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.
  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    45·
    4 months ago

    Or ANY friendships, really… As you get older a couple of things happen:

    1. Your friend group gets more geographically diverse. People move away and do other things.

    2. It gets harder to get everyone together at the same time. Everyone has a different schedule, responsibilities, and priorities.

  • SkabySkalywag@lemmy.world
    20·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • P1k1e@lemmy.world
    14·
    4 months ago

    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

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    121·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    10·
    4 months ago

    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?

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        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.

      • FelixCress@lemmy.world
        11·
        4 months ago

        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.

              • FelixCress@lemmy.world
                11·
                4 months ago

                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.

                • DameHelenaHandbasket@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  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.

    • Oxysis/Oxy@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      122·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Soleos@lemmy.world
      61·
      4 months ago

      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.

        • Soleos@lemmy.world
          1·
          4 months ago

          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.

  • JTode@lemmy.world
    4·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • YeahIgotskills2@lemmy.world
    4·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • blady_blah@lemmy.world
    4·
    4 months ago

    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)