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Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

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Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#101

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

dijit wrote: post #9

Only half? Thats a really wide range too. By 90 it is increasingly likely your spouse and close friends are mostly dead. My emotional support network consists of two people, my long-term partner and my parent(s). My long term partner loves me conditionally (and don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that this is abnormal). Only your parents might love you unconditionally, and they have a pretty decent head start wit…

I think parents love you conditionally true. In the end if you turn into a really bad person, they might not love you anymore.

That's not bad though. If I stop talking to my partner, I suspect at some point they wouldn't want to stay with me anymore. If I attacked my parents repeatedly, same goes for them

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#102

Post by tommiegannert »

matrix87 wrote: post #54

Once you're an adult, do you even need one in the first place? I'm 24, I don't go to anyone for help pretty much ever, I just follow my own goals. That's gotten me way farther than most people I know I don't think this talk about "male emotional support networks" is actually intended to help men, it's meant to infantilize them. They'd be better off just buying into the nietzschean "support yourself" type of worldview

I don't know you, but respectfully, people didn't start dying in my life until I was in my mid-30s.

The most heartbreaking experience I've had was my 88 year old neighbor ringing the door, and informing me that his wife of 60 years had just died. He managed to say three words. Before the fourth, he broke down in tears.

My wife has died.

Such a simple sentence, but a sentence that had 60 years of unconditional love behind it. And an entire family. Their life. His wife was lovely. I miss her, and cannot even pretend to imagine what this was, and still is, like, for him.

Behind him, at my door, was my other neighbor. He was the first to have been told. He just stood there, silently, while I gave the husband a long hug. He never said a word, his mere presence saying everything that needed to be said.

You are not alone.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#103

Post by watwut »

swatcoder wrote: post #95
formerly_proven wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's supposed to be a joke but it actually encapsulates one of the core issues about this already on the language level, men thinking they'd "get" something out of thin air. Do you think women have 31.41x larger emotional support networks out of thin air? Of course not, they put the effort in. Men don't.

Compassion is helpful here. Consider that many men (among others) don't consciously experience regular or frequent need for verbal or tactile emotional support as such, so they don't get a lot of practice culturing it as a skill, either as a giver or receiver, and don't often get to feel out which people in their network are going to be well-suited for it anyway. Infrequent needs are hard to "work on" and often benef…

Women do not build these networks by needing frequent emotional support. It is build on mundane stuff, when you do not need support, when no one need support.

The emotional support thing is a consequence of building relationships when you do not need help, when you are fine. If you build them only when you need emotional support, you will be perceived as needy and people will get tired of it.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#104

Post by heresie-dabord »

dijit wrote: post #9

Only half? Thats a really wide range too. By 90 it is increasingly likely your spouse and close friends are mostly dead. My emotional support network consists of two people, my long-term partner and my parent(s). My long term partner loves me conditionally (and don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that this is abnormal). Only your parents might love you unconditionally, and they have a pretty decent head start wit…

> My long term partner loves me conditionally

Sounds right, relationships require effort to stay healthy. It's not always an easy dance, as veterans of marriage will attest.

No healthy relationship should be a cage containing 2 or more martyrs. If people are accumulating resentment, it's time to seek help or dialogue or renegotiation.

That said, it's a mark of mature introspection and humility to be able to ask for help and support. It's also a mark of maturity and kindness to give help and support.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#105

Post by swatcoder »

watwut wrote: post #103
swatcoder wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compassion is helpful here. Consider that many men (among others) don't consciously experience regular or frequent need for verbal or tactile emotional support as such, so they don't get a lot of practice culturing it as a skill, either as a giver or receiver, and don't often get to feel out which people in their network are going to be well-suited for it anyway. Infrequent needs are hard to "work on" and often benef…

Women do not build these networks by needing frequent emotional support. It is build on mundane stuff, when you do not need support, when no one need support. The emotional support thing is a consequence of building relationships when you do not need help, when you are fine. If you build them only when you need emotional support, you will be perceived as needy and people will get tired of it.

If that's all it was, there'd be no distinction at all.

Men, broadly, have plenty of "relationships" that they invest themselves in and are extremely loyaly to.

What the study was about, and the discussion is about, is emotional support, and that quality is often not seen (or at least acknowledged) in the intense, loyal, committed, and earnestly worked on relationships that men do form, because its only one quality among a whole plethora that might define a relationship.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#106

Post by notjoemama »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #19

> This research was limited by its all-male, predominantly White sample and its reliance on self-reported data. Additionally, the quality of emotional support and its impacts on well-being were not assessed. So: we don’t know if it’s just men, we don’t know if it’s true for all ethnicities or just white men, it’s a reduction from two to one, I don’t mean to be dismissive, but someone got funding for this?

> predominantly White

So, the ones that commit suicide at the highest rate. But I agree, this is not a good study and little if any meaningful information comes from it. Perhaps its failure can bolster some actual research into the issue?

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#107

Post by clockworksoul »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #89
bitwize wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike men, women tend seek out emotional support networks as a matter of course. There's probably some reduction as they age, but it's probably from like, the entire glee club to their husband, kids, five or six girls they keep up with from high school and the neighbor lady. A particularly gregarious woman like my wife can grow her support network. This is definitely an area meriting more research.

As a trans women, I have a unique perspective on how gender impacts social relations having lived life in each of the two worlds. Like commenters above mention, emotional support is table stakes in friendship among women. It is a kinder, gentler world - the kind of world you perhaps remember growing up in. That world still exists, but it's typically not accessible to men once they reach adulthood. How could men acces…

That's a very valuable insight. Thank you.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#108

Post by scoofy »

matrix87 wrote: post #96
scoofy wrote: post #86

I will never stop being a regular at the local bar. I may switch to NA beers as I get older, but it is entirely important to me to engage in the rituals that predate history. Having a local bar/pub, generally walking distance away from a residence, where people gather and know each other (even if they are not friends) seems important to me. This line of thinking has also nearly convinced my to go to some kind of chur…

I kind of wish coffee houses had more of this role like how they were in Vienna

I think people attended those as sort of a nightly news service. Where intellectuals would talk about the days events. Now, with modern tech, people can do that from their own how with experts just by watching the news or youtube.

I really think the automobile and television are more to blame for the loneliness epidemic than we give credit for.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#109

Post by kelseyfrog »

watwut wrote: post #100
kelseyfrog wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a trans women, I have a unique perspective on how gender impacts social relations having lived life in each of the two worlds. Like commenters above mention, emotional support is table stakes in friendship among women. It is a kinder, gentler world - the kind of world you perhaps remember growing up in. That world still exists, but it's typically not accessible to men once they reach adulthood. How could men acces…

What is emotional vulnerability?

It's a state of being emotionally exposed in way that includes uncertainty. Like sharing emotions when you're unsure how the other person will respond. In this case, it might mean opening up more to an acquaintance as a way to develop a friendship but being unsure how they would receive that or reciprocate.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#110

Post by some_furry »

drdec wrote: post #55
some_furry wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that explains it. I was sitting here wondering how anyone has only two to begin with.

I had none for a very long time. Happy to report I have someone now. Your dismissal of people with small emotional support networks angers me if I'm being honest.

> Your dismissal of people with small emotional support networks

That's not what I was doing.

Like, I'm an extreme introvert. Most people are more extroverted than I am. Despite this, I have more than two close friends.

Whatever's causing some people to have small emotional support networks is something that should be studied by scientists, rather than taken for granted like this article does. Preventing unnecessary suffering is a net-positive for society.

But the article excluded the people who have more than two close friends, and kind of took that for granted. So I was responding to the article, not the circumstances other people suffer through.

I can see how someone could misread my comment to mean something else, but that wasn't what I was stating.

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