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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
 Posted: 13-08-2006 23:44 Post subject: All the lonely people... |
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| Quote: | Hello, loneliness
(Filed: 13/08/2006)Page 1 of 5
Feeling lonely? You're not alone. With seven million people living on their own, Britain is turning into a nation of loners - and it's making us ill. By Jan Masters
I remember a particular visit to my GP some years ago, when I'd been living on my own for quite a while. The ailment was minor: a twisted ankle.
But as the doctor crouched down, asking me all relevant medical questions, he gently cradled my foot in his hand and without warning (and as much to my surprise as to his) I burst into tears.
It was the concerned touch that did it, the uncomplicated physical connection. And in that moment I realised that no matter how many friends were at the end of a phone, how many stellar events studded my diary, however much I knew it was better to live solo than in a sour relationship (something I still wholeheartedly believe) and however well I was coping (which was pretty damn well as it happened) it was possible to feel lonely. And never admit it to others. Not even to oneself.
After all, loneliness is hardly an acceptable badge for the cool and the capable. It's for misfits in bedsits, tweed-skirted spinsters of the parish, old soldiers relegated by relatives to retirement homes.
Besides, we reason, everything's different now. How can anyone be lonely in a world where you can call your mother from a mountain top, speed-date 50 potential mates in an evening and speed-mail 20 friends in a second?
Yet in a new study by researchers from Scottish and Australian universities, one in three adults say they feel lonely. And they're not the ones crocheting tea-cosies in their twilight years - loneliness levels start to rise at 20, peaking between 40 and 49.
As one of the authors, William Lauder, professor of nursing at the University of Dundee, says, 'This study challenges the belief that people get lonelier as they get older.'
And loneliness isn't just about stoically smiling by day and sobbing into your sauvignon at night: it makes you unwell. 'It can increase the risk of conditions such as heart disease and depression,' says Professor Lauder. 'Previous research has indicated that, health-wise, it carries a similar level of risk to obesity.'
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This is a long article - it carries on for another four pages.
http://tinyurl.com/rsrwh
Beatles - Eleanor Rigby Lyrics
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding
has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by
the door
Who is it for?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will
hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. Darning his socks in the night when there's
nobody there
What does he care?
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her
name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from
the grave
No one was saved
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
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Slejpner Great Old One Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Total posts: 180 Location: Gloucestershire, Wez Cunnry Gender: Male |
| Posted: 14-08-2006 20:31 Post subject: |
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I've always believed there is a genuine buzz of energy created inside by the touch of another person. Sometimes negative energy if you don't want that person to touch you, but otherwise it can definitely raise the spirits, however minutely.
And as for a hug.... |
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| gncxx King-Size Canary
Great Old One Joined: 25 Aug 2001 Total posts: 12872 Location: Eh? Gender: Male |
| Posted: 14-08-2006 20:42 Post subject: |
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Was this the same investigation from last week that discovered single adults (or was it single men?) are more likely to die young than those with partners or spouses?
If so, I'm not long for this world... |
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| Kondoru Unfeathered Biped Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Total posts: 5670 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 14-08-2006 23:04 Post subject: |
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<Kondoru has only just discovered she is in a room full of people. she stares around, wondering what to do.>
Sniff
<goes back to reading book.> |
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| rynner Location: Still above sea level Gender: Male |
| Posted: 14-08-2006 23:12 Post subject: |
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rynner wonders whether to touch Kondoru....
decides not...
[shrug] |
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| Gemaki Joined: 18 Nov 2003 Total posts: 1107 Location: Lookin' back in front of me Age: 46 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 14-08-2006 23:47 Post subject: |
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| dreamcatcher5 Magic Mummy.
Great Old One Joined: 30 Nov 2002 Total posts: 110 |
| Posted: 15-08-2006 16:20 Post subject: |
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| Even when someone is with the people they love most in the world, it's possible to feel lonely. |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17565 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 3 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 15-08-2006 16:27 Post subject: |
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I can somehow always feel crowded, rather than lonely.  |
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| sunsplash1 Fortean and Proud
cognitively purposefuly I Joined: 09 Jan 2004 Total posts: 2074 Location: The Hills, overlooking a smallish antipodean city in South Australia Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2006 08:19 Post subject: |
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Crowded you say?
* 'Splash picks up note pad and points invitingly at couch * |
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| _Lizard23_ In love with the
Great Old One Joined: 23 Aug 2001 Total posts: 1914 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2006 09:00 Post subject: |
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I always think of lonliness as a mood. It is possible to get stuck in the same mood for a very long time, but usually they just come and go. I have spent a long time being single and living alone and occasionally got lonely, like I occasionally get angry, but if you feel like that all the time I think it's a psychological disorder like depression ... which might sound a bit harsh but depression is an old friend of mine. Anyway, that's what the pub's for. It is quite possible to be entirely alone and not the least bit lonely, just as it is to be amongst many people, even people you know and love, and be desperately lonely as mentioned above.
I'm not even sure about the physical touch thing - some people just don't seem to want or need it as much as others. While I've never been shy in intimate relationships (ahem) I used to loathe physical contact with friends and strangers ... 'aw c'mere' hugs and goodbye pecks on the cheek etc used to make me extremely uncomfortable and even shaking hands or being touched on the elbow or something during conversation would make me feel awkward. I'm much less uptight these days and figure if people want to do that sort of stuff then that's ok, but it really doesn't do much for me. I am a bit odd, mind.
I like being alone, but equally I have known people who cannot stand it. I remember reading years ago that young people are increasingly living alone longer and so on, but my experience doesn't really support this, just about everyone I've known e.g. from university, where we all lived in digs together of course, have lived with friends or parents, partially for economic reasons, until moving in with long term partners and have never actually lived alone. Older folks (I don't mean the elderly .. just grown ups  ) I know often seem to hurtle with frightening speed from one long term relationship to another, not pausing for breath inbetween - I don't know many single divorcees at all, or they have children living with them. |
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| Mister_Awesome Great Old One Joined: 19 Sep 2005 Total posts: 266 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-08-2006 11:31 Post subject: |
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| I think society discourages the amount of physical contact we might receive in a natural enviroment. Certainly living alone isn't natural... |
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| mindalai spinster of this parish
Great Old One Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Total posts: 1739 Location: on the shelf Age: 37 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 16-08-2006 11:40 Post subject: |
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It might not be natural but I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't imagine having to share my kitchen and bathroom with anyone else ever again. I'd hate it.
There was an article in the Guardian yesterday about hugging etc and the general upshot was that there's far too much of it about these days. I have to agree. I hate feeling obliged to hug everyone I meet and kiss hello with my friends. My friends all know better than to try any of that slushy stuff with me now. |
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| mindalai spinster of this parish
Great Old One Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Total posts: 1739 Location: on the shelf Age: 37 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 16-08-2006 11:44 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | The last thing I want is a hug
Jim Shelley
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian
The pressure on young British men to hug one another - their friends, their brothers, even, for God's sake, their fathers - has never been greater. Watching Big Brother or Love Island at the moment, you realise the trend has reached epidemic proportions. Not an incident or even a conversation goes by that doesn't result in, say, Callum Best and Chris Brosnan embracing like brothers who haven't seen each other for decades.
On Love Island, pathetic pipsqueaks Lee Otway and Paul Danan frequently resolved their heated disputes over voluptuous Playboy bunny Colleen Shannon (!) not only by hugging, but by kissing each other's stubbled cheeks (on their faces, that is), and muttering various meaningless assurances such as, "I love you man," or "I think you're wicked." Anyone would think they had survived a tour of duty in Iraq, not "endured" some overblown publicity stunt on a luxury resort in Fiji.
On Big Brother, meanwhile, the hugs are saved for eviction night as lads like Mikey and Pete cuddle the very people that they nominated/stabbed in the back in the first place. Every Friday, they indulge in an orgy of hugs, tears and kisses as one of their number steps out to a world of appearances in Heat magazine and Richard and Judy while the others behave as if they were being sent to the electric chair.
I'd say I don't know who these soft-hearted "New Men" think they are, but I do. The recent trend for men to hug their fathers for instance is, quite simply, an imitation of Americans. Suddenly, repressed English males you've known for years are patting their dads ostentatiously on the back as if they were greeting Tony Soprano.
The problem, as David Bowie said, is that this is not America. By hugging each other every time they meet, young British males like Otway are merely aping the cool young Americans they see in hip-hop videos or frat-pack movies. As the fraudulent gesture of the American wannabe, the male hug is basically the emotional equivalent of the baseball cap worn backwards.
This sort of random hugging - serial hugging - looks like the gesture of someone who is "in touch with his feelings". In most cases, it's totally bogus. Or rather, it's the act of someone uneasy about their relationship with their dad - which is, after all, one of the very mainstays of English society. They have undermined the currency of a real (British) hug - one that should be saved for special occasions (like, say, funerals). Hugs are becoming the nervous tics of a nation of young British men who can't be their old, gloriously repressed selves.
Obviously, it's OK to hug another man you haven't seen for several years. (The Law Against Hugging could fix it at a period of, say, 10 years. Or 20.) Personally, though, I would no rather hug my mates than kiss them on the lips. They know how important they are to me without this sort of facile gesture.
I was in the US when Barbara Bush endorsed the "Hugs Are Better Than Drugs" campaign. Obviously, hugs aren't (quite) as harmful as heroin. But it's time to leave the hugging to the Americans and Just Say No. |
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| H_James Ancient Cow (&)
Creepy thing Joined: 18 May 2002 Total posts: 5624 |
| Posted: 16-08-2006 12:00 Post subject: |
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| Hmm, well all my friends are always hugging each other, I can't say I mind it. It's just what they do. |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17565 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 3 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 16-08-2006 12:16 Post subject: |
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A manly punch on the shoulder was intimacy enough for my generation!
I'm with Minda, I don't do hugs. I've lived alone whenever I could and even now, happily married, I have my own bedroom and the Manbitch has his. (My bedroom, aka the Pimp Palace, has been seen many times on here.)
Physical contact, yuk, give me emails every time.  |
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