The Uncomfortable Truth About Why So Many Women Feel Alone

If you’re a woman who often feels peripheral—liked on the surface but not truly seen—you are far from alone. Maybe you’re warm, encouraging, reliable. You put in the effort. You smooth things over. You’re present when expected. You agree, you strive to be pleasant company. And yet the deep intimacy that makes you feel accepted, understood, and safe rarely arrives. After gatherings you leave feeling drained or oddly hollow. You notice that people seldom initiate contact. You wonder whether you simply don’t click the way others seem to. This experience of being among people but still feeling separate can be acutely painful and persist year after year, even when outwardly everything looks fine. Over time it’s easy to start believing this is just how your life will be. In clinical and teaching settings, however, a recurring dynamic often explains this pattern, especially for women who grew up with trauma or instability. I call it covert avoidance. Covert avoidance doesn’t look like dramatic withdrawal. On the contrary, folks caught in this pattern often appear as if they’re doing everything “right.” They maintain jobs, relationships, smiles, and participation, while quietly keeping others at a distance. For many, it’s so habitual they don’t even notice it. You may tell yourself you’re simply too exhausted to make plans, or too busy to follow through. You might promise to be there “next time,” and then never show up. You may scroll your phone while someone attempts to reach you, or keep chats superficial when something meaningful wants to be said. Sometimes covert avoidance takes the form of staying stuck in a draining position, or holding on to friendships that never move beyond polite small talk. It can be expressed by rarely revealing how you actually feel—even to trusted people—or by dodging real commitments because exposure feels unsafe. None of this may register to you as avoidance. It may feel like tiredness, shyness, or being thoughtful and unobtrusive. You might even tell yourself you’re being considerate by not imposing. But when these patterns repeat, when most relationships stay shallow, when loneliness becomes a persistent undertone and connections don’t nourish you, covert avoidance is often at work. In my teaching, covert avoidance typically develops as a coping strategy for managing stress and nervous system dysregulation. When ordinary connection feels overwhelming because the nervous system is hyperaroused or numbed out, people begin to withdraw quietly—often without conscious intent. It may seem like it’s just temporary, “for now,” and not because of indifference, but because they’re managing far more than they can show. If avoidance is your way of handling dysregulation, the most transformative step is learning to recognize the signs of dysregulation so you can begin to reeregulate. To help with that, there’s a quiz you can download to identify which indicators show up in your life. You’ll find a link to it in the first line of the description beneath this video; click it and it will be sent to your inbox. Using avoidance might feel soothing in the short term, like a safe space, but over time it constructs a barrier between you and both the people you care about and those who might care about you. How do you interrupt that habit? The initial move is awareness—notice when you’re holding back, faking attention, planning your exit, choosing text over conversation, or saying “next time” when you don’t mean it. Once you spot the pattern, take a deliberate step in the opposite direction—one that actually matters. Here are some practical places to begin. First, be honest when you want to decline. Much covert avoidance is cloaked in courteous excuses: “Maybe,” “We’ll see,” or “I’m swamped.” The truth might be simply that you don’t want to go. When you give a false yes or a white lie to cover a no, you distance yourself from genuine connection. A bolder, healthier choice is to answer candidly: “I’m not up for that this week,” or “Thanks for asking, but I can’t this weekend.” People can tolerate that. Those who can’t aren’t likely to offer the kind of closeness you actually need. Truth-telling feels risky, but it is the gateway to being visible. Second, catch yourself as you start to fade. Covert avoidance rarely involves dramatic exits; it is a slow dimming. You may go quiet mid-conversation, glance at your phone, or mentally leave a room long before you physically do. If this is familiar, try staying one more minute. Hold eye contact. Offer one honest sentence before you go. There’s no need to overshare—just remain present a bit longer. Repeating that extra minute teaches your nervous system that connection can be survived, and sometimes even replenishing. Third, let at least one conversation be about you. Many women who carry chronic loneliness are exceptional listeners: they ask thoughtful questions and make others feel at ease while keeping their own inner life concealed. If someone asks how you are, resist defaulting to “fine” or immediately turning the focus back to them. Share one small, truthful detail about your day, mood, or life. Say, for example, “Today was tough; I barely slept,” or “Something wonderful happened at work,” or “I’m dealing with something and I’m not sure how to handle it yet.” Those small disclosures are how people begin to know you—and being known is the antidote to loneliness. Fourth, reach out to someone you’ve been avoiding. Avoidance often leaves a trail of relationships that were once meaningful—friends, relatives, coworkers, neighbors—who you never quite reconnected with. Rather than carrying guilt or waiting for the “perfect” moment, send a simple message: “Hey, I know I’ve been quiet. I’d love to catch up.” No elaborate justification is necessary. It’s an opening. Whether they reply or not, you’ve taken a step away from hiding. Fifth, stop defaulting to “I’m too busy” or “I’m exhausted” as covers. Busyness and fatigue are convenient, socially acceptable masks for covert avoidance. They deflect questions. But when those become your reflexive responses, they cut you off from people who might actually care. Instead of “I’m too busy,” try, “I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now.” Rather than “I’m so tired,” try, “I’m not ready to commit to that.” Those phrasings are not oversharing; they are honest. Aligning your words with reality opens the possibility of connection. You probably won’t feel the change immediately, but you will notice it if you keep trying: people stop feeling brushed off, and your privacy or desire for space won’t be forced into awkward explanations. These actions are small, yet they accumulate. Covert avoidance isn’t something you cure in a single attempt, but it’s something you can observe, interrupt, and slowly shift away from. The aim isn’t perfection; it’s learning sustainable ways to reeregulate so you can accept invitations, make commitments, and say yes to relationships with the confidence that you can step back if you need to. Boundaries, reeregulation, and honest communication are the tools that expand life beyond the narrow, lonely loop that covert avoidance creates—moving you toward a broader, more connected existence. Connection doesn’t wait for the ideal cast of people; it happens when you begin to show up as you are. When women start practicing these shifts—saying no truthfully, staying present for an extra minute, allowing themselves to be known, reaching out without elaborate apologies, and dropping the “too busy” defense—there is a gradual but powerful shift. The sense of separation loosens. Not every interaction will deepen, and not every person will move toward you, but enough small moments will change that you begin to feel it: some people lean in, conversations become richer, and you feel less like an observer of life and more like an active participant. That is the work of dismantling covert avoidance—not forcing intimacy or persuading people, but removing the blocks that keep connection from occurring naturally around you. Over time, those choices add up. Loneliness stops being the default. By the way, a new book, Connectability, has just been completed; it focuses on healing the subtle ways people isolate themselves, including covert avoidance. You can recover from these patterns and be fully present in life, forming relationships that feel safe, joyful, and meaningful. A purchase link will be in the second row of the description under this video; the book is also stocked in some bookstores and available through most online booksellers. You can also look up my other book, Coming Out of Isolation: Ending the Great Loneliness, on Amazon. This work takes practice, so don’t rely solely on videos. Equip yourself with tools and a community of people also learning to connect. One place that offers that support is a membership program with a lively online community—book clubs, people reading the books, taking courses, all included. Details are linked in the description below and on the website. Having resources and community can speed up healing and help you learn to reeregulate your nervous system so you no longer have to avoid people just to feel manageable. That is at the heart of why avoidance develops: the sense that being around others will be too dysregulating. As you get better at returning yourself to a calmer state, you can step into social life again and find it enjoyable. Dysregulation is the engine behind covert avoidance: when the system is too activated or too shut down, ordinary closeness feels intolerable. Avoiding by staying overbooked, zoning out, or holding everything in becomes automatic. The pivotal moment arrives when you can soothe yourself back to center—you won’t have to disappear or tune out; you can stay present long enough for connection to emerge. That is the work: recognizing moments of dysregulation, using tools to bring yourself back to balance, and then entering connection from that steadier place. It isn’t always comfortable or simple, which is why the approach is gradual—what therapists call titration—taking small, manageable steps rather than leaping into a sudden flood of socializing. Little by little, covert avoidance loosens its hold and connection starts to appear in life as naturally and reliably as sunrise. You belong to the human family; it’s time to step in and take your place. If this video resonates, there’s another one you might love right here, and more content coming soon. For some people, avoidance can become almost addictive—preferring the permission to withdraw that overwhelm or exhaustion provides, allowing yourself to lie down and stay isolated. [Music]