Sasha was \u201cphysically and emotionally exhausted\u201d. The shock of new motherhood \u2013 far from the easy, beatific state she\u2019d expected \u2013 deepened her sense of alienation and ambivalence. \u201cParticularly having a much-wanted baby you\u2019ve really fought for, you think, \u2018I\u2019m not entitled to feel anything except joy,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Five Great Reads<\/p>\n Each week our editors select five of the most interesting, entertaining and thoughtful reads published by Guardian Australia and our international colleagues. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Saturday morning<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Even her partner could not relate, despite his best efforts. \u201cHe\u2019s very involved but \u2026 my experience was very different to his,\u201d Sasha says. \u201cHe was still going to work; his life hadn\u2019t changed to the same degree.\u201d<\/p>\n New motherhood can deepen women\u2019s sense of alienation. Photograph: d3sign\/Getty Images\u2018Like a feeling of panic\u2019<\/p>\n Loneliness can also spring from self-comparison and feeling yourself to have deviated from the expected or accepted path \u2013 itself frequently gendered. For Laura*, 41, from Auckland, loneliness is \u201calmost like a feeling of panic\u201d.<\/p>\n She recalls going for dinner with a group of school friends and realising midway through that they\u2019d spoken exclusively about their children. Laura was the only non-parent among them.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t that she didn\u2019t want to hear about their families, she says, and there was no deliberate effort to exclude her. \u201cIt was a simultaneous feeling that no one was particularly interested in what might be going on for me in my life, and also feeling shut out from this experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Laura emphasises that she doesn\u2019t feel lonely often. \u201cIt comes and goes, and is very much dependent on mood, what\u2019s happening at work, who\u2019s in my general orbit, the weather \u2013 all those factors that I think also affect mental health more generally.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markA man alone is self-sufficient, taking this bold, brave step, versus a woman living alone is a failure, left on the shelf \u2026 a weird, unlovable spinsterLaura<\/p>\n But her experience of loneliness is tied up with her life circumstances. Laura is single and lives alone, while many of her close friends have families or live far away. \u201cI am in a very different life stage,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Laura works hard to expand her network and socialise solo, but it feels effortful; she misses the easy, unthinking companionship of a romantic partner or even flatmates. Not having \u201cthat default unit\u201d \u2013 someone to commiserate or celebrate with and just share in her day-to-day experience \u2013 \u201ccomes with a sense of doing everything alone\u201d, Laura says.<\/p>\n Sexist stereotypes add another layer of ambivalence, she suggests. \u201cA man alone is self-sufficient, taking this bold, brave step, versus a woman living alone is a failure, left on the shelf \u2026 a weird, unlovable spinster.\u201d It\u2019s not that she believes this of herself, Laura adds. \u201cIt\u2019s more my concern that that\u2019s how other people will perceive me.\u201d<\/p>\n Men have their own gendered drivers of loneliness, not least that expectation of being stoic and self-sufficient. In fact, that might be driving the attention on the male \u201cepidemic\u201d, Barreto suggests: because, stereotypically, men are supposed to be strong and unfeeling \u2013 the fact they might feel lonely is considered surprising and newsworthy.<\/p>\n While lonely women tend to internalise the problem and \u201cget on with it\u201d, Barreto goes on, the potential consequences of loneliness, for men, \u201ccan be a lot more severe\u201d. Globally, rates of suicide are higher for males<\/a> than females.<\/p>\n But there is not necessarily a straightforward association between a man feeling lonely and posing a threat to himself or others. The concept of a \u201cmale loneliness epidemic\u201d also suggests a single, sweeping event, rather than a highly individual process. \u201cLoneliness is a subjective experience, so it needs to be assessed in that way,\u201d Barreto says.<\/p>\n Instead of comparing male and female loneliness, we need to augment our understanding of both, and non-binary individuals with them, she says. \u201cWe need to look at gendered life experiences, and link those to how they are hindering or facilitating our social connection \u2026 What is making men lonely, and what is making women lonely?\u201d<\/p>\n By engaging with the specificity of those (and other) experiences, we may learn how to protect against loneliness and intervene effectively, Barreto says.<\/p>\n Already the data points to a productive path forward. A 2022 study<\/a> of 30 countries found those that had higher levels of gender equality had lower rates of loneliness, for both men and women; the researchers hypothesised that equality was more conducive \u201cto high-quality, close relationships\u201d.<\/p>\n That dovetails with other research, showing loneliness to be a socioeconomic issue. Instead of looking to treat \u201cmale loneliness\u201d, a better strategy might be improving social infrastructure and increasing living standards for everyone\u2019s benefit. In the meantime, sharing individual experiences can help.<\/p>\n When Sasha became pregnant with her second child earlier this year, she knew she did not want to repeat the fraught, lonely time she had with her first. She engaged a therapist to protect her mental health and sought out honest, nuanced accounts of motherhood (she namechecks Matrescence by Lucy Jones<\/a>) that made her feel seen.<\/p>\n \u201cHappily\u201d, Sasha says, her second postpartum experience has been easier. She has also made a point of speaking honestly about her difficult road to parenthood. Her motivation was to help others feel less lonely, but it eased the burden for her, too. \u201cI found the more open I was, the more connected I felt.\u201d<\/p>\n In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14, and at MensLine<\/a> on 1300 789 978. In the UK, the charity Mind<\/a> is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline<\/a> on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America<\/a> at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org<\/p>\n * names have been changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one would think of Sasha* as lonely, least of all Sasha herself. The 38-year-old from Sydney has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":917418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97],"class_list":["post-917417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/1794685571_961_500.jpg\")
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