All The Lonely People

Formerly associated with symptoms of old age, loneliness has now become an epidemic – and young women are most at risk.

- Natalie Reilly

From the outside, Clare Stevens had an enviable life: a stylish apartment in a beachside suburb in Sydney, a well-paid job as a management consultant that she enjoyed, and a group of dependable and interesting friends. Yet most weekend afternoons, a knot of fear would begin to form in Stevens’ stomach as she anticipated the inevitable dread she knew would begin once she walked through the door of her one-bedroom apartment.

“When I’d been out with friends and had a great day, I would then come home to a totally different reality of just me, standing in the kitchen all by myself – that’s when it would really hit,” she says. Stevens, 37, was a year out of a difficult marriage when she began living alone, and the feelings of loneliness and isolation consumed her. “Living alone wasn’t a huge shock to me, as I was already lonely in my marriage, but it was still really hard. It was at a time when most of my friends were coupling up or having babies, so it felt like a sort of double whammy of loneliness. It was almost like I became scared of going home at the end of the day, because I was afraid of all the feelings that would overwhelm me in those dark hours by myself. The loneliness started to feel terminal, which was terrifying.”

Ironically, Stevens is not alone in her loneliness. Worldwide, loneliness is reaching epidemic proportions. In the US, nearly half of Americans report they often feel lonely, while the problem has become so bad in the UK that a minister for loneliness was appointed in January. In Australia, the statistics are just as worrying.