The Weight of Loneliness

How might your partner's sense of loneliness, or your own, be weighing down your most critical relationships?

How much does the smoke weigh? How much does the isolation weigh? (Image/Neuroscience News)

In the fun indie film “Smoke” starring Harvey Keitel and the late, great William Hurt, which centers around life in a Brooklyn cigar shop in 1990s New York, there’s a scene where Hurt’s character regales the other shop occupants with a story about how to weigh smoke.

As the story goes, you take an unsmoked cigar (or whatever inhalable thing you might have handy, Cheech!) and you mark down the weight. Then, you light up and smoke it, taking care to collect all of the ash on the scale. When finished, you record the weight of the extinguished butt along with the ashes. Finally, you subtract that number from the weight of the original unlit cigar.

“The difference was the weight of the smoke,” Hurt’s character says.

If you’re wondering what any of that has to do with loneliness or questioning its scientific validity, you’re probably not the only one. I just love the story, and how it makes me think about measuring the seemingly unmeasurable.

When it comes to loneliness and its impact on our physical, mental, and emotional health, as well as its impact on the quality of our most important relationships (like marriage, or long-term romantic partnership), it’s like weighing smoke.

The most important idea is simply being aware of it.

It’s what we don’t know, or rather what we don’t pay attention to, in our most important relationships that hurts us.

The bottom line is that today, people are more lonely and socially isolated than at any time in human history despite how much our world population grows each year (current 1% growth rate is adding about 80 million people per year to the planet).

And that’s not great for our individual health and wellness (we’re about 30% more likely to die prematurely from a health condition when our lived experience is characterized as lonely). Social isolation is objective. And some people thrive in isolation. It’s okay for people who crave that experience. But loneliness is a subjective experience. Just ask New Yorkers. Busy city. Lots of lonely people.

Or ask adults (especially men) who don’t live in the same town they grew up in and don’t have the support of family of origin and childhood friends in their day-to-day lives.

From the American Psychology Association via the Skeptical Inquirer article “Health Effects of Loneliness”:

“Loneliness also describes what you feel when you’re in a crowded room and aren’t connecting with the people around you as much as you’d like to be. It may involve:

• Feelings of sadness, emptiness, discomfort, or disconnectedness;

• Feeling left out or isolated from others;

• A longing for companionship;

• Feeling like you’re misunderstood or not heard;

• Feeling isolated even when you’re surrounded by others;

• Feeling exhausted or burnt out by social interactions;

• Feeling insecure;

• Ruminating and reminiscing on the past.

“Studies have reported a 29% increased risk of premature death among those living alone and a 26% increased risk among those feeling lonely.”

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Coming soon

Consider joining our new relationship coaching/support group!

Within the next two or so weeks, I’m going to be starting a new online group as a different option and experience from one-on-one relationship coaching. There will be a monthly membership, and to start, standing 90-minute meeting times reserved on Mondays and Fridays (which we’ll adjust as I come to understand everyone’s needs and preferences). You will be invited to attend as many or as few as you’d like. I’m very excited and interested to learn how telling our stories and sharing our experiences with each other can contribute positively to our relationship skills and home/social lives. As soon as I have a link to a signup page, I’ll share it, but in the meantime, if you’re interested or have questions, please feel invited to email me at mf@matthewfray.com.

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Is Your Loneliness or Your Partner’s Loneliness Weighing Heavily on Your Relationship?

This loneliness thing is a big deal to the world at large. Social isolation is strongly linked to many of society’s greatest ills, including the most awful, violent things that happen in life. But I want to home in on its impact to your marriage or long-term romantic relationship.

Because in my world, it’s super common for two young people to meet in school, then move somewhere for career or life adventure pursuits, and one or both partners are now somewhere where they only have one another and MAYBE some type of coworker relationships.

And what that means for people is that we’re relying on—or being relied on by our partners—to provide the emotional and logistical social support that once upon a time was being done by huge families and entire villages.

“The share of Americans who spend a social evening with a neighbor at least several times per month has declined from 44% in 1974 to 28% in 2022. And the declining frequency of interactions with neighbors has moved in lockstep with declines in social trust,” according to “The Decline of Trust and Neighborliness” from the Charlottesville, Va.-based Institute for Family Studies.

In my coaching work, I ask new clients to fill out a get-to-know-me intake form where I ask the question: “How would your best friends describe you?”

I wish I had a count for how many of my male clients have responded: “What friends?!”

Their entire life revolves around going to work, and then trying to satisfy a list of needs or requests from their spouse/partner or children. If they have some free time, it often involves some form of escapism—video games, movies, the gym, a personal hobby like golf or running or climbing or riding a motorcycle or whatever.

Maybe they have people they do some of those things with. They often don’t. And even if they do, they don’t feel safe connecting on an emotionally significant level to say out loud something like: “My marriage is in trouble,” or “I struggle to connect with my kids,” or “I’m struggling with physical intimacy with my partner,” or “I’m stressed about money,” or “I’m stressed about my health, which is worsening my health.”

And women often have similar emotional experiences, but sometimes for different reasons.

Among the more common stories is a young woman who had a bunch of hopes and dreams of pursuing a specific career, but then through life circumstances, abandoned the pursuit in service of marriage and family where women typically are the ones carrying the majority of domestic labor and childcare-related work.

So, now we have people who completely lost their identity in service of marriage and family living hundred or thousands of miles away from the comfort of “home,” and relying heavily on one another to provide the life-giving emotional support and time-giving logistical support which historically was provided by dozens of people.

“Inevitably, we now ask our lovers for the emotional connection and sense of belonging that my grandmother could get from a whole village,” writes Dr. Sue Johnson in her now classic self-help book Hold Me Tight.

What Do We Do About It?

I wish I had better catch-all answers. I’m only encouraging you to satisfy the very first step in the journey—don’t let it be invisible.

Don’t let the people you love hurt with the added injury of being unseen and unheard by the very people who are supposed to be loving and supporting them.

What does that look like relationally?

• Pay attention. Be attuned. Communicate in word and action that you want to know when your partner is experiencing loneliness, and that you want to know what it would look like to be someone whose behavior helped ease that.

• Ask your partner and yourself: How can I adjust what I’m doing to contribute to them feeling less lonely?

• ALSO, ask yourself: How can I put less of a burden on my partner to be all of the things I want them to be emotionally and socially?

“Positive psychology has found that the three sources of joy are pleasure, challenge, and meaning. If these can be combined, all the better. Great satisfaction can be found in meeting a challenge, solving a problem, accomplishing something difficult, and meeting personal improvement goals such as losing weight or exercising,” reads the Skeptical Inquirer article.

An AARP study identified these sources of joy:

• Being outdoors (87 percent)

• Physical activity (72 percent)

• Hobbies, skills, or projects (72 percent)

• Connecting with others in person (83 percent)

• Connecting by phone or virtually (79 percent)

The famous quote attributed to Alexander Chalmers, the article says, is “The three grand essentials of happiness are: Something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for.”

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But to take us back to the beginning, I just want to encourage you to be aware of it. You’ll relieve so much pain for those you love by simply speaking and behaving in a manner that protects others from the experience of being invisible.

I see you. I care about you. I will never abandon you to feel something awful alone.

Even if I can’t make this better for you, I can make sure you’re not alone in it.

You can change high-stakes relationship outcomes with that idea alone. So if you’re someone like me who spent much of my life never considering that idea—I see you—I hope you’ll add it to your toolkit.

They deserve it.

And so do you.

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Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.

P.S. - I know these things can present really small to some of you in your busy lives and marriages/partnerships. But that’s exactly why developing mindfulness and communication habits around these domestic scenarios is so critical to maintaining peaceful, loving relationships. If you have trust erosion, and/or pain points and frustrations around things like this at home, consider working with me as your relationship coach to develop these skills and habits. This stuff matters. Book your next appointment here. - MF