What I believe the opposite of Loneliness is

Walls of self preservation are also walls of self imprisonment.

Less negative experiences also means less positive experiences. Reality is all about risks. The more you can handle tension / uncertainty / rejection / doing something that might not work... the higher quality of life you can have. The bigger the obstacles the bigger the rewards. A lot of people try to attain guarantees or quick fixes via escaping that reality by trying to erase all the negative and only have the positive (things like porn / drugs / alcohol / etc), but eventually reality hits them in the face.

People try so hard to stay safe. To tip toe comfortably towards death. To play not to lose. To wait for guarantees before taking action. They try things here and there. They dabble... but dabbling is not a strong enough effort / commitment / resolve / intention to create real change. Staying safe, comfortable, and playing not to lose isn't enough of a risk to achieve the things you truly desire. Solitude and instant gratification are one of the many ways to relieve tension / uncertainty / adversity and to neglect the things that we know we should be doing to have the life that we want and to become the person we want to be.

I don't know where it comes from, but most people have this deep entitlement and need to always feel good. All the extraordinary results / rewards / higher quality experiences are beyond your current level of comfort / competence / confidence / experience level. So people just dip their toe in the water once in a while and pull out the second things get unideal or emotionally volatile. The level of commitment needed to create true change is to jump in the deep end of the pool like a cannonball.

Short term emotions needs to be sacrificed for the sake of your desired long term outcomes. Most people aren't willing to experience short term intense emotional volatility for the sake of long term positive results. They would rather tend to their instant gratification short term emotional comfort and sacrifice their long term outcomes (tip toeing in quiet desperation towards death). You get the life that you're willing to tolerate. Push yourself to experience emotional volatility by going beyond your current place or experience a lifetime of comfortable mediocre frustration that you can numb and neglect via escapism habits.

Make the unsafe and uncertain choice. Do things that might not work. Reinforce the belief that you're worth it by going for what you want rather than rejecting yourself before anybody else has the chance to.

If you're truly committed to fixing loneliness, you wouldn't feel lonely because you would be too busy doing something about it. You would be meeting too many people to think about being lonely. You would be experiencing and learning how to handle emotional volatility too much. Your priority wouldn't be to feel comfortable. It would be to try new things that might not work.

As for being authentic, if you act fake to manipulate others into liking you and to avoid rejection, then you'll surround yourself with people who likes that fake persona and you'll always have to convince them that you're somebody else. The people who would truly resonate with who you are won't be able to find you because you're too busy acting like somebody that you're not. So either be liked by a lot of people who don't really like who you are or be more polarizing by getting rejected by the wrong people more, but also getting accepted by the right people more.

It's not enough to tolerate or take risks because you think you have to. You have to be so committed that you seek, embrace, and are excited about taking those risks. The same uncertainty that people fear about each other is the same uncertainty that makes relationships so great.

 

I totally get you. Quitting pmo gets so lonely. It's been making me want to go out more and meet new people.
But I realized aswell that what's important is this connection I'm looking for. It's bringing me back to my family who I have neglected for twenty years.
People who I have growed up with and have missed me. And still welcome me because after all we're family. We're connected.

What seems to be important for me is telling the truth and being honest about my failures and things I love that others could laugh at. Not creating a better image of myself so others would like me. But showing I'm human with faults and flaws. Being open and not holding back is what's making my difficult sometimes awkward conversations work.

 

That's my experience in a nutshell since I began opening up and accepting my flaws, having compassion for myself first which naturally grew into compassion for others (instead of the resentment I used to feel towards basically everyone) since I saw that they were experiencing the exact same struggles I was having after all. Which was amazing to me as I thought I was super ultra special and nobody could ever get me when I was cooking in my own soup all day every day.

The entire experience, the good, the bad and the ugly seem to be necessary to deeply and authentically connect with someone.
And what was even more surprising to me is that once I also started opening up about the stuff I used to be very embarrassed about (in a calibrated manner) people would actually jump on the opportunity to share and connect since they seemed almost starved for connecting on that level as well. Like Kman said probably because of our tendency to go for the superficial persona/mask that we usually hold up because of fear and shame.

@elevate also what you said, very powerful words.
One thing I would add is that we seem have to a natural tendency to avoid pain and go for pleasure. It's one of the most basic behavioral mechanisms that evolved over millions of years for obvious reasons.
It's simple but it works most of the time.
The thing is, now that we managed to manipulate our environment to the degree that we do nowadays, we slowly but surely kept "improving" upon the natural stimuli and went for mass producing super stimuli.

And what I am trying to get at is that fighting or pushing through our natural tendencies in an environment like that turned out to be very fruitless in my experience and I think it's also one of the main factors why so many people stay stuck for years.
Luckily I found a more let's say judo-like approach to dealing with the constant temptations around us in meditation.
Handling pain and difficult emotions that way leaves enough energy and motivation at the end of the day for me to build the life I want and not get dragged back down all the freaking time.
Trying to fight everything the entire time left me feeling exhausted 24/7 and I didn't get shit done all day and slipped back all the time.
Good times.
Wishing you good sirs strength on your journey.
Pip pip cheerio