Am I settling, or is this enough?

It is probably enough if you are glad of this person’s company for its own sake, and your life would still feel full without them. It may be settling if the main thing keeping you there is the fear of long evenings alone. After 60, a calm and steady companionship is often exactly what people hope for. So the quiet is not the problem. The reason you stay is the thing to look at.

Why does a calm companionship make you wonder?

Samuel is 67. He taught high-school music for thirty-four years, and his partner of twenty-nine years, Daniel, died three years ago. Daniel’s sisters still invite him to every Thanksgiving.

Since spring he has been keeping company with Arthur, 70, a retired pharmacist he met in a hospice volunteer training. They have lunch twice a week. They walk by the river on Sundays. Arthur is gentle and reliable. There is no great spark, and some nights Samuel lies awake asking himself whether he is settling.

Pull it apart before it becomes a story:

• What happened: Six months of lunches, walks and kept promises.
• The reading: If there is no spark, maybe I’m only with him so I won’t be alone.
• The fear: That he is betraying what he had with Daniel, or fooling himself.
• The next step: Look honestly at why he stays.

Why does being alone weigh so much now?

Because, for many people, there is simply more of it. A Pew Research Center analysis of national time-use data found that Americans 60 and older spend more than half of their waking hours alone, about seven hours a day.1

For those who live alone, it is more. Among the roughly one in four people over 60 who live by themselves, time alone averages about ten and a half hours a day.1

That is a lot of quiet. It makes sense that the fear of returning to it can shape your choices. It is not a weakness to feel it. It is only worth knowing when it is doing the choosing for you.

Is wanting a partner making you unhappy?

Sometimes the wanting itself is heavy. In a survey of about 3,000 single people aged 18 to 75, those who most wanted a partner tended to be less satisfied with life.2 That link was much stronger for people over 49 than for younger adults.2 Singles who had no wish for a relationship were the most satisfied with being single.2

This was a snapshot, not a long study. It cannot say which came first. But it suggests something useful. When the longing for company is very strong, it can color how you see everything, including the person in front of you.

Is being on your own really so bad?

Not as bad as it can feel at 3 a.m. In a study of more than 77,000 Europeans aged 50 and older, people who had never partnered were, on average, a little less satisfied than people who had.3 But older singles tended to be happier than middle-aged ones, and single women were more satisfied than single men.3

That study was about lifelong singles, not widowers like Samuel. Still, it is a fair reminder. A good life on your own is possible at this stage. Many people live one.

If you could picture that life and find it livable, then staying with someone is a real choice, not an escape. That is what contentment looks like.

So how do you tell contentment from settling?

Here are gentle questions to ask yourself, on a calm morning rather than a sleepless night:

• Do I look forward to them, or only dread the empty days?
• Can I be fully myself with them, opinions and all?
• Would I miss them, or would I miss having someone?
• Is the doubt about them, or about grief for the person I lost?
• Do I still enjoy some time alone? That is a good sign, not a bad one.

For Samuel, the answers are mostly kind. He looks forward to Tuesdays. He can disagree with Arthur about music and laugh about it. What he feels at night may be grief, not doubt. That is worth knowing, and it does not need to be rushed.

If the doubt never lets up, or if sadness keeps you from sleeping, eating or seeing friends for weeks at a time, please talk to your doctor or a licensed counselor. Some people experience doubts about a partner that become constant and hard to set down, sometimes described as relationship obsessive-compulsive disorder. Only a qualified professional can say whether that applies. Asking for help is good sense.

What to do this week

• Notice the day you look forward to. Write it down. Then notice the days you only dread.
• Spend one evening alone on purpose. A concert, a good book, a call to a friend. See how it feels.
• Talk it over with someone you trust. A friend, a sibling, a grief group.
• Tell your companion one true thing. Something you enjoy about your time together.
• Give it time. Contentment rarely announces itself. It shows up in ordinary weeks.

What the research does not show

• The time-use figures are national averages published in 2019. They do not describe your evenings.1
• The partner-desire study was a single survey. It cannot show cause and effect.2
• The European study looked at lifelong singles, not people who lost a spouse.3
• No study can say whether this companionship is enough for you. Only you can, with time.