feel lonely?What we want in a relationship can change as we age

Overview: What people expect from interpersonal relationships changes significantly with age. Researchers say many people still feel lonely even when they don’t spend a lot of time alone.

sauce: Duke University

Not everyone’s vacation plans look like Hallmark cards.

If “the most wonderful time of the year” isn’t your reality, you’re not alone. not necessarily.

And that’s where loneliness comes from, says Samia Akhtar Khan, a graduate student at King’s College London and first author of a new study on the subject.

“Loneliness results from a mismatch between expected social relationships and actual social relationships,” said Akhter-Khan.

He holds a PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience from Duke. Leon Li, Akhter-Khan and others co-authored a paper on why people feel lonely, especially in later life, and what can be done about it.

“The problem we identified in our current research is that we haven’t given much thought to what people expect from their relationships,” said Akhter Khan. “While we are working to define this expectation, we haven’t really specified what those expectations are or how they change across cultures and lifespans.”

In all relationships we expect certain basics. We all want someone in our life that we can turn to for help. A friend you can call when you need it. person to talk to. People who “get” us. someone we can trust. Companion with whom you can share fun experiences.

However, the team’s theory, called the Social Relationship Expectations Framework, suggests that older people may have certain relationship expectations that go unnoticed.

Akhter-Khan’s first clue that the cause of loneliness may be more complex than it seems came during a year she spent studying aging in Myanmar from 2018-2019. People are very connected and live in a very close-knit society. People have big families. They are often around each other. Why do people feel lonely? “

But her research suggested otherwise. “It actually turned out to be different,” she said. People can feel lonely even if they don’t spend much time alone.

What has been neglected in efforts to reduce loneliness is how our expectations of relationships change as we age. Stuff is not what you want in your 70s.

Researchers identified two age-specific expectations that weren’t taken into account: For one, older people want to feel respected. They want people to listen to them, be interested in their experiences, and learn from their mistakes. Appreciate what they went through and the obstacles they overcame.

They also want to contribute. This means we want to give back to others and communities and pass on our traditions and skills through education, mentoring, volunteerism, caregiving, or other meaningful activities.

Finding ways to meet these expectations as we age can go a long way in combating loneliness later in life, but research has largely ruled them out.

“They are not part of the normal scale of loneliness,” Lee said.

Akhter-Khan said part of the reason for the oversight may be that typical economic indicators often do not take into account the work and contributions of older people. How societies value care in the global economy.

“Ageism and negative aging stereotypes don’t help,” she added. A 2016 World Health Organization survey of 57 countries found that 60 percent of respondents I found that they answered that they were not respected enough.

Loneliness is not just for older people. “It’s also a youth problem,” he says, Akhter-Khan. “If you look at the distribution of loneliness over a lifetime, there are two peaks, one in early life and one in old age.”

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, world leaders began sounding the lone alarm bells as a public health problem. Britain became the first country to appoint her loneliness minister in 2018. Japan will follow suit in 2021.

Because loneliness is more than just an emotion, it can have serious health consequences. Constant loneliness has been linked to increased risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease and stroke, and other health problems. Some researchers suggest that the risk is comparable to or higher than smoking and obesity.

Researchers hope that better understanding of the factors that drive loneliness will enable us to address it.

About this relationship and aging research news

author: Robin Smith
sauce: Duke University
contact: Robin Smith – Duke University
image: image is public domain

Original research: open access.
“Understanding and Coping with Loneliness in Older Adults: A Social Relationship Expectation FrameworkBy Samia C. Akhter-Khan et al. Perspectives on psychology

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Overview

Understanding and Coping with Loneliness in Older Adults: A Social Relationship Expectation Framework

Loneliness is an experience that arises from a perceived mismatch between expected and actual social relationships. This discrepancy is widely considered to be the ‘core mechanism’ of loneliness, but research and interventions to date have not adequately addressed what older adults specifically expect from social relationships.

To address this gap and help to place research on loneliness in older people into broader developmental theories of lifespan, we draw on research in psychology, gerontology, and anthropology to identify six key social characteristics of older people. We propose a theoretical framework outlining relationship expectations. Receiving contact, care and support, intimacy and understanding, enjoyment and shared interests, creativity and contribution, respect and appreciation.

Moreover, a full understanding of lifelong loneliness requires the strong influence of contextual factors (such as culture, functional limitations, and changes in social networks) on the expression and fulfillment of universal and age-specific relationship expectations in older adults. I argue that we need to pay attention to the impact. .

The proposed social relational expectations framework may provide useful information for future loneliness research and interventions for heterogeneous older populations.