If you're still doing these 9 things heading into your 70s, psychology says you're setting yourself up for the loneliest decade of your life - Silicon Canals

"Three years ago, I sat in my grandmother's empty house, sorting through her belongings. What struck me wasn't the quiet or the dust motes dancing in the afternoon light. It was her address book, worn at the edges, filled with names crossed out. Not because she'd fallen out with these people, but because they'd all passed away before her. The last five years of her life, she told me once, felt like watching everyone disappear."

"That memory haunts me now as I interview people in their 70s and 80s for my articles. The ones who seem happiest aren't necessarily the wealthiest or healthiest. They're the ones surrounded by friends, engaged with their communities, and open to new connections. The lonely ones? They often made the same mistakes decades earlier, habits that slowly isolated them without them even realizing it."

"Psychology research backs this up. The loneliness epidemic among older adults isn't just about aging. It's about the patterns we establish long before we reach our golden years. Here are nine things that, if you're still doing them as you approach 70, might be setting you up for a profoundly lonely decade. 1) Waiting for others to reach out first Remember when maintaining friendships felt effortless? In college, you'd bump into people constantly."

Loneliness in later life often results from long-established social patterns rather than from aging alone. Older adults who report greater happiness tend to have active friendships, community engagement, and openness to forming new connections. Habits formed decades earlier—such as waiting for others to initiate contact—can erode opportunities for close relationships as chance encounters disappear. Close friendships require sustained interaction, with research estimating about 200 hours to develop intimacy; those hours rarely occur accidentally in later life. When both parties assume the other will reach out, relationships can drift into polite distance and become difficult to recover.

Read at Silicon Canals