When we don’t feel understood, we feel lonely even in a crowd

By David McElroy · July 7, 2020

A young lesbian who I casually know paid me a high compliment today.

“If I were to ever go straight again,“ she said, “it would be for a man like you.”

Liz is married — to a woman — and I have no expectation that she’s looking to start a relationship with me. I laughed at the unexpected comment and asked her why.

“You listen when I talk,“ she said. “And when you listen to me, you ‘get’ what I’m saying. You don’t look at me like you’re not even listening or you didn’t understand. You don’t even know me that well, but you ‘get’ me better than any man I ever dated. And that’s what I always wanted from a man. I wanted to be heard and understood.”

I think Liz is perfectly normal in her craving to be understood. The fact that she’s felt so little understanding from the men in her life is an indictment of our culture. We’re surrounded by more people than ever. We have technology that allegedly connects us more than ever.

But many of us have ever felt as alone as we do today.

I’ve felt misunderstood for most of my life. It started at home with a father who desperately tried to mold me to be like him. It continued in school with my young peers. I didn’t quite fit with them. My dysfunctional home environment — and the abuse we suffered there — pushed me to be like a little man in a boy’s body.

I fit better among adults than with children. At least with adults, I knew how to play the role. Adults admired me, but it was the sort of admiration you might have for a talking dog. They didn’t know quite what to make of me.

I wasn’t one of the kids and I also wasn’t one of the adults. And that feeling of being trapped between worlds with nobody to trust — and nobody to understand me — is something I carried into my adult life.

That was my path to feeling alone among the masses but there are many other ways that others have arrived in the same position.

It seems more common for people to have grown up with the feeling that they fit somewhere and everything felt pretty normal. But at some point, a lot of people have the sudden realization that they don’t know how they got to where they are, at least in the emotional sense.

It’s as though they flowed along with what seemed to be the norm for their social group — and then they suddenly realized something was terribly wrong, even if they had no idea what that is.

My friend Liz came to the understanding that she wasn’t getting the understanding she wanted at a fairly young age, based on what she told me today. I don’t think it happens to most people until they’re in their 30s. By the time most hit their early 40s — or thereabouts — the inner whispers that something is wrong have turned to a rousing and urgent chorus that won’t leave them alone.

At that point, most people numb themselves. They turn to whatever is their form of addiction. It might be alcohol. They might make jokes about their wine consumption, but some of their friends start to realize it’s more than a joke. For others, it’s work. If they work hard enough, they don’t have to notice what they’re feeling. Or they can throw themselves into the lives of their children, telling themselves that they’re great parents because they’re sacrificing everything for their kids.

But people who take these various paths are all doing one simple thing. They are stifling their emotions. They’re doing whatever is necessary to make sure they don’t hear those inner voices screaming that they need change — that they need to be heard and understood.

A few people — a small percentage — jump off the hamster wheel of a numbing life. They face the pain of feeling alone. They face the fear of the changes they need to make. And then they take whatever steps are necessary — some big and some small — so they can quit pretending they’re living the sort of lives they wanted to live.

Those of us who are different — and who have come to understand that we want more than what our culture is handing us — need each other. We will never be a majority, but there are others out there like us.

In the most literal sense, we are wandering among masses of lonely people — and we’re looking for the one or two who might understand us. Some people are great fits for certain others. Some would mix like oil and water.

I’m still moving through this world alone and I’m looking for someone who fits. Maybe you. Maybe not. But there’s someone who’s looking for me, too. I just don’t know where to find her.

I am achingly tired of traveling this world alone. Maybe you are, too.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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