The younger the person, the more he feels lonely! The amazing truth about loneliness. Why am I lonely? Why are there so many lonely people? More single men

Among the most important factors influencing demographic indicators, I can note the following:

1) An ill-conceived education system
In developed countries, people learn a lot, including women. People marry later - as a rule, after graduating from universities and obtaining basic professional skills. That is, late marriages lead to a decrease in the birth rate. That is, it is necessary to encourage young people to start families.

2) The difficulty of competing with the childless
It is more difficult for parents of a large family to compete with parents of small families, because prices depend on the purchasing power of people, and this purchasing power is related to fertility rates (number of children per average family)

Tackling the unpopular but necessary tax on childlessness

I do not propose to redistribute the income of the successful, talented and hardworking in favor of the marginalized and outsiders. I suggest reduce the increased purchasing power of the childless, which they have only from childlessness. And also reduce the economic pressure on families with children.

Those who earn more will have more incentive to have children. And this is good! Smart and talented people often have the best genetic predispositions, and, accordingly, children can also inherit them.

Simple arithmetic. I explain on my fingers with a piece of land.

Let's take:
1. a family with three children
2. childless
who want to buy land.

Imagine that a childless person and a father of a large family have the same salary of 1000 rubles, but the first one spends 80% on the family, and the second only 20% on himself. As a result, both come to the auction. One with 200r and the other with 800r

The price of a plot is determined by supply and demand. Let's say 10 km2 of land is for sale. Then the first will buy 2km2, and the second - 8km2.

If both were childless, then each would buy 5 km2. That is, in the first example, the childless person received 3 km2 simply due to childlessness. That's why I say that the childless reduce the purchasing power of families with children, harm society

Therefore, in a country with an average birth rate of 5 children per woman, you can hardly work and live an order of magnitude better than those who work two jobs to feed their families.

3) Cultural factor

National consciousness and religious identity
Here the psychological factor plays a role. Everyone wants to leave something for their children. It is not only money, business, etc. The desire to preserve national and religious traditions is more important factor. In addition, national and religious traditions are an important link between generations.

By the way, for this reason I trust childless politicians less. It is unlikely that these people think about the future, even if they do not want to have children.

Psychologically, it is important for a person to feel his dissimilarity to others. Let it be achievements in school, career, sports or some other activity. Not everyone, however, can boast of such achievements. In this case, the national culture may be the necessary distinguishing factor that emphasizes his (person's) uniqueness.

4. Value system (related to point 3)

promiscuity are the cause of the increase in the number of abortions, infidelities, divorces, single mothers. so-called. The "sexual revolution" seriously undermined the institution of the family.

For this reason, the TQ fauna is too selfish and used to only take and use. Many representatives of the local fauna themselves grew up in families, being an only child and from childhood they were not used to sharing with someone.

4) Village support. In rural areas, it is easier to raise children, besides, they help parents from an early age, while in urban conditions they are completely dependent on their parents.

And yes, the problem is complex and complex. But it needs to be solved, UN demographers note:

“One thing is clear: countries with low fertility have no chance of increasing natural growth and returning to large families. Once the birth rate began to decline, no country in history managed to increase it again for a long time”

Therefore, unpopular measures will have to be taken.

More and more men prefer to live alone. But what do you want women to do?
“Why are you surprised: there is no man who would like to sleep with the same woman all his life,” a friend drummed into me. “But, on the other hand, no one likes, being married, to run headlong to the ringing phone so that his wife does not grab pipe, compose fables about urgent help to a friend, pull up his pants and rush to where his mistress is waiting for him. Therefore, all men would like to be bachelors. To live separately from their wives and mistresses, but in such a way that they regularly visit them in turn." As sad as it may be, I have to admit the truth about my Slovak friend. Already today, as studies show, in large and medium-sized cities of Russia, more and more men live alone. They do not shy away from women, but do not marry and, as a rule, do not have children. So far, there are approximately 33 percent of such "conscious" bachelors. Considering that men die before women, suffer from alcoholism and drug addiction more often, die more often in traffic accidents and wars, it turns out that there are 3-4 single women for a 35-year-old man who lives alone. Demography itself pushes the representatives of the stronger sex to expanse in intimate life. Some of them were married in their youth. Someone immediately began a free life, but gradually moving from long-term relationships with one partner to short ones - with different ones. And where to go "first"? A single, unmarried or divorced, temperamental, earning a living woman, but, alas, far from being young, having lost her youth to a man who was not going to marry her, and now does not really hide that she is not the only one? To paraphrase the famous song of Vizbor "You are not alone with me" and come to terms with it? Moreover, this "conscious" bachelor is not some slob. If a man is able to live alone, then he has qualities that ladies like; internally organized, the apartment is always in order, he cooks dinner (we immediately agreed that we are not talking about degraded alcoholics). Today it is customary to call such people "self-sufficient" people in the good sense of the word. They do not need a woman "on the farm", she is like a holiday to them. Friends, let's be honest: yes, this is not a man, but a dream! Yes, just unattainable. So far, it is comforting that the "epidemic" of bachelor life has affected only large cities. In a district center with a population of 100-200 thousand people, such a way of life is practically impossible. First, it causes condemnation of others. Secondly, there is no "metropolitan" variety of ladies. But all this, I repeat, for now. Why are more and more men gravitating toward what, in the language of sociologists, is called the "household for one person"? There are many reasons. One of them is household. A relatively young man "with a head" and a profession may well earn money for a "microwave oven", a washing machine, a dishwasher and other equipment, which, unlike his wife, serves him silently, without demanding feelings in return. No need to pretend that you are attentively listening to her complaints, take her to visit, trail, when necessary, to your mother-in-law, receive relatives at home. The second reason is that if from all sides they talk about the crisis of the institution of the family, it means that more people become lonely, and society gets used to it. Today, no one is surprised by a bachelor minister, a bachelor leader, the head of a company ... If earlier in some positions it was unthinkable (think of a bachelor as the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU), today no one asks for marriage certificates! But demographers, sociologists and psychologists consider the main reason for the spread of "bachelorhood" to be a reassessment of values, which, following the West, has already occurred in Russia. Why did people get married before? Including in order to have children. They brought joy, despite a bunch of problems that they delivered. They were the meaning of life, a support in old age. Sadly, I hear from the mouths of family experts: the child is no longer considered main value. The laws of society are such that improving the quality of life awakens in a person the desire for sensual pleasures. And it, if we talk about the intimate life of men, implies diversity. For example, I do not like all these observations of scientists. But life itself makes them listen to their arguments. If in 1964 young women, in the course of a sociological survey in Moscow and Vladimir, declared that they were ready to have a single friend with no prospects for marriage, but on the condition that he had them alone, then today's studies in the same cities revealed a completely different picture. 80 percent of women with secondary special and higher education admitted that they were ready to endure the "rival", if only they would not meet her face to face and not compare who their lover treats better. “The most interesting thing is that women also adapt to “households for one person,” says a psychotherapist, candidate of medical sciences, Professor Alexander Poleev. “If they are offered a “relationship” once a week, and this is not enough for young people, then accept an additional partner. Although they do not like it. A woman is so arranged that she is closer to a stable relationship and it is harder to break them. Therefore, she is often ready to endure "what is," even if such a life does not suit her. " All these processes are not only "ours", not purely Russian ones. Ten years ago there were 50 million families in the United States. And today - 34. Moreover, this figure also includes civil marriages, that is, couples living in the same house. We have the same trend. Family experts predict that if nothing changes, in 15-17 years more than half of men and women of marriageable age will live without a marriage certificate, each with his own personal "household". In a situation where there are 2-3 women for one sexually functioning "man, this is completely natural. And everything would be fine, but what about children? But it’s bad here with children. Of course, they will give birth. And men are not idols in order to relieve oneself of responsibility for the child, not to meet, not to help raise and educate. Futurologists have already given names to such marriages: “guest”, “extraterritorial”. and the consequences of growing up in a house where there are "three walls" instead of four. But for now, that's it. It is this that partly explains the widely known and already taken into account in government programs demographers forecast that in the coming years, the percentage of the country's child population will decrease by almost a third. You can, of course, be an optimist and expect that life will magically change, pushing us all and each individually towards egoism, intelligently called individualism, that responsibility for the one you tamed and the one you brought into the world will return. That a child, and not "sensual pleasure" will bind a man and a woman. One man with one woman. But I say this as a woman, a representative of the weaker sex. Nina FOKINA. "Work".

Modern psychology and science does not provide exhaustive answers to the questions “Why am I lonely?”, “Why are there so many lonely people?” and this is what can be found in the Vedic texts. This is my personal opinion, my brief interpretation

Loneliness is usually explained by:

1. Great expectations and requirements for others. Or unforgiven internal insults to the opposite sex. People feel this at a distance, often not consciously and do not want to communicate, realizing that there will be open or hidden grievances and pressure on us.

2. Great demands on oneself, internal congestion with resentment, guilt, negative emotions that blocks inner happiness. And his absence does not attract, but rather repels.

3. If for a long time before that you wanted to be alone and roughly speaking everyone was dispersed from your universe, now you need to make the same amount of effort to compensate for this tendency and then more efforts to develop the necessary one to invite people into your universe.

This is especially important in our time of loneliness and disunity, where the approach of individual farmers is cultivated. Moreover, if before that we wished misfortune and evil to everyone for many lives, now the trend of many lives will have to be broken. What many lives have desired, then we have in this moment. The law of cause and effect. Therefore, it is very important to start the practice of wishing everyone happiness in order to correct this trend.

Those. the universe around us is formed not only due to some actions, but also due to inaction, as well as thoughts and desires, including subconscious ones.

Therefore, the answer to the question: “why am I lonely” lies in several areas, in our psycho-emotional state, and our karma, when we get the results of what we did earlier in this and previous lives.

Loneliness dissolves if we are happy on our own!

In order to stop being lonely, it is very important to be kind, cheerful, happy on your own. If we are happy on our own, then people will automatically reach out to us. We will immediately find like-minded people, friends and our love. Loneliness will automatically dissolve.

Loneliness from the burden of resentment

Our happiness is largely determined by the burden of resentment and anger we carry with us. Therefore, if the question arises: “why am I lonely,” then be sure to look through your whole life and forgive all insults to men (on the opposite sex). The more grievances accumulated inside, the less chance to destroy your loneliness. People subconsciously feel that it will not be easy to communicate with an offended person and avoid such contacts.

Ecology of life: Why are more and more people choosing loneliness as a lifestyle? Does seclusion release you from obligations? How do singles change society itself? What does loneliness mean today and why is it no longer a shame to live alone? We get acquainted with the book “Life solo. The New Social Reality” by New York University PhD Eric Kleinenberg and explore the unique realities of the 21st century.

Why more and more people are choosing loneliness as a lifestyle

Why are more and more people choosing loneliness as a lifestyle? Does seclusion release you from obligations? How do singles change society itself? What does loneliness mean today and why is it no longer a shame to live alone? We get acquainted with the book “Life solo. The New Social Reality” by New York University PhD Eric Kleinenberg and explore the unique realities of the 21st century.

Even 50 years ago, choosing to live alone was associated with something marginal and unnatural.. Practically from birth, everyone received the mindset that living alone is not only strange and condemnable, but also dangerous. Exaggeratedly, this idea appeared in the dystopian film The Lobster (2015), according to the plot of which loners were prosecuted by law, and everyone who wanted, but did not find a mate, was turned into an animal and released into the forest.

Indeed, even some 100 years ago, the inability to get married was considered a real grief, and tens of thousands of years before that, punishment in the form of expulsion from the community was often perceived as a measure much more terrible than the death penalty.

Today, more and more people are consciously going into free swimming.- refuses marriage, lives and even travels alone. For example, in 1950, only 22% of Americans lived alone, today more than 50% of US citizens choose to live solo.

How can one explain the rapid abolition of the set of traditions and rules previously honored throughout the world? Kleinenberg argues that transformations modern society At least four causes have contributed: women's emancipation, social media, changing urban spaces, and increased life expectancy.

Indeed, for the first time in history modern realities are such that each individual is a full-fledged cog in the economy, thanks to which a huge number of offers for bachelors appeared on the housing market. Women's emancipation allows you to make decisions about marriage and having children without a threat to your future, and an increase life expectancy leads to the fact that one of the spouses inevitably outlives the second and is not always ready to connect his life with a new person.

Thus, loneliness today takes on a completely different meaning than it did 50 or 60 years ago. Now the right to live solo is a deeply personal and completely adequate decision, which is resorted to by millions of people on the planet.

However, despite the fact that physically secluded life has become accessible, there are still many stereotypes around loners. You need to understand that today solo life does not mean complete isolation . Thanks to the Internet and the opportunity to work from home, singles are immersed in an active social life. What's more, studies show that most single people have more fulfilling lives than their married counterparts. First of all, this is due to the fact that the new way of life is a choice in favor of healthy selfishness, that is, time intended for oneself.

“The masses of people decided on this social experiment because, in their view, such a life corresponds to the key values ​​of modernity - individual freedom, personal control and the desire for self-realization, that is, values ​​\u200b\u200bthat are important and dear to many from adolescence. Living alone gives us the opportunity to do what we want, when we want it and on the terms we set ourselves.”

This common position today comes into conflict with the traditional model of behavior. At the same time, it is known that those who marry or have children just because “it’s necessary”, without too much reflection, often condemn those who choose a life “without obligations”, regardless of their personal level of happiness. Meanwhile, sociological observations show:

“... people who have never been married are not only no less happy than those who are married, but also feel much happier and less lonely than those who have divorced or lost a spouse .... All those who have divorced or separated from their spouse will testify that there is no lonelier life than living with a person you do not love.

Friends and relatives of singles are often worried and want to find their soul mate as soon as possible, get a job in the office, or see their loved ones more often. In fact, those loners for whom solitude is a personal choice are not outsiders and do not suffer. From the point of view of psychology, the one who is not bored with himself is a whole person, not prone to destructive codependency. Kleinenberg notes:

“In fact, the increase in the number of people living alone has nothing to do with whether Americans feel lonely or not. There is a wealth of research open to the public that proves that the feeling of loneliness depends on the quality, not the quantity, of social contacts. What is important here is not the fact that a person lives alone, it is important whether he feels lonely.

In addition, it is quite obvious that today we are forced to spin in a frenzied flow of information. Messages and notifications in in social networks mixed with phone calls and news on TV, turning our everyday life into an information meat grinder. Perhaps the conscious appeal to solitude is also associated with the desire to take a break from external noise..

Recent studies cited in Kleinenberg's work suggest that most modern loners lead an active social life. Many of them have jobs, friends and lovers, and some even get married. Where is the loneliness here? The new social reality allows you to simultaneously have any kind of relationship and engage in yourself on your own territory. So, married couples who need personal space prefer to live separately, meeting, for example, on Sundays.

This approach to relationships often causes misunderstanding and even condemnation - a change in stereotyped behavior rarely causes acceptance by the majority. Also, many accuse loners of egocentrism, high self-esteem and indifferent attitude towards people. It must be understood that most often such attacks arise from those who lead a less eventful social life, have a lot of free time and are prone to psychological dependence. Modern loners are ready to maintain social contacts, however strictly select friends. Their external isolation (the desire to live alone) does not mean that they do not need people, or that they do not know how to love. Besides, those who have chosen a solo life understand that the number of friends and acquaintances does not guarantee inner comfort.

Also, many believe that singles do not face problems, as they are deprived of any obligations, which is also not true. Living solo as a lifestyle is a completely new phenomenon, the scale of which the world was not ready for. That is why today singles face many problems.

Some employers are not ready to hire an unmarried person, suspecting him of irresponsibility. In this case, singles are forced to fight against stereotypes. Travel lovers note that the price of a tour or a hotel room per person is much higher than the cost of a vacation for couples or companies. That is why entire societies for the protection of the rights of lonely people have appeared today. It is obvious that in the near future it is possible to develop a business whose target audience will be single people.

Now, despite the global growth of households of just one person, conscious loneliness causes misunderstanding and accusation of infantilism. However, psychologists and psychiatrists note that the ability to live alone is a necessary quality that many cannot learn in their entire lives.

It is known that everyone needs to be alone from time to time in order to understand their place in the reality surrounding them. Moreover, a high percentage of singles can afford to spend a lot of time on self-realization. It is no coincidence that most often this way of life is chosen by representatives of the so-called creative class.

Eric Kleinenberg published his research just two years ago. In it, he declares a "large-scale social experiment" in which the whole world participates. It is interesting that today, after 24 months, the phenomenon of solo life has become much more familiar, which means that soon we will be able to talk not only about the experiment, but also about a really new social reality.published

Scientists who, in the course of their work, are periodically exposed to bewildering truths never cease to amaze us. New research on human loneliness breaks the boundaries of stereotypes - everything is actually not the way we used to think. Claudia Hammond, who conducted a survey called the BBC Loneliness Experiment, presented contradictory common sense research results.

The experiment is based on an online survey of 55,000 people from around the world. It was developed by scientists from three British universities in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection.

When you imagine someone lonely, the stereotype paints a picture of an elderly person who lives alone and hardly sees or communicates with anyone. Indeed, in the BBC Loneliness experiment, 27% of people over 75 said they felt lonely often or very often. This figure turned out to be higher than in some other surveys, but perhaps due to the fact that the survey was conducted online, many of those who were lonely wanted to take part in it.

What is loneliness?

Sometimes you really want to be alone. However, if you need to communicate, and you do not have the opportunity to spend time with people who understand you, you feel abandoned and abandoned. Loneliness is a disunity with the outside world, it is a feeling that no one around you understands you, and there are no real, meaningful relationships with people for you. You can feel lonely in a crowd, and vice versa, you can be absolutely happy when no one is around.

Young people feel lonelier than older people

Unbelievable but true: the most high degree loneliness was recorded in a group of 16-24-year-old respondents, with 40% of them saying that they often or very often feel lonely.

The question involuntarily arises: why is this happening? It is possible that young people simply honestly admit this, while it is more difficult for the elderly to admit their loneliness and being needed by no one, older people often "show off", trying to emphasize their independence. But the trend is this: when people were asked at what point in their lives they felt most alone, the answer was the same - when they were young.

Not only does our modern life, immersing people in gadgets and “cutting them off” from the rest of the world, make young people feel lonely, they may feel this way for a number of other reasons. Many people think of the age from 16 to 24 as a new freedom away from their parents, when you can finally take everything from life, because the school is over, and you yourself are the master of your life, having started to work and earn money. But in reality, a different picture is obtained: all this alienates us from the friends with whom you grew up and are used to being together and communicating. At the same time, a person at this age is trying to take his place in life, solving the difficult task of finding himself.

Everything in the world passes, you need to do business!

In addition to this, young people are not used to the feeling of loneliness, and have not yet had time to realize that this sometimes terrible feeling is also passing, like everything else in the world. It often happens that young people do not have enough strength and opportunities to find a way to cope with these feelings - to get distracted, find an activity to their liking or make new acquaintances.

41% of people think being alone is a big plus

This discovery supports the idea of ​​people like the late neuroscientist John Casiopo, who believed that we have evolved and therefore experience loneliness, and this can be a beneficial, if unpleasant, feeling. People survived thanks to the collective life. If they are expelled from the group, then the feeling of loneliness can force them to connect with people, make new friends or rekindle old relationships.

The truth is that this feeling can become chronic and seriously affect well-being, as well as significantly undermine a person’s health.

The fact is that the negative from constant loneliness leads to the risk of developing depression in a person in a year. Although 41% of all survey participants said that loneliness can be a big plus for them, only 31% of those who complained that they felt this feeling too often considered this a plus for themselves. A lonely person feels miserable and very unhappy, it is unlikely that with such a feeling for a long time, someone will say that this is good.

Lonely people are just as good at making connections with other people

Someone is sure that people feel isolated because it is difficult for them to build relationships with others, but the results of the study disproved this dependence. When you know how to communicate, it means that you are able to penetrate into the soul of another person, understand his feelings, so that when communicating with him, you do not offend him or hurt him. One way to measure this ability (understanding people) is to have a person look at several faces or pairs of eyes to try to determine what emotions these faces are experiencing. And when performing such a task in the survey, it was revealed that there is no difference in the assessments of people who are lonely and those who do not experience this feeling. The respondents differently assessed only the degree of concern of the persons shown to them. So perhaps the anxiety caused by various social situations may exacerbate your feelings of loneliness rather than your skills in communicating with other people.

Winter is not the time to be alone

It turns out that people do not feel more lonely in winter than in other seasons. In the lead-up to Christmas, you often see campaigns from charities that help older people keep their heads down in the midst of family reunions. It seems to be so - if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then Christmas falls in the middle of winter, when the days are shorter, and people find themselves more isolated and, accordingly, feel even more alone. But as a result of the study, it turned out that for many of these "hermits" winter turned out to be no worse than any other time of the year. In the survey, people were asked to indicate the time of year and day when they felt the most lonely. More than two-thirds of people said they didn't feel more abandoned in the winter than at any other time of the year. The rest called winter, and someone even called a cheerful warm summer.

If a person is lonely, then, most likely, all year round

At Christmas, many people make great efforts to be in some company, just not to be left alone. And in the summer, when the whole environment goes on vacation, people, perhaps, therefore feel abandoned. That's probably why someone feels abandoned all year round, and not just during the Christmas holidays.

Lonely people have higher levels of empathy

The survey measured two types of empathy. One of them was sympathy for the physical pain of people: it turned out how much the respondent felt sorry for a person who had been burned on a hot frying pan, had his hand pinched by a door, or was stung by a wasp. The second type: they found out how much people are able to sympathize with those who experience heartache from moral humiliation when bullied at school, not invited to a party, or when a lover leaves. The results are surprising: there was no difference in empathy for physical pain among all respondents. But people who said that they often or very often felt lonely showed more empathy for those who experience the moral pain of social humiliation. After all, probably, only when your soul is "wounded" and wounded, you can feel the inner suffering of another person with your whole skin.