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Lonely in love

Sue Quilliam explains why being in a committed relationship can make you feel alone

You're committed to your partner. You may be living together, engaged or married, even have children. You have no doubt that this is a serious love.

So why do you feel lonely? Surely, this isn't supposed to happen? You believed that if you found the love of your life, you would always havea best friend, someone to talk to and would never be lonely again.

Feeling like this doesn't make you weird, or unique. Many women have the same experience.

You can feel cut off from the world
When you commit yourself to your partner and your relationship, your life changes and as far as social contact goes, that shift is often for the worse.

Perhaps being a couple means you've cut yourself off from friends or family. Spending time with your partner seemed so important that everyone else in your life took a back seat.

Perhaps having children means that you are housebound and lacking adult contact. You become dependent on your partner for company, conversation and emotional support. And that's dangerous.

You can feel emotionally cut off
It's particularly dangerous because within any relationship, there's a natural move towards separation. This sounds strange as surely love brings you together?

But actually, once you commit yourselves, you spend more time apart. The first excitement's died and other things, like work and children, are more demanding. Even when you are together, you may not feel happy. Almost every couple hits problems when they start to build a committed relationship. You're different people, with different needs and it's a challenging tightrope to stay happy and fulfilled.

And, because you've always expected fulfilment, you may feel like a hopeless failure. At least when you are single, you can look forward to the companionship of love. When you're in a relationship and you're lonely, you ask yourself 'is this it?'

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