Always Passing Through: Travel, Loneliness and the Search for Meaning

For many travellers and digital nomads, movement begins as freedom. A rejection of routine, familiarity, and the quiet suffocation of a life that felt too small. Travel promises us connection, purpose and a sense of being alive. Yet for many I speak to, in the airport terminals, excursion activities, coworking spaces and the language exchanges, the same themes of meaninglessness and loneliness come up each time linked to a persistent sense of being on the outside. Never quite belonging to a place and its people, trapped in the idea of otherness. Travel can offer endless novelty, but novelty does not always translate into connection. So, what are we running away from, and what is it we are searching?

The Fragility of Temporary Relationships

One of the most common struggles travellers describe is how difficult it is to form meaningful, lasting relationships. Connections are often intense but brief, being formed quickly over shared experiences, late-night conversation, or mutual longing for something different or simply someone to listen to us. Yet just as quickly as they being, they end. Someone moves onto the next country, the next visa run or the next chapter of their lives settling down back home. Living abroad, I saw this a lot within the foreigner/immigrant communities. I would meet someone at a language exchange, at pickleball or during a coworking meetup, where we would bond and start to build a connection. As soon as I tried to make plans to do things with this new friend, I would find out that they were moving onto another country or region never to return.

Over time, this constant cycle of meeting and losing people can be emotionally exhausting. Relationships become transactional as in the back of everyone's minds, it's only a temporary arrangement. There is little time to build depth, shared history, or the kind of trust that grows slowly through consistency. Even when connections feel meaningful, they are often marked by an unspoken expiry date. This can lead us to feeling a sense of emotional impermanence, where investing deeply feels too risky to the point of feeling pointless, because the constant loss feels inevitable. I found that this cycle created a downward spiral, where people were less inclined to put themselves out in the different groups and networks and instead, would stick to their cliques in order to avoid getting stung again. Withdrawal is the other option for many who cannot take the constant rejection of creating a long-term friendship with fellow travellers and digital nomads only to see them move on after a few days or weeks. However, this is the nuclear option, and one which leads to loneliness and isolation.

Always the Outsider

Many travellers also find themselves perpetually on the margins of local life. Whilst locals may be friendly and welcoming, deeper relationships often remain out of reach. Language barriers, cultural differences, and the travellers's non-permanent status all play a role in forming this bigger picture.

Having been on both sides of this experience, I can see it from both angles and get it, despite it being frustrating. As a local, why would I want to invest time into someone, who has no long term intention of staying local? Locally, I'm quite active in language exchanges which attracts foreigners, who are studying English at local institutions for a maximum of six months. Although I might stay in touch with them beyond their stay, I can't say that I will be able to maintain a deep and meaningful connection at a distance. Therefore, I keep it all civil, but I avoid deep connections.

Equally, on the other side of the coin, trying to integrate into a new country or culture is difficult because there are so many fellow immigrants, who don't stay or don't try to integrate, it creates this precedent that leads to locals not wanting to get to know me, because they can't be sure that I will be hanging around long term. Of course, there are locals who have their friendship circles from childhood and don't want to expand their friendship circles and meet foreigners, especially if the foreigner doesn't speak the local language.

From the local perspective, forming close bonds with someone who will leave can feel emotionally costly. For the traveller, this can create a painful sense of exclusion, not quite belonging anywhere, yet not fully able to integrate. You may live somewhere for months or even years, yet still feel like a guest rather than a contributing citizen. Belonging requires mutual investment. Without permanency, that investment can feel one-sided or unsustainable.

Where is Home Now?

A deeper question comes up in the internal monologues as well as the conversations I have with travellers and indeed my clients, many of whom are in this position of constantly travelling whilst working remotely from abroad, Where do I actually belong?

Many digital nomads and travellers discover that returning to their home countries no longer feels like home. Relationships have changed, values have shifted, and the person they once were no longer fits easily into old environments. Yet in their new surroundings, full integration remains elusive. This is something I know well, living abroad can be difficult, however, I've always made the effort to integrate through learning and speaking the local language, as well as connecting with the local culture either through learning the history, cuisine, past times, manners and even the dances! All these things I love, celebrate and bring back home, much to everyone's annoyance when I'm telling them how much better life is in other countries. However, I'm still the other in my new country and can't quite feel totally part of the local community, regardless of how much I try.

This creates a catch 22 scenario, caught between worlds, identities and places. Neither from here nor from there. The search for a place to settle, to build a home, to anchor meaning becomes emotionally charged and often provokes a level of anxiety. The question is no longer just about where I should live, but who am I without movement?

Is This an Existential Crisis in Disguise?

Many travellers and digital nomads believe that travel itself will resolve these feelings. That the next place, the next culture, the next version of themselves will finally bring clarity, purpose or peace. Yet what is often being pursued is unnamed and unquantifiable, a feeling rather than a destination. From an existential perspective, this may not be a travel problem at all, but an existential one.

One of the major concerns within the existential crisis is the theme of loneliness and isolation. These questions come up for us where we doubt our sense of belonging and being part of a community, which travelling and being a digital nomad can ask of us. Where do we fit? Who is "our people" and part of our network or support system? These are questions, which we can do alone, however, many of my clients enter therapy with me to discuss and explore in a professional and supportive space.

Existential crises are not about where we are, but how we relate to meaning, belonging, freedom, and responsibility. Travel can temporarily distract from these questions, but it can also amplify them. Constant movement may postpone the discomfort of confronting deeper questions about identity, commitment and choice. When movement becomes a way of avoiding stillness, loneliness does not disappear, it simply follows.

Finding Meaning Without Running

This is not an argument against travel. Travel can be deeply enriching, transformative, in that it broadens our horizons, and meaningful. But when travel becomes the solution to emotional distress or discomfort, it is worth pausing and reflecting.

Meaning is not something we find geographically. It is something we build, through relationships, values, commitments and self-understanding. Connection requires risk. Belonging requires presence. Purpose often emerges not from endless choice, but from choosing something and staying with it long enough for it to matter.

For travellers and digital nomads, the question may not be where should I go next? But what am I hoping to escape, or find by leaving again? Exploring these questions, whether through reflection, journalling, or therapy, can offer answers that no destination ever quite delivers.