Accounting for Friendlessness: Stigma and the Quest for an Honorable Self

How do people who identify as friendless make sense of their condition in a moment when friendship is extolled for the support and satisfaction it offers? This article draws on interviews with 21 adults in an Atlantic Canadian city. We argue that our interviewees were rarely at ease with their friendlessness and were at pains to recover an honorable self as people who felt looked down upon. We identify six types of interpretations of friendlessness, which we treat as “accounts” that aim to “neutralize” unexpected conduct and bring order to experience. The article contributes to understandings of difficulty in personal life and the accounts literature by attending to people's failures to find logic in their circumstances.