There are people everywhere, at the supermarket, in the streets, in restaurants and movie houses, people standing in line and rushing about. One bumps into people nonstop. And yet, one may feel alone—yes, alone—lonely, isolated!
After my husband died, I interviewed widows and widowers in order to understand and learn about the different coping mechanisms people used. I found one uniformly spoken complaint: loneliness. Not surprisingly, they missed the companionship of their spouses. If there is no one to share your thoughts and reactions with — to talk to about a movie, to discuss a newspaper article with or to tell who you met for a meal — that event loses continuity. It can never be referred to again because no one else knows it happened.
Not only is there no one who knows where you have gone or what you have done or seen or thought; no one cares. I understand why people tweet — they are searching for someone to share the minutia of their daily activities. It is a quest for someone to know and care about one’s comings and goings. In other words, to find a witness to one’s life.
Some women had best friends they could talk to on a daily basis, and a few had children available to share each other’s mundane daily activities, such as what they ate for dinner or watched on TV. That seemed to help. Some of the men also had best friends, but none called them on a regular basis, and so they were not privy to each other’s lives.
I extrapolated the lack of interest and caring by others as a major component of what one misses in widowhood. There is no one to share one’s daily comings and goings. But it is a two-way street; one also wants to care deeply for another person and be involved in his or her life. Even small children have dolls or stuffed animals that they carry around. They are objects for the child to love and take care of, not objects that would take care of the child. These children are creating a symbolic representation upon which to practice the basic human social need to love and to care for someone. One wishes to love someone, not just be loved.
So what is the solution? Another person equally alone who would like to also fill the empty hours with a human voice, a person who wants to know what you did today. A friend is someone you can be vulnerable with, who knows the secrets, who cares for your happiness and can be counted on in bad times. It is also usually someone you have known for a while — someone who has participated in the events of your past — although sometimes you can make surprisingly fast connections that are truly meaningful. It is also being needed by someone else, to be the person another confides in and trusts. Being involved in another person’s life is a reciprocal relationship. Not everyone I talked to needed this kind of intimate connection, but many did and expressed it as loneliness.
Not everyone has this need for companionship. I have met self-sufficient people content to be on their own. But the majority, especially after a recent loss, are suffering from the lack of available give and take that is the essence of emotionally intimate relationships.
If one cannot have the one friend who is always there, the solution is to have several friends who together fulfill your needs. I have friends I go to movies with; some I eat with on a regular basis; some I talk about politics and books with; some have met my children; a few remember my husband. What is most important in widowhood is friends — for it is only friends who can guard against that pervasive and painful feeling: loneliness.
And so as difficult as it is to extend oneself at such a vulnerable time, it is critical to make the effort to reach out to others and take that first step. Call someone, make a lunch date, call someone else, do it.
Natasha Josefowitz taught the first course in the U.S. on women in management and is the author of 20 books. She lives at the White Sands in La Jolla.
