You get pretty lonely when everyone under 35 has fucked off somewhere else
No wonder, we’re all separate and surrounded by water
Why wouldn’t we? Look at us, stuck out there in the middle of the Atlantic all on our own, while the other EU countries can cuddle up to each other…
I wonder does it has something to do with our population density? If you live in Dublin, you will regularly see groups of older people getting the bus or DART to town for food/drinks. Whereas, you live in the middle of nowhere that is not possible.
I’m not surprised in the slightest by these results. Even on this sub alone, there’s often posts from people saying that they’re lonely, and they’re often quite young.
It’s sad to think there’s so many lonely people out there.
I don’t think loneliness is necessarily lack of company. People can be surrounded by people and feel lonely. I think that loneliness is being surrounded by people who don’t truly get you and this can make you feel alone. That’s true loneliness, in my opinion. There’s also a lot of people who feel lonely in relationships. I think there’s a difference between longing for company, and loneliness, but different people have different opinions of what it constitutes.
Ultimately, I think humans just want to feel seen and heard. It’s such a simple thing but can be elusive for many.
Makes sense when you see the amount of emigration here. Sure there was a post today of someone saying the last of their mates had left for Australia and they were wondering how to make some more friends.
Ireland has been made a place for MNCs and tech companies, its soul has slowly been chipped away at in the name of making money.
Well, we are quite detached as the image shows
Yeah I can see that being the case here tbh
And then you’re trying to be friends and they just ghost ya
IME it’s because while Irish people are very friendly and seem very open at the start, it’s a surface level friendliness and sometimes it’s actually just nosiness. It’s not that easy to make close friends with Irish people, even if it’s someone you see every day and chat to all the time. You see them at work or the pub but never been to each other’s houses.
I think places like Spain Italy have there meals as a social get together means a lot of socialising. Here it isn’t so much
Don’t care. I’m a lone wolf. Perfectly fine on my own.
^^^^Hug ^^^^me ^^^^please.
I’m happy to be anyone’s friend if they’re lonely.
I hate the thought of people out there by themselves. Everyone deserves someone to talk to.
DM me if you need a pal.
So who is gonna make the sub for the lonely Irish?
That’s what turning a city into a suburbia does. People not living in apartments. All separate without the culture of being out in town squares.
I get that. I moved from Cork to Dublin during COVID for work and ever since then the only people I kind of see a lot are colleagues and maybe one friend or so. My other friends either still live in Cork or moved abroad.
loneliness is killing me to be honest. I don’t think I’ll ever not be lonely
So it’s not just me then
I expected it to be higher honestly
I remember living in Spain. I was meeting a friend at a metro station and bumped into another friend. He refused to leave me the fuck alone until my other friend arrived so i wouldn’t be alone. Bastard (great guy none the less).
Can confirm
Isn’t it amazing how loneliness just stops at the border. I guess being occupied means you have constant company.
Based on that picture, the UK sank into the ocean once they voted for Brexit. 😅
Both my parents moved to Meath as kids from the west of Ireland, they were not made feel welcome in the communities they joined. And a big part of the problem with Ireland is that families is the first layer of community in Ireland and if you don’t have that connection with people you are already in trouble. So many people who come to Ireland to live say that Irish people are easy to talk but find it hard to break into communities (pretty much impossible) without a family connection.
The next layer is secondary school, so many people still hang out with people from the same school and when older even move to areas with people from their old school there. Another community it is hard to break into.
The church used to offer a sense of community, you would meet people once a week, events were organised by the local church, it was something at least, a way into a community. The church’s influence is gone and it is a shame that it took the sense of community with it but it is just that, a shame.
I am not surprised a lot people feel lonely in Ireland, a lot of communities we form then exclude more include.
Any source for this? I’m really sceptical of maps on Reddit. They’re usually just ‘post-and-go’ jobs. This one is (unfortunately) credible but it’d be good to know the origin of the information,
I’m not really surprised by this. It’s very hard to make friends here, and if I’m completely honest we’re just a very superficial/fake bunch. Like someone said earlier, we’re great craic when drunk but rarely wanna communicate the next day. Basically, if you don’t still have the friends you went to school with you’re fucked. I definitely have waaay more acquaintances in my life than friends. Sad but true, although I grew up in the countryside so I’m pretty immune to feeling lonely.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Irish people are very superficially polite but when it comes to building a friendship it’s extremely difficult. Foreign people ask all the time when they struggle to make friends yet we’re supposed to be the land of a thousand welcomes and I say this as an Irish person who hasn’t any family close by and every friend I had has emigrated either during the economic crash or in recent years.
People are very clicky and it’s hard to find a click.
We used to be really social people, would talk to strangers like you have known them your whole life.
We need to bring back Irish socialising.
I know it may seem awkward at first, but try making some small talk. Give someone a compliment (if you don’t know them, compliment an article of clothing or something because you still can’t quite go up to someone and say “I like your eyes”.
Obviously don’t practice this where the wannabe london roadmen are, but maybe get to know those on your street or at a local café (preferably not a chain business).
Also, what happened to pub songs? It is literally a public house, socialise.
Many young people are very lonely. The activities in Ireland are based around drink and unless you love sitting in a pub for hours, it can be hard to find things to do.
As someone who is not from here but travels here often, this has also been my impression. I’ve tried a few different ways to be social and see if people would like to go for hikes or go to a museum or go for a drink, and it’s difficult to talk to someone outside of very late at a pub. I’ve tried a few of the apps and I get a lot of matches but the conversations are the opposite of in person. Instead of superficial stuff people tell me very personal things, I think because they feel unheard and lonely (This isn’t a complaint, they’ve all been nice people to talk to and I have a great time when I’m in Ireland). The people I actually meet up with are often people traveling here from somewhere else. I wish the apps had a tag or setting for something like “do you need to get coffee and have someone listen to you for an hour, maybe give you a hug and tell you you’re still a good person even if you don’t have a house? Because that’s ok, just say so!” It does make me sad that so many of you feel so lonely but I can see it’s over things completely out of your control.
I feel we’ve become quite insular and selfish since the celtic tiger. I truly believe that greed is what has made the country what it is today. Young people are being punished for it and it’s having a disastrous affect on our mental health. Of course people are lonely if they can’t bring someone home to their boxroom in their parents house, of course they feel like shit if their parents bought that house for fuckall in 1992 and are getting onto their kids about not doing the same.
I’m sorry to be that guy but the housing crisis is having a significant impact.
Just think about all the missed opportunities to meet new friends or potential partners because people don’t have suitable places to gather or host events. This extends to venues and meeting spaces throughout Ireland, which tend to be expensive. Consider all the gigs where you could have met someone, but it never happened due to the lack of available spaces. Additionally, numerous exhibitions never took place, preventing the work from being showcased and people from attending. We are left with limited options, such as spending time solely at the pub or expensive cafes.
Wow, nowhere else even came close to us either. It’s not surprising really. 40% of 25-29 year olds still live at home with their folks making dating more difficult. The rising rate of inflation is making it harder for people to socialise. There’s nothing in place for our elderly to meet or interact with people the same age as them. They have apartment complexes in America dedicated solely to elderly people who choose to downsize, giving them the opportunity to make new friends and socialise with their neighbours. It would be great to see facilities like this created here.
I’m 36 and am fortunate enough to own a house. I don’t have kids as we can’t afford them. We rarely see our friends as we can’t afford to go out and neither can they. Some are back living with their parents trying to save for a house. It does get lonely. Feels like we’re just living to work with very little joy in life.
You know I once met a girl in Dublin, we got off great and then before I know it she blocked me out of the blue lmao. I think Irish men and woman are much asocial in comparison with the older generation.
Hate being lonely / hate people ⚖️
It does get lonely when everyone is obsessed with staying in their little clique from when they were 10-16 or with only interacting within their local GAA club if you move or don’t want to play GAA.
I know personally speaking moving down from the north where the same issues are present that the Irish students I met in Dublin were broadly VERY cold to meeting new people. Particularly if you tried to make friends outside of your degree. I also found a weird phenomenon where people would be really nice to you when you met for the first time, but if you tried to speak to them again they would be all weird about it.
At the opposite end though the international students were always up for a chat and looking to introduce you to their friends/flatmates/etc (who typically were international students too). Particularly once you hung out a few times with them!
Obviously there were some exceptions to the above rules but the general culture and atmosphere people here feed definitely plays into that issue. Like I’m back home for the summer and since I didn’t really enjoy school I’m more or less left sitting on my own for 3 months with nobody to do anything with as my friends have all gone to America/Canada/Malaysia/where ever. Doesn’t help either that outside Dublin there is effectively no way to meet new people if you aren’t going to a pub all the time.
My most sociable time was when I emigrated because my friends at home simply flaked out of meeting up far too many times. In Ireland people always feel like ‘there will be a next time’ and bail on so many chances to meet up, even before your late 20’s. When you are abroad, and especially a big city, you can sometimes see someone you know on the street and either you or them suggests getting food or coffee at the nearest place. These folks may only be passing through or there for a year, so you have a bit of craic with them in the moment. In Ireland there’s also the feeling that there’s responsibilities and especially a poor work life balance that has people spending the midweek just refreshing for the next day ahead and not wanting to socialise at all. Before emigrating I pleaded to my friends to meet up with each other more often, but that just never happened while I was away.
Then of course you have the housing crisis, moving people away from places where they could meet up more frequently, and the stress of just existing in Ireland has people not in the mood to even get a few pints due to the costs.
As an immigrant I can tell you one line that’s been said on this sub that rings completely true.
“The Irish are friendly but never friends.”
You can go practically anywhere and have a good solid conversation with a random stranger, but once it’s over, that’s it, it’s done. Forget trying to contact the person later even though they said, yeah “give me a shout”, they just ghost you.
It’s why I no longer indulge in this bullshit. Where I come from, if you strike up a conversation and there’s a connection, generally it flows into friendships being formed etc. Not in Ireland it doesn’t.
People here are a lot less friendly and open to strangers than mainland Europe I’ve found.
I travelled between Portugal and Spain for work quite frequently a good few years ago, their hospitality was amazing. The Irish have this image of being friendly happy go lucky people and I’ve no idea where we got that from.
I think Irish people on average are lacking social skills. We’re great at chatting on a night out, but very bad at having any serious conversations with people.
Since college most of my friends have been either international or Irish people who’ve travelled extensively. A lot of people here seem very reserved and stuck in their ways. They’ll chat to you on a night out, but they won’t arrange lunch, won’t invite you to their house, for a walk, etc. It’s very easy to meet up with friends if people would put any effort in at all, but they don’t.
Making friends with Irish people is difficult, if you don’t work with them or know them from school or college then it’s basically impossible to get them to put effort in. It’s very “out of sight out of mind”. Even the people from my home town don’t keep in touch since I moved away. It’s disheartening since we’re such a friendly bunch on the face of it.
100% due to our culture where drinking in the pub is the only form of socialisation, if you don’t have a big group to go on the piss with you’re made to feel alienated.
I had a mate who’s birthday we didn’t know for 10 years, another mate who had a half brother we didn’t know of, my parents separated 20 yrs to no ones knowledge, another mate who had a clear drinking problem we didn’t even notice.
We are amongst the most friendly, sociable and amicable ppl you’ll ever meet but the most impersonable, superficial and trope-like you’ll ever meet. We’re afraid of speaking on a personal level, all niceties and pleasantries but after that the Irish a deeply guarded, shamed ppl that in fact have no idea how to share a deep friendship.
42 comments
You get pretty lonely when everyone under 35 has fucked off somewhere else
No wonder, we’re all separate and surrounded by water
Why wouldn’t we? Look at us, stuck out there in the middle of the Atlantic all on our own, while the other EU countries can cuddle up to each other…
I wonder does it has something to do with our population density? If you live in Dublin, you will regularly see groups of older people getting the bus or DART to town for food/drinks. Whereas, you live in the middle of nowhere that is not possible.
I’m not surprised in the slightest by these results. Even on this sub alone, there’s often posts from people saying that they’re lonely, and they’re often quite young.
It’s sad to think there’s so many lonely people out there.
I don’t think loneliness is necessarily lack of company. People can be surrounded by people and feel lonely. I think that loneliness is being surrounded by people who don’t truly get you and this can make you feel alone. That’s true loneliness, in my opinion. There’s also a lot of people who feel lonely in relationships. I think there’s a difference between longing for company, and loneliness, but different people have different opinions of what it constitutes.
Ultimately, I think humans just want to feel seen and heard. It’s such a simple thing but can be elusive for many.
Makes sense when you see the amount of emigration here. Sure there was a post today of someone saying the last of their mates had left for Australia and they were wondering how to make some more friends.
Ireland has been made a place for MNCs and tech companies, its soul has slowly been chipped away at in the name of making money.
Well, we are quite detached as the image shows
Yeah I can see that being the case here tbh
And then you’re trying to be friends and they just ghost ya
IME it’s because while Irish people are very friendly and seem very open at the start, it’s a surface level friendliness and sometimes it’s actually just nosiness. It’s not that easy to make close friends with Irish people, even if it’s someone you see every day and chat to all the time. You see them at work or the pub but never been to each other’s houses.
I think places like Spain Italy have there meals as a social get together means a lot of socialising. Here it isn’t so much
Don’t care. I’m a lone wolf. Perfectly fine on my own.
^^^^Hug ^^^^me ^^^^please.
I’m happy to be anyone’s friend if they’re lonely.
I hate the thought of people out there by themselves. Everyone deserves someone to talk to.
DM me if you need a pal.
So who is gonna make the sub for the lonely Irish?
That’s what turning a city into a suburbia does. People not living in apartments. All separate without the culture of being out in town squares.
I get that. I moved from Cork to Dublin during COVID for work and ever since then the only people I kind of see a lot are colleagues and maybe one friend or so. My other friends either still live in Cork or moved abroad.
loneliness is killing me to be honest. I don’t think I’ll ever not be lonely
So it’s not just me then
I expected it to be higher honestly
I remember living in Spain. I was meeting a friend at a metro station and bumped into another friend. He refused to leave me the fuck alone until my other friend arrived so i wouldn’t be alone. Bastard (great guy none the less).
Can confirm
Isn’t it amazing how loneliness just stops at the border. I guess being occupied means you have constant company.
Based on that picture, the UK sank into the ocean once they voted for Brexit. 😅
Both my parents moved to Meath as kids from the west of Ireland, they were not made feel welcome in the communities they joined. And a big part of the problem with Ireland is that families is the first layer of community in Ireland and if you don’t have that connection with people you are already in trouble. So many people who come to Ireland to live say that Irish people are easy to talk but find it hard to break into communities (pretty much impossible) without a family connection.
The next layer is secondary school, so many people still hang out with people from the same school and when older even move to areas with people from their old school there. Another community it is hard to break into.
The church used to offer a sense of community, you would meet people once a week, events were organised by the local church, it was something at least, a way into a community. The church’s influence is gone and it is a shame that it took the sense of community with it but it is just that, a shame.
I am not surprised a lot people feel lonely in Ireland, a lot of communities we form then exclude more include.
Any source for this? I’m really sceptical of maps on Reddit. They’re usually just ‘post-and-go’ jobs. This one is (unfortunately) credible but it’d be good to know the origin of the information,
I’m not really surprised by this. It’s very hard to make friends here, and if I’m completely honest we’re just a very superficial/fake bunch. Like someone said earlier, we’re great craic when drunk but rarely wanna communicate the next day. Basically, if you don’t still have the friends you went to school with you’re fucked. I definitely have waaay more acquaintances in my life than friends. Sad but true, although I grew up in the countryside so I’m pretty immune to feeling lonely.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Irish people are very superficially polite but when it comes to building a friendship it’s extremely difficult. Foreign people ask all the time when they struggle to make friends yet we’re supposed to be the land of a thousand welcomes and I say this as an Irish person who hasn’t any family close by and every friend I had has emigrated either during the economic crash or in recent years.
People are very clicky and it’s hard to find a click.
We used to be really social people, would talk to strangers like you have known them your whole life.
We need to bring back Irish socialising.
I know it may seem awkward at first, but try making some small talk. Give someone a compliment (if you don’t know them, compliment an article of clothing or something because you still can’t quite go up to someone and say “I like your eyes”.
Obviously don’t practice this where the wannabe london roadmen are, but maybe get to know those on your street or at a local café (preferably not a chain business).
Also, what happened to pub songs? It is literally a public house, socialise.
Many young people are very lonely. The activities in Ireland are based around drink and unless you love sitting in a pub for hours, it can be hard to find things to do.
As someone who is not from here but travels here often, this has also been my impression. I’ve tried a few different ways to be social and see if people would like to go for hikes or go to a museum or go for a drink, and it’s difficult to talk to someone outside of very late at a pub. I’ve tried a few of the apps and I get a lot of matches but the conversations are the opposite of in person. Instead of superficial stuff people tell me very personal things, I think because they feel unheard and lonely (This isn’t a complaint, they’ve all been nice people to talk to and I have a great time when I’m in Ireland). The people I actually meet up with are often people traveling here from somewhere else. I wish the apps had a tag or setting for something like “do you need to get coffee and have someone listen to you for an hour, maybe give you a hug and tell you you’re still a good person even if you don’t have a house? Because that’s ok, just say so!” It does make me sad that so many of you feel so lonely but I can see it’s over things completely out of your control.
I feel we’ve become quite insular and selfish since the celtic tiger. I truly believe that greed is what has made the country what it is today. Young people are being punished for it and it’s having a disastrous affect on our mental health. Of course people are lonely if they can’t bring someone home to their boxroom in their parents house, of course they feel like shit if their parents bought that house for fuckall in 1992 and are getting onto their kids about not doing the same.
I’m sorry to be that guy but the housing crisis is having a significant impact.
Just think about all the missed opportunities to meet new friends or potential partners because people don’t have suitable places to gather or host events. This extends to venues and meeting spaces throughout Ireland, which tend to be expensive. Consider all the gigs where you could have met someone, but it never happened due to the lack of available spaces. Additionally, numerous exhibitions never took place, preventing the work from being showcased and people from attending. We are left with limited options, such as spending time solely at the pub or expensive cafes.
Wow, nowhere else even came close to us either. It’s not surprising really. 40% of 25-29 year olds still live at home with their folks making dating more difficult. The rising rate of inflation is making it harder for people to socialise. There’s nothing in place for our elderly to meet or interact with people the same age as them. They have apartment complexes in America dedicated solely to elderly people who choose to downsize, giving them the opportunity to make new friends and socialise with their neighbours. It would be great to see facilities like this created here.
I’m 36 and am fortunate enough to own a house. I don’t have kids as we can’t afford them. We rarely see our friends as we can’t afford to go out and neither can they. Some are back living with their parents trying to save for a house. It does get lonely. Feels like we’re just living to work with very little joy in life.
You know I once met a girl in Dublin, we got off great and then before I know it she blocked me out of the blue lmao. I think Irish men and woman are much asocial in comparison with the older generation.
Hate being lonely / hate people ⚖️
It does get lonely when everyone is obsessed with staying in their little clique from when they were 10-16 or with only interacting within their local GAA club if you move or don’t want to play GAA.
I know personally speaking moving down from the north where the same issues are present that the Irish students I met in Dublin were broadly VERY cold to meeting new people. Particularly if you tried to make friends outside of your degree. I also found a weird phenomenon where people would be really nice to you when you met for the first time, but if you tried to speak to them again they would be all weird about it.
At the opposite end though the international students were always up for a chat and looking to introduce you to their friends/flatmates/etc (who typically were international students too). Particularly once you hung out a few times with them!
Obviously there were some exceptions to the above rules but the general culture and atmosphere people here feed definitely plays into that issue. Like I’m back home for the summer and since I didn’t really enjoy school I’m more or less left sitting on my own for 3 months with nobody to do anything with as my friends have all gone to America/Canada/Malaysia/where ever. Doesn’t help either that outside Dublin there is effectively no way to meet new people if you aren’t going to a pub all the time.
My most sociable time was when I emigrated because my friends at home simply flaked out of meeting up far too many times. In Ireland people always feel like ‘there will be a next time’ and bail on so many chances to meet up, even before your late 20’s. When you are abroad, and especially a big city, you can sometimes see someone you know on the street and either you or them suggests getting food or coffee at the nearest place. These folks may only be passing through or there for a year, so you have a bit of craic with them in the moment. In Ireland there’s also the feeling that there’s responsibilities and especially a poor work life balance that has people spending the midweek just refreshing for the next day ahead and not wanting to socialise at all. Before emigrating I pleaded to my friends to meet up with each other more often, but that just never happened while I was away.
Then of course you have the housing crisis, moving people away from places where they could meet up more frequently, and the stress of just existing in Ireland has people not in the mood to even get a few pints due to the costs.
As an immigrant I can tell you one line that’s been said on this sub that rings completely true.
“The Irish are friendly but never friends.”
You can go practically anywhere and have a good solid conversation with a random stranger, but once it’s over, that’s it, it’s done. Forget trying to contact the person later even though they said, yeah “give me a shout”, they just ghost you.
It’s why I no longer indulge in this bullshit. Where I come from, if you strike up a conversation and there’s a connection, generally it flows into friendships being formed etc. Not in Ireland it doesn’t.
People here are a lot less friendly and open to strangers than mainland Europe I’ve found.
I travelled between Portugal and Spain for work quite frequently a good few years ago, their hospitality was amazing. The Irish have this image of being friendly happy go lucky people and I’ve no idea where we got that from.
I think Irish people on average are lacking social skills. We’re great at chatting on a night out, but very bad at having any serious conversations with people.
Since college most of my friends have been either international or Irish people who’ve travelled extensively. A lot of people here seem very reserved and stuck in their ways. They’ll chat to you on a night out, but they won’t arrange lunch, won’t invite you to their house, for a walk, etc. It’s very easy to meet up with friends if people would put any effort in at all, but they don’t.
Making friends with Irish people is difficult, if you don’t work with them or know them from school or college then it’s basically impossible to get them to put effort in. It’s very “out of sight out of mind”. Even the people from my home town don’t keep in touch since I moved away. It’s disheartening since we’re such a friendly bunch on the face of it.
100% due to our culture where drinking in the pub is the only form of socialisation, if you don’t have a big group to go on the piss with you’re made to feel alienated.
I had a mate who’s birthday we didn’t know for 10 years, another mate who had a half brother we didn’t know of, my parents separated 20 yrs to no ones knowledge, another mate who had a clear drinking problem we didn’t even notice.
We are amongst the most friendly, sociable and amicable ppl you’ll ever meet but the most impersonable, superficial and trope-like you’ll ever meet. We’re afraid of speaking on a personal level, all niceties and pleasantries but after that the Irish a deeply guarded, shamed ppl that in fact have no idea how to share a deep friendship.