Almost everyone in the world is completely unaware of what is actually beneath the surface of what in a day to day way is called loneliness - it is the uneasiness caused by the unfulfilled and unsatisfied need for attention from others, preferably the fellow humans. Many of the unfortunate people under such circumstances try to get rid of the forlorn feeling trying to enjoy the company of their pets as a substitute for human companions.
Now what makes it so uneasy to deal with such a need. One apparent cause is the fact that a contemporary human individual, born and brought up in a society, of any sort, hardly ever gets the scope in his or her entire life to have an experience of true aloneness when there would be nobody whosoever around with whom to share anything - most importantly a thought or feeling. Even if the environment is hostile to a person, he or she gets to utter curses and abuses towards whoever may be around - that is also basically a form of sharing ones mind. It is completely useful when the complainant gets a retort - because for that at least some person or persons among others must pay attention to him or her. We, who live in a human society, closely connected to other human beings, go through series of such experiences, some favourable, some otherwise, right from the beginning of our life. It starts with the association with mother, then father and subsequently the others. So receiving attention becomes a part of our existence as banal and fundamental as our breathing - it is just natural to have the attention of at least some person around.
So mostly, for a person, to be unattended, is an unexpected and unusual situation to face. Here the expectation arises from the deeply ingrained habit, maybe we should call it our nature, of getting attention, in some way or other - favoured or hostile; it occurs from out of the realm of consciousness.
So a lonely person suddenly finds him or herself in a situation which is automatically labelled as problematic, bypassing the conscious experience - and hence the uneasiness. Also, for those matters, for the solutions to which we develop such a subtle dependence on others, so subtle that it even mostly remains outside the light of our awareness, the idea of helping ourselves does not occur spontaneously and very readily. That means whenever there is a situation like the one mentioned above, we are very readily faced with an uncertainty about how the need for attention is to be satisfied and the anxiety associated to such uncertainty. This anxiety caused by uncertainty, is what we so dearly name as loneliness.
