6 Tips to Beat Loneliness for Good

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We humans have a compelling need to be social. We need close relationships in our lives and when we feel disconnected or isolated from the people we love, the result is the troubling state we call loneliness. For some, loneliness is an occasional annoyance, but for others, it can become a painful, even debilitating condition.

Fortunately, loneliness is not inevitable. To combat it, and invite more affection and intimacy into your life, these 6 tips can help:

1. Be open to intimacy. One way to encourage more affection and intimacy from others is to express more ourselves. Yet many people avoid doing so. We might hold back because we fear being hurt, or because we worry that others won’t love us as much as we love them. To combat loneliness, identify your fears and then reframe them so that you see affection as an opportunity rather than a risk.
2. Invite, rather than demand. When we want others to be more affectionate, it may seem most straightforward to demand it, saying, for example, “I need you to start telling me you love me more often.” Although that tactic may be efficient, it is rarely effective, because it fails to consider why the person is not affectionate in the first place. A more effective alternative is to invite and encourage intimacy in ways that feel natural to the other person. It also helps to let the person see you being affectionate with others.
3. Acknowledge the affection you already receive. One reason people feel lonely is that they look for intimacy only in certain forms. They fail to recognize expressions of affection they are already receiving. A woman may feel lonely because her husband doesn’t say “I love you” as often as she wants, yet she may not recognize that he expresses his love in many instrumental ways, such as by taking care of household needs. Even if she longs for more expressive forms of intimacy, she can combat her loneliness by acknowledging gestures of affection that she currently overlooks.
4. Nurture affection from a variety of sources. It’s common to focus all our hopes and expectations for love on a single target, such as a spouse, but no one person is capable of meeting all of our social needs. While we might encourage more intimacy within a particular relationship, we can also combat loneliness by opening ourselves up to a wider range of close connections.
5. Avoid toxic affection. Some of us may become so hungry for companionship that we are willing to accept it even when it comes with strings attached. Conditional love—what I call "toxic affection"—isn’t genuine and actually inhibits true intimacy. An important part of decreasing loneliness, therefore, is refusing offers of affection that come with unwanted obligations.
6. Keep your expectations optimistic but realistic. For many of us, loneliness isn’t the kind of problem we can resolve overnight. It takes sustained effort, and not every tactic will be successful. When working to develop closer, more affectionate relationships, stay optimistic and recognize that change is possible. Nonetheless, it is also important to be realistic and acknowledge when a change in strategy is warranted.

Source: Kory Floyd, Ph.D., used with permission

Many thanks to Kory Floyd, PhD for sharing these great tips. Floyd is the author of 11 books, including The Loneliness Cure: Six Strategies for Finding Real Connections in Your Life, in which you can find more detail on how to use each of these strategies. (You can watch a short video about The Loneliness Cure here.)

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