Loneliness makes us more vulnerable to exploitation

In a game of negotiation, lonely people were more like to accept unfair offers than non-lonely people.
Anita E. Kelly draws the following insight from this study:

'Perhaps we all look back at times in our lives when we put up with abusive behaviors from family, friends, or lovers that we would never tolerate now. We scratch our heads and wonder why we did. Well, maybe it was because we were lonely. And maybe we can forgive ourselves now that we're not.'

 This makes a lot of sense to me. Loneliness is very painful for primates.

Many psychologists tell recently single people that they must get used to being alone before they start dating. I have given my take on this in another post. I think that much wiser advice is to put effort into building and maintaining a supportive network of friends and family so that you aren't entering into dating relationships from a place of vulnerability.