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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?

Chocrates ,

Yes, my ex wife and I can attest to that. Your coworker seems like a dick and should talk to a therapist.

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.

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.

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.

xmunk ,

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.

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.

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

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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