3 STEPS TO CONNECT WITH THE DISTANT PERSON SITTING NEXT TO YOU ON THE SOFA A stamp in your passport does not provide protection against loneliness. Research shows that approximately 20% of the total population suffers from chronic loneliness. In a recent study, 62.5% of older adults reported feeling lonely when married to their partner. How Loneliness Affects Our Physical and Mental Health Typically, we don't define loneliness as a condition that requires urgent intervention, although perhaps we should. In addition to the heartache that loneliness creates, it creates a devastating impact on our mental and physical health. Loneliness suppresses the functioning of the immune system, increasing the likelihood of inflammatory reactions, which leads to the risk of cardiovascular disease, and can literally shorten our lifespan. On the mental health side, loneliness puts us at risk for depression and anxiety and causes us to distort our perceptions so that we see ourselves, our lives, and our relationships more negatively, which in turn has a destructive effect on our behavior. How Loneliness affects our relationshipsLoneliness distorts the way we see people and causes us to devalue our relationships. We perceive others as less caring, less interested, and less committed than they actually are, and we evaluate relationships as more superficial and less satisfying than they could be. To protect ourselves from more emotional pain, we become hyper-vigilant for any signs of rejection from others and become more likely to miss any signs of acceptance. As a result - often without realizing that we are doing this - we become overly defensive and greet people with a distant, wary or even hostile attitude, which only pushes them further away. How Loneliness Affects Marriage Although we might believe that marriage can free us from the destructive loneliness, but it's not like that. Loneliness is determined by the subjective quality (how we evaluate) of our relationships, not by their objective quantity, or simply by the fact that we live with a spouse. Loneliness in marriage often develops slowly, and we feel the distance between spouses increasing gradually over many years. At some point, discussions about mutual interests, world events, goals and dreams stop completely, and conversations become purely "business" - " I need to buy milk,” “Your mom called,” or “Did you remember to pay your electricity bill?” — or focused solely on raising children. We fall into the routine of everyday life, which contributes to the formation of emotional distance: one watches TV in the evening, another watches video on the computer, or one goes to bed at 9 pm and wakes up at 5 am, and the other goes to bed at midnight and wakes up at 8 am. In short, we lose love and affection but remain married. Oddly enough, we often stay out of fear of becoming lonely, although, in fact, we doom ourselves to the loneliness that we were trying to avoid. How to deal with Loneliness in marriage The feeling of loneliness that grips us leads our “relationship muscles” to atrophy when we rarely use them in meaningful relationships. To improve the quality of our relationships, we must strengthen these skills. It takes practice and patience, but improving our rusty skills (even if we don't feel like they're rusty) can make a significant contribution to the quality of relationships and deepen connections with the significant people in our lives.1. Take the initiative. If you're single, chances are your partner is too. But he may be caught in a cycle of disconnecting from his own emotions and feeling helpless, not knowing how to change. Try to start a conversation about something other than business. Ask your partner about his views on what he cares about and confidently!