Abdul

Abdul is a 26 year old man, from a BME background, studying mechanical engineering. Due to Covid-19, he had to move out of his University accommodation and at the time of the interview he was living with his mother and siblings.

Abdul says he has been feeling lonely since secondary school. He was surrounded by people he would call acquaintances but wanted close friendships with people he trusted with his problems and who understood and accepted him. However, he believes that happiness is everyone’s own responsibility and friends cannot provide it for you.

Abdul is lonely as an adult due to a lack of a romantic relationship or close friendships. He has a small social network and thinks this is due to him being shy, introverted, his social skills, but also to waiting for others to reach out to him to form friendships. During Covid, he realised that the friendships he had were not deep ones.

For Abdul loneliness is feeling left out or being overlooked. His loneliness is intensified when comparing himself to happy couples on social media and in films, or other people that may have more friends than him.

Abdul doesn’t see loneliness support groups or intiatives as relevant to him.  He thinks “forced friendships” that are driven solely by despair and a desire to connect will not stop him feeling lonely. Abdul feels that friendships can only be genuine if they are formed spontaneously based on common interests.

Abdul believes that apps should be developed that support people who may be experiencing loneliness by advising them how to deal with it and help them find likeminded people.

Abdul longs for close friends that feel like ‘family’.

Just like I suppose I want to like, I would really like my friendship to be quite close, friendships should be quite close so I want to feel like, like family not just like xxxx friends. I mean like I suppose this part, I mean this is I suppose quite difficult to achieve.I can recognise that I suppose if I had like one or two friends who, who were like close like family then that would be good, that would be sufficient as well.

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Abdul thinks support groups for loneliness only create “forced friendships”.

I haven’t ever joined a group because that would make it, I don’t know if that would, that would help because I just feel like in that group other people will just be maybe desperate for friendships I don’t know, I mean that just came into my mind, came into my head like some people are lonely they just want, they’re just happy to be friends with anyone and obviously that’s not what I want either. I want friendships to be genuine like proper friendships that weren’t you need to have a rapport, a rapport and genuine fondness for each other and a likeness, a likeness with appreciation for each other’s company.

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