From Lonely Villain to Connected Family Man

Note: Although the biblical author of this passage alludes to marriage, many other types of partnerships can help us navigate life. Friendship is just as important as marriage, and we’ll need numerous supporters to get us through life.

In our culture, adult loneliness is so common that it’s been described as an epidemic. I’ve heard it said that Jesus’ greatest miracle was having 12 friends in his 30s. There’s been a lot of speculation as to why we’re so lonely. Is it social media? Are we losing common spaces that we all used to congregate in? Are we losing our social skills in this modern world?

A quick aside before I give my take on this. I hate simple answers. If a problem had a simple answer, it would be solved. Complex issues like a loneliness epidemic don’t have simple solutions—numerous things must be addressed, and not everyone can solve that problem on their own. So I don’t think the problem is as simple as banning social media or congregating in bars and clubs like we did in the 80s. I won’t be able to solve this issue in a short blog post, but I can help us start thinking about steps we can take to improve.

The author Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” That’s a gross oversimplification, but it highlights an important point: many of us want to be supported more than we want to support others. We see this in many other areas of life: we want to join board game nights, but we don’t want to host them; we want to tell others our great ideas for stories, but we don’t want to take the time to write them ourselves; we want the church to meet our needs, but we don’t want to volunteer to meet others’ needs. We do some of those things, but it’s human nature to recognize our own needs before the needs of those around us, especially if those needs are not being communicated.

Great friendships, marriages, and even business relationships can happen accidentally, but they happen much more readily when we take the steps to make them happen. If you’re interested in someone romantically, don’t just invite them to a group hangout and leave them in a vague limbo of indecision—let them know you’re interested and let them make the call. Friendships often work the same way. If you hope to find a friend by accidentally showing up at the same places, you’ll have a much harder time than if you let people know you want to hang out and plan things together.

We often talk of love and friendship as things that happen to us: we “fall” in love, or happen to be in the right place at the right time, where we meet our soulmate. If you find a friend or lover this way, great! But relationships often take work to build and maintain. This isn’t always simple, but as our friend Ralph Waldo Emerson alluded to, you need to be the type of friend or lover you want before you can find one.

Whether romantic or platonic, close relationships are essential to a healthy life. The first step in solving our problem of loneliness is to remember that we’re all lonely. We all want connection, and we all struggle with how to find it. Inviting others into intentional relationships is often a relief for the other party. (And if it’s not, at least you find out quickly!) So ask that special someone on a date. Ask your coworker to grab lunch sometime. Invite a neighbor over for dinner. Offer to DM that Dungeons & Dragons group you’ve been looking for. There will be more problems to solve, but as the author of today’s passage said, two are better than one, and three are even better.