Living Alone

I recently had a casual, personal, business dealing with a seemingly wonderful middle-aged woman. She lives alone. She didn't blurt out her living status, but the nature of our business transaction, and the conversation surrounding it, made it obvious. In lieu of a roommate or significant other, she had several pets.

The truth be told, I'd never really thought about this subject before (in this context). The idea that a middle-aged woman, who wasn't crazy and who was reasonably attractive and stable, should be living alone seemed tragic to me. Because I have children and a husband at home, the idea that I could be alone, totally alone (as this woman was), was something that began to fester in my mind.

So much of my socializing is focused on my family. There are constant, small interchanges: what's for dinner, is there coffee, the announcements of comings and goings, do we need milk or bread, and the usual assortment of good night/good morning greetings. Every night I share my bed with my husband and all the happiness and security that provides enables a kind of reset on the day's trials and tribulations.

The woman I met had none of that, although I'm certain she mimicks those family niceties and interchanges with her pets.

Man is a social animal and it has always been my belief that a madness of solitude can develop when people do not have an intimate social group (i.e., family). It keeps us humble, sane, and provides a minimum standard of happiness that everyone should enjoy. Research on couples has been interesting in this regard. Many of the studies I've read conclude that couples have the ability to keep each other on the straight and narrow.

Our culture has changed so radically in the last 50 years that I fear we're tinkering with disaster. When we look at programs (such as Social Security), the idea that people live alone and bear the entire burden of their housing and living costs, is something that is unsustainable. Living alone is not a state that will be able to continue once Social Security is modified, reduced, or means-tested. From that perspective, we need to be prepared for our social reeingineering to correct itself when these economic realities are forced on our culture.

Looking at it purely from an economic perspective, it is very wrong-headed, but looking at it in dollars and cents seems a bit callous. That said, living alone is an indulgence—a living arrangement that for economic reasons never existed before (in any great numbers).

There is no reason for that woman to be living alone, except that our culture has changed so dramatically that having a stable mate, or living with extended family, are no longer the norm. This is primarily a result of us having smaller families. At one time, this woman would have moved in with her sister, brother, or her parents if she found herself without a mate. She would have helped raise the children of her siblings or cousins. She might also have moved in with a long time friend (the stereotype of the two spinsters comes to mind), but the decision to live alone would not have been acceptable (because people from previous generations, although not as cool and progressively-minded as we are today, somehow knew that people were better off living among a stable family). That is not to suggest that women have never lived alone, only that it wasn't the norm.

Now it is difficult to explain why the various studies on couples show the data that they do (that couples are more mentally and emotionally stable than their single peers, as well as more financially stable and successful). Is the relationship itself casual to the outcome, or are the people casual to a successful relationship? It is possible that the reason couples remain couples is because of their generally good emotional health. It could be that the people who are prone to abuse their children, or prone to abuse themselves, find themselves as single parents (or single without children) because of those tendencies and issues. That said, it seems to be a reasonable conjecture that the everyday burdens of life are less of a burden with the cradle of stability of a relationship, even if the people themselves are more vulnerable to psychological instability, and it is that stability of the relationship itself that prevents those daily-life-burdens from diminishing our psychological health, when they are shared with another person. Couples tend to prop each other up.

I just can't get the woman's predicament out of my mind. What happened to our culture that enabled a sweet and nice lady to be so alone?

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).