Seems like a pretty broken premise, ranking comfort instead of what you expected to help most. Also related, people are typically more comfortable confessing to strangers or under circumstances that won't endanger an existing relationship, which seems like a big part of why confession is anonymous. Self-reporting here is probably basically the same as asking "according to your community norms, how are you supposed to answer a question like this?" without much real reveal
How much does the author owe you? My guess is zero.
If he didn't measure what you wanted to be measured ... that's your problem.
Do you go home and talk to your spouse? Do you go to church and talk with your pastor? Do you go to your therapist or to the local bar?
> Comfort with mental health care has become another facet of political sorting in the U.S.
I'm skeptical. Bars and churches and friends are way cheaper and more accessible in red states. It's hard enough to get poorer, less educated men comfortable going to the doctor, let alone a therapist.
Also missing from this perspective. What do people who are not from western countries do?
Pew Research: Americans are less likely than others around the world to feel close to people in their country or community - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/05/08/americans... - May 8th, 2024
> Differences by religion also emerge. Religiously unaffiliated Americans are much less likely than those who are religiously affiliated to feel connected to others in their local community (43% vs. 60%). This pattern aligns with previous research on interpersonal connectedness and philanthropy among religious people. Religious people tend to be more likely than nonreligious people to volunteer and give to charity – though they prefer these activities benefit others within their own religious groups. [My note: Religion->Shared belief tribalism, observation, not intended to be derogatory]
Pew Research: Connectedness to community, country and the world - https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/12/06/connectedness-... - December 6th, 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
> Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital" in the Journal of Democracy. Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civic engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens.
Is it that or is it the cost and availability?
Just as a curiosity, as I don't have any experience of red states myself, how easy would it be for a closet homosexual to come out and get support from their bar, churches and friends in a red state, typically?
For example, my small town in a red state was not accepting of homosexuality in general, but my church was tolerant, and my church youth group was affirming and supportive.
TLDR This is a human support capacity and capability issue. We should fix it, to the best of our ability, imho.
[1] Drop in U.S. Religiosity Among Largest in World - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916273 - November 2025 (1 comment)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46484284 (citations)
[3] When Are Half Your Members Going to be Dead? - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/when-are-half-your-mem... - January 29th, 2026
> The means are denoted in red, and you can see that most of the numbers are at least 55 years old. For instance, the average adult member of an Episcopal church is 61 years old. For Southern Baptists, it’s 58. The Assemblies of God are doing a bit better on this metric at 54. But look at the modal age for a lot of these groups—this is probably the most important metric when it comes to understanding the future of American Protestant Christianity. For many, the modal age is significantly higher than the mean. In a bunch of mainline Protestant denominations, it’s between 67 and 69 years old. For the Assemblies of God, the modal age is 69, which is 15 years older than the mean. What does this mean? Well, the mean can be pulled down by a decent chunk of younger folks. If you have a good core of 30-year-olds, they can counterbalance those 60-year-olds in that calculation. That’s not true for the mode. It gives you a much better sense of when “the tipping point” is going to come.
[4] The Generational Collapse of American Religion - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-generational-colla... - January 19th, 2026 ("So why do overall levels of attendance decline? Well, because each successive birth cohort is less religiously active than the previous one. That’s the main driver of religious decline—it’s a decay function across cohorts.")
As an atheist, this topic is one of many that stays on my mind and keeps me awake sometimes.
How A Decline In Churchgoing Led To A Rise In ‘Deaths Of Despair’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46408406 - December 2025 (2 comments)
Find Your People - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074017 - May 2025 (283 comments)
And conversely, neither priest nor friend will be able to deal with actual mental health issue you have.
Highly recommend checking out Facebook, the project mankind groups near you, embodied masculine (more extreme embodiment based group) or another one like it.
[0] https://publica.org.au/wp-content/uploads/DiJulio-et-al.-Lon...
[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
> This post has been unlocked through a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment for the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). The graphs you see here use data that is publicly available for download and analysis through link(s) provided in the text below.
Code for this post can be found at https://gist.github.com/ryanburge/0895d855fdc93c3ce26b034349...
(Ryan also wrote "The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us," which I highly recommend; he is exceptionally data driven within this domain, no affiliation besides subscribing to his Substack)
https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/products/9781587436697_the-...
Once the floor drops out from under you there is nothing to stop the rapid decent to nothingness. There is a generation of discarded people who have nobody left. When we lose our last threads of social connection there's no way back. Beyond hopeless.
Enjoy your bubble. america is completely fucked.
Being in your shoes in a suburban setting surrounded by families and neat little houses (or huge fields in a country setting) I imagine is hard. I'm only making assumptions.
Have you thought about traveling long weekends or abroad longer? Perfectly doable solo.
Look, I'm not saying it's easy. And when you're in despair, the despair makes it harder. But "impossible" and "beyond hopeless" are lies. Stop believing them. Start trying to find ways to build new relationships, even if it's slow and hard.
Sorry for you situation and stay strong.
Go to bookclubs.com and start a book club, or join a book club, or go to a local library and do any of the social stuff. Go to a crochet club, even empty-handed, chances are the fiber arts people will have plenty to spare. These are friendships that have to be forged and worked on day in and day out to strengthen them, like a sword.
> Learning how to develop a social network independently is a skill. If your partner leaving you collapses your social life, do you live in a small town where the narrative has turned against you, or did you simply rely on them to be the adult in the room and set up playdates for you like you're a child?
Oh fuck your attitude and grow some empathy. Someone confesses a serious personal problem and you start lecturing them, implying they are incompetent and/or are a man-child?
Some of your advice isn't bad, but your delivery is terrible, and life is more complicated than you imply (e.g. what if he's depressed, what if his partner was controlling and didn't allow him to have an independent social life, what if he has no interest in "fiber arts", etc)?
For example - this one about generations and trust was surprising to me: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/gen-z-doesnt-trust-any...
or this on perception of the religiosity of holidays: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/is-christmas-a-religio...
It's a pity because I found freemasonry to be hugely beneficial in terms of friendship, interesting discussions and support.