Men’s lack of deep, close friendships has been in the spotlight lately. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 54% of women say they turn to a friend for emotional support, but only 38% of men say they do. Essayist Sam Graham-Felsen and American Institute for Boys and Men CEO Richard Reeves join John Yang to discuss why some men seem to struggle with maintaining social connections.
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.