Am I destined to die alone? What the science says
Ah, the fateful words that so many of us have thought.
I remember when I began to seriously think that this might happen to me. I was asking my friend if she believes people actually do die alone, whilst we walked through Stanley Park in Vancouver one cloudy, autumnal afternoon. She met my gaze with a bemused expression, blinking back at me as she uttered, But of course.”
I was concerned for a fair amount of my 30s that this would happen to me. Not overtly, but a bit. I was confident, outgoing, seemingly carefree and had it all figured out. But with every passing bad date after bad date, failed connection after failed connection, that nagging worry grew bigger and bigger.
This is a worry I hear all the time with my clients and people I speak to. Most of us don’t want to admit it, but it’s there, buried in the back of our minds.
“Am I destined to be alone?” or, “Am I destined to be unhappy in relationships?”
I get it. I’ve been there. Many of us have been there.
Many of us are still there.
So what does the data show?
The reality is, the data isn’t great.
Almost 45 percent of first marriages in the United States end in divorce.
In 2021, data showed that 25% of 40-year-olds in the United States had never been married - that’s a quarter of the population. Sure, marriage isn’t necessarily the end goal for all partnerships, but we can take this as a proxy given the US is a country where 83 percent of participants interviewed by in this new survey from the Thriving Center of Psychology said they would like to get married at some point.
We know that social isolation increases the risk of early death by 32%.
And loneliness increases the risk of death by 14%.
Meanwhile, for those that are unhappily married, it’s a catch-22.
Dana Adam Shapiro, in his book You Can Be Right or You Can Be Married, wrote that only 17 percent of couples are content with their partner, whilst Vicki Larson, journalist and co-author of The New I Do, Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists, and Rebels, cites that 6 of every 10 are unhappily coupled and 4 out of 10 have considered leaving their partner.
Even, leaving a bad marriage comes with its own downsides. The stats are bleak:
Divorce can literally kill you. Forbes shows the mortality rate is 1,363 per 100,000 for divorcees compared with 779 per 100,000 for married couples.
Getting it wrong twice is a pattern that's hard to stop. 67% of second marriages end, and 73% of third marriages are dissolved.
An average, easy divorce costs around $7,000. The more complex (read: asset laden) ones are more.
Another stat notes that the average cost of US divorces is around $15,000 per person.
What's the core fear?
Beneath the fear of dying alone is typically the deeper, more inherent fear that we are unworthy. That we are unworthy of love, or unworthy of being wanted, chosen, and safe in intimacy.
These are often baseline fears from our childhood wounds, insecure attachment, and parents.
This core fear is what typically keeps us stuck - and what keeps the fear of dying alone so hauntingly real for us all.
In our deepest hearts, we worry that there is something wrong with us and we are incapable of finding love.
What’s the reality?
The reality is more nuanced.
Plenty of people clearly do, in fact, die alone. Plenty of people are unhappily partnered or never meet their ultimate match.
But the question is not whether they are worthy or not.
We are all inherently worthy of love
We are all worthy because we exist
The question is more, whether we have the necessary self-awareness and relational skills that we need to find and create long lasting love.
Skills like:
Knowing who we are in our heart of hearts, in our core, and being able to oconnect from that place of deep authenticity, vulnerability, and true self
Knowing what our blind spots our, our patterns, our wounds and triggers, so that we can heal accordingly and ensure we don’t sabotage our connections
Being able to be radically honest…with ourselves and with others
Feeling and showing empathy
Knowing how to set boundaries and respect each other
Being able to trust ourselves and each other
Managing conflict and finding resolution quickly
Knowing how to compromise and find balance
Being vulnerable and able to share our deepest, most raw, honest selves - in a way that is healthy and open and respectful of another’s own space and boundaries
Have emotional intelligence - be able to practise attunement, discernment, sense making of ourselves and our partners
Feel independence - to have a healthy sense of ourselves and our identities
Communication skills - being able to communicate energetically, somatically, and verbally our boundaries, our empathy, our compromise, our vulnerability etc.
And plenty of people don’t learn these.
Either because it’s not a priority, they don’t know how to, or they just haven’t had a chance to.
What happens when a connection develops from these more undeveloped relational skill spaces is that we might get into partnership but that partnership is at a very low level of connection. Often it will be fraught with disconnect, arguments, conflict, ego, envy, and all the lower energy stuff that we ultimately don't want.
David Deida, a sexual and spiritual growth teacher for men and women, outlines this as the 3 stages of evolution in partnership.
First stage - simply put, this is very basic, primal, working with ego. These are couples that play mind games, are selfish, and operate from ego. This is often where toxic patterns play out but plenty of folks stay here. This is the stuff of a lot of movies, sitcoms, drama filled media representations of relationships.
Second stage - this is a more healthy connection where communication, conflict resolution and compromise is more grounded and fair. Often this is where communication scripts and marital counselling can help. The downside of this is that often this can feel stale, like two flatmates conversing with each other, void of passion and polarity.
Third stage - this is where connection has become an intimate and almost erotic art practice. It is creative, nourishing, diverse, expressive, and rooted in love…where conflict and arguments can be rooted in our authentic selves, connecting from our core essence, from our spiritual selves rather than the ego or childhood wounds. This is where we can transmute old pain into potential for connection, where conflict becomes a place for deepening connection, intimacy becomes spiritual and transcendental. This is an advanced stage - but one worth working towards.
Relationships require relational skills. They don’t just fall into our laps.
So is it realistic to worry that you might die alone?
Well, it depends on whether you are actively going to prioritise your relationships and learning the skills you need to learn to create the connection you yearn for.
We are all worthy, and we can all do this.
What do you choose?
Let's chat if this resonates.
