I always considered marriage the epitome of feeling connected: you share a life with a partner and maybe even have children. Society at least acts like it is.
I have a coworker in his 40s, conservative and Christian, married to a woman holding a job, he is also employed and has a good job, all things considered and they have a child.
I don’t see this person much but each time he sees me he approaches to basically complain and rant, mostly about democrats and foreigners, getting very emotional to the point of crying.
At first I hated him for spewing so much shit, but now I think I’m starting to pity him: he has a job, is married to a working woman, they have a child, they are homeowners… and he still feels angry and needs to rant to feel good. It’s like he’s angry at everything.
Which takes me to think, maybe there are things men need emotionally that women cannot provide, but I couldn’t write a list.
What are some of these connections men need out of a marriage?
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Your coworker is just a miserable piece of shit. Even if he was able to personally remove all democrats and immigrants, as he so claims to want, he’d still be a miserable piece of shit and no happier.
It’s better to wake up alone knowing you’re alone, than to wake up next to someone and nevertheless feel lonely.
— Liv Ullmann, Norwegian actress
Marriage is a legal and religious construct. It does not fix a lack of connection.
I met a former religious couple at my old job.
She and her husband are in their 40s and tried to invite us to an orgy. I did the polite thing and let them know maybe later.
She showed me photos of her dressed like an Amish person in her 30s. She shared that during that time, her kids and church kept her busy. She and her husband never felt aligned, but they feel a strong loneliness when they’re not together.
And when her kids went to college, she and her husband finally bonded and discovered they both love orgies. And it was only at that moment when, after like 20 years of marriage, did they actually connect as human beings.
Wild.
Aww, what a cute story. I’m happy for them
It is a known personality issue.
It is called avoidant personality disorder (AVPD) or schizoid personality disorder (SPD). Both of these conditions can lead to feelings of loneliness due to inner walls and barriers that the person builds to protect themselves from perceived threats or emotional pain.
Here I thought it was normal to feel lonely. When that whole FOMO term use being thrown around a few years ago actually made me both aware how often I was feeling it more than others perhaps, but also that I wasn’t alone in feeling it all the time. Always kind of figured the fomo part was tied more to self centeredness or lack of self worth acknowlment or such on my end though. 34 years down, likely only 34 to go, I’ll figure myself out eventually, haha
Edit: Not married though, a couple occurrences of staying in relationships to long when I should have left though, fear of being more lonely.
Anyone can be lonely at any time, even surrounded by people who love them.
I’m happily married, I love my wife very much, she is my favorite person and I would be devastated and lost without her. Still, sometimes I feel lonely.
Sometimes I think about my dad who isn’t with us any longer and I feel lonely. Sometimes I think about work stress and I feel lonely. Sometimes I feel lonely for no damn reason at all.
None of that has anything to do with how much I love my wife, or her ability to “provide”; people are just complicated.
look, this person is probably an asshole regardless, but to answer you: Yes. Maybe more than if you are single. I stated dating a guy that was super rich and good-looking and he was super nice to me, It was like a real life fairy tale… until we got married and the routine started to show us how lonely we were with each other. We had nothing in comom, he was a bit dumb and shallow and the only subject he was interested was sports. I hate sports and like movies, shows and science. At the end he would say i was too nerd and I would say he was too dumb, but the reality is that he was very nice and so was I, we just were not ment for each other.
Dude was probably raised on stupid conservative shit and never did the work to find happiness in himself.
You don’t need connections to be happy and the connections people are drawn to tend to amplify what they’re putting into the relationship. If this dude is miserable and looking to others to fix it they’re just going to dig their hole deeper.
I’d clarify that this is different from leaning on friends when you’re going through a hard time, if you establish a positive relationship you can lean on it for stability when your life is rough… and some folks culture positive relationships during hard times by compartmentalizing them into a positive part of their lives (an example I’ve seen was a friend who joined our board game group during a rough time but didn’t reveal their troubles until later - when all that shit was going down our space was where she came to just have a good time and be positive).
Life’s hard. People raised on the ideology of bootstraps and “Having a family will fix it” are playing on extra hard mode.
Lots of great answers here already about the marriage part. I’m going to say something really unpopular in today’s society about things men need. Men need a non-verbal outlet for their anger and frustration. Even cerebral men will not successfully purge all of that negativity just by talking. That outlet can be weightlifting, running, hiking, boxing, or any number of things. Without that outlet that bitterness builds endlessly. Fight Club does a great job of showing the despair that comes from not having a physical outlet for those emotions. Or maybe not all men need that, but I know I do, as do all of my male friends. Obviously we can’t say if that has any bearing on your coworker’s situation, but you asked about needs that aren’t fulfilled by marriage alone, and that’s one that I’m aware of.
I find some of the most frustrating and angry times I have is when I don’t have a physical outlet. I need physical catharsis. Usually it’s weightlifting, a few times I’ve run until I drop. Ultimately I feel like a lot of it stems from society not fully being there with letting men be equally as emotional or emotionally open as women. This means the solution most find if they can’t express themselves that way, they do in a physical way.
This is just a personal take based on personal circumstances and lived experiences.
I think exercise is helpful to everyone who experiences stressful or frustrating situations regularly. Our bodies are still built for fight or flight responses, and physical exertion helps get rid of that stress response.
Other commenters have done a better job addressing your questions more directly, but I want to piggyback off of this question to point something else out: the atomic family, the suburban dream is extremely isolating and breeds loneliness
When you live in your house, only enter and leave by the garage and your neighbors do the same, you will never interact with your neighbors, and your neighbors will never interact with you.
Driving to the store in your personal vehicle there’s no sense of shared identity to start interacting with other people meaningfully. You’re just various individuals in the same space
Having kids can be extremely isolating as to go out to do anything you must either have a babysitter (and be able to afford said babysitter) or bring the kids with you. No opportunity for spontaneity, and it quickly gets expensive to just spend grownup time with friends unless you and your partner spend the time seperately. And taking your kids to events means paying more attention to your kids and the event than meeting anyone else. And if you have a special needs child it can be even more isolating as you are no longer sharing experiences with your fellow parents except for those who also have special needs kids.
We need to do things to foster community and encourage people to talk to strangers more. Having good conversations with strangers is how you make friends, and is a great treatment for loneliness
People that isolate themselves become isolated. I just don’t use a car, but go often with the kids by train to meet other families. We meet strangers and have fun, but sometimes I am lonely anyway. Sometimes in the middle of a chaotic people storm. It’s just what I “blame” it on that is the biggest difference. It’s the way we talk to others, if we are open and if those meet our vulnerability that is the biggest contributor imo. You can never be lonely if someone really cares about you.
The decline of the Third Space is an interesting social phenomenon.
The more comments I read the more apt this is. Without places to just be, with no expectation or obligation to be a consumer, somewhere to be around people with or without socializing. Makes you feel like part of your community, part of something that’s bigger than you, to be seen, to be acknowledged.
Your coworker is a twat.
Ignoring his political alignment, anybody who comes to work and vent about their home life just sucks in general. Doesn’t matter what walk of life they come from.
Fucking energy vampire.
They’re not lonely, they’re just assholes.
Yes, it’s entirely possible to be married and still feel alone.
However, ranting about democrats and foreigners tells me this is not about being married or not. The guy has problems and worries that have nothing to do with marriage.
Still, I can somewhat relate. Living in another country since many years (because reasons), and I don’t feel at home. Happily married, with kids, all good. But I’m not home, y’know?
People here don’t need me; they all hang out with their childhood friends they’ve known forever. I’m the new guy, even after all these years. That makes me feel lonely. And it has nothing to do with being married.
Could be his loneliness leads him to seek out that kind of political thought, cause and effect aren’t clearly established here. Isolation and other stressors have been known to drive people toward more reactionary conservative ideas.
But like others have said it could be his worldview leading to him feeling lonely and isolated, maybe threatened by changes in the world. It’s not your responsibility to help him but I occasionally see people become less reactionary when I try to include them more, not directly contradict them but steer him in kind of an anti-corporations and wealth-inequality kind of way (or something like that) when they act like this. He might be trying to bond over a what he perceives as a shared patriotic struggle and become your friend?
Even if you don’t agree 100% it’ll probably be a small relief if he knows someone he trusts has concerns about the percieved injustices of the world, and letting him vent probably helps too. Traditional Christian masculinity can be kind of claustrophobic and I could see him talking with OP as trying to broaden his horizons, as paradoxical as that might seem.
Either way good luck to OP and I hope the coworker’s outlook improves.
Please don’t judge what women can provide by this sad, angry man.
To your core topic, of course you can be married and lonely. Being married doesn’t necessarily mean you are spending a lot of quality time together, or genuinely communicating when you do. Married people have jobs, housework, kids to take care of, and whatever time remains after that is often exhausted recovery time when not a lot of social intercourse is happening.
Conservatives often have more of a “battle of the sexes” mentality where men are supposed to be MEN and women are supposed to know their place. First of all this warps everyone since these roles may not suit their native personality. And on top of that, the male role includes a bunch of sexism - be stoic around women, etc. Conservative men try to be stoic overall, but a lot of them are also loudmouths because their values are so black-and-white they have a tendency to really, really think they are right and therefore should tell the world.
This guy is probably stoic around his wife and a loudmouth at work. A healthier person would have a marriage where they can talk about what’s bothering them, and then be professional at work. He’s clearly got emotional problems but then Conservatives also have backwards attitudes about mental health. It’s not something they think about and try to manage. Again: black and white. If you’re not fucking crazy then you don’t have a mental health problem, you just need to suck it up. It’s no failing of this man if he is cracking. He’s been set up to fail.
Absolutely you should pity him. That doesn’t mean you have to listen to his loudmouth politics in the workplace.
Dude can’t even ID who he needs to hate properly due too much fake news lol
I dotm get why you think he is lonely though… Sounds like he is trying to “educate” you on shot his shiti teevee told him lol
Yeah, have you ever had an annoying roommate? Isn’t it so much more frustrating and isolating than living alone? You don’t even have your own space to get away so you just become more irritable all the time. Now imagine if you wanted to not live with that person that you need to get lawyers, your family, another family and the government involved
A lot of people get married because “they’re supposed to”, “they’ve been dating for a while”, or because it’s arranged. Is it shocking that those people don’t have the foundation for a good long term relationship? Is it shocking that every day is a little bit worse for them?
What are some of these connections men need out of a marriage?
Basically the same connections that women need out of a marriage. A peer group, a purpose, and friend groups to share interests with.
Unfortunately many, if not most, people simply don’t know how to go about it. They throw themselves into their work and whatever of their time is leftover gets dedicated to family. The interests and friends that they had prior to marriage and kids are left behind and those sacrifices leave them feeling alone and unfulfilled. They also don’t understand WHY they feel that way when to the best of their understanding they’re doing everything right!
Marriage isn’t, except in exceedingly rare instances, a “one stop shop” where your partner somehow magically fulfills your every need. That’s straight up Disney Movie bullshit.
People, regardless of gender identity, absolutely REQUIRE relationships outside of their marriage.
A peer group, a purpose, and friend groups to share interests with.
Unfortunately many, if not most, people simply don’t know how to go about it. They throw themselves into their work and whatever of their time is leftover gets dedicated to family. The interests and friends that they had prior to marriage and kids are left behind and those sacrifices leave them feeling alone and unfulfilled. They also don’t understand WHY they feel that way when to the best of their understanding they’re doing everything right!
I really feel this. I am especially struggling with making friends in a new place. I have hobbies, but they are solitary so they don’t help me with my loneliness. And it doesn’t help that work takes up more of my time than I wish it did.
