As the oldest child and only daughter of divorced parents, I was introduced to loneliness as a concept when I was about 15. My brother and I weren’t neglected or abandoned or anything of the sort. I just knew that for most of my childhood, I had two parents in the house, and then at around 15, when my mom explained ‘divorce’ to me, it was just me, her, and my brother.
I think that as a child, when any part of your environment changes, especially because of loss, you don’t see the impact it has on anyone else. You just zero in on what you no longer have. This response is expected from children, especially because emotional intelligence doesn’t develop until much later in life, hopefully.
Now that I’m an adult with a fully developed frontal lobe (although my mom and husband often suspect there’s a slight gap somewhere), I’m having to see loneliness and loss through a different lens, and it’s becoming one of the most interesting experiences of my life.
Loneliness is often synonymous with being misunderstood. It’s easiest to recognize when someone is visibly excluded, rejected, or abandoned, which is why those forms of loneliness often receive the most empathy.
When Familiar Relationships Begin to Feel Empty
But what happens when the feeling of being alone rears its head in familiar relationships?
Many of us are familiar with Ecclesiastes 3:1: ‘to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.’ I’ve commonly heard this preached at funerals and often heard people use it as an explanation for break-ups.
After nurturing several friendships over the years and being very close to abandoning one of them, I’m learning that relationships can remain and sometimes flourish, even when the seasons change.
We selfishly measure the value of our relationships and friendships by their benefit to us without considering the cost to the other person. We think that it’s easy being present when the reality is that the cost to be present in one place is to be absent from another.
We often think that feeling lonely in a relationship is a sign that it’s time to move on because, after all, the season has ended. We call it loneliness when we no longer feel fulfilled, or we don’t feel like we’re being poured into the way we once were. We say we’re no longer getting what we need without stopping to ask what we can give.
This is by no means an endorsement to remain in toxic, manipulative, abusive, or dangerous relationships or friendships. None of what I’m saying applies to these situations.
What I am asking is that you assess the source of your feeling of aloneness.
One common reason we feel lonely in otherwise healthy relationships is that what once nourished no longer meets our current needs. This in itself isn’t an issue, but it becomes one if your value of the relationship is based on whether you can use what the other party provides.
A nurturing and loving mother who breastfeeds her newborn is no less nurturing and loving when her child outgrows breastmilk.
We’ve been taught to strip people down to what they can do, often forgetting who they are. In doing this, we rob them and ourselves of all the ways God can still use them in our lives to fulfill His purpose.
When the Need Changes but the Relationship Remains
Over the past few weeks at church, we’ve been focusing on Mark 2:1-12 and reviewing the story of the paralytic man whose friends lowered him through a roof to get him to Jesus.
We don’t know what the relationship was between the four friends, but it’s easy to guess that they took great care of their paralyzed friend.
It’s safe to assume that the provisions that once met his needs were no longer what he required. What he needed was to get to Jesus. Their efforts to get him through the front door failed, and the paralyzed man could have easily said, ‘Enough, don’t worry about it, this isn’t working.’
I think he valued their relationship and the things his friends had done in the past so much that it gave them the courage to try something different to meet his need.
Sometimes, it’s not just that we stop being satisfied in the relationship but that we don’t create space for our friends and partners to try something different. We’ve taught the people in our lives to show us love in one form or another. Maybe encouragement, advice, or emotional support.
When that form of love stops feeding us the way it once did, we assume something is wrong and that the season has ended when all the relationship really needed was space to mature.
Another common source of loneliness in relationships is a feeling of loss. Typically, the one who senses the loss or loneliness is the one who no longer receives what they once did.
From Receiving to Pouring Out
Many times, this doesn’t mean that the other person stopped giving or being, but that you have reached your capacity to receive what they can give. Capacity in this regard isn’t something you fix but something you surrender to God.
Surrendering your capacity to Him doesn’t mean that He’s going to make room for you to receive more. It may lead Him to open your eyes to ways you can refresh the place that has watered you.
Healthy relationships aren’t established on reciprocity, but mutual care becomes a sign of a healthy relationship.
This becomes the true embodiment of Acts 20:35, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’
His purpose for your life will test your relationships. So, before you decide that you’re all alone and that it’s worth it to walk away, ask yourself two questions. Have I made what my friends can do more important than who they are, or have I been receiving more than I’ve been giving?