Dying alone: Spain's male loneliness crisis nobody wants to see

The new male loneliness: no partner, no children, no hope

Opening your front door and knowing that when you die, no one will notice for years. That is the image behind an anonymous confession that has circulated online: a man who declares himself defeated in love, says he will die alone, and that health services will take years to find his body. The message, brief and unadorned, has struck a nerve: unwanted male loneliness.

From venting to the hikikomori phenomenon

Against the author's resignation, some reply that life as a couple is a trap, a relationship of servitude not worth having. Others point out that loneliness is the human condition: with company or without, we are always alone inside. And at the extreme, there is the hikikomori phenomenon, the voluntary social isolation imported from Japan, though with nuances in this case: the author does not stay home by choice, but because work and routine have gradually drained his will.

The underlying debate: is feminism to blame?

The testimony takes a turn when the author blames feminism for his situation. That shift turns an emotional outpouring into a social debate: is the decline in marriage rates the fault of the feminist movement, of economic precarity, or of a crisis of expectations? There is no agreement, but there is one certainty: middle-aged men are among the great forgotten groups when it comes to emotional wellbeing.

The prediction is clear: if nothing changes, the number of men dying alone in Spain will keep rising. But perhaps the first step is to stop treating male loneliness as a private matter and start seeing it as the collective problem it already is.