Loneliness comes in many, many forms. It exists along multiple axes and, as always, the blessed can discount the sufferings of the cursed, even if they are themselves impoverished along another dimension. I consider loneliness to be one of the great problems of society: loneliness for peers, loneliness for romance, loneliness for someone who might enjoy your company sexually. Loneliness for another person who might understand where you come from on some topic of importance to you. Some might search for others who have similar tastes in music, or film, or some other passion. Different people feel different forms of it to different degrees, but so much of it revolves around a simple concept: is there someone else who feels the same as I, who has the same thoughts about this thing? Can I really be the only one in this?
Think back and ask, when was the last time you had the response "yes, yes, exactly! Exactly like that! You've summed up what I have been trying to express"?
Relationships are only the most obvious form of this, and relief from this kind of unanswered question of the soul is balanced by the uncertainties of the trek to find someone "like." Will it take long? Will I find anyone at all? Or will I simply stagger about the landscape, a random walk of rejection, percolation theory with the personal pain of being, kindly put, unsuitable? Will I find myself utterly lost, like a penguin in a Herzog documentary pursuing some mountain I haven't the reserves to reach? Do I even begin the climb down off of the local maxima at all, knowing that descent is so often treacherous?
One of the more galling aspects is that just bringing up the topic invites advice given, all too freely, by those with no skin in the game. They will not suffer if their advice is incorrect. The person who glibly suggests you "get out there" will not experience the pain of rejection, the inner flinch as just one more sliver of your self-esteem is pared away as you recognize the suppressed flinch of revulsion on the face of another. And in this you discover, in a fractal nature, another kind of loneliness -- a person who does not care about your loneliness, making suggestions whether or not you would take them, only there to simply move the conversation to something more pleasant.
Give us a pill for that.