If A Woman Has No Close Friends, She'll Often Develop These 11 Subtle Habits
PeopleImages | Shutterstock Everyone is equally deserving of companionship and connection, yet some people find it difficult to cultivate the close friendships that they're yearning for. Whether it's due to societal pressures, inescapable self-doubt, or simply time, if a woman has no close friends, she'll often develop certain subtle habits, struggling with the accompanying loneliness of her personal time.
According to research published in PLOS One, it's not just women that are struggling with a "friendship crisis," but a great deal of people across age demographics. Nearly 51% of people report difficulty making friends, with 40% longing for more closeness in their daily lives. Unfortunately, how you choose to live your life inadvertently affects your inner circle, and those who lack one feel things quite deeply.
If a woman has no close friends, she'll often develop these 11 subtle habits
1. She shares a lot of her life on social media
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Without the listening ear and venting of a best friend or close relationship, women with no close friends tend to resort to online communities and social media to simulate the connection they're yearning for. With private stories, random accounts, and various platforms, they can share their emotional turmoil and day-to-day struggles, and feel like they're bonding with others.
While they might fill a temporary void, according to a study from the Journal of Affective Disorders, online social connections, without aligned in-person relationships, tend to feed into a toxic spiral of loneliness that not only affects mental health, but promotes isolating behaviors that further inhibit these women from making friends.
2. She's a people-pleaser
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The true nature of a healthy friendship is open and honest communication, like any other relationship. But if a woman has no close friends, she'll often develop the subtle habit of people-pleasing. Because she resorts to "keeping the peace" instead of embodying that honesty and truthfully sharing her feelings, her connections are sabotaged.
A person can never truly bond with someone, share the same experiences, or grow a balanced friendship when they're holding back emotions or protecting someone else's energy. Women who constantly seek external validation from friends, partners or family never truly embody their authentic self or identity, keeping them from meeting people that make them feel comfortable, safe, and celebrated.
3. She tends to overshare with strangers
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While experts suggest that oversharing is a behavior associated with many mental health disorders, anxiety, and loneliness, it's also one of the subtle habits of a woman who has no close friends. Without the structure of support they need to heal, vent, and express their vulnerabilities, they tend to overflow when someone gives them a listening ear.
By learning personal boundaries and staying present in conversations, women like this can protect themselves from oversharing with people who don't appreciate or celebrate their vulnerability. Instead, they can pour that energy into their own introspection and healing process.
4. She's unhealthily committed to work relationships
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While there are some benefits to workplace friendships, from connection, to stress relief, and shared experience, they can also contribute to a sense of isolation that's prompted by unhealthy work-life balance and toxic boundaries. It's nice to have friends with whom you can commiserate and gossip with at lunch, but overdoing it can have negative consequences.
When these women are committed to work — not just for money or a sense of purpose, but for the relationships they've cultivated with others — that can urge employees to sacrifice their well-being, physical health, and emotional stability for the sake of productivity or projects. It's not just a behavioral symptom of having no close friends, but a cause as well.
5. She ruminates in nostalgia
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According to social worker Joslyn Jelinek, nostalgia has the power to evoke equally empowering and comforting feelings in many people. However, it's also influential in sparking depressive feelings and sadness in those who yearn for a time they can never go back to.
Especially in people who have lost friends or are experiencing loneliness, nostalgia can urge them to ruminate in those feelings of longing, feeding into a toxic cycle of wanting friends, reflecting on old ones, and not being able to reclaim or fulfill those same feelings again.
6. She struggles with vulnerability and expressing emotions
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Without close friends to lean on for emotional support, many women resort to not sharing their emotions at all, defaulting to a numb sense of composure that keeps them from being able to truly connect with new people. Whether it's never speaking up about her needs or hiding how she truly feels, if a woman has no close friends, she'll often develop these subtle habits.
As her unresolved emotions, traumas, and repressed feelings continue to ruminate, it only isolates a woman further, as mental health professional Ramon Diaz argued, disconnecting them from their friends and potential new connections.
"Although relationships and developing deep connections with friends are essential for our well-being, unresolved trauma can leave us feeling disconnected from these same friends; people often are left to manage their trauma memories by themselves," he explained.
7. She's controlling
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According to psychologist Irene S. Levine, women who struggle to maintain healthy close friendships in their lives tend to be equally self-serving and controlling. Whether it be a symptom of not having friendships or the cause, they grasp onto control in their lives as a means to soothe the anxiety of their daily life.
If they can control their daily lives, from conversations to their work life, they don't have to worry about being surprised, being disappointed, or not showing up for the people in their lives the right way. It's a means for shifting blame and not taking accountability that disconnects them from connections and relationships in their lives.
8. She's overly competitive
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According to a 2013 review article, many women are taught and pressured to compete with each other in a self-preserving way to make themselves look more attractive. It's this ingrained societal pressure and toxic standard of external validation that keeps women from maintaining close healthy relationships.
Similarly, as clinical psychologist Noam Shpancer explained, many women are inherently competitive with each other because of internalized misogyny — they view men as the prize and aren't afraid to battle with other women to "win" their validation, recognition, and respect.
While these ideals and stereotypes are being largely dismantled in many mainstream discussions, they're impossible to ignore, as they're still deeply ingrained in the collective psyche of many women, communities, and institutions.
9. She's overcritical of others
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For women who don't have close friends, they may feel constantly concerned about ending relationships or navigating "falling outs" with various people. For example, they find it a trend that they only have one friend for a few years and then are suddenly alone again.
Sometimes, it's introspection that women without close friends need to adopt, as they can be overly critical of the relationships in their lives. Growing resentful of unaddressed behaviors in their friends, they sacrifice open communication by ending friendships over time.
Instead of investing time and energy into evolving with friends, they instead cut them off. It's this misguided "quality over quantity" mindset that tends to leave many women with no close friends, as they're seeking perfect, intuitive, and passionate friendships without any effort.
10. She's hyper-independent
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Whether it's refusing help from others, reluctantly fixing things by herself, or not delegating tasks she thinks she can handle on her own, if a woman has no close friends, she'll often develop these subtle habits. Her hyper-independence is a result of her lack of social support, and the feeling that it's her against the world.
Many women who don't have friendships don't have the time or energy. They've crafted self-preserving routines that empower them, fill their schedules, and fulfill them. While everyone needs community to feel fulfilled in some ways, they might find it more beneficial to pour into other close relationships with family or partners, and occasionally seek platonic connection.
11. She overthinks every situation
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When a woman lacks close friendships and seems to navigate the world alone, she likely tends to overthink every situation or interaction she has. Perhaps she worries she said the wrong thing in a conversation at work or with a family member; even if it didn't actually happen, she lets it consume her.
Worried about how she comes across, she assumes that other people don't like her, based on very short or minute interactions. Additionally, when she elicits a neutral response from someone, she automatically believes they're rejecting her.
Unfortunately, by overthinking like this, she'll push people away, likely without even realizing it. And that will leave her feeling even more lonely than before.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
