The Invisibility Syndrome

Today’s post is going to cover a subject that does not get much coverage anywhere, but is a fact of life for many men when they go through the trauma of losing their life-long partner. It is something I had never even given much thought to, let alone noticed, until it happened to me. But once seen/experienced, it is something that I simply cannot unsee.

As the title of this blog implies, I have called this the Invisibility Syndrome.

It was almost three years ago now that I went through the pain of losing my late wife – Janet – when she succumbed to the painful and elongated disease of Cancer. At first, I just wanted to shut myself away and not deal with the wider world. But of course, I could not do that as I still had my (adult) children to consider, as well as the wider family. Furthermore, I also had that other painful duty to perform of dealing with her estate and tying up all of the loose ends.

After the funeral had taken place, I was at last able to just get away from everyone and do all of the grieving and soul-searching that I had been unable to do the way I wanted previously. For a couple of weeks, that is exactly what I did. I just escaped from everybody and spent as much time as I could away from any other living soul so that I could finally process everything that had happened and finally confront it all.

However, eventually I got to the stage whereby I was finally ready to face the world once more and start re-engaging with the wider world. It was only at this point that I suddenly became aware of the Invisibility Syndrome.

So what is Invisibility Syndrome?

To be blunt, it is where we find out just how little we mean to the wider world out there. It’s a curious phenomenon and one I was quite unprepared for.

Of course, I had done my homework and sought help and advice from others who had been through the same scenario I now found myself. I reached out to everyone I knew and also to people that inhabited the online forums dedicated to dealing with such events. This is where I found the first paradox – one of which I am probably as guilty as anyone of doing.

Women are far more open about discussing their feelings and tend to be quite open to discussing what they are going through and what sort of things work best in dealing with loss.

Men, on the other hand, are absolutely bloody useless at it. I know, I am one!!

We men bottle all these things up for a whole host of reasons, from feeling that weak in doing so, to simply being unable to express ourselves properly. Unfortunately, it is this very reluctance among men to be able to discuss these things which is the biggest contributor of the Invisibility Syndrome in my humble opinion.

For my part, I thought I had dealt with the worst aspects of the pain of loss by doing what I have always done when feeling emotional extremes – I wrote about it. Poetry in the main, but I wrote about it. Not only did I write about it, but I put it out there for everyone to see and read, in the hope that others would understand. A lot of people did exactly that.

But it was when I went back out into the wider world that I had the biggest surprise of my life. Wherever I went, be it to sit on a park bench, or in a coffee shop, or even just to have a relaxing beer, I noticed for the very first time how a man of my years (I am in my 60’s) just simply does not exist to the wider world. People just looked straight through me. Even when I engaged others in a simple small talk to have a conversation, I saw the horrified look on the faces of others when I tried to have a conversation.

Of course, I can understand why a woman might have such a reaction from a strange man they don’t know suddenly engaging in small talk. But what did surprise me was to find that even other men had that same reaction, even when they might have been sat around on their own just the same as I was.

Having experienced this for myself, I then started to notice it more and more among other men. Now, I cannot help but see it everywhere.

I have been fortunate in many respects because I have since met another lady and started a relationship with her that we are both enjoying and developing. I get to enjoy her company and we both often have long, deep and meaningful conversations where we can be open enough that very little is considered out of bounds. Through one of our such conversations it became apparent that she had not experienced the Invisibility Syndrome. For her, she found that whenever she sat down somewhere on her own, it did not take long for other people – men and women – to engage her in conversation. She was astonished when I pointed out to her that my experience had been very different and at first she found it hard to believe. Until I started pointing it out to her as I would notice it happening all around us.

As an example, we visited a pub one Saturday afternoon. As we were enjoying our drinks and conversation together, every now and again we would find the need to visit the toilet (the alcohol has to go somewhere). However, the toilet in this pub just happened to be upstairs. On one such visit to the toilet, returning from my visit down the stairs, I had a good vantage point across the bar. It was astonishing what I could see. The pub was quite a large one and had a lot of tables. All over that place you could see these tables occupied by one person drinking alone – and they were always MEN. So I told Jayne of this when I returned to our table and asked her to look for herself then next time she came down the stairs. She did so and was astonished when she realised how correct I was. It didn’t just stop there. She has now also noticed it happening everywhere she goes and admitted that it was something that she had never noticed before.

In fairness, a lot of this is probably brought on by men themselves as you will often find the few that bring the rest of us the bad name. But it is still a phenomenon that exists, and I think it is a bigger problem among older men than most realise. But it is something that we can do something about by just being a little more civil to each other.

Just last weekend, by chance I discovered that one guy I have befriended over the last few weeks had fairly recently lost his wife (also to Cancer). Whilst he only mentioned it in passing, I could plainly see the pain in his eyes. So when I informed him that I had also been through the same thing in the last three years, his whole demeanour changed as he realised that finally he might have someone to talk to about it who does genuinely understand what he is going through. So I just told him that whenever he is ready, then just come right over and I would be happy to have a conversation about it. About what works, what he can expect, what the hardest parts are and most importantly how time is a great healer. As I pointed out to him gently, the pain will never go away and will always be there. But the pain becomes less with time as you come to terms with it all and learn how to cope. It is a simple concept and just an understanding hand of friendship. He thanked me for that and I do hope that when he feels ready he will take up the offer I gave him to chat openly about it. It’s an offer I will always make to anyone – man or woman – in future because I know what it feels like to be in that place.