So I sat alone in a lobby amid thousands, read a novel, ate a couple candy bars and nursed my wounded pride. All along I kept waiting for someone to ask me to dinner. Eating dinner alone would have only intensified the loneliness. We experience loneliness when our world is smaller or less satisfying than we had hoped. Loneliness is born in fear and suspicion that no one loves us without condition, that no place is safe from manipulation or abuse.
Lonely people wish they had friends but are busy when someone calls.
The fear of love and loss combine to foster patterns of living that breed loneliness. If our experience of the world leads to mistrust or skepticism, it's unlikely we'll be able to trust people enough with our story to diminish loneliness. Philip Slater begins his classic, The Pursuit of Loneliness, with a story about a man who lived in a hut in the forest to escape his neighbors' prattle. The man was beset by one calamity after another, mostly self-inflicted. One night, while sleeping with a gun to frighten away boys who came to steal from him, the man shot off his foot.