El sentimiento de soledad en la vejez

Our purpose is to look into one of the social problems affecting the most to older people, namely the feeling of loneliness. We intend to approach this problem differ-entiating its social and emotional dimensions. Through a qualitative methodological strategy. focus groups as procedure to raise data and Grounded Theory as ana-lytical perspective. we study how that feeling is expe-rienced among a profile of older persons particularly affected by loneliness: older widowed persons living alone. Our findings prove that these persons suffer from emotional loneliness, especially those who enter wid-owhood at a later age and after decades of marriage. This feeling is linked to the loss of their spouse and it is at night when it is more likely to emerge. Moreover, wid-owhood comes along with the risk of social loneliness because of the relational distancing from friends who used to be connected to the married couple. We have identified as well gender differences regarding the im-pact of loneliness, being men those who are especially frail to confront it.