Useless.
'generalized responses, such as “family” or “friends,”..., were excluded from formal analyses.'
Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
91–100 of 191 posts
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#92More like by 40. My relationship with even my best buds from school became empty or non existent after years of marriage and kids.
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#93Only 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…
Why would you even want unconditional love? Are you planning on abusing and taking advantage of your spouse? People who want this are not ready for marriage.
Maybe I want to be vulnerable sometimes, or weak sometimes, or to have unfinished opinions on things and be listened to in good faith without risking an entire relationship because I would like to talk about it.
Like privacy, people can come up with nice catch-alls like “nothing to hide”, but the default is not abuse.
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#94Imagine having someone, anyone, that you felt comfortable sharing your feelings with. Amazing. I've known my best friend for 50 years now, literally since kindergarten. One person. I probably wouldn't talk about my top 5% of private feelings with him, not sure why. I've been married 28 years now. She doesn't understand me at all, and doesn't want to see or hear any "weakness" from me. So what the f@#$ is an emotional…
Your comment mirrors my experience with both close friends and a spouse. One time my now ex-wife asked why I don't share my feelings more. When I did she said she felt unsafe and we started talking about her instead. In my anecdotal experience men are routinely trained not to talk about their troubles and emotions. Even if I had some form of emotional support I am not sure I would know how to open up. And I am not sure I would want to.
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#95We get an emotional support network? Nobody told me.
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 benefit from institutional support rather than ad hoc support: therapists, churches/etc, discussion groups, etc
It's sort of like changing tires, in that way. Now that manually changing a car tire is rare, because tires are more durable and crises can generally be remediated by calling some number on the cell phone you're certainly carrying, fewer and fewer people have actually done it and have a working, practiced familiarity with how to do it. But thankfully, roadside assistance and tow trucks are widely available and there's mostly no shame to using them now.
Supporting instutitonal access for emotional support would go along way towards helping the many people who just don't have an opportunity to "work on" building support networks the way you suggest.
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#96I 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
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#97I attend a church and it’s large enough that you would generally not get to know people very well. But they offer “small group” connection and about 3 years ago I connected with 3 other men. We meet every couple of weeks. We have different backgrounds but all of us have leadership responsibilities. We have step by step deepened the trust and confidence in each other. At some point over the past year each of us was in some type of ultra stressful situation - losing sleep -etc. But when we came to our group we could say as much or as little as we wished but the entire group was supportive. I could get into more detail but I know that many on HN don’t care for church. What I wanted to share is that we all have found this to be the highlight of our week - when we get together. Personally, it has been the most connected I have been with men in 20 years. So it’s not a law of nature that men won’t or can’t see their masculine support network grow. It takes time to build trust but it is worth the investment
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#98I 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…
Yes, I notice the benefit of having the same faces around regularly at the $sport I do few times per week. You don’t say much more than hello and goodbye, but after a while you appreciate each other's company and really miss it when you can’t go.
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you even want unconditional love? Are you planning on abusing and taking advantage of your spouse? People who want this are not ready for marriage.
Maybe I want to be vulnerable sometimes, or weak sometimes, or to have unfinished opinions on things and be listened to in good faith without risking an entire relationship because I would like to talk about it. Like privacy, people can come up with nice catch-alls like “nothing to hide”, but the default is not abuse.
this. unconditional love is not blind love. but it means that i am not being needlessly criticized for my faults but receive care and encouragement to work on them. it means that i am treated with compassion, even if i am a criminal. it doesn't mean that i get a free pass to do whatever i want. if i hurt someone, i need to fix that, especially if it is my partner.
and the same goes in reverse. i love my wife and only wish the best for her. but that does not mean i need to be blind to her problems, or not expect her to stop doing things that hurt me or others. but it does mean that my love for her does not stop even if we should separate.
however, this assumes a different kind of love than the love that most people think they have for their partner. a kind of love that is exclusive and can only ever go to one person. unconditional love is the kind of love that accepts everyone for what they are. the kind of love that all the major religions out there are talking about.
(edit: expanded further)
Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks
#100Earlier 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…
What is emotional vulnerability?