Lonely in a Crowd: When Being There Still Isn’t Belonging

Loneliness is usually imagined as being alone. But many autistic people describe something different—and harder to explain: being surrounded by people and still feeling profoundly lonely. That paradox is what my paper tries to make sense of

Preprint Link: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rjeus_v1 

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The puzzle: lonely, but not isolated

Autistic adults consistently report high levels of loneliness. That part isn’t new.

What is puzzling is this: many of the people reporting loneliness aren’t socially isolated at all. They may be:

• in classrooms
• in workplaces
• in families
• in social or clinical settings
• interacting with others every day

And yet, the loneliness doesn’t go away.

Most research has treated loneliness as a side effect of:

• limited social contact
• social skills differences
• anxiety or depression

But those explanations don’t fully explain why loneliness can persist even when social contact is present. So the paper asks a different question: What if loneliness isn’t about absence—but about the conditions of presence?

Presence without belonging

The central idea I propose is called Presence Without Belonging. It names a situation many autistic people recognize immediately: you’re included on paper, but not received in ways that feel livable. You can show up. You can participate. You can comply. But something essential is missing. Belonging, in this framework, requires three things—not just contact.

The three conditions that turn presence into belonging

1. Recognition
Recognition means being understood as a legitimate social subject—not constantly misread, corrected, infantilized, or doubted. Many autistic people describe:

• having their emotions misinterpreted
• being spoken over
• having their self-reports discounted
• being treated as less credible than others

When recognition is unreliable, interaction becomes fragile. You can be present—but never quite trust that you’re being seen or believed.

2. Access

Access isn’t just about ramps or captions. Social interaction itself has access conditions. For autistic people, access can be blocked by:

• fast conversational pacing
• sensory overload
• reliance on implicit social rules
• limited tolerance for alternative communication (including AAC)

Even when participation is technically possible, it may require extraordinary effort to keep up. That effort adds up.

3. Sustainability

Sustainability asks a question that inclusion efforts often forget: Can this level of participation be maintained over time without breaking someone down?

Many autistic adults describe the cumulative costs of: masking, repairing misunderstandings, constantly adjusting and repeatedly negotiating accommodations When participation is only possible by enduring these costs, withdrawal isn’t a failure. It’s self-protection.

Why more social contact doesn’t fix this

This framework helps explain something research has already hinted at: simply increasing social contact doesn’t reliably reduce loneliness. If interaction continues without recognition, access, or sustainability, loneliness can actually deepen. Being present but not received can hurt more than being alone. That’s why reassurance (“You’re not alone!”) or pressure to socialize more often falls flat. It treats loneliness as a personal feeling to manage, rather than a signal that something about the environment isn’t working.

Loneliness isn’t a personal failure

One of the most important shifts this paper argues for is this: Loneliness in autism is often not a failure to connect. It’s a predictable response to systems that allow presence without supporting belonging.

This reframing matters because it:

• challenges deficit-based explanations
• explains why socially active autistic people can still be lonely
• makes sense of why autistic-majority or norm-flexible spaces often feel less lonely—even when social networks are smaller

In those spaces, recognition is more reliable, access is built in, and participation is more sustainable.

Why I wrote this

If we want to reduce loneliness, the question isn’t just:
How do we get people into the room?

It’s: What would it take for being there to actually feel like belonging?