Wanting to Be Left Alone, Yet Feeling Lonely

November 30, 2025|Tania Mullan

SOMA WELLNESS CO. | LIFE, WORK & BELONGING

Wanting to Be Left Alone, Yet Feeling Lonely

The Midlife Paradox

Because sometimes you do not need more people. You need one person or space where you can just 'be', without demands or performance.

Written and edited by Tarnia Mullan, Founder of SOMA Wellness Co. · November 2025 · 12 min read

Quick Answer

Why do I want to be alone but still feel lonely in perimenopause?

Wanting to be alone and feeling lonely are not opposites. Solitude can be your overloaded system asking for less noise, expectation and performance. Loneliness is the separate ache of not feeling understood or meaningfully connected.

In perimenopause, poor sleep, mood changes, brain fog, pain and the wider pressures of midlife can make ordinary socialising cost more than it used to. Both feelings can be true at once.

The house is not quiet. It is more like Grand Central Station with a dishwasher.

Someone is opening the fridge. Someone else is on speakerphone. A partner has arrived. Music is coming from one bedroom, laughter from another, and you have been asked three questions before you have finished answering the first.

You are not alone. Not technically.

Yet you can feel as though you are watching everybody else live a full life through a glass window. You can see it. You can hear it. You simply do not feel part of it.

At first, the withdrawing looks harmless. A friend asks about Friday and you say, "Can we do it another time?" You stop committing too far ahead because you know the woman who says yes on Monday may have absolutely nothing left by Friday.

Then "next weekend" becomes next weekend again. Messages sit unanswered. You see photos from the lunch you skipped and feel a small, sharp ache, even though staying home was exactly what you wanted.

That is the midlife paradox: wanting everybody to leave you alone, while quietly wishing one person would notice you have gone missing.

Why you can want solitude and still feel lonely

The Midlife Paradox is not really about becoming antisocial. It is about two needs that have been bundled together as though they are the same.

The first is the need for less input. Less conversation to track. Less noise. Less smiling when you are not fine. Less pressure to arrive cheerful, stay longer than you want to, remember everybody's news and explain why you seem different.

The second is the need for connection. Not a packed calendar. Not forty-seven notifications. Connection in the more difficult sense: somebody understanding what this season feels like without requiring a PowerPoint presentation first.

Midlife does not necessarily make women want fewer people. It often makes them want less performance and more authenticity.

That is why an unread message can feel exhausting while twenty honest minutes with the right person can feel like relief. One asks something from you. The other lets you put something down.

Withdrawing in midlife is not one single experience

Cancelled plans can look identical from the outside, but they do not always mean the same thing.

Sometimes you are simply peopled out. Noise, small talk and other people's moods feel like static against skin that has lost its protective layer.

Sometimes it is fatigue. When you are waking repeatedly, pushing through brain fog or carrying pain, getting dressed and driving across town can feel like an expedition.

Sometimes it is an identity shift. The friendships built around the woman you used to be may still matter, but the way you fit inside them has changed. You may no longer want to be the organiser, the rescuer, the funny one or the person who says yes before checking what yes will cost.

And sometimes withdrawal sits closer to depression or anxiety. The difference matters. Restorative solitude usually gives something back. Depression tends to flatten interest and hope, even when the room is quiet and nobody needs anything.

Worth knowing. Four different experiences can wear the same disguise: a cancelled lunch, an unanswered text, a quiet weekend that becomes a quiet month.

Why ordinary socialising can suddenly cost more

Perimenopause does not directly explain every friendship change, and research has not shown that fluctuating oestrogen simply causes social withdrawal. The safer explanation is more layered.

Healthdirect lists sleep disruption, anxiety and mood changes among common perimenopausal experiences, and all three can change how much social effort a woman has available. [1] Add caregiving, work, financial pressure, changing bodies, ageing parents, adult children and a relationship that may already be carrying years of unspoken load. The same birthday lunch can genuinely cost more than it did at 35.

A 2025 qualitative study of 509 Australian women described menopause colliding with work, family, relationships, finances, health and sense of self. For some women, menopause did not create those pressures. It amplified what was already difficult. [2]

Poor sleep deserves particular respect here. One broken night can shorten patience, increase sensitivity and make conversation harder to follow. Several broken nights can make a simple coffee feel like another appointment to survive. The full day-night pattern is unpacked in Exhausted at 3 p.m., Yet Wide Awake at 3 a.m.

Therapists sometimes use the phrase "window of tolerance" for the zone in which we can handle stimulation without tipping into overwhelm or shutting down. It is a useful metaphor, not a proven menopause measurement. In plain English, your available buffer may be smaller right now. That does not make you less loving. It means your system is carrying more.

Solitude and loneliness are not the same thing

Solitude is chosen. It can feel like taking off a bra that has annoyed you since 8 a.m. There is relief in it.

Loneliness is not measured by how many people are in the house or how many contacts are in your phone. It is the gap between the connection you have and the connection you need.

You can live alone and feel deeply connected. You can share a kitchen, a mortgage and three streaming subscriptions and still feel lonely.

The question is not, "How many people did I see this week?" It is, "Did I feel known and understood by anyone?"

That distinction matters because the answer to overload is not forcing yourself to socialise harder. And the answer to loneliness is not always more solitude. What helps is connection with lower demand and higher safety.

Not more people. The right people.

What the evidence tells us

Loneliness is common enough to be a public-health issue, not a private failure. The research points in a consistent direction:

Loneliness is widespread. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that two in five Australians experienced loneliness at least some of the time in the previous week in April 2025. [3]
Repeated loneliness deserves to be taken seriously. A 2025 BMJ Medicine study followed 11,412 Australian women aged 45 and older over 18 years. Women who reported loneliness at all six measured waves had more than three times the risk of death during follow-up compared with women who reported none. This does not mean one quiet season is dangerous — it shows long-term, repeated loneliness matters. [4]
Social wellbeing belongs in brain-health conversations. A 2026 study of 903 perimenopausal women found that loneliness and objective social isolation were each associated with subjective cognitive decline, with the highest odds where both were present. It was cross-sectional and self-reported, so it cannot prove cause. [5]
Shared experience helps. A 2024 qualitative study of 71 women found friendships with other women going through similar changes could provide comfort, solidarity and a sense of being understood, while some older friendships shifted or became harder to maintain. [6]

Friends going through similar symptoms can become closer.

— 2024 study of friendships and menopause [6]

Connection does not have to be demanding

The friendships that fit the woman you were do not automatically become wrong. But they may need a new shape.

The friend who used to expect a three-hour lunch may become the friend you walk with for twenty minutes. The group chat may need to survive without your running commentary. A catch-up can be arranged with an exit time before you arrive. You can say, "I would love to see you, but I may only have an hour in me."

This is not lowering the standard of friendship. It is making the friendship possible.

The 2024 relationships study found that women often valued support grounded in shared, embodied experience. Some described becoming closer to women who were also going through perimenopause, while relationships without understanding could feel more fragile. [6]

You may also notice that your old social identity no longer fits. If that is the deeper ache, I Don't Feel Like Myself Anymore goes further into the grief and confusion of losing access to the version of yourself everybody expects.

A Peek Behind the Curtain

The window emoji that became a lifeline 🪟

There was a period when my house was full and I still felt lonely.

Three young adults lived at home. Friends and partners came and went. There was laughter, music, food disappearing from the fridge and enough movement to make the hallway feel like a train platform.

I was not lonely because nobody was there. I was lonely because nobody was in the same life stage. I did not yet have language for what was happening, and I did not have the energy to keep translating it.

I started delaying plans rather than cancelling them outright. "Can we do it another time?" sounded reasonable. Then I stopped making plans too far ahead because I could not predict whether I would want to leave the house when the day arrived.

It felt like watching everybody else live through a glass window. I could see the fullness of their lives, but I was not inside it.

Around that time, a close friend developed a small signal. Instead of asking, "Can you talk?", one of us would send a window emoji.

It meant: do you have a window to connect today? 🪟

If a window came back, we talked. If it did not, there was no judgement and no explanation required. We both understood that silence meant no capacity, not no love.

Having one person who understood without needing me to find the perfect words took the pressure off. It gave me the sense that I was not completely alone inside it.

Looking back, I did not need more people. I needed safer connection.

Tarnia, Founder, SOMA Wellness Co.

Steal this: The Window Check-In 🪟

Text one person a window emoji, or create your own signal. Its meaning is simple: do you have a small window to connect? A yes can mean a call, a voice note or ten minutes on the front step. A no means exactly that: not today. Nobody is offended. Nobody has to manufacture a reason. Love stays the same.

It works because it removes the two things that make connection feel expensive when capacity is low: uncertainty and obligation.

What actually helps when connection feels expensive

1. Start smaller than your old social life. One person is enough.

2. Name your capacity before the catch-up. "I would love to come, but I will probably leave early" is a complete sentence.

3. Use low-pressure contact. A voice note can be easier than a live phone call. Walking side by side can be easier than sitting face to face. Doing something simple together can remove the pressure to fill every silence.

4. Let good friends update their expectations. If they love you, give them the chance to understand that delayed replies are about capacity, not care.

5. Notice what solitude does. Does an hour alone settle you, or does it deepen the heaviness? Do you re-enter life feeling more like yourself, or less interested in everything? That pattern is useful information.

6. Get help when withdrawal stops feeling restorative. Persistent low mood, hopelessness, loss of interest, major anxiety, inability to function or thoughts of self-harm need more than a quieter weekend. A GP can help you sort through menopause, mental health, sleep, medication, thyroid, iron and other possible contributors.

You do not have to force yourself back into every room. You do need at least one door that still opens.

One simple thing to try today. Send one honest message today. Not an apology. Not a detailed explanation. Just: "Thinking of you. No need to reply." It leaves a thread between you without turning connection into another job.

Where SOMA fits

SOMA focuses on the nervous system because connection is easier to choose when the body is not constantly braced, exhausted or overstimulated. Why the Nervous System? explains the wider thinking behind that approach.

Our SOMA Circle is designed as a low-pressure room where a woman can arrive alone, join in at her own level and be around others who understand that quiet does not mean disengaged. It is community, not therapy, and it is time you carve out to prioritize yourself. Because you matter too.

Our SOMA Duo is a repeatable morning-and-evening botanical ritual that supports your nervous system around the clock, so you have more capacity for daily life.

The point is not to make you more social. It is to help create enough steadiness that solitude and connection become choices again, rather than opposite sides of the same shutdown.

→ Explore the SOMA Duo

SOMA Circle — a lower-pressure way to feel less alone. Come alone. Join in at your own level. Talking is optional. Being understood is the point.

→ Discover SOMA Circle

The right room

Maybe midlife is not asking you to refill the calendar you have been quietly emptying.

Maybe it is asking you to notice which rooms require a performance, and which ones let your shoulders drop.

You do not need a bigger circle. You need connection that fits the woman you are now.

Not surrounded. Understood.

Not more people. The right room.

Share this article. If this gave you language for something you have struggled to explain, send it to the friend who has gone quiet lately, or to the one who keeps checking in without demanding an answer. Maybe suggest the window emoji

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Join the conversation. Have you been craving more solitude while also feeling lonelier, and what kind of connection feels easiest to receive right now?