Solitary man
Older men’s connections often wither when they’re on their own
At age 66, South Carolina physician Paul Rousseau decided to retire after tending for decades to the suffering of people who were seriously ill or dying. It was a difficult transition. ● “I didn’t know what I was going to do, where I was going to go,” he said, describing a period of crisis that began in 2017. ● Rousseau moved to the mountains of North Carolina, the start of an extended period of wandering. A sense of emptiness enveloped him. He had no friends or hobbies – his work had been all-consuming. Former colleagues didn’t get in touch, nor did he reach out. ● His wife had died a decade earlier. Rousseau was estranged from one adult daughter and in only occasional contact with another. His isolation mounted as his three dogs died. ● Rousseau was alone – without friends, family or a professional identity – and overcome by a sense of loss.
“I was a somewhat distinguished physician with a 60-page resume,” Rousseau, now 73, wrote in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in May. “Now, I’m ‘no one,’ a retired, forgotten old man who dithers away the days.”
Slightly more than 1 in every 5 men ages 65 to 74 live alone, according to 2022 Census Bureau data. That rises to nearly 1 in 4 for those 75 or older. In 2000, only 1 in 6 older men lived by themselves.
It’s difficult to find information about this group – which is dwarfed by the number of women who live alone – because it hasn’t been studied in depth. But psychologists and psychiatrists say they can be quite vulnerable. Research shows that men tend to have fewer friends than women and be less inclined to make new friends. Often, they’re reluctant to ask for help.
Add in the decline of civic institutions where men used to congregate – think of the Elks or the Shriners – and older men’s reduced ability to participate in athletic activities, and the result is a lack of stimulation and the loss of a sense of belonging. Of all age groups in the United States, men over age 75 have the highest suicide rate, by far.
“Men have a harder time being connected and reaching out,” said Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist who directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development. The men in the study who fared the worst, Waldinger said, “didn’t have friendships and things they were interested in.”
Interviews with several older men who live alone were revealing.
Art Koff of Chicago, 88, was a longtime marketing executive. The death of his wife, Norma, in 2023 left him hobbled by grief. Uninterested in eating and beset by unremitting loneliness, Koff lost 45 pounds.
“I have lots of family and lots of friends who are terrific,” Koff said. But “nothing is of interest to me any longer.”
Days after the interview, he died. The death certificate cited “end stage protein calorie malnutrition” as the cause.
The transition from being coupled to being single can be profoundly disorienting for older men. Lodovico Balducci, 80, was married to his wife, Claudia, for 52 years before she died in October 2023. Balducci, a physician known as the “patriarch of geriatric oncology,” wrote about his emotional reaction in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, likening Claudia’s death to an “amputation.”
Disoriented and disorganized since Claudia died, he said in a February interview that his “anxiety has exploded.” When asked whom he confides in, he admitted, “Maybe I don’t have any close friends.”
Two weeks later, Balducci moved to New Orleans to be near his son and daughter-inlaw and their teenagers. “I am planning to help as much as possible with my grandchildren,” he said. “Life has to go on.”
Verne Ostrander is a widowed carpenter in the small town of Willits, California. When he isn’t painting watercolors, composing music or playing guitar, “I fall into this lonely state, and I cry quite a bit,” he said. “I don’t ignore those feelings. I let myself feel them. It’s like therapy.”
Ostrander has lived in Willits for nearly 50 years and belongs to a men’s group and a couples’ group that’s met for 20 years. He’s in good health and in close touch with his three adult children, who live within easy driving distance.
“The hard part of living alone is missing Cindy,” his late wife, he said. “The good part is the freedom to do whatever I want. My goal is to live another 20 to 30 years and become a better artist and get to know my kids when they get older.”
The Rev. Johnny Walker, 76, lives in a lowincome apartment building in Chicago’s West Side. Twice divorced, he’s been on his own for five years. He, too, has close family connections: At least one of his several children and grandchildren checks in on him every day.
Walker says he had a life-changing religious conversion in 1993. Since then, he has depended on his faith and his church for meaning and community.
“It’s not hard being alone,” Walker said when asked whether he was lonely. “I accept Christ in my life, and he said that he would never leave us or forsake us. When I wake up in the morning, that’s a new blessing. I just thank God that he has brought me this far.”
Waldinger, the researcher, recommended that men invest in their “social fitness” and “make an effort every day to be in touch with people. Find what you love – golf, gardening, birdwatching, pickleball, working on a political campaign – and pursue it.”
Rousseau, the retired South Carolina doctor, chose a more radical option: He moved to Jackson, Wyoming, and embraced solitude, living in a 150-foot cabin with no running water or bathroom surrounded by 25,000 undeveloped acres of land.
He stays busy with volunteer activities – cleaning tanks and running tours at Jackson’s fish hatchery, serving as a part-time park ranger and maintaining trails in national forests. Those activities put him in touch with other people, mostly strangers, only intermittently.
“I’m still lonely, but the nature and the beauty here totally changed me and focused me on what’s really important,” he said, describing a feeling of redemption in solitude.
Rousseau realizes that the death of his parents and a very close friend in his childhood left him with a sense of loss that he kept at bay for most of his life. Now, he said, rather than denying his vulnerability, he’s trying to live with it: “There’s only so long you can put off dealing with all the things you’re trying to escape from.”
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