I imagine one of the worst things about a long timeline is that there is no point at which we feel we’re actually past it, unless we find ourselves debilitated and unable to look after ourselves. You’ll find people want to help when they know what you need Nevertheless I’d urge you to call one of the many wonderful organisations who are happy to offer a listening ear (see below), especially if those dark thoughts start to predominate. You clearly recognise the damage taking your own life would wreak among those who care about you. In the UK, the number of elderly who are so lonely they contemplate suicide, despite having no serious illness or disability to contend with, is a national disgrace. Far more “primitive” societies have the sophistication to recognise the asset that maturity is and value it highly. If there’s one thing more old-fashioned than our ridiculous class system, it has to be attitudes to old age. As you are no doubt aware, you are one of a growing multitude of older people, still leading healthy active lives, in a world that seems oblivious once you’re past 70. How shameful for the rest of us that you should be feeling this way. I don’t know what help you can be, and I realise that there are many people in a similar position, but writing to you has eased the situation somewhat. I have considered suicide, but have decided that this would be a lot of hassle for my family, who all live some distance away. I am very busy in the local community, and I keep myself active. I am still able to drive, which is essential in this rural community. My family are very supportive, and I have very good friends and neighbours, which helps me manage myself and my home independently. As they describe it, ripples of loneliness along the margins of a social network, where people tend to have fewer friends to begin with, move inward toward the group's center, infecting the friends of those lonely people, then friends of friends, leading to weakened ties among all.The dilemma I am an 81-year-old widower whose wife died three years ago after 30 wonderful years together. Their research, based on a 10-year study of more than 5,000 people, found that those who became lonely typically passed that feeling along to others before cutting ties with the group. A stunning study by Cacioppo and fellow researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler concluded that loneliness is contagious: It spreads in clusters throughout social networks. And of course, this, too, makes us more alone."īut even friends we interact with in the real world can put us at risk if they themselves become lonely. "And when we get together, we are quite frankly less prepared than before to listen. "Without the demands and rewards of intimacy and empathy, we end up feeling alone while together online," Turkle says. Without being aware of it, they sabotage their own efforts to connect with others. As Cacioppo notes, lonely people pay more attention to negative signals from others, interpreting judgment and rejection where it is not intended. Chronically lonely people tend to approach a social interaction with the expectation that it will be unfulfilling and to look for evidence that they're right. In people who've been lonely for a long time, the fight-or-flight response has kicked into perpetual overdrive, making them defensive and wary in social settings. This negative feedback loop is what makes chronic loneliness (as opposed to situational loneliness, which comes and goes in everyone's life) so frustratingly intractable. It makes them hypervigilant to the possibility that others mean to do them harm-which makes it even less likely that they'll be able to connect meaningfully. The emerging theory of loneliness, in other words, is that it doesn't just make people yearn to engage with the world around them.
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