Or ANY friendships, really… As you get older a couple of things happen:
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Your friend group gets more geographically diverse. People move away and do other things.
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It gets harder to get everyone together at the same time. Everyone has a different schedule, responsibilities, and priorities.
Trust me, as some weird modern form of atheistic deist, I am not advocating for religion. But there’s something to be said about community values and how it overcomes the issues you’ve mentioned. Church goers don’t seem to struggle as much with getting their schedules in order, making time for community events, doing community service… when these things are seen as virtuous under the eye of their god, they get it done.
What are we missing now that makes modern life lack this community connection it once benefited from and religious folk seem to still have? What’s missing, why’d it go, and how can we get it back?
Also relationships hinder a good part of male bonding.
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many started to wear red caps and that’s a no-no
Yeah, if someone in a red cap comes up to me lamenting about how life sucks due to inflation/lack of jobs, I’m gonna laugh right in their face.
There’s a community for that. Something about leopards? 😏
Or became super religious and changed their whole personality.
It’s pretty rare for a “deep” friendship to work in spite of external changes (having kids, moving for work, politics) AND internal changes (generational experience, level of maturity, dealing with personal stressors)
Instead of looking for a nostalgic ideal of friendship, I think its more realistic to just make a goal to place yourself in new social activities that can give you fun moments of human connection.
Honestly, at this point in my middle age, it mainly comes down to: Do we have anything in common? Cool. Can we have a comfortable conversation beyond small talk? Great. Are we both willing to make time to hang? Awesome. Anything “deeper” can come later and organically IF the connection lasts. I can count on my hand how many “deep” friendships remain in my life.
For me, a lot of those “Deep” friendships weren’t so deep at all. We knew each other, but none of us respected each other. We just all did the same drugs, drank the same excess amount and most of us had the same empty bank account.
One day, one of us would just be gone, sometimes cuz they just moved away, or realized how toxic we all were, some of us just found better friends. I talk to a few still, but “Deep”? Nah
I have a girlfriend , i work, I have a cat, there’s no time for anything else
Some men get lucky and have friends that remain trustworthy.
Isn’t that the fucking problem!
It’s hard to find time when most of us are corporate slaves.
I think there’s a core difference in “support” that they just started to touch on right at the end of the discussion. Support can take two forms:
- words
- actions
The thesis here seems almost entirely focused on “words”. As in, “Men do not reach out for words of support as often as women”. I would agree. However, when the support needed is “actions” I know myself and men are quick to ask and quick to respond to others asking.
- Can you come over and help me move this piece of furniture?
- My wife has been out of work taking care of our new child, just found out I lost my job. Can you put me in touch with that company that needed a worker for that thing?
- I don’t have a post hole digger, do you have one I can borrow?
- Can you show me how to fill out the tax form for that deduction?
Also frequently while these acts of support are happening words of support are also exchanged. Only at the end of the article did they talk about a fitness group that turned into a community service organization. The actions of support are present here. So I’d argue that men in western society have a high ratio of actions but lower ratio of words of support.
For women reading, how does this compare with relationships you have with other women in friendships? How much is words vs actions?
I guess this is just a matter of opinion, but are any of those things “support”? Like, “I need help moving a couch” isn’t really the same as “I am having an existential crisis and I need help” is it?
I guess I do bond during the couch moving, somewhat?
I guess I define support as “help from others for things that are difficult or impossible for you to do alone”. I would possibly even argue that someone that takes time out of their life to physically come to you to help you move a couch is being more supportive than someone that is on the other end of a txt message telling you “that must really suck” when you open up about an emotional/relationship problem you’re having.
I am having an existential crisis and I need help
How would my mate help me with the existential crisis? He can help me moving a sofa, lend me money, help to fill the tax return etc.
By being supportive. Emotional support is, in fact, support.
“being supportive” meaning what, exactly? Doing what?
Talking to you. Empathizing with your situation. Validating you and making you feel heard. Offering company and distraction.
Like… are you seriously asking, or are you just trolling? This is like human connection 101.
I am seriously asking as I cannot comprehend what any of my friends would be able to do.
“validating, emphatising” - these are just words. You only described one action (“talking to you”) but I cannot imagine I would want that.
If you were to say that he could take me out to have multiple beers and do something stupid to take my mind away than yeah, I can see that although I am still unsure if I would have wanted that. Apart from this… I don’t belive there is any action /task he could do to help.
Talking through a problem can help you solve it. Getting another perspective can help too. Even just knowing that someone else in the same situation would do the same thing you are doing can be validating and make you feel better. So the “doing” can just be listening and applying mental energy to your experiences.
In my opinion, guy friendships need to be doing something together. We don’t call each other up out of a blue and talk to each other about deep things. We don’t share our emotions other than on a high level or in extreme cases.
The good friends I have. I always do stuff with. I have one really good friend who I always hike with every weekend. I have another good friend group that plays video games together most nights. If you remove those people from my life, I don’t have a single male friend left that I talk with more than once a year.
I always figured that’s why watching and playing sports was so important to guys. It’s the glue that holds male friendships together. (Or in my case, playing online video games)
The weirdest thing is all that needs to happen is for men to talk about their feelings, doesn’t even have to be another man.
That’s it.
But so many men just won’t fucking do it.
So it’s literally one of the only problems that can actually be solved by raising awareness.
I sometimes question whether the “men don’t talk about their feelings” stereotype even holds true for the current generation of men. I surely can, and so do the few male friends I have. I mean, I guess it’s still broadly speaking true, but my anecdotal experience just doesn’t seem to reflect that too much. Speaking about my feelings has never been an issue for me personally. I even talk about them to people I probably shouldn’t.
How you doing? I have been better!
That’s probably selection bias.
Decades of societal conditioning will take decades more to repair, unfortunately.
I mean, we’re talking about the population susceptible to it in the first place.
All they have to do is stop being weird about it, but they’ll never do it because they’re obsessed with not seeming weird.
It’s fucking insane that you think it’s on the rest of society to spend decades “conditioning” them to quit it with the toxic masculinity. When all they have to do, is stop doing what isn’t working and no one is impressed by.
That’s the most ironic thing about it. All they have to do is stop pretending they’re tough, but they’re not tough enough to do it.
Huh… 38% of men turn to a friend when in need opposed to 54% of women. A 16% difference doesn’t seem, like, huge.
Maybe we should be talking more about why people are so closed off just in general?
That’s giving some all lives matter energy. We can talk about why everyone is so closed off in general, but this thread clearly focuses on a particular men’s issue under that umbrella issue. So no, we should talk about the topic, not hijack it for “a larger issue”.
I’m a thread about the wage gap between men and women (10-15%), you don’t say “We should be talking about why the economy is struggling instead”
In a thread about the incarceration gap between blacks and whites, you don’t say “We should be talking about why crime is up overall instead”
You make a great point about society needing to change, and a particular men’s issue doesn’t mean only men need to change, it actually does speak to how broader society considers what it is to be a man. How men decide that for themselves, are socialized by their environment into it, and how they’re treated by other genders. Just as women’s issues are human issues, men’s issues are human issues too.
Nah, straw man for days. You don’t get to dismiss the substance by equating to something I never said.
16% is not “men have a problem and women are fine” and we need to be able to admit when our initial impressions may be off.
More to the point: 46% of women don’t reach out when they need help according to this poll. Pretty close to half, which I feel fundamentally challenges my initial impressions and is worth talking about. I would have assumed it to be more like the inverse of men.
If about half of people are struggling, seems worthwhile to address.
It’s not a strawman. Just because the proportions aren’t as extreme as you expected doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. Just because we’re talking about the gap here doesn’t dismiss the overall problem of isolation. There are many many threads talking about the problem of social isolation overall. Go engage in those threads that are addressing the problem you’re newly woke to and are holding so urgently now instead of bickering in here about who should be talking about what where.
That’s a 30% decrease.
Indeed.
My old friendships are maintained through annual city breaks where me and my rag-tag group of middle-aged food, beer and cocaine enthusiasts congregate for a weekend of laughing and talking shit. Usually followed by a week of abject depression and a few months of financial ruin. I love it.
But my fragile ego!
I made a lot of terrible choices in terms of friends. Not exclusively terrible ones, I have several high quality men that I still exchange emails with at least a few times per year, and we talk a lot about lunches and stuff that don’t happen… but they’re quality men, and we are still friends.
Along with them, two or three times as many dudes who I should’ve just left where I found em, and who eventually forced me to do so, usually by treating someone else rather than me like shit.
Some others that I know I should have tried harder to move acquaintance into the friendship category.
Yeah, this makes sense to me. I’ve made some shitty choices along the way too, maybe didn’t learn as much from it as I should have.
