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The Days of Love and Roses Are Wonderful if
You Have a Mate —What to Do When You
Don’t?
This was one of my most memorable Valentine’s
days ever. My wife, Carlin, and I went into town. I
dropped her at her hairdresser and I went and
bought a new pair of shoes. I had worn my Keens
down to the bone and I was pleased to find what I
wanted on sale. I picked Carlin up and she looked
fabulous, but she always does, even after being
married for 43 years. We went out to one of our
favorite restaurants, got a private table on the
second floor, had a glass of wine and a fabulous
meal. Next day, which was February 14th, I picked
up the gluten-free cake I had specially baked for
her with a special hand-made card from a local
artist. We enjoyed a lunch of our leftovers from
the night before and had a quiet day at home. To
top it off, it snowed, beautiful, floaty flakes. A
rarity in Willits, California.
But my romantic life wasn’t always like
this. If you have ever visited me at MenAlive.com
you will see my welcome video, “Confessions
of a Twice-Divorced Marriage Counselor.”
Before I got married the first time I was too young
and crazy to think much about Valentine’s Day.
Towards the end of my first marriage, I still
bought my wife a nice card every year, but the
stresses of earning a living and raising two
children had taken a lot of the passion,
creativity, and caring out of our marriage. We were
still a family, but we had lost something that we
never were able to retrieve.
After the divorce all I wanted to do was work
and forget the pain of a failed marriage and the
strain of being a part-time father with an ex-wife
who never seemed to be able to forgive me for not
being the man she wanted and needed. Truth be told,
she also couldn’t forgive me for my inability
to fill the hole in her soul that was left by her
father who had died of a heart attack when she was
seven years old.
Loneliness is a great motivator, but not always
a healthy one. After a short time I met a sexy,
exciting woman in the tubs at Harbin Hot Springs
and after a whirlwind courtship I asked her to
marry me. My close friends tried to talk me out of
it, but I didn’t listen. They were probably
jealous that I had…well who really knows what
they were really thinking. I should have listened
to my intuition that warned me that a woman who
slept with a gun under her pillow might not be the
ideal mate for an anti-war, peace-loving
pacifist.
But loneliness has a way of blinding us to what
is in our best interests. Falling in love is not
always easy to distinguish from falling in lust.
Love may not be blind, but my one-eyed friend,
particularly when he was aroused, was not always a
good guide to a hearts and flowers marriage that
grows stronger through the years.
In my book The Enlightened Marriage and my
course based on the book, “Navigating
the 5 Stages of Love,” I talked about the
challenges of Stage 3, Disillusionment, and how
loneliness can cause us to feel alone even when we
are in a relationship and can cause us to go
“looking for love in all the wrong
places,” the title of another book I wrote
when I was trying to figure out why my first
marriage had ended.
By now you’ve probably figured out that I
write in order to sort out my feelings and make
sense of my love life. It is a tradition I have
grown to love and respect. One of my friends, and
fellow writers, John David Mann, quoted Joan Didion
in a recent mailing.
“I write to find out what I
think,”
said Didion.
He also quoted William Faulkner:
“I never know what I think about
something until I read what I’ve written on
it.”
The quote I like best is from Ann Morrow
Lindbergh:
“Writing is thinking. It is more
than living, for it is being conscious of
living.”
How the Loneliness Epidemic is Undermining
Our Relationships
Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, the US surgeon general,
released a book early in the pandemic. He said that
the coronavirus pandemic has created a loneliness
epidemic.
“Social distancing, while
necessary from a public health standpoint, has
caused a collapse in social contact among
family, friends, and entire communities —
one that is particularly hard on populations
already most vulnerable to isolation.”
Those who have been following this trend have
recognized that Americans were experiencing high
degrees of loneliness well before the coronavirus
resulted in greater levels of social isolation. In
a 2018 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 22
percent of all adults in the US — almost 60
million Americans — said they often or always
felt lonely or socially isolated. The problem is
even more concentrated among older adults: A major
National Academies of Sciences report found that a
little more than a third of adults over the age of
45, and 43 percent of adults over 60, felt lonely
(other surveys have returned similar results).
The problem is even more pervasive and
destructive. In her most recent book, The Lonely
Century: How to Restore Human Connection in a World
That’s Pulling Apart, Noreena Hertz, one of
the world’s leading thinkers says,
“Even before a global pandemic
introduced us to terms like ‘social
distancing,’ loneliness was well on its way
to becoming the defining condition of the
twenty-first century.”
In the book she shares stories of pervasive
loneliness: Carl, the Los Angeles executive so
lonely he pays to be cuddled. Eric, the Parisian
baker finding community in the political far right.
Peter, the London schoolboy distraught because no
one ‘likes’ his Instagram posts. Although
as a group males seem to be more isolated and
lonelier than females, this problem impacts both
sexes. The CDC released a report that shows that
teen girls across the United States are
“engulfed in a growing wave of violence and
trauma, as well as record levels of feeling sad or
hopeless.”
“This is not merely a mental health
crisis,” says Hertz. “Loneliness
increases our risk of heart disease, cancer, and
dementia. Statistically, it’s as bad for our
health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. This is
not just a crisis for individuals. Equally to blame
are the dismantling of civic institutions, the
radical reorganization of the workspace, the mass
migration to cities, and decades of neoliberal
policies that have placed self-interest above the
collective good.”
Noreena Hertz concludes saying,
“All around us, the fabric of
community is unraveling and our personal
relationships are under threat.”
In a Time magazine article, “It’s
Harder Than Ever to Care About Anything,”
Hertz says,
“It’s almost like we have a
choice to make. Are we going to consign and
resign ourselves to a life of increasingly
contactless encounters, in which we become ever
more isolated and ever lonelier? Or are we going
to commit to reconnect? My hope is that
it’s the latter. This demands action not
only by us as individuals, but also by
businesses and governments.”
The Evolutionary Purpose of Loneliness and
Its Solution
For most of human history humans were embedded
in a rich network of interpersonal relationships.
We had families of mothers, fathers, and children
who received support from extended family and
community. Times were often tough, but everyone had
a purpose in life and everyone felt connected to
others. That is how our ancestors survived over
millions of years.
Any disconnections that lasted more than a short
time created acute feelings of loneliness. Like
hunger that would get us up looking for food and
thirst that would send us searching for
life-sustaining water, loneliness was a signal to
reconnect. The problem in our modern world is that
loneliness feeds on itself. We become increasingly
fearful of others, afraid to trust others who could
give us the life-preserving connections we
need.
Here are my suggestions for healing:
- Recognize that loneliness is a call to
action. It is not a personal failing.
- We can begin immediately to reach out to
friends and family we trust.
- When we’re most lonely, we can help
someone else in need. Helping others reconnects
us to the world.
- Start small and build up your confidence.
Even small gestures of kindness, care, and
support can help you feel more connected.
- Together we can expand our circle of care,
connection, and love.
If you feel so moved, drop me a note to
Jed@MenAlive.com
and tell me what you are doing to combat loneliness
in your life. If you’d like to stay connected,
join our community to receive free weekly articles.
https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/
©2023 Jed
Diamond
See Books,
Issues
+ Suicide
* * *
Wealth can't buy health, but health can buy
wealth. - Henry David Thoreau
Jed Diamond
is the internationally best-selling author of seven
books including Male
Menopause, now
translated into 17 foreign languages and his
latest book, The
Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing. The 4 Key Causes
of Depression and
Aggression. For over
38 years he has been a leader in the field of men's
health. He is a member of the International
Scientific Board of the World Congress on
Men’s Health and has been on the Board of
Advisors of the Men’s Health Network since its
founding in 1992. His work has been featured in
major newspapers throughout the United States
including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall
Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and USA
Today. He has been featured on more than 1,000
radio and T.V. programs including The View with
Barbara Walters, Good Morning America, Inside
Edition, CBS, NBC, and Fox News, To Tell the Truth,
Extra, Leeza, Geraldo, and Joan Rivers. He also did
a nationally televised special on Male Menopause
for PBS. He looks forward to your feedback.
E-Mail.
You can visit his website at www.menalive.com
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