the more people you work with. Based on her 2012 study, which examined 212 employees in twenty-six teams, ranging from three to nineteen members, Mueller discovered that each employee becomes less engaged at work as team size increases. She theorized that this occurs because as team size gets bigger, each individual perceives that less support is available.
Support in this context may mean practical support, that is, training and feedback. But it surely also means the other kind of support as well — the emotional and psychological awareness that others around you care.
As Mueller put it: “[I]n these larger teams, people were lost. They didn’t know who to call for help because they didn’t know the other members well enough. Even if they did reach out, they didn’t feel the other members were as committed to helping or had the time to help. And they couldn’t tell their team leader because [it would look like] they had failed.” If this doesn’t describe distance caused by a lack of knowing and caring, I don’t know what does.
Moreover, when a team suffers a knowing and caring deficit, it appears that employees don’t just become more distant from one other; they also become more distant from the work itself. A survey published by Gallup showed that “employee engagement is broken down by company size, the smallest companies have the most engaged employees — and it [isn’t] even close. 42% of employees working at small companies of ten and fewer reported that they were engaged at work, a huge increase over the 27% to 30% of engaged people at larger companies.”
This disconnect between having people around and still feeling isolated is all about perceptions. It’s not a physical loneliness, but a loneliness of the heart and mind. It’s the new kind of loneliness creeping in. If you perceive that most of your coworkers know you and care about you, it may not matter how big your team is. But the smaller your team, the more likely it is that your colleagues will know you and care about you.
In other words, it’s not the number of hours you spend working on a project together. It’s not the number of emails you exchange or the number of meetings you attend together. Feeling integrated with those around you is really all about closeness — even at the workplace.
To start reducing loneliness in situational contexts like work, I recommend using proximity to others in service of creating closeness. Here’s one way to do that: use the recurring nature of work — seeing the same people every day — to get to know others gradually. Work is a low-pressure environment in terms of creating closeness (as opposed to a date, for example, where there’s more pressure to decide quickly if you like each other) and gives you the benefit of time. Feel people out, pick those you feel drawn to, and build closeness at a comfortable pace. Start with a chat in passing, and work up to getting coffee together before a meeting, for example. This process can, over time, make your office one of your favorite places to be!
Myth 3: If you’re lonely, just be around people.
Myth 3 reframed: Being around people can reduce or increase loneliness, depending on how those people make you feel — close to them, or distant.
Questions for Reflection
• How have your love relationships affected how lonely you feel? Have they made you feel more or less lonely?
• Which member of your family would you like to get closer to? Who would you like to let go of?
• Are there other relationship myths you would like to reexamine through the lens of closeness? What might they look like?
Which type of relationship do you tend to look toward to feel less lonely? Do you call your parents when you feel lonely? Do you go on dates looking for love? For two weeks, put this habit aside and turn your efforts toward creating closeness in another area of your life. Instead of calling on family members, cultivate some work relationships. Instead of going on dates, put more energy into your friendships.
Chapter Summary
Of all the myths about what “solves” loneliness, the three most problematic ones are:
1. Love is a reliable solution to loneliness. Love certainly reduces loneliness, given the right circumstances, but it can also increase loneliness. Closeness, unlike love, always works toward reducing loneliness. Closeness is useful in a way that love is not. Myth 1 reframed: Love is a mystery; closeness is not.
2. Some types of relationships are inherently closer than others. In fact, where a relationship falls on the spectrum from distant to close is a product of the mutual efforts of knowing and caring. No relationship (or type of relationship) is “supposed” to reduce loneliness. Myth 2 reframed: Any relationship can be close, and any relationship can be distant.
3. If you’re lonely, just be around people. Having people around does not in and of itself solve loneliness. What fills an interaction with a sense of satisfaction and happiness is how you make each other feel. Myth 3 reframed: Being around people can reduce or increase loneliness, depending on how those people make you feel — close or distant.
Try to relinquish these outdated notions about what “should” reduce loneliness. These myths will trip you up if you don’t put them to the side.
My favorite social experiment in learning to pick partners can’t be found in any social science literature. Instead, it can be found on your TV, Monday nights at 8:00 PM. It’s called The Bachelor.
For those who don’t know, The Bachelor provides one man — the eponymous bachelor — a group of twenty-five to thirty gorgeous women from whom he must choose a wife. Not a girlfriend, a wife. The goal of the show is to turn the bachelor into a married man.
The Bachelor is absolutely brilliant . . . just not at making marriages. According to Wikipedia, as of March 2015 only five marriages have come out of the twenty-nine seasons of The Bachelor and its gender-reverse counterpart, The Bachelorette, combined. But the show is genius at a particular aspect of relationships: making people think they’re falling in love.
How does the show do this? It’s easy to chalk it up to everyone being ridiculously good-looking, plus the impossibly romantic, expense-free dates. Rappelling down the highest cliff in Bali and then attending a private concert by the biggest local pop star, anyone? Swimming in a cove of endangered dolphins and then dining in a thousand-year-old castle? A little adrenaline, a little romance, and everyone’s in love!
But we all know it’s not that simple. Love is a mystery. . .but it’s not a conjuring act.
Perhaps everyone on the show believes they’re falling in love because they really want to be in love. The people who apply to be on the show are certainly a self-selected bunch. If you’re not looking for the experience of love and potentially marriage, there’s little reason to go on the show in the first place. Is it simply wish fulfillment?
Maybe. But one night as my husband (who good-naturedly tolerates it) and I sat watching the show, he made an intriguing comment. “Why doesn’t that girl just leave? She doesn’t like the bachelor at all. They have nothing in common.”
This gave me pause. In fact, the women almost never leave — they only depart when the bachelor rejects them. On very few occasions has a woman left simply because she wasn’t feeling it. But sometimes it’s glaringly obvious that a particular woman on the show is a bad match for the bachelor. Why doesn’t she just leave?
Her answer is always simple: “I think I could be falling in love!” “I think he could be my my husband.