# A Moment Versus a Lifetime: Patterns of Loneliness and Perceived Causes in People's Lived Experiences

## TL;DR

The study explores how different types of loneliness, especially chronic loneliness, are experienced and what people believe causes them.

## Contribution

The paper identifies four distinct patterns of loneliness and highlights unique perceived causes for chronic loneliness, such as childhood family issues and societal misfit.

## Key findings

- Chronic loneliness is often linked to childhood family relationships and societal misalignment, unlike transient loneliness.
- Recurrent and chronic loneliness are frequently attributed to personal traits like sensitivity and low self-acceptance.
- Four distinct loneliness patterns were identified: transient, recurrent, prolonged, and chronic.

## Abstract

For effective loneliness interventions, we need a better understanding of why some loneliness experiences persist (often labeled chronic loneliness), while most loneliness experiences remain transient. To provide starting points for future research on causes of chronic loneliness, interview data from adults ages 19–45 years from India, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Bulgaria, and Austria were reanalyzed. Because of little scientific consensus on the exact definition of chronic versus transient loneliness, different temporal patterns of loneliness were first distinguished in the data. Instead of two, four types emerged: Transient loneliness typically lasted some hours to 2 years; recurrent loneliness recurred every couple of weeks or months; prolonged loneliness lasted for multiple years; and chronic loneliness usually had its onset in childhood or adolescence and persisted for most people's lives. Perceived causes for loneliness were compared across those four temporal patterns, with findings showing that transient or prolonged loneliness was typically attributed to concrete external situations, but chronic loneliness was explained more by unfulfilling family relationships in childhood, perceptions that one does not fit in with societal norms, or high relationship expectations. Both recurrent and chronic loneliness were often attributed to sensitivity, rumination, overgeneralizations in relationships, or discomfort with oneself (e.g., low self‐acceptance).

Qualitative data were reanalyzed to explore how the chronic loneliness that people do not recover from differs from transient loneliness in lived experiences, and to explore self‐perceived causes for different loneliness patterns. Not only two, but multiple patterns of loneliness were observed. Different from other loneliness patterns, chronic loneliness was often attributed to unfulfilling family relationships in childhood or not fitting in with social norms.