I have heard it so many times that I have assumed it as a reasonable hypothesis. It is raised by women from my professional and personal environments: “Men (we are talking about “boomers”) do not know how to live alone, if you separate you look for someone else; when you are older you are even more dependent.” More or less they usually say this, although there are other versions; There is one that I love: “you never grow up.” To then offer specific cases of mutual acquaintances or acquaintances who divorced and who quickly found a partner, sometimes much younger. Whenever this dialogue occurs, I immediately think about which men my age I know who have broken up and gotten involved again, and how many of these have preferred to continue living alone.

I understand then that my universe is wide, and if I try hard I can find all kinds of examples, but without clear common lines. Well, there is a general cause which is the resistance to assuming that they are already in the last seasons; You understand what I mean, that phase in which you have to check the prostate once a year and observe how testosterone levels fall. I spoke to you in another article about this issue and the “age panic” effect, which translated into many turning, after 50, into runners, bikers, paelleros or directly looking for a young lover. But the question raised is more complex, because it concerns the ability of men to live with loneliness and the alleged need to find company, even if it is by paying a monthly fee to Tinder.

From the observation exercise, which since Plato has been considered a scientific methodology, I can conclude that, auditing my contact list, the majority of them do not know how to live alone, or do not want to live alone, which is an important nuance. At least while they have what is called “vital energy” left, that is, the desire to get up from the couch on a Saturday night, which is a habit that generates enormous laziness as the years go by, and I know what I’m talking about. If the day is cold or rainy, there is no one to move you from home. Now retired, and I would need to add some data, the stage of resignation to accepting loneliness begins, because one is no longer there for certain adventures. This is when the time comes to adopt a dog, which in addition to being company, helps you stay in good physical shape and even socialize.

But now comes the surprise. They also do not want to be alone and, although with different methodologies, they also establish links to have company in the short, medium and even long term. The forms, I have already said, are different; You know, they still think they are back in the days when “Dirty Dancing” or “Saturday Night Fever” were successful, and this is not usually the case for them, with exceptions, of which there are. “Conquest” still prevails in them and I think that my friends are simply looking for a good partner (which, honestly, looking at the panorama, doesn’t seem easy to find). Everything gets complicated over time, because from the age of 65, and these are data from the INE, 40% of people in Spain live alone, and of these more than 70% are women (among other reasons because they die earlier). ). So in the end, one has some arguments to refute or qualify the initial hypothesis: they do not know how to live alone, but no one likes a loneliness that at certain stages of life can become a bitch.