Anon doesn't have to listen to my contrary opinion, but since I used to feel this exact way I thought I would share what changed my mind.
The first thing I learned that really changed my perspective on loneliness is that avoidant people (like those with STPD) tend to subconciously suppress our negative feelings. Even when we feel we are content being alone, we continue to show the symptoms of loneliness. This is because we are prone to Alexithymia, the inability to identify emotions. This case study explains the underlying mechanism well
By portraying herself as strong and unaffected by negative emotions, she avoided confronting her own helplessness and loneliness. Suppression of her genuine feelings did not reduce their impact; instead, it impaired her ability to process her emotions and seek support, thereby exacerbating loneliness and diminished self-efficacy. Lacking the positive experiences of accepting and managing negative emotions—which she perceived as shameful—she became increasingly self-critical and unable to cope independently.
I was personally very influenced by a case study of a patient reporting being fine and content when their partner was away but showing a degradation of self care and routine, but I can't find it anymore. In most cases where we report being "content" we are simply unable to identify our loneliness.
The other key thing that highlights why loneliness matters is that it is a gigantic public health concern. Being social animals seems to mean that when we are isolated we suffer wide ranging health problems.
These findings indicate that the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption and exceed the influence of other risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.
And a third factor is the fact that people with schizotypal and other avoidant attachment patterns tend to read everything as more negative, meaning that the world is not actually as cruel as it seems. People are constantly approaching us with kindness or neutrality, but our minds often misread their intention as in some way dangerous or damage our recall of positive interactions.
Because the attachment system is theorized to become active in response to emotional experiences that may otherwise promote closeness, avoidant individuals may default to disengaging from emotional stimuli. Avoidant individuals may be particularly insensitive to positive emotions. In fact, attachment avoidance is related to lower expectations and experiences of intimacy in romantic relationships. Likewise, when asked to recall their earlier reactions to daily events, those higher in attachment avoidance underestimate the positive emotions they felt, specifically for interpersonal events.
This all means that in our default states we are suffering without internal knowledge, trapped in a world that is much crueler than the reality we could share with others. People who talk about love and friendship don't intend to diminish us, though they sometimes can underestimate the difficulty and pain of human connection for schizotypal people. Pursuing connection is often extremely painful, but there is a kinder world waiting for us if we persist.
