This is scary. This is the first time I read such article. I live alone, never married ( no plans to marry either ), have no friends. I have a decent job though.
Do something like go joint meetup.com. If you job isn't something like brain surgeon or another essential item then it's the old adage: nobody ever wished they had spent more time at work on their death bed.
Not really a fan of that advice (although better than no action) - I believe it is difficult to avoid shallow connections with a shifting group of people.
I personally (A) choose to share accommodation (shared house), (B) live in a part of the city that has that community feel (not the "best" neighborhood). Now meaningful long-term connections just happen without trying (in fact it would take effort to avoid it).
The more interesting question is: how has one traversed their entire life up to gainful employment and has no friends? This seems to be the more telling question.
A person can be at school and have a small number of friends. They then leave to go to college and lose those friends. They may make a few more friends at college. They then leave college and go to work - and again they lose their friends.
Once you're at work it is hard for some people to male friends.
This isn't a new or unusual point of view. We freqently hear about how lonely cities can feel.
"$cityname is lonely" returns hits of people talking about how lonely they are in any city. The fact that they do this on the Internet makes it, to me at least, very sad.
Some people just struggle to make and keep friends.
I doubt it is the psychology, but the lack of shared experiences outside work. In school you have shared experiences and you grow to like some of the guys you hang out with. You don't hang out (much) at work and so don't have the shared experiences and consequently make no bonds.
Not the OP, but Death is a cruel mistress. Sometimes even a 40 year old will outlive quite a few friends. I'm 44 and about a 1/3 of my graduating high school class of 20 are gone. Of the friends I made in college about 1/3 moved and I didn't keep in touch, and a couple of other died. I never married (that billionaire comment tomcam feels a bit too true sometimes).
I have plenty of relatives along with close friends (enough that getting together to play Arkham Horror is becoming a logistic nightmare), but I could easily, with just a few unlucky breaks or moves, not have any close friends. It isn't even that uncommon.
If you have a phobia that impedes your life, you probably should overcome it. It's also easier to get over spiders, or get married than become a billionaire.
Yes, if you have a phobia you should overcome it. We know that telling people to just get over it doesn't work. That's why we provide short courses of carefully planned therapy.
Similarly telling a lonely person to just get over it does nothing to help that person. It might even make things worse - increasing feelings of failure and hopelessness.
same here.. except for the friends part. i feel happy with a lot but the difference is ive thrown myself into japan and dont have really close friends.
that sucks that the article scares you, stay strong my friend. my room in japan actually has started to look like the picture i saw in the article. back in the states, i was a much cleaner person but now i find it almost impossible and stuff is just lying around everywhere... the similarity is a little scary there but i just laughed it off like i usually do. im hoping ill be fine :)