Participant ID: P04
Pseudonym: Robert
Age: 45
Gender: Man
Occupation: Construction project manager
Living situation: Rents a basement apartment in Surrey; alternating-week custody of two kids (ages 10 and 13)
Relevant context: Divorced 14 months ago after 18 years of marriage
Interview date: 2025-11-04
Interview length: 41 minutes
Interviewer: R2
Location: Coffee shop in Surrey

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I: Thanks for meeting up, Robert. Tell me a bit about yourself.

P: Yeah. Um. So I'm 45, I've got two kids, Jordan and Emily, 13 and 10. Construction PM, been in the trades my whole working life. Used to be married to Jenny for, uh, almost twenty years. Now I'm not. We split in 2024. And, yeah, that's where I'm at.

I: When you hear the word loneliness, what comes to mind?

P: The week the kids aren't with me. That's it. That's the whole answer. The weeks they're with me, the apartment's loud, there's noise, there's homework, there's me cooking dinner and them complaining about it. And then Sunday afternoon I drop them at Jenny's and I come back to this — this silence. And the apartment is a tomb. I'll sit on the couch for like six hours and not move. So that's loneliness for me. It's the off-weeks.

I: How does it feel physically?

P: Yeah. [pause] So, look, I'm not a feelings guy. I don't talk like this normally. But — I get this thing in my throat. Like a tightness. Like I want to cry but I can't. And I don't sleep. I drink more on those weeks. I know I do. My ex caught me drinking by myself last summer on a Wednesday afternoon and that was, uh, that was a bad moment. So yeah. Throat, sleep, the drinking. That's the body part.

I: Is loneliness different from being alone?

P: I never really thought about it that way. I think — yeah. Like, I'd go on hunting trips before the divorce, alone for days, and it was fine. That was good for me. So it's not the being alone, you're right. It's — it's the not having anyone. The structure. The someone-coming-home-to-you. After eighteen years of that, the absence is loud.

I: Walk me through a recent time you felt lonely.

P: Last Friday. So it was a kid-free week, and my buddy was supposed to come watch the Canucks game, and he had to cancel because his wife wasn't feeling well. So I had this whole evening, you know, beer in the fridge, game on, and just me. And I sat there for three hours and I didn't drink any of the beers and I didn't really watch the game. I just sat there. And I kept picking up my phone and there was nobody to text. Like, who do I text? My buddies are all married, they're with their wives, my kids are with their mom. My parents are in Ontario and they can't really hear well on the phone. So I just — I just sat there. And then I went to bed at like 9:30 and didn't sleep.

I: Have you tried things that worked?

P: Some, yeah. I started — okay, this is going to sound — I joined a men's running group. There's a thing called the Vancouver Run Crew, I go on Tuesday nights. We run for like 40 minutes and then we go get beer. That's been good. Nobody talks about feelings, which is nice, but we talk about, like, our weeks. And that's enough. I needed that.

I: What about things that didn't work?

P: Dating. I tried dating for, like, a few months earlier this year. Bumble. And — I don't know, man. It's hard. Like, women my age, they want something serious, and I'm not ready, and I don't want to lie about it. So I had a couple coffee dates that were nice and then I just felt guilty afterwards. Like I was pretending I was further along than I was. So I stopped.

I: Have you sought help?

P: My GP put me on antidepressants in March. They help, I think? Hard to say. I don't see a counsellor. I should. The wait list for the EAP through work is like four months, and I keep meaning to call. The thing is — okay, I grew up where you don't talk about this stuff. My dad would think I was, like, a soft kid if I told him I went to therapy. He's 78. He's not going to change. So part of me carries that around still, that I shouldn't need it.

I: What do you think your loneliness is telling you?

P: That I don't really know who I am without my family being right there. Like, I was Dad and I was Jenny's husband for twenty years, and that's how I made sense of myself. And now I'm Dad part time and I'm nobody's husband, and I haven't figured out what the rest of it is. So the loneliness, I think, is — it's like a vacuum. I haven't filled in what used to be there. So.

I: Do you think of yourself as a lonely person?

P: No. I don't. I think of myself as a man who's going through a lonely period of his life. Which I hope is a temporary thing. The kids are going to grow up, and I'll have to figure out who I am on the weeks I don't have them, but also on the weeks I do. So I'm working on it.

I: Has it changed how you see your relationships?

P: Oh, big time. Like, my marriage — I was lonely in my marriage for a long time before we split, I can see that now. I just didn't have a name for it. So weirdly I'm not sure I'm lonelier now than I was. The kind of loneliness is different. Married loneliness, you've got someone next to you not seeing you. Single loneliness, there's no one next to you. I don't know which is worse. They're both pretty bad.

I: Anything that helped that surprised you?

P: My daughter. Em. She's 10. She, like, drew me a picture of our family — me, her, her brother, no mom — and gave it to me one Sunday before going back to her mom's. And she wrote "Dad's house is fun" on it. And it's on my fridge. And I look at it some nights and it just — it reminds me I'm not nothing. That something is still there. So. A drawing from my kid. Probably wasn't on your list of expected answers.

I: What would you want to change about how society handles loneliness?

P: I think — men, specifically. We need better permission. Like, my run crew works because nobody had to say "let's talk about feelings", we just had a structure that put us together repeatedly without it being weird. There needs to be more of that. Not therapy, not group hugs. Just structures where guys can be in the same place over and over until something real comes up sideways. That's how it works for us, I think.

I: Anything I haven't asked about?

P: Yeah. Just — the loneliness of, like, watching your kids hurt because of your divorce, and not being able to fix it. That's a kind of loneliness I didn't know existed before. The loneliness of being the cause of someone you love feeling lonely. That's the worst part of all of this, honestly.
