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\u2014yes, alone\u2014lonely, isolated!
\nAfter 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 \u2014 to talk to about a movie, to discuss a newspaper article with or to tell who you met for a meal \u2014 that event loses continuity. It can never be referred to again because no one else knows it happened.
\nNot 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 \u2014 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\u2019s comings and goings. In other words, to find a witness to one\u2019s life.
\nSome women had best friends they could talk to on a daily basis, and a few had children available to share each other\u2019s 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\u2019s lives.
\nI 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\u2019s 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.
\nSo 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 \u2014 someone who has participated in the events of your past \u2014 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\u2019s life is a reciprocal relationship. Not everyone I talked to needed this kind of intimate connection, but many did and expressed it as loneliness.
\nNot 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.
\nIf 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 \u2014 for it is only friends who can guard against that pervasive and painful feeling: loneliness.
\nAnd 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.
\nNatasha 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.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\u2014yes, alone\u2014lonely, isolated! After my husband died, I interviewed widows and widowers in order to understand and learn about the different coping mechanisms […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":281471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"DOING IT BETTER: Feeling lonely in a crowd","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11552],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}