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How seniors cope with loneliness and living alone

Are you suffering from what’s being called the “loneliness epidemic”? Everywhere it seems, people report feeling socially disconnected. Not even seniors, despite their years of wisdom, have totally figured out how to overcome this. According to Statistics Canada, over a million Canadian seniors report feeling lonely and lacking meaningful relationships in which they feel heard and accepted.

As someone sensitive to the emotional well-being of others, this made me worry about my own senior friends. I began to wonder whether they were silently suffering, experiencing loneliness, but uncomfortable talking about it because of the unfortunate stigma it still has. Though we’ve come a long way as a society to being more public about discussions regarding the dark side of mental health, such as depression and anxiety, we too often equate loneliness as being “undesirable” or, more harshly, a “loser.”

Paul Swartz is a 68-year-old real estate agent who lives alone and has never been married. Swartz regularly visited my parents as I was growing up, and we became friends later in my adult years. “You need to have something to look forward to,” he says, which for him means playing the guitar at home and attending Greenborough Community Church, where he’s been a lifelong member.

While Swartz may have been less lonely had he gotten married, he never made the commitment due to uncertainty that he’d be able to provide for a family.

“I felt that if I couldn’t have the resources to do somewhat what my father did, I wasn’t going to be happy as a husband, struggling and saying to my wife, ‘Well, you know, I can’t do this or I can’t take you to a show.’”

To fulfill sexual urges, Swartz believes sex work would give him a semblance of intimacy. He’s adamant about decriminalizing sex work so that people who aren’t married can fulfill fantasies and experience pleasure.

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Paul Salvatori

Lucia Catania Paterra is retired and divorced.

My friend Lucia Catania Paterra also rejects the idea that she’s a lonely senior. At 70, the retired seamstress and seasoned artist is divorced and living alone. While she experiences moments of loneliness, she says that her door is always open to visitors. This has earned her home the nickname of “Casa di Popolo,” which is Italian for the “People’s House.”

“I have about two or three people who visit me a day,” says Paterra. “They are all from different walks of life and professions. I’ll cook for them and we’ll spend time talking about whatever’s on our mind. We connect and there is no hierarchy between us.”

I’m reminded of the importance of trust in forming meaningful relationships when I talk to Sheila Emami, who did not disclose her age. A few years ago when she was divorced and looking for new love, she was the victim of a major online romance scam. She lost nearly everything she owned, earned through a successful career in real estate.

Emami says this made her deeply lonely. Not only did the scam make it difficult for her to trust people and build new relationships, her family and friends now avoid her, worrying that she’ll ask for money to recover from the financial loss.

Swartz’s and Paterra’s insights give me hope that Emami will overcome her dark situation. It requires being proactive in the effort to connect with others – or at least, with ourselves.

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