Signal: What Loneliness Is Really Telling You

Why loneliness isn’t a flaw, but a sign that something inside needs to be heard

I want to talk about loneliness today. Not in the way it usually gets talked about, statistics and crisis lines and men struggling in silence. In a quieter, more specific way that I think will land differently.

Because I think most men misread what loneliness actually is. And that misreading makes it harder to do anything about it.

One Story

I was recording Safe Harbour with my mate Phil Askew and we got into a conversation about connection and being on your own that I’ve been thinking about ever since.

Phil is an only child. He’s been self-employed for years. He spends a lot of time alone and he’s completely comfortable with that.

And then he said something I want to pass on. He said loneliness for him isn’t about being on his own. He can do that all day. Loneliness shows up when he’s struggling with something and going around in circles inside his own head, and what he actually needs is to say it out loud to someone who can hold it. The moment he does that, the loneliness lifts.

Loneliness isn’t the absence of people. It’s the absence of somewhere to put what’s actually going on.

I really connected with that. Because I’ve felt lonely in packed rooms. I felt the loneliest I’d ever felt when I moved into my mate’s loft conversion after my marriage ended, surrounded by people who knew my name, and yet unable to say the thing that was actually happening to me to almost any of them.

Loneliness isn’t a character flaw. It’s information. And like all information, it becomes useful the moment you understand what it’s actually telling you.

One Shift

Most men, when they feel lonely, either push through it or diagnose themselves as someone who struggles with connection.

They make it a story about who they are rather than a signal about what they need right now.

But if loneliness is information, the question changes completely. Instead of “what’s wrong with me”, it becomes “what do I need to say, and who do I need to say it to?” That’s a much more solvable problem.

And here’s what I’ve been sitting with. We talk a lot about male loneliness. We share statistics and articles and nodding-in-agreement posts on Instagram. And then most of us close our phones and go back to our lives unchanged. Because talking about the problem isn’t the same as doing something about it.

One Challenge

The next time you notice that particular feeling, the low-level restlessness, the sense of going around in circles, pause and ask yourself one honest question:

What do I actually need to say right now, and who could I say it to?

Don’t fix it yet. Don’t act on it yet. Just name it, even if only to yourself. And if you notice you can’t answer the second part of that question, if the who is genuinely unclear, sit with that too. It’s pointing at something important.

▶ Safe Harbour: Phil Askew

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” — Leo Buscaglia

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Listen on your commute. Or your lunch break. Or that walk you keep meaning to take.