Alone

Today is Valentine's Day, traditionally a great day for florists, but also for marriage proposals! Obviously, I don't personally observe Valentine's Day, which lost its minimal religious connection when the post-conciliar calendar reform inexplicably and absurdly dropped the obscure Saint Valentine for other very meritorious but probably ot very widely known or appreciated saints.That said, this widely observed feast of romantic love is as good an occasion as any to reflect upon the decline of romance and even friendship in our society, with all its complicated consequences. 

That Americans are more alone - and lonely - today appears incontrovertible. The national marriage rate is nearing an all-time low, while the share of women under 65 who aren’t living with a partner has grown steadily since the 1980s. More broadly, young people say they spend significantly less time with the friends they do have, attend fewer parties, and spend much more time alone. The decline of coupling has had a noteworthy economic component, having declined more than among those without college degrees compared with college graduates.

A major complicating factor appears to be the stagnation of less educated young men's incomes in recent decades. For single, non-college-educated men, average inflation-adjusted earnings at age 45 have fallen by nearly 25% in the past half century, whereas average real earnings for the country as a whole have more than doubled. Since men's odds of being in a successful relationship are generally correlated with their income, it is alleged that a lot of contemporary men do not seem marriageable to contemporary young women, whose college completion rates (and presumably incomes) have risen in contrast.

Add to all that the general epidemic of increasing loneliness that afflicts more and more people in our supposedly super-connected social media society, stripped sadly of so many traditional opportunities for human connection!

Valentine's Day cannot repair our growing epidemic of loneliness and disconnectedness. If anything, Valentine's Day's glorification (or at least commercialization) of romance may merely highlight the pain of those left behind in loneliness' contemporary Slough of Despond.