The Unexpected Friend Next Door: Companionship After 50 Can Take Many Forms

When Rylie Middaugh suddenly needed a place to live, she found much more than a guesthouse. She found Tom.

Middaugh, a 28-year-old wedding photographer, was living in Bend, Oregon, when she and her boyfriend broke up. Moving home to South Carolina was complicated because she already had photography jobs booked in Oregon. A friend suggested that she stay in the backyard guesthouse of Tom Ward, the 71-year-old former partner of the friend’s late mother.

What began as an improvised housing solution developed into an unlikely friendship.

Ward started inviting Middaugh to dinner. Soon they were sharing meals two or three nights a week, with Ward cooking and Middaugh cleaning. They watched movies, listened to oldies, and texted about dinner plans, lost cellphones and forgotten hearing aids.

After Middaugh shared some of those exchanges on TikTok, millions of people discovered their relationship. But beneath the humor was something more consequential: two people at very different stages of life giving each other companionship when both needed it.

“I feel like our world is craving connection,” Middaugh told The Washington Post. “We are all lonely in some way.”

That observation may resonate especially strongly as we grow older. Retirement, divorce, the death of a spouse, health problems and children moving away can gradually shrink a person’s social world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says older adults and people living alone face an elevated risk of social isolation. Loneliness and isolation are associated with depression, anxiety, heart disease, stroke, dementia and earlier death.

But companionship does not have to look like marriage, romance or a traditional family household. It can be a younger person living in your guest room, a friend your own age sharing expenses, a volunteer who visits twice a month — or simply a familiar voice calling every Tuesday.

Metro Atlanta already offers examples.

In Mableton, Beth Hogan and Debbie Aschemeier became roommates in their early 60s. Both were divorced, worked in health care and enjoyed gardening. They were strangers before moving in together but soon became close friends. Hogan told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that they hit it off immediately.

Their arrangement offered both companionship and financial relief — the real-life version of The Golden Girls. That approach may become more attractive as housing, insurance and other household expenses consume larger portions of retirement income.

But two people don't have to live together to reap the benefits of companionship.

Jewish Family & Career Services of Atlanta operates One Good Deed, which matches adults 65 and older with volunteers for friendship and social activities. Volunteers commit to visiting twice a month for at least a year. Matches might cook, shop, run errands or spend an afternoon together. Many of those relationships last beyond the initial commitment.

For someone who is homebound, or simply doesn't want another person in the house, companionship can come by telephone. The Atlanta Regional Commission’s One2One Telephone Reassurance program matches volunteers with adults over 60 and people with disabilities for regular conversations.

Bottom line: Any person-to-person connection can make a huge difference. A regular walking partner matters. So does the person who drinks coffee with a neighbor on the porch, the pickleball group that notices when someone misses a game, the volunteer who calls every week, or the younger roommate who introduces you to new music while laughing at yours.

Stay open to connection when it arrives in an unfamiliar package. Sometimes the person who makes life feel less lonely is not the person we expected.