IRL with Arielle: It’s impractical to love your way out of loneliness

Arielle Andrews, Staff Writer

I will let you in on a little secret — I am lonely. 

When I was four years old and asking God for a best friend for Christmas, I was lonely. When I was in high school, and I used to sit alone on the bleachers, book in hand, I was lonely. Here I am, about to graduate from VCU, a massive institution, and I’ve spent every weekend scrolling through Twitter until 4 a.m., and I am still lonely. 

I have gotten so used to being lonely that I have started to prefer it. However, the loneliness is not always compliant, sometimes it demands more of me than I can spare. 

At times like that, I like to watch Netflix or scroll through TikTok and live vicariously through the large groups of besties who seem so far out of touch with my reality. 

Occasionally, I’ll stumble across a video of them bragging about their friends and saying the key is “confidence.” To the inevitable loser in their comments who says “I wish I had friends,” the lazy and all too automatic response is “love yourself first.” 

Self-love and the cult of confidence will have you believe that the solution to all your loneliest problems is just to love yourself more. While self-confidence should be an important aspect of your healing journey, it simply is not a good replacement for human connection.

I tell you this as someone who is lonely and who will likely always be lonely, it is really hard to love yourself when you are alone and really easy when you are not.  

To increase life satisfaction, therapists and TikTok creators alike have touted the power of self-love as coping for loneliness and painful situations. It allows you to navigate through tricky and toxic relationships and view your life more positively. 

“If you love yourself, you’ll never be lonely,” is the wisdom.

People really and truly believe that you can love yourself out of loneliness. 

My empty bed and the lack of pings on my phone whisper this untrue. 

There are many evolutionary benefits to relationships including increased happiness, longer lifespans and get this, improved self-esteem, according to Marisa G. Franco, Ph.D., in her book, also a TedTalk, “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends.” 

Friendships can make you whole, releasing shame you hold deep within you and making you a better, more sound person, Franco says. 

“If we were asked, ‘How did you become more emphatic? More moral? Develop high self-esteem?’ for most of us, our answer would not be friends. Education, self-reflection, therapy or genes, we might say. We are not always conscious of the way friendship transforms us, but it still does,” Franco states. 

Something I wish I had known earlier was one of the best ways to increase your self-esteem and confidence, contrary to the cult’s idea of solo trips in the woods — as lovely as that sounds — is to make genuine connections. Lack of human connection lowers your overall life satisfaction.

You cannot self-love your way out of that. 

“[Friendship] does not just make us into better versions of ourselves. It helps us figure out who we are,” Franco states. 

Relationships are as human as the human brain. We are not built to be alone. We should not stay alone. As beneficial as self-love is, it is honestly overrated. 

You are not going to love yourself all the time, and that is okay. You do not need to. It is not an obligation to live in this universe.

A more significant thing to do in your life is learn to keep moving forward when you do not like yourself. 

The cult of self-love wants you to believe that you must always think good thoughts about yourself all the time. This is impossible and a better practice would be to think neutrally. You might not be the best, loneliness might feel painful but how about a cup of coffee? Maybe text a friend? 

You still deserve to be loved and to love even if you do not love yourself. By all means, do the affirmations if they make your life better. Live alone in the woods if you must. Please do not minimize the importance of having a friend to share life with. 

Learning to love being alone will not help you learn to love. 

To put it simply, imagine you are holding a glass of water. To some, that would be enough and maybe it should be enough for you. Even so, you see someone holding a can of Coke. Someone else is touting a bottle of wine. Another, a glass of apple juice. 

You think to ask to share but you tell yourself, “No, no. I love my glass of water. That’s enough.” 

I would have to pity you. While water might be enough, you are missing out on a whole universe of flavor. One that might not just enrich your life, but teach you how to live it. 

Those who hide away, drinking their glasses of water, may love themselves, but in some ways, much like me, they will always be lonely.