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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

#271

Post by watwut »

viburnum wrote: post #221
capableweb wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some research showing that friendship for women is basically with whatever other women you’re around the most. If you’re a woman and want more friends, you probably need to get a new job. Or make a long-term commitment to showing up to the same place where other women are also committed to showing up (AA meetings, church, sports team, etc). Or just be friends with the wifes of your husband’s friends. I replaced "me…

Not really. It’s possible for women to say, “I love your earrings,” and be best friends ten minutes later. I dare you to try that as a man.

No, it does not work like that. I can say "I love your earrings" and have nice friendly idle conversation about bullshit. It takes waaay more to get a friend you can really talk with or open up.

The equivalent is a guy saying something about soccer and the two having nice idle chat about match or something. Not a friend, but conversation happened.

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

#272

Post by busrf »

fromthestart wrote: post #216
capableweb wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some research showing that friendship for women is basically with whatever other women you’re around the most. If you’re a woman and want more friends, you probably need to get a new job. Or make a long-term commitment to showing up to the same place where other women are also committed to showing up (AA meetings, church, sports team, etc). Or just be friends with the wifes of your husband’s friends. I replaced "me…

Or perhaps men and women are innately different after hundreds of thousands of generations of sexually dimorphic evolution, and this affects the manner in which they socialize? It seems we've brainwashed an entire generation into believing that all differences in male and female are purely social constructs - which is total nonsense.

My experience has been that men and women have far more things in common than we have things in difference. There are of course differences between men and women, but I think that if I had a rigid belief that how men and women socialize was this large, unbreachable, genetically determined gulf, I would have lost out on a lot of really great friendships and relationships.

We don't think much about evolution or biological determinism on so many other subjects - for example, we were hunter-gatherers for most of our history, but we don't seem to discuss that very much in our post-agriculture society, or think that it limits us from building civilizations the way we do today. So why say on this subject that we are biologically limited in this specific way?

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

#274

Post by mercutio2 »

Ixiaus wrote: post #212
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That means you can invite yourself over It is fairly common for a man to marry a woman who does not like his friends. Then, the wife does not want the husband’s friends at their home. So, you cannot invite yourself over, and the man is so busy with giving his wife sufficient attention and with childraising that he cannot easily go out to meet his friends in another location.

It is not common and if you experience this then you are: bad at setting your own boundaries, bad at mate selection, or bad at friend selection. Men are not victims here. Have a hard look at why you think this and fix the problem.

I know lots and lots of people in very similar situations to what Mediterraneo described.

I’m not sure if I’d describe it as common, but having a partner who either directly, or passively aggressively, undermines your ability to maintain external friendships is a very real phenomenon.

It’s certainly not a healthy pattern, but it’s also pretty understandable. Relationships of all sorts need care and feeding. Sometimes intimate partner priorities push out friendships.

Different people experience this as more or less of a tragedy.

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

#275

Post by nitrogen »

humanrebar wrote: post #159

I only see a couple mentions of religious organizations, but it's worth pointing out that churches and other religious organizations put an enormous amount of effort into making meaningful friendships convenient and healthy, including casual events, lectures, classes, study groups, and group volunteer activities. I'm not positive that the amount of attention given men in particular is comparable to children, women, c…

It's a bit disappointing that community and belief system have to be intertwined. If one changes (you change beliefs, or your local community doesn't suit you), the other suffers (you lose your friends, or you have to pretend to believe something you don't).

I used to be devoutly religious through my mid twenties. In hindsight that was a mistake for me personally because the community surrounding that religion didn't suit me, and eventually discovered flaws in the belief system that led me to become an atheist. I missed many opportunities in life by trying to make that religion work for me for far too long.

So it's true that if you find a belief and community that work for you in the same place that it can be great, but I wish there were more options like that independent of belief.

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

#276

Post by starpilot »

cableshaft wrote: post #265

I recently got married in my 30s, and I had a difficult time choosing who to be my groomsmen, because while I do have quite a few people I could call good friends, I no longer had anyone stick out that I could really call a "close" friend or a "best" friend. We get together and mostly do activities, like play games or watch movies or go out to eat, and we will help each other out if someone needs it, but I don't real…

You are living this movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_You,_Man

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

#277

Post by shard »

This is likely exacerbated by the trends towards single family homes. A few generations ago, when you lived together with aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, parents, grand parents, great grand parents, there's always someone to interact with. But nowadays, if your spouse is at work and your children are at school or some activity, there's nobody around. The situation is even worse when you are single. I think the trend of loneliness will increase due to technology unless the stigma in current society of living with your family goes away, but I'm not holding out much hope for that.

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

#278

Post by scarface74 »

CalChris wrote: post #241
tonystubblebine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important post-30 strategy that I use is to assume that all friends with children are prisoners in their own home. You know exactly where they are. You know they don't have plans. They are desperate for adult conversation. That means you can invite yourself over, bring takeout, and basically make their day. I'm coupled but this should work as a single. Our parent friends say it's actually easier to be friends with…

Child-free couples, unless of course you're talking playdates which is a social tree climb all its own. But single, disagree from experience. There's even a line from Nora Ephron's Heartburn , the book not the movie: Couples date couples.

Exactly. My wife and I have a grown son and a 17 year old. We won’t go over to couples houses with small kids or go out to dinner with couples that don’t have reliable babysitters where they bring their kids along.

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

#279

Post by scarface74 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #206
tonystubblebine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important post-30 strategy that I use is to assume that all friends with children are prisoners in their own home. You know exactly where they are. You know they don't have plans. They are desperate for adult conversation. That means you can invite yourself over, bring takeout, and basically make their day. I'm coupled but this should work as a single. Our parent friends say it's actually easier to be friends with…

> That means you can invite yourself over It is fairly common for a man to marry a woman who does not like his friends. Then, the wife does not want the husband’s friends at their home. So, you cannot invite yourself over, and the man is so busy with giving his wife sufficient attention and with childraising that he cannot easily go out to meet his friends in another location.

If your wife doesn’t like your friends, there is usually a reason. Your friends may be not respecting the marriage or trying to get you to do the same types of things you did when you were single.

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

#280

Post by nitrogen »

icebraining wrote: post #219
goatinaboat wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are illustrating the problem which is that men are “not allowed” to have problems. There are plenty of things, such as unrealistic body image portrayed by the media, that affect both men and women, yet women claim it exclusively as theirs, because men aren’t supposed to. Can’t men have a thing?

> women claim it exclusively as theirs This way of putting things, as if groups like "women" or "men" were clubs with decision making processes, is absurd and only serves to cause division and infighting.

Call it emergent behavior then; whether through uncoordinated coordination of the media/marketing world, or uncoordinated coordination of peer/social pressures, these expectations exist.

I have literally been shut down in a conversation, in person, at work, more than once, because I was a white male in tech.

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