In May of 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General released a stunning report called Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. The report revealed that approximately one half of all adults and up to 80% of young adults (18-24) feel lonely. As a result of these findings, the Surgeon General declared loneliness a national epidemic.

In February of 2026, the Institute for Family Studies and Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute issued a State of Our Unions report finding that young adults are experiencing a dating recession during their prime dating years. Only about one in three of young adults is actively dating. The report concluded that we are living in “an age of dramatic increases in loneliness and social isolation.”

According to psychologists, a lack of intimacy—both emotional and physical—is the root cause of loneliness. This suggests the deeper problem might more accurately be called an intimacy epidemic. Simply put, adults are experiencing less intimacy than ever before and young adults are barely experiencing any at all.

Dictionary.com defines intimacy as “a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group.” I believe this definition reflects part of the problem, but we will address that later. For now, the important point to remember is that intimacy describes a positive state of feeling connected to others.

Over the course of our lives, we all receive an enormous amount of social conditioning around the idea of intimacy. We are told what intimacy is supposed to look like, how we are supposed to enjoy it, what forms are acceptable and what forms are not. We are told where to look for it, what we need to do to get it, and how we are supposed to behave to maintain it. Most importantly, we are told that if we aren’t experiencing the kind of intimacy we want, then we need to change our image.

As the Surgeon General’s report makes clear, the majority of people are discontent with the amount of intimacy in their lives. In other words, all this conditioning doesn’t seem to be helping. Even those who are reasonably satisfied tend to experience intimacy as a temporary blip, not a long-lasting state. Enduring fulfillment of our intimate desires is about as common as unicorn sightings.

Ironically, while the amount of intimacy in our lives is diminishing, the “intimacy economy” is rapidly expanding. Pharmaceutical companies, fitness centers, dating apps, matchmakers, plastic surgeons, personal trainers, therapists, cosmetologists, beauty salons, health spas, makeover specialists, health food manufacturers, wellness centers, houses of prostitution, and even AI companions are all vying for a piece of the action. When we stop to add up all these players, we see that the fraction of the economy dedicated at one level or another to helping us find, maintain and enjoy more intimacy is staggering.

Novels, movies, pop songs and social media all do an amazing job of reinforcing the relentless social conditioning we receive around intimacy. Out of all the messages we receive from popular culture, I would argue the most powerful and pervasive one is that we need to find someone else to love us in order to be whole. Isn’t that what every romance novel, every love song, and every rom-com tells us?

But the shocking truth is that each one of these pop culture messengers, and each one of these companies built on top of them, is pointing in the wrong direction. Enduring intimacy cannot be found by looking outside of ourselves nor by fiddling with our external image. As counterintuitive as this may sound, the path to enduring intimacy is purely an internal one. The experience of intimacy has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else and everything to do with our own thoughts. In other words, it’s one hundred percent an inside job.

Of course, I don’t expect you to take my word for this. How could I, especially after all the conditioning society has heaped upon us that says the exact opposite? So what I want to do is lay out my case in the most simple and compelling way I know. Then you can reach your own conclusion.

The first thing we need to establish is that human beings do not live in the external world. They do not live in houses or apartments or cities or forests or deserts or any other geographic locations. It only seems like they do. This perception is the product of our crafty egos, which are intensely vested in maintaining the illusion.

In actuality, human beings live in their minds. One hundred percent of the time humans live in their minds. From birth to death, humans always and only live in their minds. The proof is remarkably simple and yet continuously overlooked. 

The way humans experience life is by intaking stimuli through their sensory organs and interpreting this data with their brains. The interpretations gets processed as “life” thanks to what we call consciousness. However, we know these interpretations are imperfect representations of reality, not only because we can identify animals with superior sensory organs across all five senses, but also because some animals have senses we lack, such as echolocation. 

Therefore, we can state with certainty that humans do not experience objective reality, but rather a distorted and incomplete version of it. Moreover, all humans’ interpretations of reality are distinct, not only because of variations in their sensory organs but because of variations in their experiences, which further shape their interpretations.

So where exactly does that leave us? In simplest terms, it means that all human beings are experiencing their own subjective versions of reality as projected in their minds, much like movies are projected on a screen. Every human ego has essentially two jobs: one, to persuade us that this movie being experienced is “reality” and two, to persuade us that if any other human’s movie differs, then our version is the “true reality.”

Of course, we have just demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that our egos are misleading us on both counts. The movie each one of us watches in our minds is most definitely NOT reality. It is a subjective interpretation of reality. Perhaps even more startling, we have absolutely no idea how far away from reality it truly is. And to add insult to injury, we have absolutely no idea whether anyone else’s movie is any closer to reality than ours.

Granted, scientists can test competing models of reality to see which ones score better across various empirical benchmarks. But these same scientists will freely admit that humans only know a small fraction of what we believe to be knowable. Some estimate that we only know about one percent of the knowledge that exists in the universe. So if one person’s movie is 1.01% accurate and another’s is 0.99% accurate, I’m not sure the difference is worth quibbling over.

Regardless, until we become crystal clear about the game our egos are playing with us, we will be constantly tempted to either look outside of ourselves or to fiddle with our external image in order to find intimacy. The great spiritual masters understood this temptation deeply, which is why they pointed out again and again that the human experience of separation is merely an illusion propagated by the ego. We are already one with everything—there is nothing whatsoever we need to do to achieve this oneness.

The two jobs performed by the ego are what create the illusion of separation. Since we believe our movie is reality and we believe our version is the right one, we automatically believe we are separate. We also automatically believe we can do something in the external world that will make us feel less separate.

But the very same illusion that makes us yearn for connection also destroys connection. “Falling in love” temporarily suspends job #2—persuading us that our version of reality is the true one. Instead, when we are head over heels in love, we behave as if our movies our perfectly merged with our new lover. Inevitably, however, job #2 kicks in once again because this illusion of perfection is unsustainable. That’s when the cycle starts all over again.

This repetition is all but guaranteed since it is impossible for anyone other than ourselves to make us feel whole, loved, happy or fulfilled. The reason, as we have just shown, is that humans live in their minds and thereby remain fully in charge of how they interpret external stimuli. No one else can impose their interpretation of reality upon you, even if you grant them permission to do so, because you are the one playing your movie in your mind. Only you have access to the script.

If you’re not feeling loved in this moment, it makes no difference what anyone else does in this moment. A person could speak the most validating words of affirmation, provide the most meaningful quality time, present the most beautiful gifts, perform the most thoughtful act of services, and offer the most soothing physical touch. But if your script chooses to focus on the shortcomings of these efforts, or on your own shortcomings, then that is how you will process the experience.

Alternatively, someone could scream obscenities at you as you enter the grocery store, cut you off in traffic, steal the most prized possessions from your home, rip you off in a Ponzi scheme, or punch you in the face. And still you could choose to look beyond these actions and see the person for who they really are—a psychologically innocent being who is currently in a world of hurt but who yearns to feel and express love.

This understanding leads us to a fundamental truth about the human predicament. The only way to experience true intimacy is by completely releasing every other human being on the planet—and, in fact, every other conscious being in the universe—from any obligation or expectation to meet your wants and desires. Wherever obligation or expectation resides, true intimacy does not. For true intimacy requires being fully present in the now, untethered from the limiting thoughts and beliefs generated by egoic consciousness.

Put another way, true intimacy requires a surrender of the socially conditioned falsity that such an experience is owed to you by anyone else or earned by anything you do for others. One might even say it requires a waving of the white flag, an admission of total defeat, a facing up to the painful realization that at some level your wants and needs will never be met, can never be met—at least not in the way that your inner child imagined such a possibility and yearned for its fruition. We have all been set up by our egos, we have all been led down a path of illusion, we have all been fed a dream, a myth of the magical other, that is simply not true, not attainable, and not real.

But this is not the whole story—far, far from it. Because once we are able to surrender to this truth, then the stage is set for another kind of intimacy that is infinitely deeper than our inner child ever could have imagined. Rather than reducing intimacy to a point-to-point connection “with” another individual, this broader concept of intimacy is about connection to everything and everybody for no reason other than their existence.

By letting go of our expectations and obligatory feelings, we create an energetic field of love and acceptance that all conscious beings around us can sense. This nonjudgmental field invites positive connection with everything in our path. Not only do we become free to reveal our authentic self, but also to witness the authentic truth of those around us.

As such, intimacy becomes something we are able to experience with trees, rocks, stars, animals, Uber drivers, villains, cruel people, politicians, aliens, ex’s, and, of course, ourselves. No longer limited to our current romantic partner, intimacy becomes a celebration of all that exists in this moment exactly as it is without any imposed conditions on how such existence needs to be.

This means that instead of defining intimacy as “a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group,” we can expand it to “a close, familiar, affectionate and loving relationship with everything.” And now that we have taken everybody else off the hook for being responsible for providing intimacy for us, we can start to experience it everywhere and all the time. We can see just how all-pervasive it really is as we ourselves become sovereign beings meeting our own needs.

Under this new, expanded understanding of intimacy, it makes no difference at all what our current life circumstances are. It makes no difference if we are in a romantic relationship or not. It makes no difference if we have many friends or none at all. It makes no difference if we have a family or not. It makes no difference if we are part of a community or not. 

What matters is that we exist right now. What matters is that we have consciousness right now. What matters is that we are able to tune into the vibration of love right now. Simply by being here now, we are already experiencing the most amazing intimacy this universe has to offer. All we need to do is quiet our minds and we can immediately notice it humming through us like a pulsating orb of radiant golden light.

No doubt, we might prefer one life circumstance over another. But the key point is that our current situation in no way whatsoever limits our ability to experience profound intimacy. The intimacy epidemic can be reversed immediately simply by a shift of perspective, by letting go of our social conditioning and releasing our expectations.

Beautiful, profound and deeply fulfilling intimacy is 100% available always and forever. It’s available at this very moment to every conscious being in the universe. No products or services need to be bought, no changes to our image need to be made, no legislation needs to be enacted. And absolutely no one besides ourselves can interfere with our experience of this exquisite intimacy. 

Feel it, breathe it, taste it, smell it, touch it. Lean into the mystery of complete and total intimacy with all that exists now and forevermore. It is our eternal birthright.