When Affection Finds the Wrong Address

No one tells you that loneliness has its own logic. That after decades in the same rhythm—same partner, same habits, same jokes—you can still be startled by connection. Sometimes it happens with someone younger, someone who reminds you of a version of yourself that used to feel alive.

It doesn’t have to be romantic to knock the wind out of you. Sometimes it’s just warmth landing where there hasn’t been any in a long time. It can look like admiration, or energy, or even friendship. You don’t realize until later that you were running a little starved and mistook recognition for rescue.

I didn’t see it happening. I thought I was just being friendly, engaging, present. But friendship has weight, and when you’re carrying decades of emotional drought, you lean harder than you mean to. You ask more. You need more confirmation that you still matter, that you’re still interesting, that someone chooses your company without obligation.

The other person—especially if they’re younger, still figuring out their own boundaries—might not know how to say “this is too much” until it already is. They might try to match your energy out of kindness, or curiosity, or their own loneliness. And then one day they realize they’ve been holding something they never agreed to carry.

That doesn’t make anyone a villain. It just makes us human—messy, hopeful, sometimes too open for our own good.

What I’ve learned: When you’re that hungry for connection, you need to feed yourself first. Not through someone else’s attention, but through your own work, your own community, your own rebuilt sense of what makes you whole. Otherwise you’ll keep overfilling tanks that were only meant to hold so much.

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone who showed you warmth is to stop asking them to be your lighthouse.