When You’re Surrounded by People but Still Feel Alone

By Derek Colvin, LPC-S, CGT - The Giant Therapist

Real. Raw. Unfiltered reflections on friendship, loneliness, and the emotional lives of men.

The Kind of Loneliness No One Recognizes at First

There’s a strange kind of loneliness that sneaks up on men as we get older. It’s not the loneliness of having no one around, most of us are surrounded all the time. We have partners, kids, coworkers, responsibilities stacked so high there’s barely room to breathe. But underneath all of that noise, there’s this quiet ache that shows up in the in-between moments. The ride to work. The late-night dishes. The walk to the mailbox. It’s the ache of realizing that somewhere along the way, your friendships faded, and you didn’t even notice until the silence got loud enough to feel like something missing inside your chest. Men don’t usually name this feeling. We just feel it. And because we don’t know what to do with it, we tell ourselves we’re fine. We bury it under work, or humor, or silence. But the truth is, being surrounded by people doesn’t mean you feel connected. And sometimes the loneliest place you can be is in a house full of people who love you, while still feeling like you have no one to carry the things that sit heavy inside of you.

How We Learned to Be Together Without Ever Getting Close

Most men didn’t grow up learning how to build deep friendships. We learned how to build proximity to teammates, classmates, the kids who lived down the street. We learned how to bond over sports, video games, music, and trash talk. But we didn’t learn how to talk about ourselves. Nobody sat us down and said, “Here’s how you open up without feeling weak.” Instead, we figured out pretty quickly that showing emotion was risky. That vulnerability made you a target. That being the “soft one” invited shame. So we learned to be loud, funny, angry, competitive, anything but honest. And those patterns don’t magically disappear when you get married or have kids or turn 40. They follow you into adulthood, into your marriage, into fatherhood. You can build a whole life and still not know how to let another man truly know you. Not because you don’t want that kind of connection, but because you never learned how to start it.

Why Friendships Fade When Life Gets Full

Once careers take off and kids arrive, the friendships men rely on start slipping through the cracks. Not because we don’t care, but because friendship requires intentionality, and intentionality requires energy. And by the end of most days, there’s not much left to give. The shift is subtle. You stop texting as much. You cancel plans. You promise to catch up soon but never name a day. You assume you’ll eventually reconnect, and then months turn into years. And when you finally look up, the people who used to know your world barely know what your life even looks like anymore. The distance isn’t always about conflict. Sometimes it’s just the slow drift of two lives moving without a shared rhythm. But the emotional cost is the same: isolation, pressure, and the sense that no one really sees you for who you are beneath all the roles you carry.

When the Pressure Has No Place to Go

When men don’t have friends they can talk to, all that pressure gets funneled into one relationship: their partner. And even the healthiest marriages weren’t built to carry the entire emotional weight of two people. Your wife can be your person, but she can’t be your only outlet. No one was designed to hold all of someone else’s anger, sadness, confusion, and fear. Yet that’s exactly what happens to men who don’t have friendships with emotional depth. The pressure builds, and it leaks out sideways with things like irritability, withdrawal, shutting down, or exploding over things that don’t actually matter. I’ve been there. I’ve watched myself expect Sheena to carry things she was never meant to be responsible for. I’ve watched my own fear of vulnerability get mistaken for anger, and my hurt get disguised as silence. When a man has no place to put what he feels, he ends up hurting the people he loves most, not because he wants to, but because there’s nowhere else for it to go.

The Fear Behind “I’m Good, Bro”

One of the saddest truths about male friendships is that most men are starving for connection but terrified to be the first one to admit it. We’re afraid of being judged. Afraid of being dismissed. Afraid that if we show the parts of us that actually hurt, the other person won’t know what to do with it, or worse, won’t care. So we stay on the surface. We talk about sports and work and the latest show we’re watching. We joke. We tease. We fill the space with noise so the silence doesn’t expose how much we’ve been holding alone. Meanwhile, inside, there’s this question that feels too risky to ask out loud: If I disappeared tomorrow, would any man really know what I was going through?

Finding People Who Can Actually Hold the Real You

The answer isn’t to find a crowd, it’s to find a few. We don’t need dozens of close friends. We need one or two people who know when we’re not okay before we even say it. People who can tell the difference between “I’m busy” and “I’m drowning.” People who don’t flinch when we talk about the harder stuff. Those friendships don’t happen by accident. They grow in the soil of authenticity, and authenticity is uncomfortable as hell at first.

But here’s what I’ve learned: the moment you take the risk to go one layer deeper, you’ll know who can hold it. You’ll know who’s safe and who isn’t. You’ll know who’s capable of meeting you with the same honesty. And if you keep showing up that way, slowly, intentionally, you’ll build the kind of friendship that actually changes a man’s life. I’ve watched it in my own circle. I’ve watched it in clients. I’ve watched it in the men who sit across from me every week, exhausted from carrying everything alone.

Starting Small: The First Step Toward Something Real

The jump from small talk to real talk doesn’t have to be dramatic. It starts with something simple, something almost forgettable, an honest sentence in a place that usually gets a dismissive one. Instead of “I’m good,” you say, “Honestly, man, it’s been a rough week.” Instead of backing out of plans with a vague excuse, you say, “I actually need some time with people right now.” Instead of disappearing, you reach out. And yes, it will feel vulnerable. Yes, it might feel awkward. And yes, you might get rejected. But you might also find the thing you didn’t know you were missing: another man saying, “Yeah, me too. Let’s talk.” That’s how real friendship starts. Not with a big moment. With a small invitation into honesty.

What Happens When Men Stop Carrying Everything Alone

Something shifts when a man finds friends he can be real with. His marriage softens. His body relaxes. The reactivity in his chest loosens. He stops expecting his wife to be his entire emotional system. He becomes a better father because there’s room for patience again. He becomes a better partner because he’s not overflowing all the time. He becomes a better man simply because he’s no longer trying to white-knuckle his way through life’s hardest moments. We were never meant to navigate adulthood, fatherhood, marriage, or identity in isolation. Men need other men. Not drinking buddies. Not hobby friends. Not just coworkers. Men need the kind of friendships that make it safe to say, “Here’s what I’m actually feeling,” and know the room won’t fall apart. That's how we grow. That’s how we heal. That’s how we stay grounded instead of drifting into the loneliness we pretend we don’t feel.

A Gentle Push If You’ve Been Feeling This Too

If reading this stirred something in you, if you’ve been carrying more than you admit, if you’ve been telling everyone you’re “fine” while drowning underneath it, then here’s your invitation to stop doing this alone. Reach out to someone. Say something real

. Take the smallest step toward connection. You deserve friendships that hold you, not just ones that recognize your face.

And if you need a place to start, if you want someone to help you untangle the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding, you can always book a session with me. This is the work I sit with men in every day. You don’t have to keep white-knuckling it.

Stay Connected

If this hit home, share it with someone who needs it. And follow @themajopodcast on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, and TikTok for more real conversations about marriage, fatherhood, and the inner worlds of men.For deeper reflections and therapy-focused content, follow me on Instagram and TikTok at @thegiant_therapist, and on Facebook @thetherapygiant.