Rx for Loneliness: Get out of the house!
Many women begin to feel as increasing sense of loneliness and alienation at midlife. I think the single most important thing you can do to best reverse these feelings is this: Make it your business to get out of the house at least once or twice each week.
Here are some Tips for Making Friends after 50.
Have you made a new friend during the past year? I would love to hear where and HOW.
Category: Coping with loneliness, MAKING FRIENDS
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Making friends at midlife: Ties that bind : The Friendship Blog | December 25, 2012
I retired in 2009 and moved to SC with my partner. It has been a long and lonely road for me. I have tried volunteering (still am), getting into social groups and I still feel the loneliness. Now I’m thinking it’s me and that I made a mistake by moving here. My entire family lives up north. The reason for the move was that homes were more affordable and life would be less of a financial headache. I am debt-free thank goodness. I just want a meaningful relationship with friends. Any suggestion?
I would love to find out that you (Anonymous) or some other nice lady who might come across this is from Abilene, TX. My husband and I moved here Feb 2011 and I haven’t made any acquaintances. I have 6 dogs (rescues) and they are not well socialized so I think for anyone to put up with us they’d have to be dog lovers.
Thank you for the nice comments to what I wrote. I hope we all find more friendships, no matter how unlikely they initially seem or how fleeting they might tend to be. A life of friendly connections with people seems like a good Plan B. I know I sometimes have been too concerned that I don’t have the friendships like what I see in movies or TV. . But that doesn’t mean the only option is no friendships at all. I hope others write here to share their stories.
What a wonderful heartwarming way to look at friendship – beautiful post 🙂 🙂 🙂
I agree Irene…Love this post…from another long in the tooth.
Thanks so much for sharing this story~
Irene
I’ve too long in the tooth to be called middle aged. (If you don’t know what long in the tooth means, you are too young to empathize.) And I think I’ve seen a lot of 60 year olds on this blog who have cried out about their loneliness, more so than middle aged. But anyway. I made a new friend this year. We are workfriends, so you know what that means: there are boundaries. We mainly kibbitz at the office or in sneaking emails to each other. And have the occasional lunch. He is gay and only 25, so this is not a romance. Not even a “Harold and Maude” romance. (If you don’t know that movie, you’re too young to read this.) But we have just hit it off. We get each other and have had some really good, fun, and sometimes deep conversations. And I would never in a million years have thought so. When I first met him I thought he was a bright and beautiful young thing, too hip and groovy to have anything in common with me. I don’t tend to chase after young people, don’t try to show them how hip I am. I’m not hip, and don’t care to be hip. It just goes to show there is still something called a meeting of the minds, a spark, that can happen. And I’d call that friendship. Now, will he and I be lifelong friends? Probably not. He and his boyfriend will get married once it’s legal where we live (and believe me, it will be in our lifetimes–if we are lucky; history is on the side of fairness) and will move away. But that’s okay. I have no expectations of BFF-dom. Just a pleasure in knowing that sometimes you can click with someone and it is a friend. I have searched high and low this year for a gal pal for those movie friendships. And haven’t found it. But the friend of 2012 turned out to be in my own backyard, so to speak. This guy I slowly got to know by joking around a little in passing, then a lot. So I would say look in your own backyard, and if you can’t find a movie gal pal friendship, settle for the friendship potential in regular people who are right under your nose.
This is nice. My bf is in his 60’s I’m In my 30’s I think we understand each other better and have more laughs than I do my peers. And it’s a platonic relationship.