• Loneliness linked to major life setbacks for millennials, study says
    21 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/24/loneliness-linked-to-major-life-setbacks-for-millennials-study-says
In other news, low muscle mass related to not not exercising or working out. Being uneducated linked to not having access to school systems. Sadness related to emotionally distressing life events. This just seems like common sense. The article is making it out as if loneliness is just something that a person has or doesn't have, like a disease, and that the symptoms of it are having health problems, not working, pessimism... but it's literally the opposite. Loneliness itself is the symptom of those things, not the cause. People tend to disconnect from others when bad stuff happens. When more and more bad things happen, more and more disconnect happens. I definitely know this first hand. It makes sense that loneliness is a symptom of disconnecting from others.
The results reveal that up to 7% of participants said they often had feelings of loneliness, with 23-31% of participants saying they experienced feeling left out, alone, isolated or lacking in companionship some of the time. The results held regardless of gender or socioeconomic status. I feel like we have social media to blame for that. Everyone tries to portray a "perfect" version of themselves on Facebook, instagram, etc. and people who read this might feel like they're inadequate in comparison to what they see on social media.
Seems fairly obvious, both from personal experience and simple logic.
Maybe. It sort of depends on where you're at in your life. I'm in a class of nearly 90 people and I barely know anyone because I have completely different interests. I'm nearing 30 and most of the people I'm aware of in the class are married/engaged, are expecting their first/second child, and most are religious. I'm single, have zero desire for children, and am an atheist. I can't really relate to anyone. I also live almost two hours away from family and live by myself with no pets (thanks apartment rules!). So, yeah. Of course I'm lonely as hell.
I'm afraid of starting relationships with other people because I feel like I'm too ugly and unlikable to make an improvement in someone's life.
Same. I feel like too much of a failure of a human being to be worthwhile for anyone else to have a relationship with, and I've alienated myself from some of my closest childhood friends because I feel like I'm just annoying them.
How can you love others if you don't love yourself.
I feel lonely all the time and it make me feel shitty and depressed all the time, but I honestly don't know how to meet people. I work, but people at work don't want friends they want to get paid and go home. I have hobbies, but people my age don't like shooting, it's hard to find games in my area, and my others hobbies keep me at home. The only thing people my age do to socialise these days is go to town, get drunk, and try to pick up someone for a one night stand... that sounds equally as lonely.
Around here there's only a bar and a flea market. Nothing like being a 22 year old socializing with a bunch of out of touch 30/40/50/60 year olds. Relationship wise it's never going to happen because the only way to get with somebody is your run of the mill dating apps, good luck if you're an average guy.
Moreso, how can you trust that others love you, when you don't love yourself?
Opposite scenario here. Most people around here prefer to go out shooting, on top of drinking/partying/having one-night stands. There's a local games shop that I used to hang out at, but it's full of elitist neck-beards and MtG players.
Quite simply, it's almost impossible. To have a foundation of trust, you need both reciprocation and initiation, that's how the limbic system works and manages itself. People laugh at the Chad/Virgin paradigm, but frankly they laugh becuase that's how the system works, and they know it. Nature and Nurture have jack shit to do with "deserve" or "should be". Evolution and propagation are very much concerned with Macro and not so much about Micro. As long as people are popping out the next generation, the inviduals trials or tribulations are pretty much meaningless. It doesn't take much effort to leave a heart or a smiley face while on a phone, crafting a relationship on the other hand requires long term work and and a rather large amount of risk, from logistics to physical well being and health to emotional well being and health, and a metric shit ton of people literally fall through the cracks. If you think you have it bad living in a western country, try being single and trying to stand out as worth somebody's time in India or China.
this is a good post
I've been out of the loop for almost 3 years. I'm very lucky to have a close family and a good relationship with them, but I haven't socialised with anyone my own age in that time. I'm totally fixated on trying to find work at the minute, working on my web design portfolio and I've got a university course lined up in case I can't find employment by September. Most days I don't leave the house because I'm focused on trying to improve my situation. I think as long as you've got some sort of interaction going it helps. I deleted my Facebook account about 3 years ago as well, but I've been able to chat with online friends now and again which prevents me from becoming completely isolated. If you can cut out bad or unfulfilling habits then I think it'll help a lot. I've cut out most of gaming, because it felt like a huge waste of time and I'm relearning how to draw and play guitar instead. Also cutting out porn and masturbating, holy fuck is that bad for you. If you can remove excuses for self-loathing and do positive things then I think you'll at least find acceptance and satisfaction in yourself.
This problem has roots far, far longer than social media. It started with industrial revolution that led to people working outside of their communities and living alone or in small family units. Work and free time are now distinctly separate, but with a dire lack of "social time". Spending time to be social didn't use to be necessary because in the old days everything people did was social. Now to fulfill this very basic human need, everyone involved has to make space in their busy industrous schedules.
How can you love your friend's car if you hate your own car? The former has nothing to do with the latter tbh.
If you don't love yourself then you might struggle to understand why others love you, you'll be insecure, jealous or perhaps needy (shes the best I'm going to get, shes too good for me).
You can love people without them loving you. hence
I guess this begs the question: What is love?
From my personal experience, the only way to conquer loneliness is to fight the fear it creates within oneself. Maybe as a defense mechanism, I myself developed a very optimistic personality to offset the loneliness I had for maybe a decade, as well as a humor that is easily amused because I had to amuse myself. You can't be afraid to take the inherent risks to find a true and healthy relationship. A relationship with anybody will hardly ever start off perfectly in tune, and this is where my generation loses it. They think that it's not the one if they give it a go and it not work. Well of course it wont, real relationships take time if at least one is hesitant, and if both are willing to jump in, then they need to be willing to compromise... and that's where (at least from almost ALL of the people in my generation from my area) the newest generations are rocked to their core. Compromise is a human ability, to work together has built society. That has been lost as culture has shifted so much these last few decades, so a lot of people I know can't stay in relationships because they fear to change themselves, but you have to compromise to come together, that's a big part of it. You can't expect two disparate people to connect perfectly all the time, you have to fit the pieces together over a time of mutual bonding. True love can happen instantly, but when it doesn't you have to cultivate the relationships that everybody desires. Now onto the matter at hand... Society has crumbled in the US to where we can't even function as we should. The older generations have some sort of hostility to younger generations, and when they are helping to bring up younger generations of their family they don't have much of an ability to help navigate this increasingly complex world. The parents generation have had economic troubles, and haven't been able to raise their kids completely. The school system here doesn't help either, underfunded or unconcerned, teachers have lost some connections necessary to complete the kids. So if it takes a village to raise a child, then they're underprepared in the modern-day and the new generations take the brunt of that loss. Its a system that needs fixing, and is the one that some right wingers associate with degrading family structure due to other cultural shifts, but the system just needs fixing. How that comes, idk, I'm not entirely sure the endemic reasons why this is as it is, but i suspect all the issues of the socitey as a whole are too intertwined to get a good read off it or to fix it in small sections at a time.
I wish there were more opportunities to like, meet people. It feels like if you didn't have your foot in the door with friends from school and their mutual friends, you're just screwed, there's no appropriate way to meet new people in the adult world.
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