Sometimes women, you can connect with them better on an emotional level as opposed to men.
Not just women ofc, but generally people who have been socialized to be more empathetic.
I feel like a part of the issue is the quality of the friends out there (including pov). Sure if you get “adopted” by a cool friend or group it’s easy to follow their lead, but so many of us don’t actually know how to be good friends.
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.
Sure, my wife spends more time with her friends than I do with mine. I wouldn’t want to trade though. They seem to have more internal conflicts than we do. Larger groups have more shit to deal with.
My point is that it’s not easy to evaluate friendship only based on quantity.
qualitiy over quantity
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
Dang, your life sounds like a Noir narrator
Less cool than you make it sound for sure
I had a friend since 3rd grade. I’m 47 now, we haven’t spoken for about 2 years now. Considered him my brother but he went far right and he just stopped talking to me. I find it so strange to because in our 20s he was by far the most liberal of all of us and he kept me from going to the fox news right wing radio brainwashing.
Something happened during COVID, he just lost his mind. And never looked back
It’s hard to find time when most of us are corporate slaves.
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?
I feel that part of the reason is the lack of any kind of 3rd-space. And that’s what churches are for some people. (I’m also not religious)
I’ve tried to find others that would want to open up a community makerspace but have had no luck.
(typo)
Yeah, bars are about all that’s left. Unhelpful for those of us who don’t drink.
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
Or became super religious and changed their whole personality.
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? 😏
Some men get lucky and have friends that remain trustworthy.
Isn’t that the fucking problem!
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.
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.
I think you’re oversimplifying when the social consequences for being seen as weak or effeminate have (even in recent history) been so harsh for men and boys. Very often this behavior is abused into boys, with parents (not just dads, but moms too) sometimes going as far as murdering boys they think are gay.
That doesn’t mean men aren’t responsible for their own behavior, but IMO this needs to be understood as an abusive practice foisted on boys from the time they’re old enough to act on their own in any way, a sort of culturally accepted PTSD imprinted on boys. Framing being caught in this cycle of abuse as being somehow weak or unmasculine is itself participating in the abusive structure it is speaking out against.
I think you’re oversimplifying when the social consequences for being seen as weak or effeminate have (even in recent history) been so harsh for men and boys
I grew up on a farm and worked construction, played sports thru college, then joined the military. Raised by and around other men who make my life seem like a cakewalk.
Every stereotypically “manly” group I’ve been apart of, dudes are all emotionally open because they’re secure in their masculinity.
When boys/men think they’re acting “tough” by suppressing their emotions, they’re not copying men who are actually tough, they’re copying other people’s false bravado.
That’s the entire point of what I’m saying.
All the posturing only impresses other people that are posturing.
the abusive structure
And literally anyone can stop buying into it at anytime…
If they don’t, they’re perpetrating it.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to stop caring what douchebags think is “manly” and that’s literally all it takes to fix this
If any problem could be solved by ‘just do x’ it would have been solved already. I grew up in the same sort of environment you did, except the men in my life very much bought into the culture of toxic masculinity. It wasn’t until I started to research my own family history and saw the horrific abuse that my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather experienced and perpetuated that I really made the connection between the cycle of abuse, PTSD, and toxic masculinity.
For people that can just drag themselves out of that mire on their own without any help, great. But some need to be pointed in the right direction and to work through all the trauma that was inflicted on them.
It’s scary to do, especially if it’s with someone you don’t know very well. But I’ve found every time I opened up other men have been very supportive.
It’s also a little weird to me that the article doesn’t seem to treat women as potentially being supportive, deep friends for men? I don’t think they established a rationale for why it is important that strong friendships be specifically with other men. Any strong friendship should have mental health benefits.
Women definitely can be supportive, deep friends for men. However, it’s really important that we don’t inadvertently perpetuate placing the burden of men’s emotional support entirely on women.
I’m a woman, albeit not one that cares much for gender (or the divisions society creates around it.) I have relationships of all kinds with people across the sex/gender spectrums (I’m pansexual, polyamorous.) The sad truth is that, for a lot of women in hetero relationships, we become the sole emotional support for the men we’re in relationships with. We’re expected to perform emotional labor for them daily, but it isn’t always reciprocated.
Men who have other men they can rely on for emotional support don’t end up putting 100% of their emotional burdens onto their relationship partner, and trust me, that means A LOT. One of the reasons I’m drawn to polyamory is specifically because it leads to a support network - multiple people capable of supporting each other. Having been the one and only “everything” for a partner, back when I was monogamous, was extremely taxing on me. I have my own issues to deal with, and when a man has no one else to turn to besides their partner, the division of emotional labor can easily become a one-way street.
So you are right - there’s no reason women and men can’t be strong friends with each other. But it is crucial that men reach out to each other too, without expecting women to always be the ones to provide emotional support for them.
I hear you on your second point. I don’t feel like friendships with the opposite sex can’t be strong and supportive.
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?
A 16% difference is a huge gap!
Let’s put that in context for a second here; let’s say you are a man with 100 friends, only 38 feel comfortable reaching out to you when they need help. The other 62 don’t feel comfortable reaching out for help, meaning they feel as if they have to deal with it alone.
Now let’s consider if you were a woman in the same setting. 54 feel comfortable reaching out and 46 don’t feel comfortable.
In this case that’s 16 more lives that are negatively impacted in men.
Now when we factor in the actual population numbers for each group it gets significantly worse. And since this study is done on Americans let’s apply that to the entire population of the country using data from Neilsberg Research. With there being roughly 164,545,087 men and 167,842,453 women.
For the men that means about 62,527,133 men feel comfortable asking for help, looks like a lot until we look at the remainder. 102,017,954, roughly, don’t feel comfortable reaching out. That’s nearly 2/3s of men aren’t getting help when they need to.
For women about 90,634,925 are seeking help when they need it. That’s a gap of 28 million people from where the men are! While 77,207,528 are not getting help, 24,810,426 less women are not getting help.
That’s what a 16% gap actually means and it’s insanely huge.
Yeah, like, I know how numbers work… but the prevailing narrative for my entire adult life has been that men are isolationist monsters who never reach out for help while women are inherently social creatures.
16% doesn’t really support this narrative. Seems like about half the population isn’t comfortable talking to other people, which seems like it might indicate that society needs to change a bit, rather than just men.
Slightly over a one half vs slightly over one third is pretty significant.
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.
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.
