On the Importance of Building Community and Reducing Alone Time

Or, how I connect interacting with your neighbors to the fact that caretaking can worsen menopause symptoms

It’s hard not to laugh (or cry, really) at the benign-sounding euphemisms often used in medical situations. The sensation of having a needle stuck into your tender gums by the dentist is called a “zing.” The breath-stealing agony of having a baby pushed out your vagina is referred to as “pressure.” And, it turns out, the hot sweats, joint pain, and anxiety of menopause are merely “bothersome.”

The article that labels menopause symptoms thusly concerns a recent Mayo Clinic study that found menopause symptoms worsen if the sufferer is also performing acts of caregiving.

Such as taking care of children and aging parents, a situation that affects many, many people. And, as we are all too aware, most of those people are women. Historically and currently, caregiving disproportionately falls on women. Our government and wider communities are not stepping up, even in These Modern Times.

Some of that is due to our patriarchal society and its inevitable misogyny. But I think part of why it’s particularly bad now is due to what a recent Atlantic article calls the Anti-Social Century. According to the article, people are socializing in person at rates dramatically lower than ever seen in recent history—the trend was accelerated by the pandemic but had already started years earlier (thanks, air conditioning and TV). Personal technology and an increasingly frictionless access to it are, per the article, much to blame for the state of socializing today.

The tl;dr of the article (and it’s worth reading in its entirety because it goes into detail about the consequences of our society’s pervasive alone-ness; spoiler: political radicalization is one of those consequences): Chronic alone-ness means less resilience, less tolerance, and less health. And often we think a preference for being alone is what we need—when in fact it’s the opposite.

Lots of us have relationships that exist solely online; lots more of us have relationships with friends and family that largely consist of text, social media DMs, and (acting my age here) email. Phone calls, if you don’t mind them.

None of it involves the valuable in-person chemistry of microexpressions, pheromones, and mutual memory building in real time with real touch and a shared sense of physicality. By that I mean: If you virtually meet up for lunch or coffee, you can connect in a genuine way, but you’ll never be simultaneously experiencing the same scents, sounds, sights, and tastes that you would if you were in the same place looking at each other in person. Those memories feel different. We were both there, your brain tells you, instead of your voice spoke to me but I was alone.

As the Atlantic article points out, by isolating ourselves, we’ve eliminated the emotional tolerance-building that comes from regular in-person interactions with our neighbors—no matter what their tastes and beliefs. Most people are less likely to spew vitriol about immigration, abortion, gender identity, and unhinged educational voucher schemes if they’re occupying the same space as another person and having to meet their eyes. They’re probably not going to say it to someone’s face, no matter what they think when safely behind a screen.

Having to be polite—or at least civil—and work together as familiar-but-not-necessarily-friendly neighbors is enormously important for a strong community. A willingness to recognize similarities and tolerate differences isn’t easy to do if you never have to work with or depend on anyone you live around. It’s uncomfortable! So you need a reason to do it…like sharing space and resources in a physical community.

By avoiding this type of tolerance, you end up with a not-insignificant number of perimenopausal women who are caring alone for their children and their parents at the same time, all while undergoing a massive, life-altering hormonal shift. Where is the community? Where is the village? They’re all inside watching increasingly siloed and expensive streaming services, or rage-commenting on AI-assisted posts that don’t align with their politics.

So as we’ve isolated from our neighbors, we’ve lost our tolerance for people who aren’t our friends and don’t share our views. Perimenopausal caretaking women are certainly seeing some unpleasant knock-on effects from that. We as a society have also become less resilient from this epidemic of tech-aided alone-ness, if only when it comes to discomfort. And it’s often uncomfortable or inconvenient to help people who are caretaking. When we dissolve in-person community bonds, we narrow our field of vision for seeing people who need help.

This avoidance of discomfort is in part due to a marked decrease in those everyday annoyances and, from there, a lack of immunity to them. We’ve eliminated everything from the mild discomfort of a delay in attaining information—you can now search engine (or, dear god, ChatGPT) your way to satisfying curiosity—to the need to have indoor attire that reflects the actual temperature outside—new houses in the U.S. are built to accommodate aggressive climate control in the form of heating and air conditioning. If you’re not forced from necessity, why bother to alter your wardrobe to reflect changing seasons or outside socializing—or anything other than your own mood?

(And, on that note, we’ve all mostly habituated our bodies to an even narrower range of comfortable temperatures than they require by design, which is more comfortable, sure, but at what cost in terms of environmental damage and social atrophy? I had an actual source in mind to back this up, but I’ve now wasted about forty minutes in a fruitless search for a link, so I guess chalk the earlier statement up to “feels true; author can’t find source.” And, as side-side note, my search did yield articles indicating that office air-conditioning temperatures are optimized for men wearing suits, despite the fact that many office workers are now women.)

Anyway, that epic parenthetical aside, I think we’ve exchanged the minor discomforts and inconveniences that used to come with a less tech-dependent and more pro-social life for one that is far more comfortable and convenient but is far less private and far less sustainable. From health, environmental, economic, and structural standpoints.

These “conveniences” and this troubling combination of being physically alone while electronically connected has resulted in us pushing ourselves away from help and failing to build the communities that could reduce our burdens.

I’m not blaming any specific population group (well, of course the acceleration of Bad comes from corporate C-suites, billionaires, and all the people who get rich from holding shares and don’t care about destructive short-term thinking that yields shareholder gain and societal loss), but we’ve all normalized things that shouldn’t be normal.

We’ve all tethered ourselves to attention-catching devices that tell us everything we want to hear while severing our connections to other points of view—devices that keep us too occupied to see the wonder of the natural world and thus have a stake in preserving it; to see our neighbors as a shared community of helpers; to venture outside what is comfortable intellectually and emotionally so that our brains and spirits can continue to grow and evolve.

Maybe to a casual viewer it doesn’t all feel connected. It might not be immediately obvious that perimenopause is being made worse by caretaking and caretaking is being made more arduous by a lack of social structure and support, which is being made worse and more intense by technology and a lack of social spaces…but it’s not impossible to see. It is, as they say, systemic.

So what can we do? As with most things when you’re powerless on a large scale, the answer is (I think) to start small. Build community locally. This doesn’t mean endless in-person and face-to-face interaction starting tomorrow! I know we all have at least some social anxiety, and that kind of thing can get worse the less often you socialize in person. You may very well need to start with limited in-person interaction until you either reach your real limit or are gently acclimated to expanding it.

And building community can also mean organizing online and keeping up with people over text, direct messaging of some sort, and phone calls. But. Do try to get some face-to-face interaction. The consequences of eschewing most in-person contact may be significant.

Because: Another recent study found dementia rates are projected to rise dramatically. Lifetime risk is expected to be around 42 percent after the age of 55, according to Scientific American coverage. By 2060, the Nature Medicine study found, about a million U.S.-ians will develop dementia each year. For context: In 2020, about 500,000 U.S. adults were diagnosed.

One of the study authors attributed these alarming numbers to the fact that there will simply be more older people in the general population. That said, the numbers are alarming, and I went from reading the SA article to looking up ways to prevent and/or slow the onset of dementia.

Here’s the thing: Regular social interaction is on every single list of ways to prevent or reduce the effects of dementia. Every single one!

(The others include, of course, exercise, sleep, and certain dietary guidelines, because those three things are the absolute foundation of our meatspace existence…annoyingly.)

So all this alone-ness will perhaps contribute to a future of memory loss and disruption, each of us suffering solo, cut off by our own actions from any community that might help. I don’t love that prognosis. Let’s start building those communities now instead, when our concerns are circling around bothersome menopause symptoms. That way, our communities are in place by the time we’re facing what might be referred to as “a little forgetful.”

We have to do the work, and the work right now is human-ing with people around you in small but satisfying ways. I believe we can do it, and a big part of doing it is simply acknowledging the reality of what’s happening to and around you. If you have the choice, don’t pick being alone every single time. Build a bridge; don’t burn it.

I recognize that, today of all days, it’s a real challenge to think graciously and generously about some of our neighbors. This trend of alone-ness goes beyond politics, though, and it’s exacerbated those very politics that are so troubling. Since I lack enormous power, I’ve come to accept that correcting or even just ameliorating the situation requires me to improve my ability to tolerate—and to encourage greater tolerance from everyone around me.

(Some days this is easier than others. I have not started with the neighbors who fly offensive flags, I must admit.)

Yours amidst scheduling drinks and coffees with other neighbors,

That Hag

Two Small Ways to Interact in Person in the Week Ahead:

1. If you already have one friend who lives within your city/town/county, set up a time to get together. This is probably the easiest way to start. Odds are you’ve been meaning to schedule some time together already. Just take the plunge, send the text, ready the carrier pigeon, whatever. I’m a big fan of early-morning (before work) coffee dates, Friday-afternoon lunches (leisurely), and school-night drinks at fancy bars (less crowded). Sometimes super short-notice stuff works, but you know your friends better than I. Don’t induce an anxiety attack because you spring a “Let’s get drinks tonight!” on a friend who needs more time to mentally prepare. But don’t hesitate to do it if you know your friend won’t mind and will put it off otherwise.

2. Interact with a neighbor. Depending on the relationship that already does (or doesn’t) exist, this one could take a lot of forms. If you generally adhere to a “never go outside if there’s a chance you can encounter anyone who lives nearby” policy, try relaxing this a bit and saying hello to your neighbor(s) when you cross paths. Or see each other across the street. If you vaguely know your neighbors and might recognize them outside the context of their front door, leave a note with the contact information you’re comfortable sharing, even if you couch it in “just in case we ever need to contact each other” terms. And if you’re already on nodding-acquaintance terms, drop a baked good or something similar by and suggest you all get a coffee sometime.