Fear of Being Alone

Fear of being alone is one of the quietest, most misunderstood forces shaping the relationships we choose — and the ones we stay in long after we know, somewhere deep down, that they're not right for us.

It doesn't always look like fear on the surface. Sometimes it looks like "being realistic." Sometimes it looks like "not wanting to give up on something," or "not wanting to let them down." Sometimes it just looks like staying, because leaving means facing an empty home, a quiet evening, a new version of life with unknown challenges.

I want to tread carefully here, because I think this particular fear can carry some shame with it, and shame is exactly the wrong tool for understanding ourselves. We might have been made to believe that being alone makes us unlovable, unwanted, unworthy. None of that is true of course, but if we've been told those things early enough in our life, we might believe them regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

Settling because the alternative feels frightening

There's now a decent body of research on what psychologists call "fear of being single" (FOBS), and it lines up closely with what I see in the therapy room. A 2025 study in Acta Psychologica looked at whether this fear pushes people towards what the authors call "extreme" behaviour in the search for a partner — meaning any action that sacrifices other important goals, values or needs in order to get and keep a relationship. As the fear grows stronger, it can become disproportionately important, and people may lower their standards, ignore red flags, over-invest time, money or energy in the search, prioritise finding a partner over their own family, work or wellbeing, present a version of themselves that isn't quite true, or wave away well-meaning concerns from friends and family about someone's suitability (Bonarska et al., 2025).     

A separate study out of the University of Arkansas looked at the same fear from the angle of tolerance. Researchers found that the more afraid someone was of being single, the more relationship "baggage" — real, enduring issues that might otherwise be dealbreakers — they were willing to quietly absorb rather than walk away from (Wilbourn, 2025).

It isn't so much that people prefer unsuitable partners; it's that the cost of being single can come to feel heavier than the cost of staying in an unhealthy or unhappy relationship.

None of this is a character flaw. It's a nervous system doing what it was built to do: avoid the thing it has learned to associate with danger. Which brings us to the next part.

What the fear is really about

Fear of being alone is very often not about being alone at all — it's about what being alone makes you feel. When we're on our own, we no longer have anything to distract us from our most important relationship: the one we have with ourselves. It's in those long, unfilled hours that we finally hear our own inner voice clearly, and for a lot of us, it isn't a voice of kindness or compassion. It could be the voice of an inner bully, or even a huge void that can cause feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Interestingly, research suggests that singlehood itself isn't inherently bad for wellbeing — it's people who already struggle with depression, anxiety or emotional regulation who tend to find it hardest (Hoan & MacDonald, 2025).

And attachment research has repeatedly linked anxious attachment with both a stronger drive to find a partner and a greater likelihood of settling for a less satisfying relationship out of fear of being single (Spielmann et al., 2013).

As you might already sense, anxious attachment frequently has its roots in inconsistent or emotionally unavailable caregiving in childhood.

It makes complete sense that if you didn't reliably experience being seen, soothed and valued as a child, being alone with yourself as an adult won't feel safe or restful. It can feel like the original neglect or abuse resurfacing.

A 2025 study following childhood emotional abuse into adulthood found it predicted lower self-satisfaction largely through the attachment insecurity it left behind (Cecen & Gümüş, 2025). Childhood emotional abuse can disrupt a child's earliest relationships enough to plant beliefs like “I'm not worthy of love”, “others can't be trusted”, or “there's something wrong with me” — shaping that critical Inner Voice, and it's often that voice which makes time alone feel unbearable rather than restorative.

A 2025 meta-analysis adds a further piece: people with more secure attachment consistently show more self-compassion, while insecure attachment is linked with less of it. Those with anxious attachment tend to struggle with self-criticism, shame and a need for outside reassurance; those with avoidant attachment often lean on self-reliance and emotional distance instead, which limits their capacity for self-compassion too (Hill et al., 2025).

It logically follows that the healing tends to involve building a more secure relationship with yourself, whilst repairing self-worth, and undoing the toxic thought patterns that were shaped so early on.

The discomfort of your own company

In a well-known set of studies, a striking number of participants left alone in a room with nothing to do, chose to give themselves a mild electric shock rather than sit quietly with their own thoughts — a finding since replicated across eleven countries and still cited in current solitude research (Wilson et al., 2014). Some of us are, it turns out, remarkably willing to avoid our own inner world — that's how vicious that Inner Critic can get.

I believe that constantly filling the space around us with another person — a call, a text thread, someone in the next room — can sometimes become a way of never finding out who we are underneath all that external influence. Your preferences and desires, your belief systems, your actual likes and dislikes — all need a bit of quiet to surface. If that quiet always gets filled with someone else, a whole layer of you stays unmet and unseen — by anyone, including you.

The good news is that self-compassion is a trainable skill, well worth the time and effort it takes to learn (do have a browse of my resources on self-love).

Where RTT Therapy comes in

This is precisely the kind of pattern RTT was built for, because it rarely responds well to willpower or advice. “Just try to enjoy your own company" doesn't undo a nervous system that learned early on that aloneness can mean danger or discomfort.

RTT works by going back to where that belief first took root, so we can understand it, safely release it, and let something truer take its place: that you are the best company for yourself, and that whoever joins you next in your life's journey gets to be an addition, not a rescue.

RTT can take you to the place where you're genuinely looking forward to spending time with yourself, because you've remembered that you're your own best friend! Several of my previous clients now find real comfort and joy in their own company, which has gone on to transform all their other relationships too. As they became able to provide their own safety and emotional regulation, it freed them to discover their authenticity and build a healthy, nurturing relationship with themselves.

If any of this sounds familiar, you're very welcome to book a free consultation and we can talk it through.