This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Texas chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.
“You can’t love yourself out of loneliness.”
That was the first sentence of a TikTok I saw that probably changed my entire perspective on loneliness in your 20s. Jennifer, a creator by the name of @saintjenni on TikTok, went on to say that the many people who feel lonely don’t lack self-love, nor are their lives void of individual, meaningful relationships. What they lack instead is a meaningful community.
She explained that a person can have many individual relationships or friendships that they love and value, but oftentimes, they’re not the same as a community. According to Jennifer, the difference is that with the former, it feels as though you’re simply telling people about your life, whereas with the latter, you’re actually living life.
That deeply resonated with me because it articulated everything I had been feeling but hadn’t been able to put into words for almost two years now.
In my Fall semester of junior year, I wrote an article about how moving into a new apartment away from my college best friends (and previously, roommates) had launched me into a pit of insecurity and anxiety on coming to terms with my new routine and unwanted feelings of loneliness. I went from living with my best friends to only seeing them every now and then, and that was genuinely a difficult change to adapt to back then. At the time, I simply thought my emotional response came from a place of dependency or over-reliance on my friends, but looking back on it now, I think I might’ve had it all wrong. What I had sophomore year was a sense of community— a group of people I shared celebrations with, laughter, late-night conversations about life and death, sorrows, happiness, and everything else a group of four college girls could experience together. From my junior year onwards, I felt its absence.
Jennifer’s TikTok put what I felt into words perfectly. I have many individual friendships that I am incredibly grateful for and that I truly love and appreciate beyond what words could express. But at the end of the day, I can’t help but feel like I’m living life solitarily from one day to the next while updating people about it rather than sharing that experience with them. (Two things that are very different.)
This isn’t an individual experience, however. Through conversations with multiple people, I’ve learned this is something that many of us go through in our 20s, and the absence or lack of community is all the more pronounced during this decade of our lives.
It simply doesn’t get talked about enough because we, as a society, have created this notion that your 20s are defined by a hallmark of life events inseparable from meaningful community. Take college, for example. Every single aspect of college life is intertwined with the concept of meaningful community. It’s a hub for forming friendships, identity, romantic relationships, and much more, all of which can foster a sense of belonging and emotional engagement in us. Even the workforce, which many of us officially enter in our 20s, relies heavily on this idea of collective teamwork and community. Whether it’s meaningful to you or not may vary from person to person, but it’s just one of the many examples of how our 20s are transformed by a sense of community. For college students especially, when you see everyone around you experiencing these four years alongside their close-knit friend groups, it can’t help but feel like you’re living your 20s all wrong.
Even within the media, we’ve been disillusioned to expect a picture-perfect experience from our 20s, book-ended by self-actualization that’s supported by a community cheering you on. Iconic chick-flicks will show a 20-something woman coming back from a disastrous date or interview into the supportive arms of her friends. Later on, she may even have an epiphany in the middle of a crowded sidewalk that self-love is (somehow) the answer to all of her problems.
And just think about how many TV shows and movies you’ve watched that have shown community to be a part of one’s everyday routine: Friends, Sex and the City, The Sex Lives of College Girls, The Office, Grey’s Anatomy, New Girl, etc.
On the flip side, some media will paint romantic relationships as the ultimate form of community. In some ways, this holds true at a certain point in our lives. Whether it’s moving in together or tying the knot with marriage (both of which, oftentimes, also happen in your 20s), your romantic partner becomes your primary form of community. To some extent, that’s why many people (like Jennifer) find themselves searching for or relying on romantic relations instead. It makes perfect sense when you think about it (and trust me, I’ve thought a lot about this point). We idealize romantic partners as being representative of features that are found in a meaningful community: unconditional love, companionship, safety, living and growing together (as opposed to individually).
That isn’t to say romantic love can’t provide you with your own sense of community or that all people who seek romantic connections really only want platonic community, but it’s important to understand the distinction between the two and realize what you truly want. For many people who don’t, the commonality between platonic community and romance can not only result in an over-reliance on romantic relationships, but it could even lead you to being complacent in a relationship that’s not even what you truly want. Worst-case scenario, you could cling to a (toxic) relationship that’s more harmful than it is beneficial and secure.
In the end, I’ve come to realize that I could take myself to as many coffee shops as I want or treat myself to every materialistic item on a shopping wishlist (yes, that is a nod to Miss Carrie Bradshaw and her expensive pastimes). I could pour all of myself into the cup I drink from and love myself wholly, and maybe I could even share that cup with someone else. But nothing would amount to the feelings of comfort, reassurance, and belonging that come from having a community— held together by unconditional love, safety, and loyalty— that you know will always be there for you.
And I’m a firm believer in that every person, no matter how much they love themselves, can find themselves desiring this.
So no, it’s not that you don’t love yourself enough or that you aren’t trying hard enough. It’s not that you need a romantic partner to validate and fulfill your desire for companionship. And it’s certainly not that you’re clingy or crazy for feeling the way you do because this is an innately human desire.
The desire for community is wired within us, and it’s okay to want. When you realize it’s not a lack of self-love, you allow yourself to search for that community, and somewhere along the way, you will find it. It may not be in a stereotypical cramped college dorm or a coffee house, but when and wherever it happens, you’ll be grateful for the wait because you could never miss the community that is truly meant for you.
