651–660 of 728 posts
My mother, somewhere around 1976, told me that basically when men get married, they lose all their friends. But they get all their wife’s friends. Which seems prescient to me. Including their husbands, obviously.
The split isn't married vs non-married, it's with kids vs without kids.
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I read somewhere long ago that the biggest factor in building friendships is shared experience - like the “circumstances” you described. More important than anything else. Ones those experiences go away so does the common ground.
You specifically mention building friendships. What it takes to build and maintain friendships can be different. Once friendships are built on the back of a shared experience, they can survive the loss of that shared experience, if the parties recognize that things have changed, continue to value the friendship, and understand that maintaining the friendship will require a different kind of commitment and different l…
> Male loneliness epidemic You are solving a non-existent problem. There is no "male loneliness epidemic". If anything, there might be a "human loneliness epidemic". This is not a DEI angle on the problem. Times have changed, societies have changed. But our expectations have not. It is literally time to grow up to the new reality. I think Professor Galloway, whom I am generally a fan of, is spreading a narrative base…
If men feel like they can't open up to their friends because they're afraid they'll be ridiculed, that's on them. Get better friends.
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Sometimes men just want to hang out with other men. I’m a straight man who usually gets along better with women than men, but I still also like spending time with just other men as well. It’s just different. I have no doubt that my presence in a group of women changes the dynamic. There needs to be some place men can just spend time with other men. Yes, it’s a problem if those men only places become important to busi…
> There needs to be some place men can just spend time with other men. This is literally anytime, anywhere though. Do just not meet up with their friends? You can go to dinner, get drinks, go hiking, play sports, bike, ski, sunbathe, play videogames and many more things in single-sex groups without raising an eyebrow. The real classic for men of a certain persuasion from a western cultural POV is golf right? I think…
What you described is unrelated. Yes, people can and do go out and do stuff.
I would argue that the fatal flaw of this idea is that it is an online app. If this was solvable with technology, Meetup.com has a 15 year head start on you and they didn't solve it. I think technology is antithetical to the goal you are working toward. Instead, start a local group and have a "all cellphones go here" basket when members enter so that when they are there, they are fully engaged and not doom scrolling…
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Whether a boyscout group sits around and does lame crafts or goes into the woods to start fires and hit each other with sticks is entirely down to the leadership (boys and adults) in that troop. So to is it with girlscouts. There is nothing intrinsic about boyscouts that makes it more exciting, except that it was lead by guys.
> There is nothing intrinsic about boyscouts that makes it more exciting The chance to obtain Eagle Scout status is itself more exciting. It difficult to deny that it is one of the best leadership programs for children available. The girl scout equivalent is not even close to producing the leaders the Eagle Scouts do. They also have their own network for eagle scouts to connect. It can be an opportunity to get into a…
Finding a third place helps a lot. For me, it's church. That's my community that's outside of work and family. But I also have hobbies (karting, gun range, etc.) and through that, I meet new people.
Homepage leaves me asking why this website wasn't a Meetup group for AI-generated stock photos. What's to resonate? I hate to have to be the one to say it, but speaking from my mid-forties, what you are experiencing is called "entering your 30s." If you try to sell "fix loneliness" to a "not committed yet to growing TF up" market you're cooked. Ironically, I'm probably pretty close to who you think you want to hear f…
I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s just a “you’re in your 30s, deal with it” thing. A lot of guys lose connection over time.. not because they’re flaky, but because work, family, and life get in the way. To me this doesn't feel like some cheesy attempt to fix loneliness with tech. It’s just creating a space for something that’s clearly missing for a lot of people. Writing it off feels like part of…
I don't think that's really it. Well, it's a reason, but not the cause. I think people (not strictly men, but maybe this hits men harder for some reason) lose touch because they fail to understand that it requires different skills, mindset, and effort to maintain friendships when work, family, and life "get in the way".
If your friend group is centered around hanging out in the college dorms or doing coursework together, or going out for drinks after work, or just the ease of scheduling things because no one yet has kids, then when those things change, the friendship maintenance changes too. I think some people don't get that, or just aren't good at figuring out what they need to do to keep the friendship going. It's often more work, too, which can be difficult to adapt to.
I DO think social isolation, white boys and men in the US (and elsewhere? I have no idea), and voluntarism have confronted challenges for years. Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone that came out in 2000, the Do Good Institute report on voluntarism (https://dogood.umd.edu/sites/default/files/2019-07/Where%20A...) and the recent work of Scott Galloway and friends on boys are examples of investigations of problems, challenges, and solutions.
Having been in the public policy world for 20+ years, government may be part of the solution (okay, not in this climate). But more often, it is part of the problem. Government is fickle about consistent and long term funding and evaluation and nonprofit organizations may not actually do work in a way that helps (meaning, is effective).
Individuals and communities often step up to do something, often anything, that may address a need. Participation and reach may wax and wain and I think that's ok. It really is the nature of the beast. Best case, an effort fades away and there is already another underway or standing in the wings.
The bottom line for me is that efforts are made. As a policy wonk and social worker, I'd very much like for efforts to be grounded in some sort of theory of change or best practice or something. But since I'm not a funder or a wielder of power, I don't get to make this decision.
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Introducing women to a group of men completely changes the dynamics, and vice versa. Genders have fundamental differences, and it's human nature to act differently in the presence of the other. Consider also that men may not be willing to be themselves or be open in the presence of women. Are they not allowed to have a space for this? A mixed gender social club inevitably gets raided by a load of dudebros who want to…
I don't think the OP comment was about women, I read it discriminatory in terms of social class and "culture fit".
Another hot take - the healthiest communities are those that people self-identity into. Like HN ;)