Loneliness – The biggest threat to men’s wellbeing

There’s a common societal belief that only ‘old people’ get lonely and it’s wrong.

Recent research shows that increasingly, it's middle aged and older men that are feeling the pains of loneliness and isolation.

This increase comes at the same time as a sharp rise in male suicides, the two could be linked but that isn’t the focus of this article; instead, the focus here is on the subtle sense of midlife loneliness that many professional men ‘silently’ experience.

I’ll start with a divisive statement:

I believe male loneliness to be the biggest threat to modern men’s wellbeing.

Through statistics, findings and my coaching experience, I’ll demonstrate why.?

In a recent YouGov poll, 32% of men stated they didn’t have a best friend and in a confidential survey conducted by Age UK, it reported that 8 million men in the UK feel lonely in their lives.

Also concerning is the 2015 Holt-Lunstad report, it found that loneliness can increase your risk of death by 26% and that being lonely is worse for your health and wellbeing than being obese.

Despite how damning these statistics already are, they may only scratch the surface of the issue, particularly when you consider the 2017, Jo Cox commission on loneliness. It surveyed 1,200 men and 10 per cent said they would?not?admit to feeling lonely,?and instead would prefer to keep it hidden because of internal shame.

Do you feel lonely in your life?

In your 'hour of need', would you have someone to call?

If you're feeling lonely, would you admit it?

Moving forward, loneliness can cause lethargy, anxiety, and depression, and it’s a problem, particularly so after isolation and lockdown restrictions we all experienced during the pandemic.

And yet, I truly believe that the more we 'silently' ignore the impact of male loneliness, the more common it will become in men as a gender and in wider society…?

So what are the factors behind this ‘silent epidemic’.?

Let’s take a look. The first I will focus on here is a lack of free time.?

I often refer to the midlife bracket, of the 30’s and 40’s as the messy middle.?It’s that time when the demands and pressures of our life can become all consuming, particularly if we aren’t clear on our purpose, our priorities and our values.?

Further compounding this, is that it’s likely been decades since we left our childhood friends at home before heading off to university, or we hung up our 'boots' and we stepped back from the connection and community competitive/contact sports once afforded us.?

This almost natural separation means many men have unknowingly let formative friendships drift away in the swell of life and now naively rationalise to themselves that the bi-yearly phone call they force themselves to make keeps them truly connected to friends back home or from the 'club'.

Men in the ‘messy middle’ can find that free time is an increasingly rare commodity for them and I believe the constant rush and busyness of their lives creates the biggest barrier to them keeping connected to their current friendship groups or cultivating new ones.

Some 2500 years ago, Socrates, a prominent Stoic philosopher said:

‘Beware the barrenness of a busy life’.

It seems and feels that as a gender, we’re still struggling to reconcile this concept and for many men, their busyness results in a barren life and lonely life.

The second issue I feel that is cultivating the middle aged male loneliness is the resistance many men have to speaking about and discussing their feelings; we all acknowledge that this is still a common behavioural trait in men.

It stems from childhood and is influenced by us being taught that ‘real’ men need to be strong, stoic and silent, and it's compounded in later life by toxic phrases such as man up, grow a pair, don’t be a pussy which are still shared freely amongst men and are accepted as changing room humour but only reinforce the protective self-imposed isolation that many men subject themselves to.

But this self-imposed isolation creates a withdrawal, a separation, a subtle disconnection, and inevitably a loneliness in men.

To evident this, I will share the work of Dan Doty, the founder of Evryman, as US based men’s group.?Doty created the following thought provoking equation:

Vulnerability x Time = Depth of Connection.

The logic underpinning this equation is that if we increase our vulnerability, the time it takes to deepener our connection to others lessens so because almost everything in life is on a continuum it's equally reasonable to assume the opposite is true too:

A lack of vulnerability x A lack of time

= A lack of connection.

A lack of connection, a lack of ‘growth friends’ is one of the reasons why I created my Better Yourself small group coaching course – the next course starts on Thursday the 30 September 2021.

The men that join this coaching journey will experience peer to peer coaching. They will share aspects of themselves that they wouldn’t normally do so, but because everyman is doing so, it lessens the stigma, it deepens the connections and significantly increases the impact of the coaching.

(If you would like to find out more or apply to join the 9 week course, send me a personal message).

The final point which I believe is compounding male loneliness is our dependency on convenient but superficial digital connections.

To be clear, I am not against social media, it has given a powerful and nessecary voice to key issues such as Black Lives Matter and Gender Pay Gap but what I am against is how, we as a society exploit the ease and expedient nature of our digitally connected ‘togetherness’.?

Even before the prominence of Facebook and the rise of Instagram and LinkedIn etc, men were skilled at keeping conversations at a surface and superficial level.?Now, because of our reliance on digital interaction, many men have mastered the art of avoiding and evading any conversation that might require them to converse about how they feel.

Paradoxically, we’re connected to more people than ever before but research would suggest that we have never felt so lonely and disconnected. ?

I personally believe that part of this digital disconnect is fuelled by a subconscious belief that many of our social media connections are 'only' transient and as a result, we simply don’t care to carve out the time commit to them or show up in the meaningful ways like we do our physical friendships.

So how do we combat male loneliness (?).

It’s a simple but difficult answer; it will require a concerted effort from the men of our generation, both as individuals and as a wider collective.

We need to redefine the standards of modern day masculinity. We need to place a greater emphasis on connection, not just to other men but to ourselves, our family's and our communities.

By redefining the standards of what it means to be a man, we can reduce many societal and socioeconomic issues; but to do so we need men to increase their emotional courage, embrace their vulnerability and most importantly, talk.

My parting message is this:

Men.?Talking about your emotions does not make you weak, it makes you durable.

If you've found this article insight, interesting or perhaps thought provoking, please engage by commenting, sharing or liking etc as it helps raise the topic of male loneliness.

NB. If you recognise you're lonely or perhaps that you want to create new male friendships and you're an enable bodied man who has an interest in the outdoors and who wants to connect with other good quality, likeminded men, you're welcome to join our Men & Mountains walking community.

Thank you, Dan.