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is it possible to be married and still feel lonely?

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?

MindTraveller ,

It’s easy to feel lonely around your wife if you don’t think women are people. And if he’s a Republican in 2024, that’s probably how he thinks. Drink your respect women juice and you’ll find marriage much more enjoyable.

Buelldozer ,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

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.

bl_r ,

Marriage is a social construct not built upon love or companionship. It is just a social relation that is related to the two, with religious and legal backing to fortify it.

If you see marriage as a means to love and companionship, you are not gonna have a loving relationship. Love and companionship are completely viable (and I’d argue stronger) outside the strange little box that society tries to place it in

Fuck marriage.

I don’t think there is anything that a person of any gender can’t provide in a relationship. I do see that society shuns certain people from performing certain roles, but anyone can do any one of them.

If he is only ranting politics, he might not have anyone to talk politics with. Maybe he is the lone conservative, lapping up every scrap of talking points from Fox (or maybe Newsmax), but can’t spew them out around family who sees him as being crazy for watching Fox. If you aren’t pushing back, he probably sees you as safe, and if he is finding it hard for him to deal with political stressors, that’s probably why he is ranting and getting so emotional.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

Yes, it’s possible to feel lonely while you’re married. Because “to feel lonely” might mean a thousand different things: lack of physical affection, lack of emotional bonding, lack of intellectual stimulus, lack of ability to coordinate and do stuff together… and only some of those are fulfilled by a romantic relationship. (A good relationship should fulfil more of them, but you won’t get the full package ever.) And often the other person doesn’t have time for you, even if they’re trying their hardest to be a good mate.

That said, it doesn’t seem to me that he feels lonely, but rather that he feels frustrated with something. As people said perhaps therapy would do him good.

sunzu ,

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

Today ,

I feel sad for his wife. Unless she’s hateful too.

wirehead ,

So, there’s a lot of things to unpack here.

First, the idea that your spouse is your primary sole emotional connection is a relatively weird new concept on the scale of things. There’s been a huge period of history where your primary emotional connection was your male companions and your spouse was infantalized by comparison. If you were well-off you might be so lucky and have your group of emotional companions, your group of romantic companions, and the person who bears your legitimate children.

Second, there’s really not much of a good underlying working model for actual modern conservatism. The frontiersman/“house on the prairie” sort of rugged independence was never actually a thing back then and a lot of big issues like medical bills were a lot simpler when the answer to having any sort of illness was that you either get over it after relatively inexpensive and simple treatments or you die. So the conservative movement must necessarily sell you a false bill of goods. US politics are such that there is no actual fully-left political party, so that by default makes you a democrat.

There’s also a bunch of added uniquely christian baggage. So there are left-wing christians who also have their own set of weird baggage.

Third, mostly irrespective of politics, there’s a lot of cultural programming for males that they can’t actually worthwhile work though their emotions in a productive fashion. Movies, TV shows, books, literally everything in the media creates this idea of maleness and the writers are just trying to write a catchy story and seldom have time to think about what kind of male they are creating. This is, overall, a relatively recent concept.

Fourth, “things men need emotionally that women cannot provide” is actually pretty silly. Outside of practical advice about what to do with specific pieces of anatomy where maybe it would be nice to have some reference, the things people do is a pretty wide field. “Oh, someone to watch football with” ignores female football fans, et al. This ties in a lot with right wing men because they can’t necessarily have an emotional connection with someone not-male because that’s equivalent to messing around with someone’s property. And it also ties in with the social programming that created a stereotype for how men are supposed to relate to each other that’s just a writer trying to put a good story together without thinking of the social implications.

Radicalization doesn’t work on people who are emotionally connected and comfortable. Part of why we are where we are is that there’s a whole class of people whose happiness has been precluded by the structure of their lives and the best people who can take advantage of this are fraudsters selling a false bill of goods. And I don’t even really feel sympathy for those people anymore because they are hurting people who I do very much care about and after a point it doesn’t matter if they are just too dumb to see it.

But, I guess, to return to your initial point, the idea that if you find a person and get married to them that you have “solved” connection, that’s the road to unhappiness. Partially because marriage generally requires a commitment and effort to stay together as things happen and people change… but also because relying on one single person without other social connectivity is not a stable equilibrium.

aasatru ,
@aasatru@kbin.earth avatar

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

FeelzGoodMan420 ,

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.

lordnikon ,

Marriage is not a fix for anything it’s just a definition we give for two people that want to hold hands endure life together and I use endure on purpose. Since it’s the good and the bad that comes with it. To many people especially men raised on 1950’s fantasy think marriage is about getting something but really it’s about giving something sometimes everything for your family. So they get mad when both people in the marriage have to work but for some reason they think just because house work was gender coded to be women’s work they expect their wives to do that on top of everything else.

Marriage is no longer man and wife it two partners coming together to face the harsh reality that is our world. That means doing your fair share not being asked to do the damn dishes. Trading back and forth who is going to be the rock and who is going to be the one holding on to the rock. So they don’t get pulled under.

long story short your coworker is a dumbass that just wants things handed to him. Just because he checked a box that said I’m married now. where is my happiness.

Also I have been married for a long time and I will tell you. you go through phases. You will fall in love with your partner then after time you may fall out of love for a bit and then after some more time fall back in love again. But the whole time they are your partner, your family you just can’t imagine them not being their. That’s marriage.

MissJinx ,
@MissJinx@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Ziggurat ,

There is people in unhappy marriage. Who sometimes sacrified their own life for their marriage and kids and end up living with someone they don’t love anymore (if they ever did) and no social life on their own.

The_v ,

From what I have seen, unhappy marriages are very common in highly religious/conservative groups.

Most of these groups have stupid “No Sex before marriage” rules. So two horny young adults (teenagers in some cases) get married quickly. Pregnancy follows immediately and they start being parents before they are fully mature.

Fast forward 5-6 years later and they don’t even like each other anymore. The smart ones do the adult decision and divorce.

Way too many of them live misery constantly bickering while claiming to be “happily married” because “divorce is a sin”. They then spend most of their time complaining about their spouses. The kids of course have all sorts of baggage from growing up in the toxic environment.

son_named_bort ,

While I can’t attest to why your coworker is angry all the time, I can say that it is possible to feel lonely in a marriage. While you are connected in a functional marriage, your partner isn’t going to be and can’t possibly be the only source for your needs. You’re not going to have all the same interests as your partner and it’s good to have friends outside of the marriage to share those interests. Sometimes your partner will drive you crazy, so it helps to have friends that can help you with that. If you don’t have anyone to help with those needs it can get lonely quickly.

makeshiftreaper ,

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?

snek_boi , (edited )

Anytime we talk about human behavior, it is a good idea to learn and use the lens of behavioral contextualism. If and only if the contextual behaviorist analysis concludes that human connections is the issue, Sue Johnson’s texts will be great to understand your coworker. Otherwise, the contextual behavioral analysis will let you know what’s going on.

Edit: Removed excess text

vzq ,

Are you Hoffman or Hayes?

Seriously though, your reading list is a bit one sided. I’m happy you found a hammer you like, but not every relationship is a nail.

snek_boi , (edited )

Thanks for the response. I guess I do see much of human behavior through a contextual behaviorist lens. Sorry if it seems excessive. I am not Hayes or Hoffman. It is just frustrating to see blanket explanations for human behavior, instead of understanding specific processes. I guess I really want to avoid the fundamental attribution error and reductionism, something contextual behaviorism deliberately aims to avoid.

While I recognize Emotion Focused Therapy is helpful to understand and, if possible, change social behavior (which is why I mentioned it previously), I maybe should have brought up Emption Construction Theory or even Sapolsky’s multi-lens framework, considering different timescales of explanation. Would you have suggested something different? When does contextual behaviorism fail?

Thanks for helping me potentially falling into reductionism. I wouldn’t want to fall in that trap.

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