by Jessica Pan
Paul pauses, taken aback by the question.
And this is the problem with Deep Talk. Not only do you have to be a bit vulnerable and a bit ballsy to ask the questions in the first place but also you’re asking whomever you’re speaking with to be the same: open up, take your hand, and embrace the depths.
Paul furrows his brow. After a beat, he nods.
“Yeah, I was,” he says.
“What did you do to combat it?”
“I wrote in my journal a lot,” he tells me. “I went for walks. But I was still really lonely.”
He tells me that he’s good at talking to new people but that in most of the places where he stopped along the way, people were pretty guarded.
When I play back this conversation in my head, I wonder how differently pre-sauna Jess would have handled it. Given that I didn’t know Paul well, I would have probably asked about logistics, or how many miles he covered per day, or what kind of bike he rode. Maybe, at best, I’d have launched into a story about a bike seat I’d used in Beijing that was such a literal ass-ache that I could barely walk for two weeks, followed by a monologue about the realities of life with thigh chafing.
I am so impressed by how open Paul is with me. He could have lied and told me, nah, he doesn’t get lonely, that he relished the time alone on the road, he was a lone wolf, a cowboy striking out into the sunset with nothing but his trusty metallic steed.
One of the most vital parts of Deep Talk is that it has to be a two-way process—both parties have to be willing to share, to disclose, to be vulnerable. If you initiate it with someone but don’t give back, you’re likely just harassing innocent people to share extremely personal information.
I realize I probably shouldn’t go around asking men about their loneliness and not share my own experience of it. Since we’re all in this together, I’ll tell you, too.
There was a time in my life when I was so lonely that my only friend was a deaf cat named Louis, except I was very allergic to him, and also neither of us particularly liked each other. Louis belonged to my roommate in Beijing, who was rarely around, so it was usually just Louis and me. I could be home for three hours, but because he hadn’t heard me, I would regularly turn a corner and he’d jump three feet into the air in shock—which in turn would set me on edge.
After work, I’d come home, eat dinner alone, and then go to bed. Louis would spend his nights tunelessly howling outside my bedroom door at 2 a.m., but he’d vanish every time I peered through my doorway to investigate why. It was like cohabitating with a Victorian ghost.
Looking back from a safe distance on those long days spent alone, I can just about frame it as a funny anecdote, but the reality was far more painful. I recently found my journal from that time, and I had written, “I’m so lonely that I actually think about dying.”
Not so funny.
I wasn’t suicidal. I’ve never self-harmed. I was still going to work, eating food, getting through the day. There are a lot of people who have felt far worse. But, still, I was inside my own head all day, every day, and I went days without feeling like a single interaction made me feel seen or understood. There were moments when I felt this darkness, this stillness from being so totally alone, descend. It was a feeling that I didn’t know how to shake, and when it seized me, I wanted it to go away so much that when I imagined drifting off to sleep and never waking up again just to escape it, I felt calm.
I remember it happening most often when I’d wake up on a Saturday morning, the full weekend stretching out ahead of me, no plans, no one to see, no one waiting for me. Loneliness seemed to hit me hardest when I felt aimless, not gripped by any initiative or purpose. It also struck hard because I lived abroad, away from close friends or family.
These days, a weekend with no plans is my dream scenario. There are weekends in London that I set aside for this very purpose, and they bring me great joy. But life is different when it is fundamentally lonely.
During that time in Beijing, I made an effort to make friends at work. I asked people to dinner. I moved to a new apartment, waved (an arm’s-length) goodbye to Louis, and found a new roommate, a gregarious Irishman, who ushered me into his friendship group. I had to work hard to dispel it, and on some days it felt like an uphill battle that I might not win, but eventually, it worked. The loneliness abated.
It’s taken me a long time to really believe, to know, that loneliness is circumstantial. We move to a new city. We start a new job. We travel alone. Our families move away. We don’t know how to connect with loved ones anymore. We lose touch with friends. It is not a damning indictment of how lovable we are.
Introvert or extrovert, shy or outgoing—loneliness can catch you no matter who you are. And it’s common. It’s been described as an epidemic, and a minister for loneliness has been appointed in the UK. In the US, a recent study found that 43 percent of the twenty thousand participants don’t feel they have meaningful relationships and that 46 percent felt alone either sometimes or always. It’s not just the obvious candidates—the elderly, people living in remote locations—who struggle, either. Today’s sixteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds report feeling lonelier than those of any previous generation. Between social media, email, and meal and grocery delivery apps, we can outsource most in-person encounters to our phones, and the reliance on this technology increases with each passing year. Everyone experiences loneliness at some point in their life. But even though the issue is heavily covered in the media, it still feels like stepping onto treacherous ground to bring it up face-to-face.
After my dinner and coffee with Paul, I notice that loneliness naturally comes up a lot in conversations with others when I explain the impetus for starting my year of extroverting: sitting alone on my sofa, my best friends scattered around the world, and wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Once I explained this honestly, men I knew slowly began to open up to me.
One man, a new friend’s husband, Tom, tells me that he felt loneliest when he moved to Geneva to start a PhD program. He’d been warned by a friend of his, who had recently moved to Paris for work: you will get so lonely that you will end up at a bar alone, sitting by yourself, looking to make friends. Tom had laughed—that was ridiculous. He’d never do that.
He lasted a week before he broke. His friend was right. He was “going so crazy” that he went to a bar just to be around other people. He ended up talking to some guys there, and the following day he was playing soccer with them. He says that he kept going, going to events alone, talking to people, actively trying to make friends, until he finally did. Sometimes it failed spectacularly, but eventually, some friendships stuck.
Tom tells me he’s an introvert, and we discuss the misconception that introverts don’t get lonely.
“Of course we can,” he says. “Human contact is important. You can Skype or FaceTime, but at some point, you want real contact.”
Introverts crave a particular kind of connection, so while extroverts might get a buzz from a busy city where they have small, surface encounters with people, introverts tend to feel lonely in crowds, even if they are interacting with a few people. (In other words, we’re difficult to please.)
One of Sam’s friends, Pablo, tells me that he felt loneliest when he was traveling alone, staying in a hostel. He’d be reading on his bed while everyone else around him seemed to effortlessly become best friends with each other.
At improv, I become friendly with one of my classmates, Edward, who’s an outgoing guy in his twenties. So, obviously, on our walk back to King’s Cross Station, I ask him about the last time he felt lonely. Edward becomes quiet, shrugs, and then tells me he’d think about it. Later that night he sends me a message saying that he feels incredibly lonely living in London right now. He’s just moved back to the UK after spending five years abroad, and he feels lost and out of touch with his old friends. He tells me he actually feels lonely pretty much every moment he isn’t do
ing improv.
“Improv does way too much heavy lifting,” he writes. “It’s the only time I don’t feel . . . empty.” I feel my heart breaking reading those words. I had never suspected he felt this way.
There’s this feeling that we should be self-sufficient, islands on our own, but secretly, introvert or extrovert, we all crave finding “our people” and physically hanging out with each other. Sometimes in small doses, sure, but we still crave intimacy. Why can’t someone gather all of us up with a big net and put us in a cozy pub with a fireplace and feed us nice snacks? Why must talking about loneliness and breaking out of it be so hard?
When I ask Edward what he and his work friends talk about, he tells me, “Soccer.”
“Just soccer?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says.
“But when you go out to the pub together—is it still only soccer?”
Edward nods.
✽ ✽ ✽
When I first moved to England, I fell slowly but surely in love with soccer (though they call it “football”). It was everywhere—without even trying, my brain began to soak up knowledge about English teams: big rivalries, facts about players, controversial coaches, the best players in the league. I watched my first penalty shoot-out during the World Cup 2014 (Brazil vs. Chile): men cried, I cried, Neymar cried. I was done for. I loved it.
I quickly realized that with soccer, I had a source of endless small talk. As a freelance editor, I work in many different offices, full of people whom I don’t know. I often sleep badly the night before embarking on a new gig. It’s that apprehension everyone has felt the night before starting a new job, except I have it every few months.
But with soccer, I can join in pretty easily. When I walk into a new office and a group gathers around the water cooler talking about the latest tournament, I have something to say. For someone like me, it is like a gift from on high. Safe, ever-present, and easy.
Soccer is the perfect vehicle for extroverting. For light conversations. For meeting new people. For breaking the ice. For silent cab rides and client drinks.
Soccer opened up a door for me—an easy way to quickly connect with a massive demographic (the majority of which are men—male fans outnumber women two to one in the UK). But often, once I’ve walked through that door, I find out that I am locked in a small room. I like talking about soccer for . . . forty-seven minutes. Maximum. Maybe an hour if it’s during the World Cup. Then I’m done. But once I’ve initiated it, I can’t escape soccer small talk. It is like trying to escape an enchanted maze—all dead-ends and giant European goalkeepers blocking my way out. Turn right and I’m trapped talking about the next match. Turn left and we’re talking about the Euros. Now I’m stuck in a loop about penalties and CAN ANYONE HEAR ME IN HERE?
It leads me to a thought that I’m not even sure I’m legally allowed to have in a European country without the threat of deportation. Do . . . do we talk about soccer too much? Does this ultraconnector, this social leveler, this thing that brings together so many people actually prevent us from real human connection?
It comes up with Benji, a comedian friend I’d met via my comedy classmates.
“People tell me I’m always asking hard questions,” Benji says. “My friends are always calling me ‘heavy.’ Like, ‘Why do you have to be so heavy? We’re not in therapy, mate.’” Though this last bit is probably because Benji is a psychiatrist by day.
At the same time, other friends are relieved that Benji is willing to venture on to more difficult topics. He tells me about a friend of his whose wife is struggling to conceive—no one in their friendship group is asking him how IVF is going or about the effect it’s having on his relationship with his partner. Another friend’s cousin committed suicide, but none of his other friends will broach the subject.
“Sometimes my friends can’t get past talking about ‘the match last night,’” he says.
Benji understands why his friends act this way and push aside his questions, even though it drives him crazy. Soccer is a defense, but it’s also fun to talk about—it’s enjoyable and light. And also maybe people would rather talk about Lionel Messi than think about, say, their crumbling marriage.
Soccer has been a conversational lifesaver for me so many times since I moved to England, but I wonder whether I’ve enabled a monster. Because I don’t just want passable chitchat: I want to break through the barriers. I want to know you.
Terrifying, I know.
✽ ✽ ✽
Over coffee, a new friend I’ve matched with on Bumble, Annie, is telling me about a guy she’s been dating for about two months. She says Sunil is kind, he’s funny, he has a good job, he’s handsome, and they have a great sex life. She says all this with a wistful look in her eyes.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know whether this is important, but . . . it’s all banter,” Annie says.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“We never have any . . . ‘deep chat.’ He talks about movies or what’s going on at work, but we never have any meaningful conversations,” Annie says.
I think back to the American woman, wearing pearls, back in the classroom at the beginning of my year. She struggled to ask me a single deep question.
“Well,” I say. “Have you tried asking him any deep questions?”
“Not really,” Annie says. “It feels so awkward. And I don’t want him to think I’m too serious.”
Maybe Sunil was hoping she would. Maybe he was saying the same things to his friends: she’s sexy, smart, and kind, but the talk is all shallow.
When Annie first tells me this story, I feel myself jump immediately to frustration. How could she not ask him the questions she really wanted to know the answers to? And how could he not have asked her anything, either?
But then I remember how hard this really is. When Sam and I had been dating for about six months, I struggled with this, too. I was bursting with all the questions I wanted to ask him, but it felt too exposing because it showed what I had been thinking about and how serious I was about him. I wanted to know about his relationship history. I wanted to know about his most recent ex-girlfriend. Did he end things, or did she? Did they say “I love you” to each other? Did he still pine for her? Did he want kids? Did he ever want to get married someday? (To, I don’t know, an Asian American woman with a low center of gravity?)
When Sam and I were living in Australia, one winter weekend we rented a cottage in the countryside. We toured local wineries by day, and at sunset we wrapped ourselves up in blankets on the porch overlooking the valley below, digging in to our bounty of wine and local cheese. I can’t remember who initiated it (OK, fine, probably me), but we decided that during this magic hour while day turned to night we could ask each other anything.
This moment in our relationship changed everything. I got to ask all my questions, and so did Sam. We also had to answer them. I think for both of us it’s the night we tipped over from infatuation to falling in love. Even now, the phrase “wine and cheese hour” is shorthand for this safe space, when we need to sit down and reconnect. This is so bougie and painful to admit, especially because I don’t even like wine and this is now far more likely to be “coffee and Pop-Tarts hour.” (Vodka and Pringles work, too.)
I tell Benji about how powerful that openness and mutual vulnerability felt. And he tells me about the researcher Arthur Aron, who claimed he knew how to make two strangers fall in love. He created a list of thirty-six intimate questions and argued that if you and a potential partner ask (and answer) these questions, then stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes, the chances of the two of you falling in love would increase. The thinking behind it is that these questions accelerate your connection. Could this really work?
“My now-girlfriend and I did this on our second date two years ago,” he says, laughing.
I send Annie the art
icle with the list of questions. “Try this,” I say, as if I’m a doctor sending her a prescription. The questions are hard to ask: What is your most treasured memory? What is your most terrible memory? They’re even harder to answer: If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
✽ ✽ ✽
Sam and I are eating dinner at our local ramen restaurant, but tonight I’m lingering over my noodles longer than usual. He’s telling me about his friend who has just moved to Japan and seems to be struggling to make friends.
“How do you know? What did he say?” I ask Sam.
“He hasn’t said anything specific. But he’s spending all his time at work, and the fact he doesn’t have any stories about the nightlife and the expat scene is significant for someone like him. He’s not used to being alone,” Sam says. “He just seems a bit down.”
I think back to my previous conversations with men, some successful, others never going anywhere.
“I wish he could just tell you. I wish more men could admit these things,” I say.
A few minutes later, the door to the restaurant opens, and a man enters. He sits down at the table next to us, alone, and sets down a book. I glance over to read the title. It’s Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown.
Omigod.
I know this sounds too good to be true, but it is. I swear on all that is holy, including Neymar’s right foot. The universe was listening to me.
Brené Brown is the researcher and professor who had inspired me to find a reliable, trusting friend—a friend who would “move a body” with me. She also espouses the power of vulnerability in her now-famous TED Talk, the one that had made me rethink giving a speech at my own wedding. And now, here is this man, alone, reading her book.
Of all the ramen joints in north London, he walked into mine.
I look at Sam meaningfully, nodding toward the guy and his book. Sam shakes his head firmly: no. I nod vigorously: yes. Sam shakes his head. I take a deep breath.