Britain has recently hit the headlines for being the loneliness capital of Europe. We may be faring better economically, as well as having safer streets and better general health than some of our neighbours, but we barely know our next-door neighbours and we’re unlikely to have strong friendships on which we can rely in times of hardship (only the Germans fare worse).

I once asked two friends whom they would call if their car broke down and they were stuck somewhere. ‘I’d call the AA,’ one friend said, without a note of irony.
My other (Danish) friend was confused, ‘Alcoholics Anonymous?’

Below those attention-grabbing headlines, the survey from the Office for National Statistics reveals that 88.7% of us still have someone to turn to when disaster strikes, so perhaps things aren’t that bad and we’re mostly a nation of self-reliant problem solvers.

This is not to undermine the debilitating impact of real loneliness, which can understandably affect the elderly, recent immigrants, and stay-at-home mums (many of us have experienced one of the latter two situations and the short-term loneliness associated with change).

What did surprise me was a report published in JAMA Internal Medicine last year, which found that having a husband or wife to come home to didn’t stop 62.5 per cent of married adults feeling lonely.

Our long working hours certainly can’t help, but do we really choose to stay in a bad marriage or marry because we’re lonely…? (I am rather skeptical of perhaps yet another scaremongering survey.) As author Wayne Dyer said, ‘You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.’