When Connection Becomes Transactional

As I write this, we're entering the season that's supposed to be about connection. Thanksgiving dinners, holiday gatherings, year-end celebrations with family and friends. Norman Rockwell paintings showing tables full of laughter, homes filled with warmth, communities coming together in joy. This is the time, we're told, when we belong.

But here's what I've been noticing lately - a pattern in how conversations actually go, or don't go. A friend suggests I watch a video about communication techniques. Another conversation gets cut short because there's not enough time. An old memory surfaces of someone at a bar years ago saying "Tell me what you've been up to - five minutes or less." No genuine interest, just give me the highlights.

At first, I wondered if it was me. Am I boring? Do I not know how to engage people? But then I started paying attention. Really paying attention. And I realized: this isn't about me. This is happening everywhere. To everyone. Connection has become transactional, and we've stopped talking about what that's costing us.

That video? Here's the advice it offered: Use hype lines to hook people from the start. Create dramatic pauses with strategic hand gestures. Keep them engaged with performance techniques. While this might be helpful advice for professional presentations or media appearances, it was being offered to me for use in everyday conversations. With friends. With family. With anyone I might want to connect with. The message is clear: if someone's attention wanders, that's on you for not being engaging enough.

But here's what that really means: We can never just be genuine. We're always "on." Always performing. Always trying to earn someone's attention rather than being given the gift of their presence. And when you can't ever just be yourself - when even the people who supposedly care about you treat your stories like something to be packaged into their attention budget - something profound happens. You become lonely. Even when you're surrounded by people.

There's a difference between feeling lonely in a moment and living with loneliness as a persistent state. We all experience moments of feeling alone - at a party where we don't know anyone, in a new city, during a quiet evening. But what I'm talking about is deeper: that lingering sense of not mattering that persists even when you're surrounded by people. It's not solved by being in a room full of people or having a packed calendar or even being in a relationship.

Loneliness, in this deeper sense, is the feeling of not mattering enough for someone to hold space for you. It's speaking and sensing you're not really being heard. It's the isolation of realizing that to keep someone's attention, you have to perform rather than just be.

It's what happens when someone can't even look you in the eye during a conversation because they're already half-focused on what's next. When your story gets interrupted because something - or someone - just walked in. When you realize you're editing yourself down to soundbites just to fit into someone else's attention budget.

Loneliness is the feeling of not mattering enough for someone to hold space for you.

This kind of loneliness shows up in patterns we don't always recognize. It can happen with life-altering events - loss, illness, major transitions - that set you apart from others who can't quite relate to how your life has shifted. It can happen in relationships where you're together but feeling fundamentally unseen, living parallel lives rather than connected ones. You can share a home, a calendar, even a bed, and still feel profoundly alone.

But it's not just there. This lack of space - this inability or unwillingness to truly hold space for another person - shows up everywhere. In our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our communities, our daily interactions. The settings change, but the pattern remains the same: connection becomes transactional, presence becomes performance, and loneliness grows in the gaps.

Research on loneliness existed long before the pandemic. While the epidemic has faded from headlines, the loneliness itself hasn't. If anything, it's gotten worse even as we've gotten better at looking connected. And here's what we're really not talking about: Loneliness isn't just something that happens to us. We're actively creating it in each other.

Choosing Differently

That person at the bar who asked for my life in five minutes or less? What if instead of setting a timer on my humanity, they had just been present with me? Even for a genuine ten minutes of actual connection

That friend who sent me the video about performance techniques? What if instead of implying I needed to be more engaging, they had simply said "I'd love to hear what you're sharing, but I can't give it the attention it deserves right now. Can we talk later when I can really listen?"

What if, instead of treating each other's stories and experiences like content to be consumed efficiently, we extended the gift of our actual presence? What if we stopped requiring people to earn our attention and instead offered it freely?

The question isn't whether we should be entertained or engaged - it's what we're prioritizing. In our harried worlds, we've forgotten how to stop and take a moment to really be with someone - a friend, a family member, even a stranger. We've lost the practice of asking ourselves "What piece of kindness can I share in this moment?"

So what does it actually look like to shift this pattern? How do we stop creating loneliness in each other and start creating genuine connection instead?

It starts with recognizing when we're treating someone transactionally. Notice the moments when you're half-listening because you're already thinking about what's next. When you're waiting for them to finish so you can share your response. When you're mentally calculating how long this conversation will take. That awareness itself is the first step.

Then comes the practice of honest, kind boundaries. There's a world of difference between "I don't have time for this" and "I want to give this the attention it deserves, but I can't right now. Can we talk later when I can really listen?" One dismisses. The other honors both the person and your own limitations. We can be truthful about our capacity without making others feel like they don't matter.

Holding space for someone doesn't require endless time. It requires genuine presence for whatever time we have. This might look like putting your phone away during a conversation - actually away, not face-down on the table. It might mean asking "How are you?" and then actually stopping to hear the real answer, not the polite one. It might mean letting someone unfold their thoughts without rushing them to the point, trusting that the wandering path is part of how they process.

It means means recognizing that being fully present for someone - truly seeing and hearing them - is one of the most profound gifts we can offer. And it doesn't cost us anything except our willingness to slow down.

Holding space for someone doesn't require endless time. It requires genuine presence for whatever time we have.

This isn't about ignoring our own needs or having no boundaries. It's about being honest and kind about what we can offer, rather than making others shrink themselves to fit our attention spans. It's about recognizing when we're treating people as interruptions to our agenda rather than as humans worthy of our presence.

As you move through your interactions, you might ask yourself: Can I offer presence or do I expect performance? How can I make space rather than create transaction?

Because here's what I've learned through my own experiences with loneliness: When someone truly holds space for us - when they give us their full presence without requiring us to perform or edit or rush - something shifts. We feel seen. We feel valued. We feel less alone, even when we leave that conversation and return to being physically alone again. Those genuine connections carry us forward. They sustain us in ways that transactional exchanges never can.

And when we offer that same gift to others, we create small pockets of genuine connection in a world that's forgotten how to be present. We remind people that they matter, that their stories are worth hearing, that they don't have to earn our attention.

This season, as we head into gatherings that might look like those Norman Rockwell paintings or might feel nothing like them, we have a choice. We can perpetuate the transactional approach that's making us all lonely, or we can practice being genuinely present with the people in front of us.

Not perfectly. Not with endless time or energy. But with honest kindness about what we can offer, and genuine presence when we're there.

Where might you be unintentionally creating loneliness in others by treating connection as transactional? What would it look like to offer presence instead of expecting performance in just one conversation today?

Know someone who's feeling lonely even when they're surrounded by people? Or struggling with how transactional our interactions have become? Feel free to share this with them.