Seems to me he was not alone, as he had friends and spent time with them.

Is this example conflating 'alone' to the seperate issue of him being unable to find a sexual partner?

Also generally I'm sure there will be outlier examples of 'see he was alone in the past' but I feel we have to approach these from a 'generally' view to understand the bigger picture as examples of one may be good for context, but can tend to be used as a confirmation bias of sorts against a bigger picture.