The shortcuts to belonging that leave us lonelier, and what builds the real thing
Wishing to belong is a basic human desire. We want to be part of a group, to be known and accepted into a fellowship. This takes many forms: a family, a sports team, a civic organization, a culture, a political party, a religious community, and so forth. Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary, in an influential 1995 review, argued that the need to belong is a fundamental human motivation, one whose frustration is associated with broad costs to emotional well-being, adjustment, and health (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).
But belonging to a group is seldom sufficient to fully satisfy this desire. We want to be appreciated for what we, as individuals, bring to that group.
One particularly compelling way to be appreciated is to be desired. An employer desires your technical skills and shows it by giving you a raise. A school desires your academic abilities and expresses this by offering you a scholarship. A friend desires your companionship, and expresses this with invitations to dinner.
Being desired and belonging are not the same, but they often go together.
Being desired when one is deeply known, strengths and flaws laid bare, is the pinnacle of belonging. This is often thought of in terms of romantic relationships, but that context is far too limited. Parents intimately know their children, good friends have intimate platonic knowledge of each other, and within psychotherapy, patients often feel deeply known, understood, and accepted by their therapist.
Healthy intimacy combines a sense of belonging with a sense of being deeply appreciated, valued, and welcomed.
Because healthy intimacy involves being prized despite your flaws and shortcomings, this depth of belonging is rare. It requires building a sturdy foundation of trust, a prerequisite for genuine self-disclosure. That process is risky and, consequently, time-consuming. Just how time-consuming? Communication researcher Jeffrey Hall found that moving toward a good or best friendship often requires roughly 200 or more hours of shared time, though the amount varies across relationships and the quality of that time matters as well (Hall, 2019). No substitute exists for repeated, meaningful shared time.
For a fuller discussion of the risk, patience, trust, and vulnerability involved in building intimacy, see Risking Deep Intimacy: The Road Desired but Less Traveled.
The Shortcuts That Backfire
Many people nonetheless try to take shortcuts. They substitute attention and superficial approval for deeply genuine appreciation. These shortcuts can include emphasizing one’s sex appeal, endless boasting about accomplishments, pretentious displays of intellectual prowess or physical strength, flaunting wealth or status, and so forth.
The attention garnered through these methods can become only a chimera of the deep appreciation that attaches to genuine acceptance and intimacy. Momentary attention may feel rewarding, but it is not necessarily substantive. Like most quick fixes, it can rapidly fade.
Women and men can fall into different versions of the same trap. In contemporary culture, women are often taught that beauty and sex appeal are reliable routes to attention and affirmation. Men are often taught that achievement, income, status, physical strength, and professional success are reliable routes to respect and acceptance. These tendencies are not universal, and they are not moral failings. They are simply common enough to shape how many people learn to seek approval.
The woman who leads chiefly with sex appeal may receive plenty of attention while wondering whether anyone values more than her appearance. The man who leads chiefly with income, status, professional success, or physique may receive admiration while wondering whether anyone values more than what he provides or displays. In both cases, the person may be noticed without being deeply known.
Lose the looks, the job, the income, the title, or the physical edge, and the attention may diminish. If a person’s sense of worth has become tied to that source of affirmation, the loss can feel like confirmation that he or she was never truly wanted in the first place.
The problem is not that people wish to be attractive, accomplished, admired, strong, desired, or successful. Those can all be good things. The problem begins when a person comes to believe that one of these traits is the primary basis upon which he or she can be wanted.
Early experiences can shape these beliefs in powerful ways. If you find that your sense of worth rests too heavily on a distorted or overly narrow picture of yourself, see Is Your Self-Identity Wrong? How Childhood Experiences Distort Your Self-Concept.
Barriers to Genuine Connection
Today’s social-media world encourages connection without commitment. It is easy to accumulate hundreds of online “friends,” very few of whom you would ever confide in. Settling for the superficial appreciation available through social media can be seductive. Why work on developing real friendships, which require sacrificing time and energy, when you can collect dozens of likes by posting a snarky political comment or a heartwarming photo of a kitten?
Evidence suggests this trade can be a poor one. In a 2018 randomized experiment involving University of Pennsylvania undergraduates, Melissa Hunt and colleagues found that participants assigned to limit Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to 10 minutes each per day—about 30 minutes total—for three weeks reported greater reductions in loneliness and depressive symptoms than those who used the platforms as usual (Hunt et al., 2018).
Layered on top of this is a broader culture that rewards display over depth. The implicit message is that to belong, you must perform: be sexier, louder, more successful, more outrageous. Performance can win an audience. It rarely wins a friend.
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory identifying loneliness, social isolation, and inadequate social connection as urgent public-health concerns. The advisory summarized evidence linking poor social connection with elevated risks of depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, stroke, dementia, and premature death (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023).
Building the Real Thing
The solution for those seeking genuine connection and intimacy is to be intentional about building relationships. Be selective about whom you pour your time and energy into.
That is not to say you should be stingy with your goodwill and grace. But do consciously direct your interpersonal energy toward building relationships with people whom you admire and trust, and who have shown at least an initial appreciation for who you are and what you offer.
Research on how closeness develops points to a few practical habits:
Disclose gradually, and reciprocally. Social psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor described relationship development as a gradual process in which self-disclosure often moves from relatively surface-level material toward more personal material over time. Reciprocity matters: when one person’s openness is met with appropriate openness from the other, further closeness becomes more likely (Altman & Taylor, 1973). Share a little more than you normally would, then see whether the other person responds in kind. If they do, take another step. If they do not, you have learned something useful at little cost.
Be responsive. Harry Reis and Phillip Shaver’s work suggests that intimacy depends not only on self-disclosure but also on how that disclosure is received. When someone shares something personal, show that you understand it, value their experience, and care about them. That response is what makes the next disclosure feel safe (Reis & Shaver, 1988).
For a closer look at why helping another person feel known can matter even more than simply telling them more about yourself, see Building Deep Romantic Connections: Why Helping Your Partner Feel Known Beats Self-Disclosure.
Build your social skills. Genuine connection becomes easier when you know how to start and sustain a conversation, communicate interest without interrogating someone, and pay attention to the emotional cues that tell you whether the other person feels comfortable and engaged. Improving social skills does not make a person false or manipulative. It gives them more opportunities to meet people, build trust, and discover where genuine connection may be possible. For practical guidance, see From Socially Awkward to Socially Savvy—Made Simple.
Protect the hours. Closeness requires shared time, so schedule it. A standing coffee, a weekly walk, or a regular phone call does more than occasional grand gestures.
Why It Matters
In my clinical work, many depressed patients—including some who are married, have children, and regularly meet with friends—describe a painful lack of at least one relationship in which they feel deeply known, valued, and safe. Often, the missing piece in their lives is a sense of intimacy with someone who appreciates them deeply, and expresses that appreciation as genuine delight in their company.
This sort of relationship takes a great deal of work, and risk, to develop. Initial attempts often fail, and there is a temptation to give up and retreat to the comfort of more superficial relationships.
What you will find, if you persist, is that you become better at building these relationships over time. Not every attempt will succeed, but each one brings you closer to your goal. And because the desire for this kind of relationship is so universal, you are likely, eventually, to find others with whom you connect deeply and share a profound sense of belonging.
The deeper point is that building a life of connection is part of building a life that is meaningful. Pleasure, approval, attention, and achievement can all have their place. But purpose, genuine commitment, and relationships in which one is both known and valued are more likely to produce the kind of fulfillment that has deep roots. For more on the difference between pursuing immediate happiness and building a genuinely fulfilling life, see To Have Deep Happiness You Need to Aim for Fulfillment.
Dr. Forrest Talley is a clinical psychologist in Folsom, California, with more than 30 years of experience. He is the founder of Invictus Psychological Services. For more on overcoming, not just coping, visit forresttalley.com or the Invictus Psych channel on YouTube (@invictuspsych).
References
Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278–1296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225
Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decreases loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751–768. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751
Office of the Surgeon General. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
Reis, H. T., & Shaver, P. (1988). Intimacy as an interpersonal process. In S. Duck, D. F. Hay, S. E. Hobfoll, W. Ickes, & B. M. Montgomery (Eds.), Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research and interventions (pp. 367–389). John Wiley & Sons.
