Admitting you’re lonely to a friend feels risky. Often, they’ve been lonely too.

Loneliness feels like a fact about you rather than a situation you are in, which is why saying it out loud feels like a confession. The risk you are imagining is that it will make you less wanted. What tends to happen instead is recognition, because the person across from you has been somewhere similar and has been keeping quiet about it too. Said once, it stops sitting underneath everything else.

Tell one person in plain words, without making it a joke first. If that is too much, start by asking how they have been finding things lately.