The Difference Between Being Alone and Feeling Abandoned (opens in new tab)

A woman watches the three dots appear and disappear on her phone. Someone is typing. Then they stop. No message arrives. Five minutes later she checks again. Nothing. The loneliness she feels has almost nothing to do with being alone. Her husband is upstairs. The dog is asleep beside her chair. The television murmurs softly in the background. Objectively, she is not isolated. Yet something inside her experiences the silence as a threat. A new study suggests that this distinction—between being...