The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all.

Coupland’s line warns that emotional self-sufficiency can shade into emotional numbness. Not feeling lonely may look like resilience or independence, but it can also be a defensive adaptation: if you blunt the ache of isolation, you may also blunt the capacity for attachment, longing, and joy. The “price” is a flattening of affect—an inner neutrality that protects against pain while quietly eroding the very feelings that make connection meaningful. In Coupland’s broader preoccupation with late-20th-century alienation, the quote reads as a critique of coping strategies (and cultures) that treat detachment as strength, even when it results in a life experienced at a distance.