I was nervously preparing to be a first-time guest on a TV news show. I would be live from my apartment in Toronto, and I carefully adjusted the webcam to show my turquoise-blue couch and not the messy dining table behind me.
When the Al Jazeera producer initially contacted me, I assumed the show, “The Stream,” wanted me to share my expertise as a psychological science reporter for the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley. But after a few emails, it became clear that I wasn’t the expert on the panel.
Instead, at 28 years old, I was the example of a lonely young person, Exhibit A of the solitary millennial.
How did I get here?
Little use for love and friendship
Back in high school in New Jersey, my violin was my best friend. At least that’s what I told myself when the girls around me paired up into twosomes.
Thanks to a bit of early reinforcement, my identity was set: I was the good student, the smart valedictorian. I valued achievement and leaned in hard, having little use for love and friendship. Four hours of daily violin practice eventually morphed into studying 12 hours a day, including on weekends, during my time at college at McGill University in Montreal.
My accomplishments were my source of happiness. I thought that needing others to be fulfilled was a form of dependence — and I wanted none of it. My perfume was Femme Individuelle (no joke).
When I started dating my boyfriend (now fiance), school was my top priority; we routinely haggled over what time I’d finally quit studying and meet him for dinner. In my mind, we were two separate people with separate, busy lives — and I liked it that way.
After college, we decided to travel the world, an adventure for him and a fantastic career opportunity for me, an aspiring writer. We called ourselves digital nomads for four years, living for months at a time in places such as Beijing, Rome and Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Travel can be glamorous, but it’s also isolating. Old friends and extended family members are time zones away. When you move every few months, making awkward small talk with strangers in the hopes of forming a new friendship that probably won’t last seems futile, particularly for introverts like us. So, to be honest, we didn’t really try to meet people.
That worked fine for me — up to a point.
I had my boyfriend, so I was never really alone. But I started to catch a few glimpses of deeper community, of the life I was missing out on, during a half-year stay in Toronto.
In an effort to try to connect with people, I stepped out of my comfort zone and started a monthly meetup group that bonded over coffee and one of my favorite topics, happiness.
My partner’s sister introduced me to one of her good friends, and suddenly I had fun girls’ nights and tea dates, and also people to call when I needed an ear.
At the end of the summer, saying goodbye to everyone, I smiled and talked excitedly about the upcoming Oktoberfest in Germany, about Italy and Greece. Inside, I was sad that I would be gone in September. Some of my enthusiasm for travel had disappeared.
The following year, I was relieved and excited when my plane touched down again in Toronto. I was wrapping up a four-year, 17-country world tour. I was also hit with a deep and chilling sense of loneliness.
Online ‘dating’ for friends
When I went on TV that afternoon, the host assumed I had already “crossed the threshold” and gotten over my pangs of loneliness. She asked when it had happened, and I confessed that it hadn’t. “I’m still on the journey,” I said, seven months after my partner and I signed a long-term lease.
But the show itself was a bit of a turning point for me.
One of the other guests was the founder of Hey! VINA, an app for women to make female friends. I decided to give it a try. (Another guest was running a platonic cuddling service, but that seemed like a bit much.)
Hey! VINA is basically like the Tinder or Bumble dating apps — you create a profile, swipe through other people’s profiles, and get matched up when there’s mutual interest in hanging out.
The benefit of this digital friend-making approach, in my mind, was that everyone was just as desperate as me.
The downside was that it’s almost exactly like online dating. After each “date,” I’d ponder all the things I had said: Was I interesting? Did I offend her? Then there was the question of whether — and when — to suggest another hangout. Should I play it cool and wait a few days? What if she agrees just because she feels sorry for me?
My first VINA friend disappeared for a few weeks, and I lamented to my brother. “She was so cool, I liked her so much,” I said. “Why doesn’t she like me?”
After some merciless brotherly teasing, he told me not to put all my eggs in one basket.
Old habits die hard
Luckily, I did have eggs in other baskets. At the time, my personal loneliness-busting initiative amounted to something like, “Go meet people, at least once a week.”
I kept “dating” other prospective new friends; I went to meetups, book clubs and dinners hosted by my neighbors. I attended weekly blues dances, whether my partner decided to come or not.
This was a huge change for me. A decade ago, I defined myself by my work ethic, my intelligence and my productivity — all brains and no heart. I didn’t see myself as the type of person who had friends and community, and so I avoided them.
As my behaviors changed, though, my view of myself started to change, too. Someone recently told me I had a “kind and gentle presence,” a far cry from the cold, logical intellectual I once fancied myself to be.
My old self would call me touchy-feely or weak, and I continue to grapple with these changes. I still have to battle the impulse to prioritize work above everything else. When I get a personal call during the workday or my partner tries to persuade me to leave work early, I feel a surge of annoyance, a little alarm bell signaling a threat to my productivity. Old habits die hard.
In those moments of internal conflict, I’ve learned to soften a little. I try to remember what’s important — that loving, connecting with and supporting others are not frivolous, but some of the most meaningful things I can do.
A full turquoise couch
I’ve celebrated my birthday in far-flung places, with a Segway tour in Paris and an open-air massage in Bali. But my 29th birthday was different.
That night, the table was set for 12, not two.
To my delight and surprise, I kept hearing knocks at the door as friends appeared — a fellow newcomer to Canada, who had attended my meetups and brought her homemade corn bread. A blues dancer, handing me a cat-shaped bottle of wine. My phone pinged with a message from my VINA friend, who had liked me after all but was working that night.
All the friends and community I once thought I never wanted were now sprawled across my turquoise couch, eating cupcakes and chatting. They looked like they were having a great time, and it all felt a little surreal. Were they all here for me?
My head couldn’t grasp it, but some corner of my heart did.
Kira M. Newman is the managing editor of Greater Good magazine at the University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Follow her on Twitter @kiramnewman. A version of this essay first appeared in Greater Good magazine.
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