There’s currently a serious male loneliness epidemic. Middle-aged men are one of the loneliest groups of all, though they don’t often share their feelings with the world. If you notice a man in your life feeling down, these are 17 reasons why men over 40 feel so lonely.
Suffocating Societal Expectations
Middle-aged men are often subject to suffocating societal expectations that emotionally isolate them from the rest of the world. They must be providers, high earners, and the pinnacle of idealized physical masculinity. Any man who hasn’t met these expectations by 40 feels too insecure to discuss his feelings and disconnects from society.
Unfulfilling Jobs
By the time they hit 40, most men have been in their jobs for decades. As a result, they struggle to make career changes, even if their jobs make them miserable. They feel trapped and too guilty to confide in their families, who are depending on them, so they suppress their feelings.
Lack of Emotional Support
According to Mind, men are twice as likely as women to have nobody to rely on emotionally. This lack of support hits them harder than they let on, especially when they’re over 40 and expected to be on top of everything. Asking for help is wrongly seen as emasculating for an older man.
Rising Divorce Rates
Divorce is on the rise for middle-aged couples. While separation helps some people rediscover themselves, others find it challenging to forge a new identity. Men are discouraged from sharing their feelings so frequently that their partners are the only people they’re comfortable confiding in. As a result, divorce isolates them.
Aging Parents
Watching your parents age is hard, but chances are, if you’re over 40, your parents are elderly. The older they become, the more you start fearing their deaths. This is harder for men because their relationships with their parents often aren’t considered as close as women’s; thus, they’re less important to society.
Estranged Friendships
As we age, we naturally grow apart from some friends, but friendships are essential for socialization. On average, men have smaller friendship groups than women, so they have fewer people to speak to if they become estranged. It’s also a problem that older men are discouraged from showing affection to their friends.
Mounting Responsibilities
By 40, most men have too many responsibilities to count: jobs, partners, children, bills, and chores. These mounting responsibilities are often a massive burden, but most men are too proud to share their woes with other people, so they retreat into their loneliness and try to tackle everything on their own.
The Pressure of Raising Children
Successful child rearing requires two actively involved parents. HuffPost explains that family men cast themselves in four roles: the provider, protector, leader, and teacher. As the pressure mounts, many men silently buckle, and sadly, this pressure only gets worse with age.
Health Concerns
The older we get, the frailer our bodies become. The risks of developing cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis, high blood pressure, and diabetes all increase with age, and men aren’t immune to fear. However, many middle-aged men keep health concerns quiet to convince themselves everything will be okay.
Lack of Positive Affirmation
Positive affirmation isn’t just something for children. Everybody needs good self-esteem to banish negative thoughts, but men aren’t usually encouraged to be vulnerable. Their insecurities eat away at them and make them feel worthless. Society doesn’t praise or comfort them, so they continue to suffer in silence.
Stress
Unfortunately, stress is a part of everyday life, but that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Men, in particular, struggle with stress, which further fuels their loneliness. Research has suggested that men are more likely to withdraw due to extreme stress because they feel ashamed of not being ‘masculine’ enough.
Mental Health Erasure
Sadly, men over 40 are most at risk of committing self-harm because they find it too difficult to talk about their loneliness. Instead, they become consumed by mental health disorders, like depression and anxiety, which make them feel even lonelier. What’s worse is how society erases men’s mental health!
Less Physical Contact
Physical contact is much more powerful than we think. Medical News Today outlines the dangers of ‘touch starvation,’ including feelings of emptiness and loneliness. Men are stereotyped as being stoic and unaffected, so people wrongly assume they don’t need physical contact, such as hugs, to make them feel less alone.
Money Troubles
Money is one of the things we worry most about. That’s why men who lose their jobs often develop depression and spiral into dangerous coping mechanisms like alcoholism or gambling. There’s still pressure on men to be providers and solve money troubles, which is an isolating experience.
Being Terminally Online
Social media is often toxic to our mental health. While it helps us connect with people, being terminally online robs us of real-life contact and communication with people. Society frequently mocks older men who spend lots of time online, ignoring that they’re yearning for a connection to make their loneliness easier to bear.
Fewer Social Opportunities
Socializing is the ultimate cure for loneliness, but we typically get fewer social opportunities as we age. Middle-aged people, in particular, miss out due to having children at home and career milestones to hit. Men frequently find social isolation harder to deal with than women, and as a result, they become more withdrawn.
Toxic Masculinity
Finally, it’s a sad fact that men of all ages are still told to ‘man up.’ Verywell Mind warns that toxic masculinity glorifies unhealthy behavior, stigmatizes mental health, and makes men feel like they constantly need to be tough. Middle-aged men are from a generation that would regularly hear toxic masculinity from their own fathers, so it’s deeply ingrained.
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