Older men, even more than older women, need to make connections, experts say
After Art Koff’s wife Norma died last year, the retired Chicago marketing executive was hobbled by grief. Uninterested in eating and beset by unremitting loneliness, he lost 45 pounds.
“I’ve had a long and wonderful life, and I have lots of family and lots of friends who are terrific.” Koff, 88, said in an interview. But now, “Nothing is of interest to me any longer.
“I’m not happy living this life.”
He died shortly after the interview. The death certificate cited “end-stage protein calorie malnutrition” as the cause.
In some ways, older men living alone are disadvantaged compared with older women in similar circumstances. Research shows that men tend to have fewer friends than women and be less inclined to make new friends. Often, they’re reluctant to ask for help.
“Men have a harder time being connected and reaching out,” said Dr. Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist who directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has traced the arc of hundreds of men’s lives over more than eight decades.
The men in the study who fared the worst, Waldinger said, “didn’t have friendships and things they were interested in — and couldn’t find them.” He recommends that men invest in their “social fitness” in addition to their physical fitness to ensure that they have satisfying social interactions.
Slightly more than one in every five men 65 to 74 years old lives alone, according to 2022 Census Bureau data. That rises to nearly one in four for those 75 or older. Nearly 40% of these men are divorced, 31% are widowed and 21% never married.
That’s a significant change from 2000, when only one in six older men lived alone.
Longer lifespans for men and rising divorce rates are contributing to the trend. It’s difficult to find information about this group — whose numbers are dwarfed by the number of women who live alone — because it hasn’t been studied in depth. But psychologists and psychiatrists say these older men can be particularly vulnerable.
When men are widowed, their health and well-being tend to decline more than women’s.
“Older men have a tendency to ruminate, to get into our heads with worries and fears and to feel more lonely and isolated,” said Jed Diamond, 80, a therapist and the author of the books “Surviving Male Menopause” and “The Irritable Male Syndrome.”
Add to that the decline of civic institutions where men used to congregate — like the Elks Club or the Shriners — and older men’s reduced ability to participate in athletic activities, and the result can be a lack of stimulation and the loss of a sense of belonging.
Depression can ensue, fueling excessive alcohol use, accidents or suicide. Of all age groups in the United States, men over 75 have, by far, the highest suicide rate.
At 66, Dr. Paul Rousseau, a physician in South Carolina, retired after tending for decades to people who were seriously ill or dying. It was a difficult and emotionally fraught transition.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do, where I was going to go,” Rousseau said.
Seeking a change, first he moved to the mountains of North Carolina. That was the start of an extended period of wandering. But soon, he said, he felt a sense of emptiness enveloping him. He had no friends or hobbies. His work as a doctor had been all-consuming. Former colleagues didn’t get in touch. Nor did he reach out.
His wife had died a decade earlier after a painful illness. He was estranged from one adult daughter and in contact only occasionally with another. His three dogs were his most reliable companions. But his isolation only grew worse as the dogs eventually died.
Rousseau said he was completely alone — without friends, family or a professional identity — and overcome by a sense of loss.
In 2023, he moved to Jackson, Wyoming, where he embraced solitude, choosing a remarkably isolated spot to live — a 150-square-foot cabin with no running water and no bathroom, surrounded by 25,000 undeveloped acres of public and privately owned land.
“Yes, I’m still lonely,” he said. “But the nature and the beauty here totally changed me and focused me on what’s really important.”
In a piece in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in May, Rousseau, now 73, wrote: “I was a somewhat distinguished physician with a 60-page resume. Now, I’m ‘no one,’ a retired, forgotten old man who dithers away the days.”
The transition from being coupled to being single can be profoundly disorienting for older men. Dr. Lodovico Balducci, 80 and his wife Claudia were married for 52 years before she died last year. Balducci, a renowned physician known as the “patriarch of geriatric oncology,” wrote about his emotional reaction in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, likening his wife’s death to an “amputation.”
“I find myself talking to her all the time, most of the time in my head,” Balducci said. Isn’t there anyone he confides in? “Maybe I don’t have any close friends.”
Disoriented and disorganized since his wife died, Balducci said his “anxiety has exploded.”
He moved from Tampa to New Orleans to be near his son and daughter-in-law and their two teenagers.
“I am planning to help as much as possible with my grandchildren,” he said. “Life has to go on.”
Verne Ostrander, a carpenter in the small town of Willits, California, lives about 140 miles north of San Francisco. Cindy Morninglight, his second wife, died four years ago after a long battle with cancer.
“Here I am, almost 80 years old — alone,” Ostrander said. “Who would have guessed?”
Ostrander said that, when he isn’t painting watercolors, composing music or playing guitar, “I fall into this lonely state, and I cry quite a bit. I don’t ignore those feelings. I let myself feel them. It’s like therapy.”
Ostrander has lived in Willits for nearly 50 years. He belongs to a men’s group and a couples’ group that’s been meeting for 20 years. He’s in remarkably good health and in close touch with his three adult children, who live within easy driving distance.
“The hard part of living alone is missing Cindy,” he said. “The good part is the freedom to do whatever I want. My goal is to live another 20 to 30 years and become a better artist and get to know my kids when they get older.”
The Rev. Johnny Walker, 76, a Chicagoan, lives in a low-income apartment building on the West Side. Twice divorced, he’s been on his own for five years. He, too, has close family connections. At least one of his several children and grandchildren checks in on him every day.
Walker had a life-changing religious conversion in 1993. Since then, he has depended on his faith and his church for a sense of meaning and community.
“It’s not hard being alone,” Walker said. “I accept Christ in my life, and he said that he would never leave us or forsake us. When I wake up in the morning, that’s a new blessing. I just thank God that he has brought me this far.”
Waldinger recommends that men “make an effort every day to be in touch with people. Find what you love — golf, gardening, birdwatching, pickleball, working on a political campaign — and pursue it.
“Put yourself in a situation where you’re going to see the same people over and over again. Because that’s the most natural way conversations get struck up and friendships start to develop.”
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