The impact of aging and social isolation

Street Pattern · Oct 13, 2015

I entered my sixties not long ago. Things are going great for me, but I find myself thinking often about my contemporaries who didn't do so well.

Recently, I spent most of a day with one of them, a guy I've known since high school. He's very intelligent, but never developed decent social skills, never managed to start a career, never had a romantic relationship, never even been on a date.

That's not hard for me to imagine, because when I was younger, that's how I expected to end up.

I just came across this poignant essay by a guy in a similar situation, albeit much younger than my friend. Social isolation is one of the worst things that can happen to a person.

People think it's the alone of being forever alone that hurts the most, but that's not true. Everybody's alone sometimes, whether for periods when they're not dating anyone or just for a weekend while their spouse is at a conference. Alone is part of the human condition. It's the forever that pulls down the corners of your mouth just a little bit when you give someone a smile meant to indicate that everything's okay with you even though you want to scream that nothing's okay and never will be. It's the forever that tastes bitter in the back of your throat when you see a happy couple walking in the park or laughing in a restaurant. It's the forever that has you wide awake staring at your ceiling into the wee hours of the morning. Forever alone.
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There's an ongoing half-serious claim in our culture that men think about sex all the time. Every 17 seconds or so. That may be true for some guys but not a forever alone. After awhile you stop being able to think about sex, at least the way other people do. You can think about it abstractly, or when watching other people perform a stylized version of it alone in your room while you use your hand to joylessly complete a sad shadow of the biological imperative, but you stop being able to imagine sex as something you could be a part of. You see a woman in the springtime, her midriff peeking out from between the soft cotton of a shirt and the rougher waist of a pair of jeans. You start to imagine her naked, constructing a fantasy in detail, the way her breasts would sit against her chest, the soft down or absence thereof on her pubic area, and then you try to insert yourself into her presence and the fantasy crumbles to dust under the weight of its own absurdity. You know there's no chain of events, no course of actions, that could lead to that ill defined imaginary room where the two of you would meet in an act of carnal congress. There's no way to there from where you are, it's not even an alternate universe, it's an inconceivable one. It's like trying to imagine a world where everything else is the same except elephants float around like helium balloons and have to be anchored by their trunks or they'll float away. An inherently absurd thought. That's the idea of you and her being intimate. So you look away from that tiny sliver of skin, trying to keep your face from contorting in pain and bitterness. Where other men might smile at her you don't, because your smile sucks, and you suck. Forever alone.

Eventually you don't even bother to build the image only to have it blow it away like a sand painting in a tornado. You imagine lesser things. The brush of a cool, soft, feminine hand against yours. Mundane couple bullshit like eating pancakes on a Sunday morning or watching a movie or just sharing your day with someone who gives a fuck and is not your mother. The other party in these pathetic little domestic tableaus is ill defined in your mind, because if you imagined her clearly enough to make her realistic then you know she wouldn't want you. And even with this feminine blur, this placeholder, this blurry silhouette of nothingness you project your emotions onto, the person she's with isn't really you. It's a better version of you, a thinner less obnoxious version who will control his temper before saying something cutting, who doesn't geek out and talk too much, who is free from the flaws who make you who you are and assure that nobody else will ever want to share their life with that person. Then you realize that you're fantasizing about an Archie Comics version of yourself making tomato soup for an undefined feminine projection blob, and you realize that even the part of you that creates these images doesn't want to be with you and can't imagine anyone who might. Forever alone.

Around you the world stays mostly the same. People fall in love, hit milestones, get married, have kids. You're even jealous of the divorcees because you know that this is just a bump in the road for them, part of their journey. You're still at the starting line watching them recede, wanting to chase them and catch up, knowing you never will. But while the world is almost static, you are aging. Moving through your life alone. You start to get bitter at the milestones you've missed and the chances you'll never have. You see the graying of your hair and the years piling on like rust eating at the hull of a decommissioned ship and you realize that your opportunity for young love is already past. Even if you got it together and got in the game you'd just have a shot at middle aged love. It doesn't matter if you think women age like a fine wine, what wine connoisseur wants to live his life without ever tasting the shocking astringency of the harsh tanins of youth. Even if that's not your thing you don't want to cut it off forever. But you have. You won't even have memories of those very good years, as the song says, to keep you warm as you slide towards your dotage. All you have is your bursting store room of regrets and bitterness, and you can always cram in more. And you know that that rusty battleship will some day have a hole in its hull and be unfixable, good for nothing more than salvage scrap. You add up the time it would take to lose the weight, get your teeth fixed, figure out your professional career, the time until you can smile at that woman in the coffee shop with confidence rather than the stomach sickness of self hate, and you realize it all adds up to a very big number. Everyone thinks of themselves as eternally 22 but at some point you are forced to admit that you are 37 and half your life is over and the back nine of the remaining half is not a time when people finally get that whole dating thing right. If the window is not closed its halfway there and sliding fast. Forever alone.

All this breeds desperation and depression so you shove it back because you need to function, you need to keep eating and staying warm, you can't just stop and feel. But your dam is fragile and it leaks. And when you see that girl whose hand you want to brush against, who could sit with you looking into your eyes through the steam coming off her coffee cup and just be, who could understand you (she probably couldn't, but this is something men like to project on to women) you feel the dam start to buckle and the river behind it start to surge and you don't want to break down crying in the coffee shop because that's not what people do and if you can't have love at least you can have dignity, or the appearance of dignity, or the delusion of the appearance of dignity, so you turn your face to the side, you hope and pray she doesn't try to draw your attention (generally safe on that count, old chum) and you put one fucking foot in front of the other and continue down your sad and barren blighted path. Forever alone.
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Link.

ASU2003 · Oct 13, 2015

But what would the impact of a spouse be on my life? I'm not sure there are too many cute girls out there who would put up with me, my schedule, and how cheap I am.

Yes, I never thought I would have made it to my mid thirties without having any type of relationship and being on fewer than three first 'dates' with single women *not really called out as dates officially though.

I've always held the prospect of getting a foreign bride as a possibility though. I would have to quit my job, and then the health insurance, food, and lifestyle expenses would rack up pretty fast.

Cayvmann · Oct 14, 2015

I have found that you can feel just as 'forever alone' in a relationship, when you don't feel that you are worth what you have.

rogue49 · Oct 14, 2015

Life & relationships are a crapshoot.
Forest Gump's mom was right.

But you survive, make due and hopefully succeed with some effort.
Most of the older people I know say the same.

You've got to get good at being alone...it's your life, your terms...you can't live it for others and forget yourself. You, in the end.
But this makes you better when you're lucky enough to have them around. (but you're not trapped either, because you've defined yourself...not defined by others)

Plan9 · Oct 15, 2015

Some questions to frame and direct the OP into a forum discussion would be helpful.

Since there aren't any, I'll do what I do anyway and ramble off some random thoughts that may or may not be related.

...

Initial Thought: Author of OP article is a hopeless romantic that confuses various emotional masturbation fantasies for failed attempts to connect with women.

...

Forever Alone. Without some critical event to intervene, time only amplifies the weird in people. People are creatures of habit and like to stay in their comfort zone. The guy that couldn't talk to women in his 20s still didn't grow a pair in his 30s and now is a virgin in his 60s. Let's call it Life Trajectory.

It's just natural selection at work, brah.

Those men bold enough to say "Hi," to a pair of tits get to breed (or experience love). If you're somehow too timid or too ugly or too weird AND you can't overcome your hangups... you don't get to procreate (or experience love).

It's all the Darwinism we've got left in the first world to fight the rabbiting trailer trash and Catholics.

...

Dying Alone. Given that I probably won't have children, I will have to adapt to being an old person with no family or I will be isolated in a studio apartment with the woman, a frenetic kitten and back issues of Janes small arms encyclopedias. I will have to restructure my support network of friends to accommodate for being childless as infirmity sets in on both myself and my partner, deal with services to provide for our needs instead of our non-existent family and likely have to push the grand Off button alone assuming I don't die first. Part of being an adult is learning how to deal with fork in the road and accepting that most of the time you can't go back if you feel like you made the wrong choice. Use your short time in the sun wisely, they say.

And always tell her to cup the balls.

Street Pattern · Oct 15, 2015

Perhaps I should have drawn some distinctions between my longtime friend (whose life I have observed) and the unknown author of the essay I posted.

My friend has some mental and physical challenges which make him repulsive to most people. I avoid looking him full in the face because of his tardive dyskenesia, a side effect of decades on antipsychotic drugs. His personal grooming is not as bad as it once was, but still doesn't really meet middle-class standards. He has always been rude and abrupt and almost accusatory in his manner. His voice is weirdly nasal and querulous. He sounds constantly on the verge of tears, no matter how innocuous the topic.

I don't remember him ever complaining about his lack of romantic prospects, but he complains in dour and hopeless tones about everything else: his landlord, his employer, the weather. He is Catholic, and I believe he attends Mass regularly, but he never mentions it.

rogue49 · Oct 16, 2015

Well, is it just sexual loneliness or relationship loneliness??

Because if it's just sexual loneliness...I wonder how life would change if we lived in one of those countries that allowed prostitution...and it was totally acceptable in society's mindset.
France emphasizes lovers and mistresses...but you have to get people to like you and be interested for that.

As to relationship loneliness...that's a different matter, but there are some that will tolerate anything...the Key is finding them.
But the odds are against you, if you don't make yourself agreeable to others.
Most of us go out of our way to make ourselves agreeable...maybe too much so.
Others are fully unaware of their traits and habits.

But then it's like I said, you have to learn to be alone and how to enjoy yourself being alone.
Been there, done that.
But in truth, if you don't want to be alone...you have to put yourself out there.
Day after day.
Interact, interact, interact.

Good example is my mother...a saint, sweet woman with a fully nice personality...BUT she doesn't go anywhere, do anything, has trust issues.
So she doesn't have any friends....just immediate and nearby family. (or her friends are rare and far away)

Well, if you don't put yourself out there, how are they going to find you???

Yes, there's a risk in NOT being alone.
Yes, people can be a pain in the ass...but it's like family, they're all you got.
Life has pain.
People can be a pain
But you keep movin' and groovin' despite it all.
This is YOUR responsibility.
Most of us aren't beautiful enough to have people clamoring for you no matter what you do. (and I'd be wary of that even)

It's all a two way street.

POPEYE · Oct 17, 2015

I have lived my 52 years with people mentally ill. IMO there is absolutely nothing that can be done to change their lives for the better long term. Sure for a night or weekend or month, but the darkness always win.

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The impact of aging and social isolation

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