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Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#181

Post by icebraining »

humanrebar wrote: post #143
enraged_camel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is that most people understand the concept of a plan B when it comes to things like what university they will attend, their careers, their financial safety nets, etc. But they assume their marriage will last forever. As you imply, it’s a big mistake.

I don't think my marriage would be as good if I went into it with an exit plan. For instance, it would be easier for some things, especially huge things, to be "her problem" instead of "our problem" if I had an escape hatch present in my subconscious.

Neither of my grandparents "escaped" (by which I assume you mean divorce), yet it still ended, and my grandmother lived over 30 years alone.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#182

Post by username90 »

humanrebar wrote: post #143
enraged_camel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is interesting is that most people understand the concept of a plan B when it comes to things like what university they will attend, their careers, their financial safety nets, etc. But they assume their marriage will last forever. As you imply, it’s a big mistake.

I don't think my marriage would be as good if I went into it with an exit plan. For instance, it would be easier for some things, especially huge things, to be "her problem" instead of "our problem" if I had an escape hatch present in my subconscious.

I think that making the husband socially dependent on the wife is bad for the same reasons making the wife financially dependent on the husband is. You can say that it goes against the spirit of marriage, but I'd say that those things makes people stay in unhealthy relationships.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#183

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

lolinder wrote: post #168
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct, by your definition I'm both alone and lonely. Lonely makes me sad but has improved productivity, where as socializing gave me what I would describe as 'Short term happiness which seemed fake & ridden with guilt later'.

That doesn't sound like a very healthy outlook on life. Trading social belonging for productivity is a Faustian deal if I've ever seen one, and a deal likely to lead to burnout and depression. If socializing leaves you ridden with guilt for lost productivity, I'd recommend a paradigm shift.

Not guilty for lost productivity, but for having to fake emotions, showing interest in conversations which I have no real interest and most of all feeling powerless to cure problems of people when they tell about it.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#184

Post by scarface74 »

jcims wrote: post #33
paganel wrote: post #5

As a man is pretty damn hard keeping friends after the age of 30, especially if you happen to go trough a divorce when suddenly more than half (if not more) of your friends get to “choose” the other side. Yeah, you get to ask your friends back from high-school or college out for a beer but chances are they’re also in a middle of a divorce or they’re too busy with family requirements (can’t blame them) or too stressed…

I sometimes wonder if I’m broken when I see comments like yours, which seem heartfelt and correct and as it should be (the desire for friendships that is). Maybe it’s because my wife and kids fill the void, but I just have no interest in making or maintaining friendships. My wife has a really cool coworker that tries to get me out of the house but i just kinda flop on him. I live in a secluded spot that you can’t see…

I’m in my 40s also and I find most of my social needs are met by my wife. She has two groups of friends that she likes to spend time with but I’m okay spending time alone when she is out with her friends.

I have a couple of friends that we force ourselves to get together at least once every other month to at least have lunch but we are all in the same boat - married, jobs, hobbies, side projects or studying so we have to explicitly schedule it on our calendars.

I don’t think it is healthy to depend on only one person for your emotional support and my wife isn’t interested in hearing about the latest geeky stuff that we talk about it. I have another friend who is across the country but we try to catch up once a month.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#185

Post by hombre_fatal »

garmaine wrote: post #145
buro9 wrote: post #87

I run 300 forums, and I had a startup for them. The lofty goal of the startup was to "cure loneliness" but I never told the users that. My path to doing this was to encourage interest based communication, in a way that would allow them to take it offline. How? Well to make it interest + geography, i.e. horology nerds in Cumbria, cyclists in London, petrol heads in Cornwall, audiophiles in Suffolk. By binding together…

Just FYI, “have no close friend” and “loneliness” aren’t the same thing. I have no close friends, and I prefer it. Don’t try to “cure” people like me.

Someone wrote this and had deleted their comment when I went to reply to them, but I thought it was on point, so now I'm saying it:

Curious, why you took offense to OPs post? If you are enjoying not having close friends, then good for you, really. This thread doesn't apply to you.

You remind me of Ricky Gervais' Guitar Lessons bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3dxMGzt5mU

In summary, it's like calling up a guitar teacher and telling them you don't want to learn guitar. Why call?

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#186

Post by bildung »

personlurking wrote: post #88
jcims wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes wonder if I’m broken when I see comments like yours, which seem heartfelt and correct and as it should be (the desire for friendships that is). Maybe it’s because my wife and kids fill the void, but I just have no interest in making or maintaining friendships. My wife has a really cool coworker that tries to get me out of the house but i just kinda flop on him. I live in a secluded spot that you can’t see…

>I see it in my youngest daughter as well, and I do worry for her It's good that you worry. As children of staunch loners, my siblings and I all turned into loners as adults. Edit: We don't even talk to each other.

This is an important point for jcims' situation: If you want your kids to get out, then get out yourself. You have to be a role model for getting out - both in the sense that the kids see that you had fun doing so and as a model for the skills used to master the situation (e.g. casually talking to people, gift culture, helping each other out and so on. The specifics obviously differ for different (sub-)cultures).

The role model thing is often overlooked when parenting. If you want your kids to do sports, let them see you doing sports etc.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#187

Post by cryptozeus »

Some of the comments here are taking about just “male friends”...point here is about “close friend” not juts friends. I think its difficult to make close friends in the digital world where you never see real side of the people

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#188

Post by lojack »

reaperducer wrote: post #148

I think part of the problem is that social media, and Facebook in particular, has cheapened the meaning of the word "friend." I see people on HN all the time saying that they have better friends far away via social media than they have in their own neighborhoods and offices. It's popular inside the tech bubble to believe that digital communication is as good or better than real communication, but it isn't. That's a l…

I'm not sure I buy your explanation at all. Social media may make distant friends feel closer, but I don't think this explains the lack of close friends. I understand that this is a data point of 1, but this article and the HN comments all ring true to me, and I hardly ever use social media.

Most of my not very close friends also don't use social media. A friend of mine tried creating a group on facebook to help coordinate social events for a group of dads and almost universally the wives ended up RSVPing for their respective husband.

When we ended up getting together we ended up talking about work and our houses and all the different things we're doing. Men have a tendency to communicate differently (IMO society has trained us to do so) than women. When my wife gets together with her friends they talk about how they're feeling about things and their relationships. This leads to men having a tendency to have more superficial relationships.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#189

Post by malandrew »

Yoric wrote: post #40
chrisseaton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you have any hobbies that give you a social life outside your work or family?

Hobbies might not be sufficient for a social life. I used to train seriously in mixed-martial arts. While I had no issue with any of my training mates, I also had zero interest in hanging out with them. Likewise for other, strictly cerebral, activities.

One thing that is valuable is activities with downtime where you’re forced to get to know one another outside of the activity. If you do something like martial arts or rowing (which I do), it’s when you travel for competitions that you bond. Activities like skiiing where you share housing for the season gives downtimebto get to know people between the activity. Hiking and camping is another good one where you spend time at the campsite at the end of the day preparing food together.

Re: Almost one in five men admits to having no close friends, a survey has found

#190

Post by icebraining »

PeterStuer wrote: post #78
dleslie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great many people in the USA work well beyond 40h a week, and have a few hours of daily commute time on top of that. For them the weekends are for recovery; there is no physical or emotional energy for social engagement or self care.

It is not just the US. 10 hour workdays (officially 7.8, but if you would actually 'just' do that and skip the 8am or the 6pm meetings you will not be keeping up with the Joneses and pay the piper) and spend 2-3 hours in commuting each day doesn't leave much for hobbies.

Meetings outside the working hours?! Where is this common?

Here we work 9-6, but even in the places I've worked on where unpaid overtime was common (otherwise you wouldn't keep up with the workload), no manager would have the gall to schedule regular meetings outside working hours.

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