OPINION:
Could it really be true that “loneliness” has the same devastating effect on your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day?
In May 2023, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an alarming report describing “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” a trend he believes now demands the same attention and investments previously given toward addressing obesity, drug addiction, and tobacco use. Indeed, he argues that this destructive psychological trend does the same damage to our bodies as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and will have increasingly more noticeable negative effects on our collective performance and productivity as a nation.
Subscribe to have The Washington Times’ Higher Ground delivered to your inbox every Sunday.
What is “loneliness”?
Loneliness is when you’re struggling with something and there’s no one to call. When you want to celebrate, but have no one to invite. It’s walking down the street in your own community and realizing you don’t even know anyone’s name, much less their story. It’s being surrounded by people in person and on social platforms but sensing nobody really knows the real you.
One person described loneliness as, “Thinking inside my own head all the time but with nowhere to get it out.” A lot of us are blaming the pandemic for this trend, but that’s not the full story.
Long before the debilitating social separation created by the COVID-19 outbreak, one in two American adults were describing themselves as shouldering all of life’s burdens by themselves and being isolated from substantive connection with others. Robert Putnam first drew attention to both the onset and sources of this developing problem in his troubling 2000 book “Bowling Alone,” and little has happened since the turn of the century to restrain the tide of social disconnectedness. In fact, Mr. Murthy would argue it’s gotten worse.
When it comes to broader society, we’re definitely not alone in feeling alone.
When you’re lonely at home
But what if in your most honest moments, the loneliest place on earth is actually inside your own marriage? What if you feel even more disconnected from your spouse than you do people at work or in the after-school pickup line?
How is it possible for an arrangement God created to withstand the cultural pull toward isolation — one that by definition involves a companion — to become ground zero for loneliness?
If you’re married, you know how it happens. Marriage feels lonely when we start passively sharing space like lease-bound roommates instead of actively pursuing one another’s inner lives.
When the kids or the job or the hobby absorb so much of our energy, we’ve got none left for each other. When we start taking each other for granted, harboring contempt, or using language we’d never try with co-workers. When silence becomes our conversation because in that silence reside all the same unresolved arguments we don’t want to talk about anymore. When we stop investing time and withhold the mental and emotional attention necessary for genuine intimacy to have a chance.
What’s the antidote to loneliness?
Without exception, no marriage is immune from the loneliness created by all this and more.
While accepting our current reality in marriage is “as good as it gets,” we need to remember that God’s steadfast love is actually a remedy for a world drifting toward isolation, even right inside our homes.
In fact, that love is a foundational model upon which marriage grows and thrives. It’s an active, loneliness-resistant love that:
- Sticks through the highs and lows of life
- Sacrifices on our behalf even when we don’t deserve it
- Sets us free from the bondage of our sin and failures
- Sees everything about us but still pursues deeper levels of connection
- Sends us to care about others who need God more than they need us
These are relational realities we can activate and experience with God because of the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. But they’re also the same characteristics God wants those of us who’ve said “yes” to Jesus to experience with one another in our marriage. A marriage like this shows that a culture of connection begins in our home, in our marriage.
Loneliness doesn’t stand a chance against His unrelenting, active love. Whether you’re feeling it right now or not, it’s still true today: God wants to put aspects of himself on display through your marriage.
When we live the gospel in our home, we benefit by experiencing the kind of unity and oneness He wants us to enjoy — even in the midst of our own brokenness. Our marriage becomes His messy masterpiece, and we receive the relational royalties that come with it being put on display.
If all of this sounds a little more philosophical and idyllic than something practical you can live out in the day-to-day, check out the “Art of Marriage.” Because sometimes you just need a nudge to know what it means to step toward each other and you can do it alongside a community of other couples doing the same thing.
Even in the hardest moments, God has more hope for your marriage than you might’ve allowed yourself to believe. And maybe (re)discovering His vision for you as a couple could make all the difference in the lonely places inside your home and across our world.
–
Ed Uszynski is a Content Developer and Oneness Consultant for both FamilyLife and Athletes in Action, the marriage and sport ministries of Cru. Together with Brian Goins, Ed produced the all new re-imagined “Art of Marriage,” available nationwide. He served many years as a teaching elder at their home church and frequently speaks to college students, men’s groups, and churches around the country. His writing includes contributions to DesiringGod and other online publications, and “Untangling Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know and Why It Matters” (IVP, June 2024). He has an M.Div. and Ph.D. in American Culture Studies.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.