LONELINESS.

LONELINESS. Years ago, I read the observation that loneliness is the biggest social problem in America, but that loneliness is not thought of as a social problem because there isn’t anything the government can do about it. Instapundit linked to this post by Ann Althouse, which reports on a study that concluded that 13.9% of unmarried men and 8.9% of unmarried women between the ages of 25 to 45 have never had sex. Celibacy and loneliness are, of course, not the same thing. I thought of loneliness because of one haunting comment on the study that Ann Althouse quotes. One passage from the comment: “I wonder, night after night, month after month, year after year, what I’m doing wrong. it’s hard not to wonder whether there’s something fundamentally, immutably wrong with *me*. it’s hard not to wonder whether sex and romantic love are simply things which aren’t *for* me – things which the universe has seen fit to make available to others, but not to me.”