I seem to have a slightly different take on this subject than most people. I’m a 56 year-old American man who always had a lot of friends but now has precious few, like many others, but in my case...
I seem to have a slightly different take on this subject than most people. I’m a 56 year-old American man who always had a lot of friends but now has precious few, like many others, but in my case I guess it’s been more intentional.
I have broken up with nearly everyone who used to be close to me. There was no plan to it, but over the years so many of my male friends made choices I could no longer support. I think this is specifically a modern male problem, because most of the changes they went through were forced on them by orthodoxy and devil‘s choices in their professional careers. Not to say women and others don’t face similar pressures, but I believe they are expressed differently in our culture.
In their 30s, most of my male friends got excited by the idea of moving up whatever ladder at work and becoming executives. In their 40s, they did what executives do and in their 50s they have now fully internalized those perspectives, priorities, and values. They are the executives we all used to hate when we were young.
And many of them have made truly unsupportable decisions in their private lives, repeating the mistakes of their parents and making a whole bunch of their own. For a decade or two I was a forgiving and understanding friend, but once I realized that few if any of these men were going to change their behavior I just didn’t want to be around them anymore. This includes my friend from college who left his wife and teenage children so he could marry someone 15 years younger. Now he is a new father again at 55 and wants all my love and support.
So I ghost him. And I ghost the executive who brags about firing people. And I ghost the narcissist who only sees people as numbers. They didn’t used to be like this, back when we were all dope smoking hippies. Now I’m the only dope smoking hippie left!
Talking about the modern crisis that is the dearth of male friendship is almost cliche at this point but author Sam Graham-Felsen beautifully describes his own personal struggles with loneliness....
Talking about the modern crisis that is the dearth of male friendship is almost cliche at this point but author Sam Graham-Felsen beautifully describes his own personal struggles with loneliness. My takeaway from this article is to be the friend, reach out to your mates and be daring enough to dive a little deeper with them.
I read this the other day and really enjoyed it. It's a perennial topic in The Atlantic, and one could argue, in our society since Bowling Alone arrived. I adopted a 'always be the prime mover'...
I read this the other day and really enjoyed it. It's a perennial topic in The Atlantic, and one could argue, in our society since Bowling Alone arrived.
I adopted a 'always be the prime mover' identity in my 20's and it really helped to build the kind of personal agency and responsibility for the friendship that the author sometimes references.
From this came the confidence that I was always doing my part and an understanding of when my efforts weren't valued, the friendship was toxic or the or that my efforts belong elsewhere.
Recently someone I considered my best friend and main gaming buddy throughout my 30s got a girlfriend, and around the same time his gaming PC broke. Ever since then, he hasn’t really made an...
Recently someone I considered my best friend and main gaming buddy throughout my 30s got a girlfriend, and around the same time his gaming PC broke. Ever since then, he hasn’t really made an effort to fix it or get back online.
It’s been frustrating. We had tons of games we used to play together, stuff we were halfway through or had talked about diving into for years. It wasn’t just about the games either, it was the routine, we had gaming nights carved out every week that were ours. The laughs, the long nights, the way we’d vent about life or just chill without expectations.
And I get it, life shifts. Priorities change. But there’s still this weird sense of loss when a core part of your social life just kind of fades without any real closure.
That was the last deep male friendship I felt I had.
I moved up to Seattle about a year and a half ago for a job that actually paid for my relocation. At first, I thought I was starting a new chapter, and I even made a few friends at work. But after just eight months, they let me go. And part of that came down to people I thought had my back, who ended up throwing me under the bus. That hit harder than the layoff itself.
Since then, it’s been hard making new connections, Seattle freeze and all
I’m planning to check out this “Silent Book Club” meetup next week. It sounds promising, and I’m hoping it leads to something.
I feel like this has become easier with the loss of third places. I've seen relationships dry up overnight because of a bad video game patch. I'm a world where we increasingly socialize over...
I feel like this has become easier with the loss of third places. I've seen relationships dry up overnight because of a bad video game patch. I'm a world where we increasingly socialize over technology, our connections become increasingly fragile. I'm not saying we can't continue a relationship when the platform it was based on goes away, but it's harder.
With this in particular, I feel like some people are just very timid, or unwilling to voice the reality that, as a social animal, they want to hang out with people because it's enjoyable. Like,...
I've seen relationships dry up overnight because of a bad video game patch.
With this in particular, I feel like some people are just very timid, or unwilling to voice the reality that, as a social animal, they want to hang out with people because it's enjoyable. Like, you can't just hang out with people for fun, you need a "reason".
"I'm not playing CoD with you for you, I'm, uh, playing it cuz I love CoD and uh y'know you're more successful when you duo queue. Your existence is, uh, just incidental, y'know?" - and that's when friendships end when people lose interest in a game or the game becomes bad.
Sometimes you can just ask people if they want to play X or Y (new) game because you want to spend time with them.
I feel in America we have an antisocial society that does not value self-awareness or emotional needs. So many people, it seems, don’t know what it is that they want or need out of life. I get it;...
I feel in America we have an antisocial society that does not value self-awareness or emotional needs. So many people, it seems, don’t know what it is that they want or need out of life. I get it; I’m bad at it too. But this is the culture that has seemingly half of the country campaigning to prevent public schools from having basic personal mental health education. It’s like we are trying to make everyone’s life worse for no reason.
Yes, I definitely feel that (and have been guilty of it when I was younger). It's as though it's a secret that we actually care about the other person, and once it's out we're compromised or...
Yes, I definitely feel that (and have been guilty of it when I was younger). It's as though it's a secret that we actually care about the other person, and once it's out we're compromised or vulnerable in some way.
The way out of the Seattle Freeze is hobbies. Everyone I've met here after graduating has been directly through a shared hobby in a public space or indirectly by those people introducing me to...
The way out of the Seattle Freeze is hobbies. Everyone I've met here after graduating has been directly through a shared hobby in a public space or indirectly by those people introducing me to other friends of theirs. Bars suck around here, especially in the city, for talking to strangers. Go to street fairs, game stores, hiking clubs, the zoo, whatever aligns with your interests and will have other people around.
Same for me in San Francisco. I’m in one group that’s about 100 people ravenously addicted to a specific social deduction game. I’m also a member of a communist/anarchistic 24/7 hacker space with...
Same for me in San Francisco. I’m in one group that’s about 100 people ravenously addicted to a specific social deduction game. I’m also a member of a communist/anarchistic 24/7 hacker space with a sizable community.
I can't believe Ive been around the sun 63 times AND an English major and thats the first time Ive ever heard that word. Huh. Learn something new every day. Sorry you got stabbed in the back at...
contrapositive
I can't believe Ive been around the sun 63 times AND an English major and thats the first time Ive ever heard that word. Huh. Learn something new every day.
Sorry you got stabbed in the back at work. Been there, and I still kinda hold a grudge because I thought the people who did it were my friends too. Sucks.
Good on you for getting out there just for the sake of socializing. Maybe I'm biased, but I really feel like the online space is where you build existing relationships, not try to create new ones....
Good on you for getting out there just for the sake of socializing. Maybe I'm biased, but I really feel like the online space is where you build existing relationships, not try to create new ones.
The shared experience has to go deeper than one that a game company has prepared for you.
Yeah my buddy was an old friend from high school, we'd go camping and stuff when I lived in SoCal. I find it hard to connect with anyone I just randomly meet online. Tried a couple of times, but...
Yeah my buddy was an old friend from high school, we'd go camping and stuff when I lived in SoCal.
I find it hard to connect with anyone I just randomly meet online. Tried a couple of times, but the experiences are just so different.
One piece of wisdom that stuck with me was that "Guys create bonds shoulder to shoulder whereas women create them face to face". It's stuck with me as my best friendships with guys have been...
One piece of wisdom that stuck with me was that "Guys create bonds shoulder to shoulder whereas women create them face to face".
It's stuck with me as my best friendships with guys have been developed while doing something, whereas my best girlfriends are based on sharing and talking.
Frankly, I operate best with face to face talkers which is why my lovely wife, who isn't a talker, continues to throw a wrench into my idea about how gendered this whole thing is haha
Guys always nod when I say it. I think it's one of those truths that 'make sense' for dudes looking for something focused to make sense of the mayhem of emotions.
Guys always nod when I say it. I think it's one of those truths that 'make sense' for dudes looking for something focused to make sense of the mayhem of emotions.
Hey man I live near Seattle, would be happy to meet up at cafe vivace or whatever and hang out or whatever. I think I'm a similar age and might have some brain similarities too haha. Either way...
Hey man I live near Seattle, would be happy to meet up at cafe vivace or whatever and hang out or whatever. I think I'm a similar age and might have some brain similarities too haha. Either way welcome to the area.
I help run a yo-yo club, we meet every month or so, if you're looking for the effective adhd/autism meetup haha
I've never heard of that before so I googled and read a few articles. The idea is you meet in a coffeshop or some such, read totally unrelated books in silence for an hour, and then there's...
I’m planning to check out this “Silent Book Club” meetup next week. It sounds promising, and I’m hoping it leads to something.
I've never heard of that before so I googled and read a few articles. The idea is you meet in a coffeshop or some such, read totally unrelated books in silence for an hour, and then there's freeform, undirected, group chit-chat for some period of time. Is that right?
Yep. I looked into a typical book club and every book they had was just a slog to me, so I like the idea of being able to read books I'm interested in and talking about it. Maybe find other fans.
Yep.
I looked into a typical book club and every book they had was just a slog to me, so I like the idea of being able to read books I'm interested in and talking about it. Maybe find other fans.
Can definitely relate. But unlike most men, getting married and having kids didnt shut down my male connections, ironically because I had a crappy first marriage. I used to have two very good...
Can definitely relate. But unlike most men, getting married and having kids didnt shut down my male connections, ironically because I had a crappy first marriage. I used to have two very good friends who met me for breakfast every two weeks for twenty years. They were the best kinds of friends too - not afraid to ask the hard questions or give their blunt opinions. In fact, it was because of them that I accepted the fact that my wife was going to divorce me and I gave up trying to fix what was undeniably broken.
But the odd part is that soon after I started dating again, and one of them moved away and then I moved away and despite 20 years of close friendship, we rarely communicate anymore. I would be there in a second if either of them needed anything, but we've just kind of moved on with life and sometimes I wonder if my failing marriage wasn't part of the glue that kept us all together for all those years.
And now I find myself living in a rural location and no longer part of a church community that was the basis of my friendships for almost all my life including those two guys. Id say in all honesty I have one good male friend, my brother in law. I have a couple of others that I'd call sporadic friends who I see once or twice a year, but we're not really close. And thats about it. Its ok, Im generally not lonely, but if my wife leaves or the dogs die, Im royally fucked lol.
But I agree with the author, whenever I do bother to take the initiative to reach out to my old buddies, they do respond and seem to appreciate it. Its just remembering to do it.
Meanwhile, something thats really taken off here, and across america is the Men's Shed movement. https://mensshedscanada.ca/ Basically guys getting together for no big reason, usually around woodworking or mechanics to shoot the breeze and fill in the gap that seems to be really lacking for most men.
Or we could all just go back to church like the old days, but uh... nah, Id rather sleep in.
Edit: Because of this post, I just texted one of my old friends. Turns out in the last few months he had to put down his dog, then he lost a niece to suicide and a nephew OD'd. Damn, now I feel guilty for not getting in touch sooner. Definitely going to take him out for a beer and a little cheering up.
I'm not projecting or judging here, I'm not married so I'd genuinely be interested in your opinion. I've seen a ton of reporting on this exact scenario with men these days where their spouse...
Im generally not lonely, but if my wife leaves or the dogs die, Im royally fucked lol.
I'm not projecting or judging here, I'm not married so I'd genuinely be interested in your opinion. I've seen a ton of reporting on this exact scenario with men these days where their spouse becomes their really only close friend and confidant and while the wife usually has a robust friend network to spread their emotional needs around, they usually become the sole emotional outlet for their husbands - and that can be quite taxing when in addition to the duties as a spouse, sometimes, mother, etc. As an outsider it just seems like a potentially very compromising position for both people to be in.
Does that description at all resonate with you? What are your thoughts on this usual commentary?
Well my wife doesnt actually have a ton of friends either, but she does have a lot of work colleagues as well as three adult children who definitely communicate regularly with her, usually every...
Well my wife doesnt actually have a ton of friends either, but she does have a lot of work colleagues as well as three adult children who definitely communicate regularly with her, usually every day or two.
But as far as sharing the stuff that goes deeper than 'how was your day' we are each other's closest confidantes. I know there are days I talk her ear off, but Ive also learned to recognize when her eyes glaze over and her mind is elsewhere, so we just joke about it and I shut up lol.
But Im also online here and other places regularly so I see that as part of my 'social circle' and I enjoy the conversations, particularly Tildes which is far more polite than most online spaces.
They're my stepkids, and no, they definitely talk to their mother a great deal more lol. We get along great but its a mom thing. I have three of my own, but none who live close by, so I try to...
They're my stepkids, and no, they definitely talk to their mother a great deal more lol. We get along great but its a mom thing.
I have three of my own, but none who live close by, so I try to fill in the gap by facetiming them. Having grandkids really gives a lot more reason to see them as much as I can.
This feels emblematic of the "get married, move out to the middle of nowhere for space" direction. And it's like, yeah, you moved out to the middle of nowhere, what did you expect? I don't think...
This feels emblematic of the "get married, move out to the middle of nowhere for space" direction. And it's like, yeah, you moved out to the middle of nowhere, what did you expect?
I don't think it's as present in the urbanites, although it's inherently a biased sample, since you wouldn't know people with no friends by definition.
The 'burbs are emblematic of a devaluing of friendships in general. Whenever someone is moving out "for space", the considerations are always: affordable housing, spAcE, school systems, and so forth. Never, "I have a lot of friends who live there", or "there is a subculture that I want to be a part of".
Friendships are a weaker relationship, so they need to be reinforced more. Living near your friends is more of a necessity if you want to keep them. Where did the author finally have his long-missed guy hangout? In Manhattan.
Everyone is different, and I'm sure the sPAcE is worth it for many, but others should ask themselves what they're really going to miss.
Online communities (and by communities I mean group-chat sized) probably help as well, but the author is probably too boomer for that subculture. I mean, he talks about calling people lol.
edit: I also see a lot of stories that are like "I had one friend, and they moved, and now I have no friends", and it's like, having ONE friend should've been the warning sign! You should always be trying to make new friends. When you become friends with someone, try to hang out with their friends. Something can always happen, from moving to marriage to death. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and all.
There are legitimately things that you can't do and hobbies you can't realistically have without space. It's hard to be into motocross, blacksmithing, woodworking, mountain biking and so forth if...
There are legitimately things that you can't do and hobbies you can't realistically have without space. It's hard to be into motocross, blacksmithing, woodworking, mountain biking and so forth if you live in New York city. I think it's actually impossible to consider some of those things your hobby versus something you do occasionally, if you need to plan a multi day trip to do it.
Most things, however, can be done in a city. It's just that you have to get used to sharing space in a way that many people have grown uncomfortable with. You don't need a gym in your home. You can go to a shared gym. You don't need a giant set of bookshelves in your home, you can go to a library. You don't need a workshop in your home, you can go to a maker space.
Yes, it's more convenient to have that stuff in your house, but most people don't really consider the true cost. An increased mortgage for the extra space, increased energy use to heat/cool it, increased taxes for that square footage All the equipment you have to buy and maintain, paying for gas to drive out to the middle of nowhere, potentially a septic tank. And then of course the most painful cost of all, not having any real friends.
I think a lot of people don't think about these hidden costs when it comes to fantasizing about a life of homesteading isolation. I'm sure it works for some people, but the way it's glorified online, I think a lot of people don't really understand how expensive, inefficient, and painful that kind of life can be in all sorts of small, hidden ways.
Hell I don't think many of the people living those types of lives realize how much its making them miserable. They're usually the ones making mean Facebook posts with a selfie profile picture behind the driver's seat of a pickup truck.
To be completely contrarian (I already sold my pickup truck but I still have a pickup sized SUV) moving from a city of 1.6M to a town of 60k and then to a rural subdivision has been joyful. I...
Hell I don't think many of the people living those types of lives realize how much its making them miserable. They're usually the ones making mean Facebook posts with a selfie profile picture behind the driver's seat of a pickup truck.
To be completely contrarian (I already sold my pickup truck but I still have a pickup sized SUV) moving from a city of 1.6M to a town of 60k and then to a rural subdivision has been joyful. I always described myself as a city kid and mildly mocked those 'country hillbillies' but now that I live here, you'd have to get a team of wild horses (or two rednecks in a jacked up F350) to drag me back into town.
The main thing I notice is the peace and quiet. I didnt realize how MUCH background noise there was in the city until it was gone. We even lived in a playground zone, but that didnt stop the trucks and the bikers from ripping through it, blasting that loud exhaust note and shaking the walls at times. The occasional train whistle. The constant hum of traffic. It never goes away in the city, even at night.
And then I came out here and... silence. Its gloriously quiet. There's the odd kid on a dirt bike or a delivery truck but most days I dont see more than one or two cars go by. And there's a reason they say that living near nature is good for your mental health. Cause it is. We can walk through a forest and breathe in all that fresh, clean air, listen to the wind blow gently, birds singing, and watch the river flow in the valley below. People PAY for that kind of therapy but dont find it in the city.
The other major pro is the privacy. I love working on my vehicles or building projects so I have stuff spread around our acreage. In the city, every time I went in the house I had to hide or lock up tools to make sure they didnt get lifted by someone passing by. Not here. I can leave everything out and two days later, its right where I left it all. We dont even lock our doors when we head into town. Because there is no theft, no vagrants, no meth heads, no door to door solicitors, no one bothers to come out here unless they have a reason to. Absolutely love it.
My personal view of this romanticism around homestead life is that it’s a result of the stress of work more often than not. People are put through a tremendous amount of stress and their jobs keep...
My personal view of this romanticism around homestead life is that it’s a result of the stress of work more often than not. People are put through a tremendous amount of stress and their jobs keep getting more challenging and laborious without proper compensation, and they are suffering for it. But the only thing that they can see as a way to deal with it is usually to buckle up and keep working. No wonder they are dreaming of escape.
I haven’t married anybody, but I did move to the suburbs for one of your listed reasons: cost. I can technically afford to live downtown in a US city where doing things without a car and thus...
I haven’t married anybody, but I did move to the suburbs for one of your listed reasons: cost. I can technically afford to live downtown in a US city where doing things without a car and thus socialization is easy, but at some point in my early 30s it began to hurt to see so much of my paycheck burned away on basic housing.
It sucks. Even the well-paid are faced with the choice of being able to stick a decent amount cash away in savings/retirement or being able to maintain a social circle.
The other big reason was actually noise. The suburbs I’m in are so much more quiet and free of disturbances like cars with cut off mufflers blaring music rolling through at 3AM and it’s blissful. US cities would do well to actually enforce noise ordinances and mandate a certain level of soundproofing in residential buildings.
In the end, it's all about tradeoffs. I just think it's worthwhile to reconsider how those tradeoffs weigh. I'm not saying you think this way necessarily, but there's a general sentiment that...
In the end, it's all about tradeoffs. I just think it's worthwhile to reconsider how those tradeoffs weigh. I'm not saying you think this way necessarily, but there's a general sentiment that "you're stupid if you rent in your 30s/married/etc". And I think people should think about it more.
"You're still living in a shoebox? You're almost 40! Get a grip and stop partying, settle down in bumfuck nowhere already."
Life is meant to be lived, in the end, not a video game scored with how much money you have on your deathbed. Is it better to have more savings, but be alone and isolated? That will depend on personal factors, but I suspect that many people who would rather live a full, happy life talking to more than 1 person but who deny it to themselves.
I would add that health is a part of this as well. It's well documented that having a healthy social circle is incredibly and materially important to your physical health, not to mention mental health. It's so important that in magnitude, having a strong social circle can be as much a determinant on your lifespan as smoking is.
I’d say the two things driving me to lean towards saving money are: The desire to have healthy padding if things go disastrously wrong — for example if I lose my job and can’t get hired again for...
I’d say the two things driving me to lean towards saving money are:
The desire to have healthy padding if things go disastrously wrong — for example if I lose my job and can’t get hired again for a year or get wrecked by medical expenses. Once you’ve fallen into a financial hole it’s difficult to get back out.
The desire to eventually get to the point to where I can fund a better-than-barebones lifestyle without working a full-time job. I hate that so much of my youth is getting poured into work instead of, y’know, living life.
The first of those points is particularly strong for me because I spent over half of my 20s dead broke and scraping by and I don’t want to ever return to that if I can help it.
All that said I absolutely want to be able to go out and do things with people, which is why longer term I’m trying to tee things up for moving to a city abroad with much lower cost of living, as well as setting up income streams to help establish financial independence. It’s a lot of work, but if those plans go well I’ll be able to land in a place with minimal tradeoff and maximal benefit — I’ll be in a physical location that’s conducive to building and maintaining connections while also having the time and money to do the connecting and maintenance.
What are some ways that other men on Tildes have been strengthening their friendships? I've moved around a lot and have male friends spread across the globe. One thing I've been doing is to cold...
What are some ways that other men on Tildes have been strengthening their friendships?
I've moved around a lot and have male friends spread across the globe. One thing I've been doing is to cold call them. Some answer, some don't, some only have a few minutes to cordially say hi, but I've had success with others and even had a three hour conversation with a friend who I used to be very close with.
Unfortunately my home life has been a struggle this past year. My closest friend where I live betrayed me and when I tried to work it out with him he was just unable to own up to his actions. The wider friend group knows something is going on with him, in general, and more than a few of us are convinced he's cheating on his SO. The situation is so messy I've just decided to distance myself from it all. Unfortunately he and his partner are very central to our friend group so hangouts have become award and I kind of woke up and realized I don't have a ton in common with the others in the group. I'm now starting from scratch which is difficult when you're well past college aged but I'm not giving up hope.
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences in this area; that sounds incredibly challenging. For context/levelsetting purposes, I’m a cishet male in my 30s. Forgive the armchair professing, but I...
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences in this area; that sounds incredibly challenging.
For context/levelsetting purposes, I’m a cishet male in my 30s. Forgive the armchair professing, but I think that one of the factors that contributes to this is that, at least in my experience, men often bond over shared experiences, i.e. doing together instead of thinking or discussing together. In a weird way, I felt like I bonded with my wife a lot more quickly than I bonded with any of my longtime male friends, even the ones I’m still friends with today after 20 years, because in that male-to-female connection, there was a lot more engagement and discussion that immediately got deep. Of course it’s not fair to generalize that all M/M or M/F interactions play out this way, but it did in my case. And it’s also not to say that it would be impossible to build these bonds quickly and deeply with male friends, old or new, but I feel like it doesn’t occur to us so immediately.
And with all that in mind, when you meet friends as an adult, what’s the one thing you tend to lack compared to any other point in your life? Time! The time you would have had in HS or college to have these shared experiences with male friends. The time to drive around town aimlessly, or play games, or just vent without really digging too deep. Time that we took for granted as young(er) men who spent days, weeks, months in the company of peers by force of circumstance, and developed these deep connections without much deliberate effort.
I’ve developed what I would consider one good friendship since moving states with my wife, and even so, it was only thanks to a shared interest / life experience (we’re both actively gigging musicians and met online when looking for folks to gig/jam with in the area). But even so, I find it hard to maintain in the same way as we both have young children and live ~45 minutes away from each other. It very much feels like an uphill battle.
I know this isn’t a direct answer to your question, but moreso wanted to say that you’re not alone and echo that it is challenging.
This absolutely isn't useful or economically prudent advice for most people, but I fly around to meet my friends multiple times a year, even if it's just to chill at their home eating takeout for...
What are some ways that other men on Tildes have been strengthening their friendships?
This absolutely isn't useful or economically prudent advice for most people, but I fly around to meet my friends multiple times a year, even if it's just to chill at their home eating takeout for a couple of days. While I'm not wealthy, I'm at a comfortable enough income level where I view maintaining those friendships with in-person activity as more valuable than saving some tens of thousands of dollars extra for when I'm old. My now-closest friends are people I met online and spontaneously (only a few days' notice) flew out to visit after knowing them only a short time.
For years I've been stumped about why Joe Rogan and his podcast are popular. Is this basically it? It's essentially a proxy for friendships for a large section of American men?
In late 2018, I found something that finally resonated. And I found it on — alas — “The Joe Rogan Experience.” [...] while many of his ideas made me wince, I found myself spellbound by his voracious curiosity. There was something deeply soothing about his rambling conversations, which often spanned three or four hours. The weave of these yap fests reminded me of what it was like when I had hours of open-ended time with my own friends: the way it would take us a little while to warm up and move beyond banter about biking gear, the way we would inch, steadily upward, to the most elevated terrain — debating the very meaning of life — and then come racing back down to the level of jocular jousting.
For years I've been stumped about why Joe Rogan and his podcast are popular. Is this basically it? It's essentially a proxy for friendships for a large section of American men?
Between lack of time and third spaces it's pretty tough for anyone. My partner grew up in the area so she has friends from elementary schools through college that we see regularly. Their partners...
Between lack of time and third spaces it's pretty tough for anyone. My partner grew up in the area so she has friends from elementary schools through college that we see regularly. Their partners are cool but we're usually in group settings where I'm bad at conversation. Most of my best male friendships developed while working on something. Not to imply the contrapositive, but I think men do well building trust when accomplishing something together. It helps you to see how that other person deals with adversity, communicates, and whether they are dependable.
We built a great grad school family. Trauma-bonding and all that. But jobs spread us across the world. We have one big meet up every year. A couple days at someone's house with food and board games. Regularly contact is still difficult to maintain as none of us are social media users and so much of our relationships were built on sitting together for deep conversations.
Other places I've made friends, or met people that could be friends that I haven't pursued, is work and the gym. I know some good people from my gym, the challenge is that I never really connected outside the gym. At work I've made a couple good friends. One was actually going through some really tough medical stuff with his dog so I think that sped up our ability to talk about our personal lives.
But really what makes this all tough is time. We try to meet up outside of work but we live about an hour apart and there's just life happenign and driving two hours to hang out for a bit is a hard sell.
I seem to have a slightly different take on this subject than most people. I’m a 56 year-old American man who always had a lot of friends but now has precious few, like many others, but in my case I guess it’s been more intentional.
I have broken up with nearly everyone who used to be close to me. There was no plan to it, but over the years so many of my male friends made choices I could no longer support. I think this is specifically a modern male problem, because most of the changes they went through were forced on them by orthodoxy and devil‘s choices in their professional careers. Not to say women and others don’t face similar pressures, but I believe they are expressed differently in our culture.
In their 30s, most of my male friends got excited by the idea of moving up whatever ladder at work and becoming executives. In their 40s, they did what executives do and in their 50s they have now fully internalized those perspectives, priorities, and values. They are the executives we all used to hate when we were young.
And many of them have made truly unsupportable decisions in their private lives, repeating the mistakes of their parents and making a whole bunch of their own. For a decade or two I was a forgiving and understanding friend, but once I realized that few if any of these men were going to change their behavior I just didn’t want to be around them anymore. This includes my friend from college who left his wife and teenage children so he could marry someone 15 years younger. Now he is a new father again at 55 and wants all my love and support.
So I ghost him. And I ghost the executive who brags about firing people. And I ghost the narcissist who only sees people as numbers. They didn’t used to be like this, back when we were all dope smoking hippies. Now I’m the only dope smoking hippie left!
Talking about the modern crisis that is the dearth of male friendship is almost cliche at this point but author Sam Graham-Felsen beautifully describes his own personal struggles with loneliness. My takeaway from this article is to be the friend, reach out to your mates and be daring enough to dive a little deeper with them.
I read this the other day and really enjoyed it. It's a perennial topic in The Atlantic, and one could argue, in our society since Bowling Alone arrived.
I adopted a 'always be the prime mover' identity in my 20's and it really helped to build the kind of personal agency and responsibility for the friendship that the author sometimes references.
From this came the confidence that I was always doing my part and an understanding of when my efforts weren't valued, the friendship was toxic or the or that my efforts belong elsewhere.
Recently someone I considered my best friend and main gaming buddy throughout my 30s got a girlfriend, and around the same time his gaming PC broke. Ever since then, he hasn’t really made an effort to fix it or get back online.
It’s been frustrating. We had tons of games we used to play together, stuff we were halfway through or had talked about diving into for years. It wasn’t just about the games either, it was the routine, we had gaming nights carved out every week that were ours. The laughs, the long nights, the way we’d vent about life or just chill without expectations.
And I get it, life shifts. Priorities change. But there’s still this weird sense of loss when a core part of your social life just kind of fades without any real closure.
That was the last deep male friendship I felt I had.
I moved up to Seattle about a year and a half ago for a job that actually paid for my relocation. At first, I thought I was starting a new chapter, and I even made a few friends at work. But after just eight months, they let me go. And part of that came down to people I thought had my back, who ended up throwing me under the bus. That hit harder than the layoff itself.
Since then, it’s been hard making new connections, Seattle freeze and all
I’m planning to check out this “Silent Book Club” meetup next week. It sounds promising, and I’m hoping it leads to something.
I feel like this has become easier with the loss of third places. I've seen relationships dry up overnight because of a bad video game patch. I'm a world where we increasingly socialize over technology, our connections become increasingly fragile. I'm not saying we can't continue a relationship when the platform it was based on goes away, but it's harder.
With this in particular, I feel like some people are just very timid, or unwilling to voice the reality that, as a social animal, they want to hang out with people because it's enjoyable. Like, you can't just hang out with people for fun, you need a "reason".
"I'm not playing CoD with you for you, I'm, uh, playing it cuz I love CoD and uh y'know you're more successful when you duo queue. Your existence is, uh, just incidental, y'know?" - and that's when friendships end when people lose interest in a game or the game becomes bad.
Sometimes you can just ask people if they want to play X or Y (new) game because you want to spend time with them.
I feel in America we have an antisocial society that does not value self-awareness or emotional needs. So many people, it seems, don’t know what it is that they want or need out of life. I get it; I’m bad at it too. But this is the culture that has seemingly half of the country campaigning to prevent public schools from having basic personal mental health education. It’s like we are trying to make everyone’s life worse for no reason.
Yes, I definitely feel that (and have been guilty of it when I was younger). It's as though it's a secret that we actually care about the other person, and once it's out we're compromised or vulnerable in some way.
The way out of the Seattle Freeze is hobbies. Everyone I've met here after graduating has been directly through a shared hobby in a public space or indirectly by those people introducing me to other friends of theirs. Bars suck around here, especially in the city, for talking to strangers. Go to street fairs, game stores, hiking clubs, the zoo, whatever aligns with your interests and will have other people around.
Same for me in San Francisco. I’m in one group that’s about 100 people ravenously addicted to a specific social deduction game. I’m also a member of a communist/anarchistic 24/7 hacker space with a sizable community.
Yeah I'm going to a silent book club so hopefully that helps.
I can't believe Ive been around the sun 63 times AND an English major and thats the first time Ive ever heard that word. Huh. Learn something new every day.
Sorry you got stabbed in the back at work. Been there, and I still kinda hold a grudge because I thought the people who did it were my friends too. Sucks.
Good on you for getting out there just for the sake of socializing. Maybe I'm biased, but I really feel like the online space is where you build existing relationships, not try to create new ones.
The shared experience has to go deeper than one that a game company has prepared for you.
Yeah my buddy was an old friend from high school, we'd go camping and stuff when I lived in SoCal.
I find it hard to connect with anyone I just randomly meet online. Tried a couple of times, but the experiences are just so different.
One piece of wisdom that stuck with me was that "Guys create bonds shoulder to shoulder whereas women create them face to face".
It's stuck with me as my best friendships with guys have been developed while doing something, whereas my best girlfriends are based on sharing and talking.
Frankly, I operate best with face to face talkers which is why my lovely wife, who isn't a talker, continues to throw a wrench into my idea about how gendered this whole thing is haha
Well said.
Guys always nod when I say it. I think it's one of those truths that 'make sense' for dudes looking for something focused to make sense of the mayhem of emotions.
Hey man I live near Seattle, would be happy to meet up at cafe vivace or whatever and hang out or whatever. I think I'm a similar age and might have some brain similarities too haha. Either way welcome to the area.
I help run a yo-yo club, we meet every month or so, if you're looking for the effective adhd/autism meetup haha
I've never heard of that before so I googled and read a few articles. The idea is you meet in a coffeshop or some such, read totally unrelated books in silence for an hour, and then there's freeform, undirected, group chit-chat for some period of time. Is that right?
Yep.
I looked into a typical book club and every book they had was just a slog to me, so I like the idea of being able to read books I'm interested in and talking about it. Maybe find other fans.
Can definitely relate. But unlike most men, getting married and having kids didnt shut down my male connections, ironically because I had a crappy first marriage. I used to have two very good friends who met me for breakfast every two weeks for twenty years. They were the best kinds of friends too - not afraid to ask the hard questions or give their blunt opinions. In fact, it was because of them that I accepted the fact that my wife was going to divorce me and I gave up trying to fix what was undeniably broken.
But the odd part is that soon after I started dating again, and one of them moved away and then I moved away and despite 20 years of close friendship, we rarely communicate anymore. I would be there in a second if either of them needed anything, but we've just kind of moved on with life and sometimes I wonder if my failing marriage wasn't part of the glue that kept us all together for all those years.
And now I find myself living in a rural location and no longer part of a church community that was the basis of my friendships for almost all my life including those two guys. Id say in all honesty I have one good male friend, my brother in law. I have a couple of others that I'd call sporadic friends who I see once or twice a year, but we're not really close. And thats about it. Its ok, Im generally not lonely, but if my wife leaves or the dogs die, Im royally fucked lol.
But I agree with the author, whenever I do bother to take the initiative to reach out to my old buddies, they do respond and seem to appreciate it. Its just remembering to do it.
Meanwhile, something thats really taken off here, and across america is the Men's Shed movement. https://mensshedscanada.ca/ Basically guys getting together for no big reason, usually around woodworking or mechanics to shoot the breeze and fill in the gap that seems to be really lacking for most men.
Or we could all just go back to church like the old days, but uh... nah, Id rather sleep in.
Edit: Because of this post, I just texted one of my old friends. Turns out in the last few months he had to put down his dog, then he lost a niece to suicide and a nephew OD'd. Damn, now I feel guilty for not getting in touch sooner. Definitely going to take him out for a beer and a little cheering up.
I'm not projecting or judging here, I'm not married so I'd genuinely be interested in your opinion. I've seen a ton of reporting on this exact scenario with men these days where their spouse becomes their really only close friend and confidant and while the wife usually has a robust friend network to spread their emotional needs around, they usually become the sole emotional outlet for their husbands - and that can be quite taxing when in addition to the duties as a spouse, sometimes, mother, etc. As an outsider it just seems like a potentially very compromising position for both people to be in.
Does that description at all resonate with you? What are your thoughts on this usual commentary?
Well my wife doesnt actually have a ton of friends either, but she does have a lot of work colleagues as well as three adult children who definitely communicate regularly with her, usually every day or two.
But as far as sharing the stuff that goes deeper than 'how was your day' we are each other's closest confidantes. I know there are days I talk her ear off, but Ive also learned to recognize when her eyes glaze over and her mind is elsewhere, so we just joke about it and I shut up lol.
But Im also online here and other places regularly so I see that as part of my 'social circle' and I enjoy the conversations, particularly Tildes which is far more polite than most online spaces.
Does that imply that they don’t communicate regularly with you?
Not OP, but you're assuming that the adult kids of his wife are also his adult kids.
They're my stepkids, and no, they definitely talk to their mother a great deal more lol. We get along great but its a mom thing.
I have three of my own, but none who live close by, so I try to fill in the gap by facetiming them. Having grandkids really gives a lot more reason to see them as much as I can.
This feels emblematic of the "get married, move out to the middle of nowhere for space" direction. And it's like, yeah, you moved out to the middle of nowhere, what did you expect?
I don't think it's as present in the urbanites, although it's inherently a biased sample, since you wouldn't know people with no friends by definition.
The 'burbs are emblematic of a devaluing of friendships in general. Whenever someone is moving out "for space", the considerations are always: affordable housing, spAcE, school systems, and so forth. Never, "I have a lot of friends who live there", or "there is a subculture that I want to be a part of".
Friendships are a weaker relationship, so they need to be reinforced more. Living near your friends is more of a necessity if you want to keep them. Where did the author finally have his long-missed guy hangout? In Manhattan.
Everyone is different, and I'm sure the sPAcE is worth it for many, but others should ask themselves what they're really going to miss.
Online communities (and by communities I mean group-chat sized) probably help as well, but the author is probably too boomer for that subculture. I mean, he talks about calling people lol.
edit: I also see a lot of stories that are like "I had one friend, and they moved, and now I have no friends", and it's like, having ONE friend should've been the warning sign! You should always be trying to make new friends. When you become friends with someone, try to hang out with their friends. Something can always happen, from moving to marriage to death. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and all.
There are legitimately things that you can't do and hobbies you can't realistically have without space. It's hard to be into motocross, blacksmithing, woodworking, mountain biking and so forth if you live in New York city. I think it's actually impossible to consider some of those things your hobby versus something you do occasionally, if you need to plan a multi day trip to do it.
Most things, however, can be done in a city. It's just that you have to get used to sharing space in a way that many people have grown uncomfortable with. You don't need a gym in your home. You can go to a shared gym. You don't need a giant set of bookshelves in your home, you can go to a library. You don't need a workshop in your home, you can go to a maker space.
Yes, it's more convenient to have that stuff in your house, but most people don't really consider the true cost. An increased mortgage for the extra space, increased energy use to heat/cool it, increased taxes for that square footage All the equipment you have to buy and maintain, paying for gas to drive out to the middle of nowhere, potentially a septic tank. And then of course the most painful cost of all, not having any real friends.
I think a lot of people don't think about these hidden costs when it comes to fantasizing about a life of homesteading isolation. I'm sure it works for some people, but the way it's glorified online, I think a lot of people don't really understand how expensive, inefficient, and painful that kind of life can be in all sorts of small, hidden ways.
Hell I don't think many of the people living those types of lives realize how much its making them miserable. They're usually the ones making mean Facebook posts with a selfie profile picture behind the driver's seat of a pickup truck.
To be completely contrarian (I already sold my pickup truck but I still have a pickup sized SUV) moving from a city of 1.6M to a town of 60k and then to a rural subdivision has been joyful. I always described myself as a city kid and mildly mocked those 'country hillbillies' but now that I live here, you'd have to get a team of wild horses (or two rednecks in a jacked up F350) to drag me back into town.
The main thing I notice is the peace and quiet. I didnt realize how MUCH background noise there was in the city until it was gone. We even lived in a playground zone, but that didnt stop the trucks and the bikers from ripping through it, blasting that loud exhaust note and shaking the walls at times. The occasional train whistle. The constant hum of traffic. It never goes away in the city, even at night.
And then I came out here and... silence. Its gloriously quiet. There's the odd kid on a dirt bike or a delivery truck but most days I dont see more than one or two cars go by. And there's a reason they say that living near nature is good for your mental health. Cause it is. We can walk through a forest and breathe in all that fresh, clean air, listen to the wind blow gently, birds singing, and watch the river flow in the valley below. People PAY for that kind of therapy but dont find it in the city.
The other major pro is the privacy. I love working on my vehicles or building projects so I have stuff spread around our acreage. In the city, every time I went in the house I had to hide or lock up tools to make sure they didnt get lifted by someone passing by. Not here. I can leave everything out and two days later, its right where I left it all. We dont even lock our doors when we head into town. Because there is no theft, no vagrants, no meth heads, no door to door solicitors, no one bothers to come out here unless they have a reason to. Absolutely love it.
My personal view of this romanticism around homestead life is that it’s a result of the stress of work more often than not. People are put through a tremendous amount of stress and their jobs keep getting more challenging and laborious without proper compensation, and they are suffering for it. But the only thing that they can see as a way to deal with it is usually to buckle up and keep working. No wonder they are dreaming of escape.
I haven’t married anybody, but I did move to the suburbs for one of your listed reasons: cost. I can technically afford to live downtown in a US city where doing things without a car and thus socialization is easy, but at some point in my early 30s it began to hurt to see so much of my paycheck burned away on basic housing.
It sucks. Even the well-paid are faced with the choice of being able to stick a decent amount cash away in savings/retirement or being able to maintain a social circle.
The other big reason was actually noise. The suburbs I’m in are so much more quiet and free of disturbances like cars with cut off mufflers blaring music rolling through at 3AM and it’s blissful. US cities would do well to actually enforce noise ordinances and mandate a certain level of soundproofing in residential buildings.
In the end, it's all about tradeoffs. I just think it's worthwhile to reconsider how those tradeoffs weigh. I'm not saying you think this way necessarily, but there's a general sentiment that "you're stupid if you rent in your 30s/married/etc". And I think people should think about it more.
"You're still living in a shoebox? You're almost 40! Get a grip and stop partying, settle down in bumfuck nowhere already."
Life is meant to be lived, in the end, not a video game scored with how much money you have on your deathbed. Is it better to have more savings, but be alone and isolated? That will depend on personal factors, but I suspect that many people who would rather live a full, happy life talking to more than 1 person but who deny it to themselves.
I would add that health is a part of this as well. It's well documented that having a healthy social circle is incredibly and materially important to your physical health, not to mention mental health. It's so important that in magnitude, having a strong social circle can be as much a determinant on your lifespan as smoking is.
I’d say the two things driving me to lean towards saving money are:
The first of those points is particularly strong for me because I spent over half of my 20s dead broke and scraping by and I don’t want to ever return to that if I can help it.
All that said I absolutely want to be able to go out and do things with people, which is why longer term I’m trying to tee things up for moving to a city abroad with much lower cost of living, as well as setting up income streams to help establish financial independence. It’s a lot of work, but if those plans go well I’ll be able to land in a place with minimal tradeoff and maximal benefit — I’ll be in a physical location that’s conducive to building and maintaining connections while also having the time and money to do the connecting and maintenance.
What are some ways that other men on Tildes have been strengthening their friendships?
I've moved around a lot and have male friends spread across the globe. One thing I've been doing is to cold call them. Some answer, some don't, some only have a few minutes to cordially say hi, but I've had success with others and even had a three hour conversation with a friend who I used to be very close with.
Unfortunately my home life has been a struggle this past year. My closest friend where I live betrayed me and when I tried to work it out with him he was just unable to own up to his actions. The wider friend group knows something is going on with him, in general, and more than a few of us are convinced he's cheating on his SO. The situation is so messy I've just decided to distance myself from it all. Unfortunately he and his partner are very central to our friend group so hangouts have become award and I kind of woke up and realized I don't have a ton in common with the others in the group. I'm now starting from scratch which is difficult when you're well past college aged but I'm not giving up hope.
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences in this area; that sounds incredibly challenging.
For context/levelsetting purposes, I’m a cishet male in my 30s. Forgive the armchair professing, but I think that one of the factors that contributes to this is that, at least in my experience, men often bond over shared experiences, i.e. doing together instead of thinking or discussing together. In a weird way, I felt like I bonded with my wife a lot more quickly than I bonded with any of my longtime male friends, even the ones I’m still friends with today after 20 years, because in that male-to-female connection, there was a lot more engagement and discussion that immediately got deep. Of course it’s not fair to generalize that all M/M or M/F interactions play out this way, but it did in my case. And it’s also not to say that it would be impossible to build these bonds quickly and deeply with male friends, old or new, but I feel like it doesn’t occur to us so immediately.
And with all that in mind, when you meet friends as an adult, what’s the one thing you tend to lack compared to any other point in your life? Time! The time you would have had in HS or college to have these shared experiences with male friends. The time to drive around town aimlessly, or play games, or just vent without really digging too deep. Time that we took for granted as young(er) men who spent days, weeks, months in the company of peers by force of circumstance, and developed these deep connections without much deliberate effort.
I’ve developed what I would consider one good friendship since moving states with my wife, and even so, it was only thanks to a shared interest / life experience (we’re both actively gigging musicians and met online when looking for folks to gig/jam with in the area). But even so, I find it hard to maintain in the same way as we both have young children and live ~45 minutes away from each other. It very much feels like an uphill battle.
I know this isn’t a direct answer to your question, but moreso wanted to say that you’re not alone and echo that it is challenging.
This absolutely isn't useful or economically prudent advice for most people, but I fly around to meet my friends multiple times a year, even if it's just to chill at their home eating takeout for a couple of days. While I'm not wealthy, I'm at a comfortable enough income level where I view maintaining those friendships with in-person activity as more valuable than saving some tens of thousands of dollars extra for when I'm old. My now-closest friends are people I met online and spontaneously (only a few days' notice) flew out to visit after knowing them only a short time.
For years I've been stumped about why Joe Rogan and his podcast are popular. Is this basically it? It's essentially a proxy for friendships for a large section of American men?
Makes as much sense as anything.
Between lack of time and third spaces it's pretty tough for anyone. My partner grew up in the area so she has friends from elementary schools through college that we see regularly. Their partners are cool but we're usually in group settings where I'm bad at conversation. Most of my best male friendships developed while working on something. Not to imply the contrapositive, but I think men do well building trust when accomplishing something together. It helps you to see how that other person deals with adversity, communicates, and whether they are dependable.
We built a great grad school family. Trauma-bonding and all that. But jobs spread us across the world. We have one big meet up every year. A couple days at someone's house with food and board games. Regularly contact is still difficult to maintain as none of us are social media users and so much of our relationships were built on sitting together for deep conversations.
Other places I've made friends, or met people that could be friends that I haven't pursued, is work and the gym. I know some good people from my gym, the challenge is that I never really connected outside the gym. At work I've made a couple good friends. One was actually going through some really tough medical stuff with his dog so I think that sped up our ability to talk about our personal lives.
But really what makes this all tough is time. We try to meet up outside of work but we live about an hour apart and there's just life happenign and driving two hours to hang out for a bit is a hard sell.