How Did We End Up All Alone?

That wasn't what I planned!

Did you/do you expect to be alone? Probably not. Neither did I.

Like most kids, I was raised to believe in the fairy tale that everyone gets married and grows old surrounded by a big happy family. How did I end up in this big house in the woods talking to spiders and stuffed bears?

Alone seems to be my default setting. When I look back on my life, I have spent more time single than married, including my growing-up years, the years between my first and second marriages, and the years since my husband Fred died at 73 of complications from Alzheimer’s Disease.

(Obligatory plug: I tell our story in my memoir No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, coming out in June from SheWrites Press. Preorder at your favorite bookstore now.)

After I married Fred, I didn’t expect to be alone. Well, maybe sometime in the far distant future, but not from my late 50s to the end of my life. He was 14 years older than I was, but he was so healthy I accused him of being bionic. He didn’t even get colds. His parents both lived long, active lives. I believed this man could live to over a hundred years old, and I’d be at his side. We didn’t have children together, but we had each other. Cue the romantic music.

Then he started having trouble remembering things . . .

My father never planned to be alone either. My mother was younger, not in great health but good enough. In retirement, they traveled and reveled in being together and free from the workday schedule. Then she got sick. Cancer. Three months later, she was gone. Dad spent the next seventeen years alone. Yes, he had my brother and me, but we both lived far away and couldn’t be with him most of the time.

I come from a line of long-term widows. Great-Grandma Souza’s husband died in his 30s. She never remarried and wore black until she died in her 80s. Great-Grandma Fagalde lost her husband when they were in their 60s. She lived to 88 and never remarried either. Aunt Edna Sousa, who never had children, lost Uncle Tony early and remained single until she died at 100.

I have friends whose marriages blew up ages ago. They have lived alone ever since. I have been both divorced and widowed. They’re very different, but the result is the same. You’re alone in sickness and in health, in broken plumbing and income tax, on Christmas, your birthday and Groundhog’s Day.

I also have friends and family members who never married. Not everybody does, for all kinds of reasons. A few started out to be nuns or priests, then decided they preferred the secular life. Some never wanted to be coupled up. Some never found that special someone—or they found them, but they weren’t available. Maybe they’ve been waiting all their lives, but it just hasn’t happened.

A 2021 Pew Research Center study found that 25 percent of 40-year-olds in the U.S. had never been married—compared to six percent in 1980. Follow-up studies showed one in four of those single 40-year-olds did marry by age 60, but that leaves the other three out of four still single. Are they coupled without getting married? Possibly. But some people have been alone all their lives.

Question: Cinderella got her prince, but what about the wicked stepsisters? Did they spend their later years by themselves?

There’s always a chance that we widowed, divorced or never-married will find love or at least deep like and be alone no more, but you know what? A) For those of us who don’t want to try online dating, it’s not likely, especially if we’re older, and B) most of the older women I know who are alone enjoy their freedom too much to give it up. They didn’t ask to be alone, but they choose to stay that way.

The response to my first post has been amazing. Clearly a lot of people want to talk about being alone. Those who are not alone now are worried about what might happen in the future. What if they lose their person? Can they make it alone?

They can. I can, you can, we can. Yes, the world is set up for couples and groups. Try walking into a crowded restaurant and requesting a table for one. Try having a medical procedure without someone to drive you home. Try living on one income. Try ordering something on Amazon that is too heavy for you to lift by yourself (I ordered a treadmill).

Living alone is a challenge. Maybe it’s not our first choice. But we can do it.

Thank you to everyone who has subscribed. I truly appreciate you. Let’s talk. How did you end up alone? If you’re not alone, what scares you the most about the possibility?

I’m just one of millions. Let’s talk.