Why We Leave Group Hangouts Feeling Lonely (Sometimes)

groups are about the collective, so we can feel lonely if it’s not what we need today

I love a group hang. It’s kind of my thing. I was telling my bestie the other day that I always like to have my next gathering on the calendar. (Guess what? It’s a June 30th last ditch celebration of Pride). My crew regularly does celebrations, video games, movies, and outings together. It’s pretty wonderful.

And I’ve also noticed-- and heard from other people-- that sometimes they do walk out after an event feeling a little bit lonely. I notice that when I host, especially, I sometimes feel like I didn’t actually talk to anyone so much as flit like a butterfly between various blooming flowers of conversation.

When what I want most was to be fully seen and connected, it can be really crushing.

So why does this happen? Maybe you read our take on why we feel lonely in crowds, but surely, when the group chat gets together we shouldn’t still be lonely?! Isn’t this what friendship is “supposed” to be?

Let Go of the Shoulds

Okay so first of all, when it comes to relating, let’s let go of the shoulds. Unless we’re talking about ethics and morality, shoulds aren’t all that helpful. 

There is no one way that friendship, friend groups, or connection of any kind have to look.

You get to prefer things one day and have a different preference the next. You get to misjudge your desires and organize a movie screening for 15 when you really wanted to do a spa night with your bestie. What we need and want shifts as we live life, as circumstances come and go, and as each day brings its unique joys and challenges.

Even if you grew up on a certain sitcom about 6 friends in a certain major city, I’m here to tell you that whatever [consensual, equitable] relationship structures fulfill you are the right ones for you. 

Okay but why?

• A group is its own being, not the sum of the people in it. Groups are not just proximate points on a scatter plot. They are dynamic and more complex socially and culturally than one-to-one relationships. Groups have in-jokes, vocabularies, and history that depend on all the members and their shared experiences.

  Like rivers carving out their banks, over time, groups build their own momentum and lay out patterns. My group of meditation friend group tends to gravitate toward meditation practice, walks outside, slow time. My dyed-in-the-wool activist friend group tends to do big gatherings, themes, high energy. But there ARE overlaps in those groups, it’s about what we bring out in each other.

  So the group needs you and it should feed you (in my opinion, literally and metaphorically) but it can’t and won’t focus on you in the same way a one-to-one connection can. It can feel lonely because you might be looking for some focus on you.

• Groups emphasize breadth and multiple points of connection; not depth. Now, there are some deep AF groups out there, but it takes a long time to build. The guys who go fishing every Saturday share about the deep stuff at a different pace than the bros who meet up for a walk in the woods. The group dynamic is about the magic and sparks that fly when we all get in there and do our thing; it tends toward what we hold in common and attention tends to be divided. If you’re lonely after the party, you may have needed something deeper.
  

• Groups often come together around a specific purpose or connection. This defines the direction of a group, and can be the primary thing that is happening. For my movie night group, we are watching movies. If the focal point of a group’s attention is the shared experience, the vibe is going to feel a little bit less “go with the flow” since there is already a specific plan set.

  For example, if you start watching the movie and realize you actually really want to get some fresh air, you now have to make a choice— stay with the group and compromise on your preference to be outside, or leave the group to meet that preference. In smaller groups or one-on-one hangs, it can be easier to get those preferences met without sacrificing the whole hang. So if you’re looking for something more free-flowing to feel connected, that can be a lot easier to do in smaller sets.
  

oops, Everything I do is in a group— what should I try?

We often go to groups because:

• The crowd provides some protection from being perceived (and there’s so many ways we are perceived in this modern age!) In a group, no one person is looking at you the whole time. You can laugh, listen, drift in and out, and let the attention move around the circle instead of feeling like an interrogation lamp is shining on you.

• It feels less risky to roll with a crew— less chance for rejection, more space to observe. If one person isn’t super engaged, there are six other people to talk to. If the conversation stalls, someone else might pick it back up. Groups can give us a little social cushioning, which can make it easier to relax, which can then in turn make it a little easier to feel most like ourselves.

• We aren’t sure if we’re really liked, and fear rejection. It can feel safer to be invited to the group thing than to ask one specific person, “hey, do you want to hang out just the two of us?” A group hang lets us feel included without having to put one particular relationship on the line. No one has to say yes to us specifically; they just have to say yes to the plan.

• We want to feel a little less “responsible” for the quality of the conversation. We want to feel a little less “responsible” for the quality of the conversation. One-on-one time can feel like a lot of pressure if you’re tired, anxious, or out of practice. In a group, you don’t have to carry the whole emotional weather system yourself. You can contribute, but you don’t have to be the entire vibe.

These are all valid-- and honestly, if you find yourself mostly having one-on-one hangs, these are reasons you should try hanging with groups more. But if you’re stuck in a group rut, you can try a few things:

• Come to a Skip the Small Talk! It’s a group, but emphasizes individual connections over group dynamics

• Test it out, think about the number of people in a relevant group and ask the ones you feel the most affinity for to hang out— separately. You’ll probably be surprised at your success rate.

• Remind yourself, people like you more than you think-- science even backs this up (read our take here)

So if you leave a group hang feeling a little lonely, it doesn’t necessarily mean the night was a failure. It doesn’t mean your friends don’t love you, or that you’re secretly bad at friendship, or that everyone else has unlocked some magical sitcom-level version of belonging that you somehow missed.

It might just mean that what you needed that day was not the group version of connection.

So the next time you leave a group hang feeling weirdly empty, try not to use that feeling as evidence against yourself or your friendships. Use it as information. Maybe the move is not “I need better friends.” Maybe the move is “I need a different shape of friendship this week.”

A walk with one person. A phone call. A dinner with three. A group hang where you pull someone aside for ten minutes and ask the real question. A Skip the Small Talk event where the whole point is to make the big group feel a little more human-sized.

Loneliness after a group hang is not proof that you don’t belong.

Sometimes it just means you were looking for depth, and the group was built for breadth.