There's a particular quiet that shows up about three months after you move somewhere. The boxes are gone. You've worked out which supermarket is the good one. And you realise you haven't had a proper conversation with anyone in eleven days.
It happens at twenty-five, to someone who moved for work. It happens at sixty-five, to someone whose circle has thinned out through moves and illness and the ordinary attrition of decades. Same quiet.
What the research says
In a 2022 survey of nearly 219,000 adults across 26 US states, the CDC found that about half of LGBTQ+ adults felt socially isolated at least some of the time, against three in ten straight adults. The average hides a wide spread: 41% of gay men, 45% of lesbians, 57% of bisexual people, and between 56% and 64% of trans people.
It's easy to assume loneliness is an old-age problem. It isn't. When Meta and Gallup surveyed people in 142 countries in 2022 and 2023, adults aged 19 to 29 reported more loneliness than those over 65. It turns up early, in the gap between having somewhere to live and having somewhere to belong.
It's also tangled up with housing, which almost nobody mentions in the same breath. In a 2022 survey for Generation Rent and the charity akt, nearly one in five LGBTQ+ private renters said they'd faced discrimination from a landlord or letting agent because of their sexual orientation. And when Tonic, Stonewall Housing and Opening Doors London asked 624 LGBTQ+ Londoners over fifty about retirement in 2020, 56% said they'd choose an LGBTQ+ retirement community, while only 1% preferred a general one. That's a London survey, so treat it as London.
Put those next to each other and something fairly obvious appears. Where you live, and who you live near, isn't a separate question from whether you're lonely. It's most of the question.
Why the usual advice doesn't work
The standard advice is to download something. And the apps do work at what they're for. They make it possible to meet someone tonight in a city where you know nobody, which for a lot of people has been a lifeline.
But meeting isn't knowing. The social platforms are built to hold your attention. The meet-up apps are built to make people findable. Neither one is built to leave you with somebody who notices when you've gone quiet for a fortnight. You can scroll for two hours, message four people, and put the phone down at midnight knowing nobody new. That isn't a personal failing. It's what those tools do.
What actually shifts loneliness is slower and much less interesting: repetition, proximity, and time spent alongside the same people more than once.
What works, roughly in order
1. Pick something that repeats
A one-off event gives you an evening. A thing that happens every Tuesday gives you people. Choir, running club, five-a-side, a language class, a regular volunteering shift. What it is matters far less than how often it is.
Give it six sessions before you decide. Nobody feels part of anything in week one, and most people quit in week two.
2. Treat where you live as a social decision
Here's the version of this that actually happens. You go to see a room. It's fine, the rent is what the advert said, and you're reaching for your coat. Then somebody puts the kettle on. Forty minutes later you're still standing in the kitchen talking about something that has nothing to do with the flat.
That's the one to say yes to. Not because the room was better, but because you already know what living there would feel like on a wet Tuesday in February. Nobody puts that in the listing.
This is the one people skip, because rent is the number they're looking at. But when you sign a tenancy you're also choosing who you'll be within twenty feet of, every day, for the next year. Proximity is about the strongest predictor of friendship there is.
A flatshare with people you've actually got something in common with will do more for your loneliness than any app. So will picking the neighbourhood where the community is visible over the one that's twenty minutes cheaper. If you're older and thinking further ahead, intentional communities and co-housing exist for exactly this, and there are more of them every year.
3. Be the one who suggests the second coffee
Most friendships die in the gap between the first meeting and the second, because both people are waiting for the other one to suggest it. Be the one who suggests it. It feels excruciating, but it can help turn a first meeting into a friendship.
4. Volunteer for something that needs you weekly
Volunteering gets you the repetition, plus a reason to be there that isn't "I am trying to make friends". The reason matters more than you'd expect. Having a task takes the pressure off the socialising, which is exactly what lets the socialising happen.
5. Don't travel alone by default
Travel is one of the few situations where strangers get close quickly, because you're sharing days rather than an evening. Staying with a local instead of a hotel, joining a small group trip, going away with someone you've met once. All of it beats a week of solitary sightseeing.
The person who hands you the keys usually knows which street is worth walking down at dusk, where to eat on a Sunday, and who else is around that week. A local host may offer a more personal introduction to the place than a hotel can.
6. Build the practical layer too
Belonging isn't only about friends. A GP you don't have to explain yourself to. A therapist who doesn't need the background filled in. Over time, the number of people in your life who already understand adds up to something that feels a lot like being at home somewhere. Worth choosing on purpose rather than taking whoever comes up first.
If you've been here a while
Most of this is written for the person arriving. But the fastest route to a less lonely community is the people already in it doing the inviting.
If you've lived somewhere for years, you almost certainly know somebody who's newly arrived, newly single, newly out, or newly on their own. The invitation costs you an evening. It can change somebody's entire first year.
That goes double across generations. The twenty-five-year-old and the sixty-five-year-old in the same city are usually working on the same problem in separate rooms, and there's no good reason for it.
The honest bit
None of this is fast. Adult friendship takes months, and anyone promising otherwise is selling something.
But loneliness isn't a personality trait. It responds to circumstance, and circumstance is something you can change on purpose. Pick where you live with people in mind. Find the thing that repeats. Suggest the second coffee. And once you're settled, turn round and invite the next person in.
Among Our People is an LGBTQ+ platform for housing, community living, companionship, travel and a directory of LGBTQ+ professionals, built for people at every stage of life. We make the introduction. You build the rest. ✦
Last reviewed: 17 October 2026
Sources
- CDC, Loneliness, lack of social and emotional support, and mental health issues, United States, 2022
- Meta-Gallup, The Global State of Social Connections (2023)
- Landlord Today, report on the Generation Rent and akt survey (2022)
- Tonic, Stonewall Housing and Opening Doors London, Building Safe Choices (2020)