Another task of the conjugal connection is overcoming loneliness. Man finds it hard, ‘it is not good’ for him to be alone. Disunity among men or isolation is a worrying symptom of our time. Family is a victory over division. Only the state which consists of harmonious families can be strong, a quality that is very much absent these days.

When man is not alone, when he has a harmonious family, he loves his land and is not unmindful of his problems. The family man will work for the welfare of his country, he will guard it for it is where his children and grandchildren are going to live. A society made up of solitary people is fragile. A solitary man is not bound by anything: if he is not feeling fine in his country he leaves it for another, where he will fill complete.

Unfortunately, the main problem is not even that now the number of families is smaller and smaller and that many prefer solitude, but that people remain alone even after they have founded a family. It is the so-called psychological loneliness when people live together, but do not feel attachment, love, and spiritual kinship to one another. And this loneliness has become in the contemporary world – according to psychologists – a true epidemic.

Ivan Ilin, wrote: ‘Without a living love, people are like the dead dust ... But true friendship shatters this solitude, overcomes it and frees the man to reach the constructive and living love. True friendship ... only people knew to cherish and strengthen it ... There is only one power able to overcome loneliness; and this power is love.’

(Translated from Pr. Pavel Gumerov, Conflictele familiale: prevenire și rezolvare, traducere din limba rusă de Adrian Tănăsescu-Vlas, Editura Sophia, București, 2013, pp. 70-71)