I always considered marriage the epitome of feeling connected: you share a life with a partner and maybe even have children. Society at least acts like it is.
I have a coworker in his 40s, conservative and Christian, married to a woman holding a job, he is also employed and has a good job, all things considered and they have a child.
I don’t see this person much but each time he sees me he approaches to basically complain and rant, mostly about democrats and foreigners, getting very emotional to the point of crying.
At first I hated him for spewing so much shit, but now I think I’m starting to pity him: he has a job, is married to a working woman, they have a child, they are homeowners… and he still feels angry and needs to rant to feel good. It’s like he’s angry at everything.
Which takes me to think, maybe there are things men need emotionally that women cannot provide, but I couldn’t write a list.
What are some of these connections men need out of a marriage?
Yeah, have you ever had an annoying roommate? Isn’t it so much more frustrating and isolating than living alone? You don’t even have your own space to get away so you just become more irritable all the time. Now imagine if you wanted to not live with that person that you need to get lawyers, your family, another family and the government involved
A lot of people get married because “they’re supposed to”, “they’ve been dating for a while”, or because it’s arranged. Is it shocking that those people don’t have the foundation for a good long term relationship? Is it shocking that every day is a little bit worse for them?
I think you are conflating the vision of success with happiness. These two things hold no relation.
The thing about marriage is that anybody can do it. You don’t have to love somebody to marry them. It isn’t special. There’s no test you have to take together or qualifications you have to meet.
So yeah - he’s angry, and lonely, and he’s also married, but none of those things are related to each other.
Sounds like he needs therapy, but in our society men aren’t encouraged to share emotions if it doesn’t perpetuate an image of strength. So he’s expressing his emotions in a “socially acceptable” way: anger. Which is probably what also got him into these backwards ideas about his political ideology as well.
Marriage is a legal and religious construct. It does not fix a lack of connection.
I met a former religious couple at my old job.
She and her husband are in their 40s and tried to invite us to an orgy. I did the polite thing and let them know maybe later.
She showed me photos of her dressed like an Amish person in her 30s. She shared that during that time, her kids and church kept her busy. She and her husband never felt aligned, but they feel a strong loneliness when they’re not together.
And when her kids went to college, she and her husband finally bonded and discovered they both love orgies. And it was only at that moment when, after like 20 years of marriage, did they actually connect as human beings.
Wild.
Aww, what a cute story. I’m happy for them
Your coworker is a twat.
Ignoring his political alignment, anybody who comes to work and vent about their home life just sucks in general. Doesn’t matter what walk of life they come from.
Fucking energy vampire.
They’re not lonely, they’re just assholes.
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Brah. braaaahhh
Idk what else to say. Just, braaahhhh
Anytime we talk about human behavior, it is a good idea to learn and use the lens of behavioral contextualism. If and only if the contextual behaviorist analysis concludes that human connections is the issue, Sue Johnson’s texts will be great to understand your coworker. Otherwise, the contextual behavioral analysis will let you know what’s going on.
Edit: Removed excess text
Are you Hoffman or Hayes?
Seriously though, your reading list is a bit one sided. I’m happy you found a hammer you like, but not every relationship is a nail.
He probably watches a lot of right wing/conservative media, and those shows generally aim to get people riled up to be against democrats and foreigners to an unreasonable extent. That and other personal issues messed up his brain. Like others have said, dude needs therapy.
watches hate-spewing tv programs like fox news
is consequently angry
surprised pikachu face
Marriage is a piece of paper. You can absolutely get married to someone you still feel alone around. Being not angry requires something a little more than a piece of paper.
Yes, my ex wife and I can attest to that. Your coworker seems like a dick and should talk to a therapist.
Dude was probably raised on stupid conservative shit and never did the work to find happiness in himself.
You don’t need connections to be happy and the connections people are drawn to tend to amplify what they’re putting into the relationship. If this dude is miserable and looking to others to fix it they’re just going to dig their hole deeper.
I’d clarify that this is different from leaning on friends when you’re going through a hard time, if you establish a positive relationship you can lean on it for stability when your life is rough… and some folks culture positive relationships during hard times by compartmentalizing them into a positive part of their lives (an example I’ve seen was a friend who joined our board game group during a rough time but didn’t reveal their troubles until later - when all that shit was going down our space was where she came to just have a good time and be positive).
Life’s hard. People raised on the ideology of bootstraps and “Having a family will fix it” are playing on extra hard mode.
While I can’t attest to why your coworker is angry all the time, I can say that it is possible to feel lonely in a marriage. While you are connected in a functional marriage, your partner isn’t going to be and can’t possibly be the only source for your needs. You’re not going to have all the same interests as your partner and it’s good to have friends outside of the marriage to share those interests. Sometimes your partner will drive you crazy, so it helps to have friends that can help you with that. If you don’t have anyone to help with those needs it can get lonely quickly.
Your coworker is just a miserable piece of shit. Even if he was able to personally remove all democrats and immigrants, as he so claims to want, he’d still be a miserable piece of shit and no happier.
look, this person is probably an asshole regardless, but to answer you: Yes. Maybe more than if you are single. I stated dating a guy that was super rich and good-looking and he was super nice to me, It was like a real life fairy tale… until we got married and the routine started to show us how lonely we were with each other. We had nothing in comom, he was a bit dumb and shallow and the only subject he was interested was sports. I hate sports and like movies, shows and science. At the end he would say i was too nerd and I would say he was too dumb, but the reality is that he was very nice and so was I, we just were not ment for each other.
Yes, it’s possible to feel lonely while you’re married. Because “to feel lonely” might mean a thousand different things: lack of physical affection, lack of emotional bonding, lack of intellectual stimulus, lack of ability to coordinate and do stuff together… and only some of those are fulfilled by a romantic relationship. (A good relationship should fulfil more of them, but you won’t get the full package ever.) And often the other person doesn’t have time for you, even if they’re trying their hardest to be a good mate.
That said, it doesn’t seem to me that he feels lonely, but rather that he feels frustrated with something. As people said perhaps therapy would do him good.
