Modern loneliness doesn’t just inhabit empty rooms or manifest as ghosted texts or Friday nights alone with your screens. It often lives in couples’ bedrooms, many of whom no longer speak each other’s language. It shows up in the way people cling to relationships that don’t nourish or fulfill them because the alternative feels unbearable.
We say we want connection. But what we often settle for is proximity. Another body in the room, even if we secretly don’t like it that much. We do it with a quiet desperation that looks a lot like love on the outside, but is really just fear dressed up as “relationship goals.”
We like to think we’re modern. Enlightened. Emotionally literate. That we wouldn’t stay in a relationship that drains us, demeans us, or makes us feel invisible or unsafe, that we know our worth and will never subject ourselves to a situation that disempowers us, that we will never contort ourselves to fit a partner we outgrew a long time ago.