We’ve been analyzing several key contributors to the rise of loneliness in American culture. One thing that should decrease our sense of loneliness is our family. Families provide us with built-in connection and community, and yet an apt description of many marital relationships these days is “alone together.” In truth couples today are less connected to one another and less connected to others.
Alone Together is actually the title of a book written by Paul Amato, Alan Booth, David Johnson, and Stacy Rogers. The work explores significant changes to marriage that occurred over a twenty year span. Published in 2009 it was already seeing trends that we are experiencing in more fullness today. Their work concluded that couples are less connected than they once were and less connected to others outside their home. This is owing to several key factors:
- Expectations. Many people go into marriage believing that their spouse will provide a sense of personal fulfillment and emotional satisfaction. When those expectations are not met individuals often feel isolated and disappointed with the marriage.
- Invidiualism. This a familiar foe to connection and community. The rise of individualism as a core value has led many to prioritize personal needs and desires at the expense of the relationship itself.
- Work and Stress. The demands of our work culture lead many individuals to high stress and long long hours that zap time and energy needed for investment in the relationship.
- Technology. The overuse of technology, and especially social media, has reduced the amount of face-to-face time that couples have, which further contributes to feelings of loneliness in marriage.
Despite having built-in community, couples feel alone at home too. They feel alone in part because they simply aren’t connecting with one another. The same factors that decrease their friendships are negatively impacting their marriages.
Despite being lonely within marriage, couples still use family as an excuse for not pursuing external relationships. Families stay busy and the commitment to keep our kids engaged with every possible activity often means that there is little to no time for friendships. Parenting itself can feel lonely. In a recent study conducted by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, 65% of parents stated that they felt lonely, and 80% said that they longed for a way to connect with other parents outside their home. Our devotion to our family is good, but our busyness in it keeps us from developing other healthy relationships.
You need more than your family. The romanticizing of romance has led many to believe that their spouse and their kids can “complete” them. There is a genuine belief that this person or these people will satisfy all my emotional and relational needs. That is putting all your relational eggs in one basket, and it is too heavy for anyone to carry. 1 Corinthians 12 reminds us that we need the varied giftings of others (especially in the church). Your spouse and kids are unable to provide everything that you may need as a man or woman, as a person with specific strengths, interests, personalties, and weaknesses. You need varied voices to speak into your life. You need different personalities to help you, encourage you, stretch you, challenge you, and celebrate with you. Often, however, we view our family as the completion of our relational circuit. Once we enter into marriage, or have kids, the circuit closes and we need no one else to be involved.
In truth, our investment in our family is often an investment in ourselves. We often end up making our family an extension of our own self-love. James K.A. Smith, writing about the need to reframe marriage as a relationship for the common good, expressed concern over the way our culture thinks about marriage. In “Marriage for the Common Good” he writes:
Indeed, the myths we load into weddings almost doom marriages to fail. Weddings are centred around the romantic “coupling” of two star-crossed lovers, as if marriage was an extended exercise of staring deep into one another’s eyes—with benefits. But even then, my spouse is one who sees me, will meet my needs, will fulfill my wants, will “complete me.” Even our romantic coupling becomes a form of self-love…
Our view of the family is often self-focused. It has been said that we marry for our idols, and therefore we end up using marriage and family to feed our own selfish desires. Or at least we try to, because of course there are other people in this relationship who are doing the same thing, which inevitably leads to conflict and disappointment.
When we live in isolation with our families we end up hurting ourselves. Loneliness will continue to abound. The busyness and presence of family will delude us into thinking we aren’t lonely. We take the kids to travel ball games every weekend, we help at their school, we go on elaborate vacations together. We are busy and we are with other people all the time. And yet, as research shows, people in families feel lonely and isolated.
We desperately need to reconsider how we are living. We need to slow down, for sure. We need to spend more quality time with our family, not just quantity time. But even those with families need friendships outside the home. We need to recover a theology of friendship instead of counting on the family to solve all our relational problems.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 