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I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. I have many acquaintances, I’m not shy o

by d4nt 5y ago

I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. I have many acquaintances, I’m not shy or socially awkward. E.g. When I was running a business I would often go to business networking events alone, start conversations with people, establish a rapport and spend hours chatting, but all those interactions have essentially left me with one good friend. I’ve often found it easier to establish friendships with women, but (being straight) they get complicated. Either I develop feelings, or they do, or there’s a suspicion from someone’s parter about the real nature of our relationship. It’s just too problematic. I think the female “model” of friendships outlined in the abstract just makes more sense to me. “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” is what I want from a friendship. I suspect there are other men in this position and that the dominant male “model” of friendship that we have (and which is outlined in this article) is more cultural than biological. But I have no proof. What do you think?

marktangotango 5y ago
> I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. Same here. Maybe you, like me, have none of the characteristics the fine article mentions? > (men) value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates.
- xapata 5y ago
  Interestingly, having female friends to fulfill the need for emotional support will create the "access to potential mates" characteristic that makes it easier to have male friends.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  I think it may be even deeper. I have 3 male friends who are extremely close types. And others I would say are very close types. However, they are not particularly wealthy, afford me no access to potential mates, and are definitely not what anyone would term "physically formidable". (Maybe one is? If you only look at his height and ignore his freakishly gangly frame.) Point is, I was willing to initiate friendships with them 25 years ago or whatever despite them checking none of the boxes I should have been looking for. (According to the study). I wonder if most men are simply unwilling to do that? Maybe most men actually do look for those things, and will never consider friendships with any man who doesn't have them? There is a concept in dating called "settling". I wonder if most men are "unwilling to settle"? So, you're right, it is possible the commenter has none of those things, but it's equally possible that the commenter has all of those things, and simply wants to be around the rest of the "cool kids"?
- stereolambda 5y ago
  I find this list very weird, like someone would look for a... strong patron? not a friend? My understanding of manhood (which I don't pretend to be normative) is that you're supposed to make do with as much of those things as you have yourself, work with your limitations, not attach to someone else. A friend is supposed to be pleasing/interesting to be around (i.e., compatible) and trustworthy. I would even tone down signalling the qualities mentioned in TFA to avoid attracting into relationships the people who are looking for gain. It would be dangerous to build your life on these.
  - deleted 5y ago
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xapata 5y ago
I have the same problem. Luckily, I do have male friends in the emotional support category, but they are all old friends from school and none live in the same city as me.
snarf21 5y ago
It is definitely hard to make friends as an adult male. Most of mine at this point are ex-coworkers. I think the one under appreciated place is in a hobby. I design and play board games. There are lots of meaningful ways to build relationships around that. Most other hobbies are the same, however you have to really get into the hobby, not go once a month. Running clubs, photography groups, cooking classes, hiking clubs.... just find something and dive in until you find the right thing for you. Also, When Harry Met Sally was right. Men and women can't be friends. Eventually the sex gets in the way. Speaking for my self, men tend to confuse all closeness with romantic intimacy. I've never seen even explicitly sex buddies work either, sooner or later someone gets jealous or serious.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I think this depends. I’m a male but my two best friends are women who are in a relationship with each other. I think that it’s true that most straight people of the opposite sex can’t really be friends long term without one of them becoming infatuated with the other.
- johnny22 5y ago
  it doesn't actually HAVE to be that way though. You can have closeness without romantic interest if you realize that's what's happening. It's a learnable skill. Having a nice cuddle is good to recharge your batteries.
  - bigiain 5y ago
    And you can have romantic interest in someone, while at the same time knowing that’s just not going to happen and behaving accordingly. I have at least half a dozen close woman friends, all of whom I have or have had “romantic thoughts” about, but for various reasons have either not tried, or tried and been rebuffed but stayed close friends with. One example, a girl I met in ‘99 (I still remember the day) and fell head over heels in lust with. She had a boyfriend, so that was out of the question. In the next 15 or so years we were never in a position where both of us were single at the same time. That situation happened about 5 years back, and we ended up in a drunken flirty conversation, where we both agreed that we weren’t going to do this, because we both valued the friendship too highly to risk losing it over a hookup. (Neither of us have great track records of staying friends with exes…) Others had/got boyfriends/partners/spouses, and while all of them involved awkwardness and sometimes outright distrust, I totally understand and acknowledge that’s a normal human reaction to a girl having very close guy friends they’ve known a lot longer than “new boyfriend”. You need to earn trust in those situations, and all you have to do is behave like a rational and respectful human being. It can take a long time though, the girl from the example above got married, it took 3 or 4 years before her husband go ok enough with our friendship that we can go out together alone. And that’s Ok, I reckon I’d have acted exactly the same were the positions reversed.
strickman 5y ago
I think it's more biological than cultural. Men evolved with preference for solving the production problem (are we creating enough?), and women evolved with preference for solving the distribution problem (does everyone have enough?). But as with everything, the behaviors are described by a normal distribution, and these two curves with offset means overlap.
- xapata 5y ago
  What's the evidence for this evolution preference? I am skeptical, because historically, women were substantially involved in agriculture and textile production.
  - strickman 5y ago
    I think one piece of evidence would be the studies in psychology on the "big five" personality characteristics that show women scoring higher than men on agreeableness. But this is more of my guess on how things work. And it's probably not a massive offset in the bell curves; your examples would not be in conflict.
    - xapata 5y ago
      That's an observation of modern characteristics, not evolutionary pressures.
      - strickman 5y ago
        It wasn't my intention to limit my comments on this to statements for which I have links to supporting academic studies. I wanted to propose my guesses, because it's fun to see who else has arrived at the same spot. I was careful to start with "I think it's" rather than "it is true that" or "consensus exists that".
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
oneoff786 5y ago
> I’ve often found it easier to establish friendships with women, but (being straight) they get complicated. Either I develop feelings, or they do, or there’s a suspicion from someone’s parter about the real nature of our relationship. It’s just too problematic. I find it pretty weird to suggest you can’t have an overtly platonic relationship with someone. I’m a straight male, tall, relatively attractive, and on the wealthier side of my social circles. I’m married. It’s very easy to behave in such a way that it’s clear I have no romantic interest in other women. I have never once felt that a woman failed to understand this and behave in kind.
- austhrow743 5y ago
  Do you have a preference for female friendship for emotional support and intimacy like the poster does?
  - oneoff786 5y ago
    I don’t think that’s particularly salient. It’s not difficult to portray yourself as non romantically interested. I’m not buying that the poster behaves in a way consistent with just looking for friendship at all. Especially with the comment that partners get suspicious.
    - austhrow743 5y ago
      I would struggle greatly to portray myself as non-romantically interested and still have the level of intimacy many women have with their close friends. They're real touchy and huggy. Resting heads on laps or shoulders. My current partner regularly has sleep overs with her best friend where they rug up on the couch and watch movies late at night. They share the bed when my partner hosts. And its not exactly something strange I haven't seen before. Physical touch is huge to me when it comes to feeling close to someone so when I think of women's more emotionally supportive and intimate relationships these are all the the things I think of. Maybe it's different for you. But I've seen lesbians express frustration at how it can be difficult to tell if someones interested because of it, with some relationship origin stories being that they were both having late night movie dates with their 'straight' friend, wishing the other was gay too.
openknot 5y ago
>I have many acquaintances, I’m not shy or socially awkward. E.g. When I was running a business I would often go to business networking events alone, start conversations with people, establish a rapport and spend hours chatting, but all those interactions have essentially left me with one good friend. I have a similar experience when attending more professional environments. However, I think it's easier to create relationships marked more by friendly intent — rather than professional advantages — when working with people outside of your industry, especially in non-profit contexts. In these contexts, as there are less/no immediate professional advantages, you are likely staying in touch due to liking their personality. >I think the female “model” of friendships outlined in the abstract just makes more sense to me. “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” is what I want from a friendship. I suspect there are other men in this position and that the dominant male “model” of friendship that we have (and which is outlined in this article) is more cultural than biological. But I have no proof. I have no problems having a friendly but tactful relationship with other men who are competitive, but I would idly prefer a close friendship with a guy similar to the friendships I experienced in elementary/middle/high school due to spending lots of time with the same people. I really missed that kind of relationship when I was in university. However, I've shifted expectations to only expect a "best friend"-like relationship (where I can let my guard down and act like myself) with a romantic partner. I just don't think most people in my bubble are willing to set aside the time and energy to nurture and maintain close friendships (e.g. meeting up with someone just to hang out or grab dinner) in other contexts.
dnautics 5y ago
likely cultural. There are a lot of (possibly "extreme") male environments where males DO provide emotional support to each other, though probably at a lower throughput that the "typical female" friendship, and where they don't, it's empirically dysfunctional -- for example, groups of men living together in submarines, deployed in the military/bootcamp, prison, but also some less extreme stuff like fraternities. On the other hand, for men, finding yourself a "band of brothers is "your job". If anything the cultural defect that we don't tell men that it's up to you to create your own band, and that we don't give them the tools to do so (note my examples are almost all "men forced together by happenstance"). There is a cottage industry of male support groups that is starting to address this that's getting really popular, if you want a rec, I'm doing one starting mid-next-month, I trust the pod leader, he's my housemate, and really good at this. Contact info in my bio As for the sex differences, I suspect both men and women need approximately the same amount of emotional support, just that in our culture, men undershoot how much they think they need (often by a factor of infinity) and women overshoot.
darod 5y ago
it's actually very easy to make friends with other men but it will typically be done around an activity. my mentor used to categorize these activities as Tools, Toys, Tinkering and Ball Handling (Sports). If you want to make friends join a club, play a sport, etc.
PKop 5y ago
I think it is biological, and also that "culture" is generally an expression of biology also. Why wouldn't biological factors influence the collective expression of human nature? Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum outside of these forces. There are probably some men like you describe but your lack of success finding what you're looking for speaks to the likelihood the standard model for male friendships closer to accurate and more prevalent..and dare I say natural. Depending on what you actually mean by "intimacy", here's a relevant comment I made on another thread about difficulty finding friendships for men: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047 copying below: "True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think sports teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood friends and the experience growing up. It is hard to establish anything meaningful of a connection with casual interactions, and expecting to just "party/play hard" with people you don't really know is putting the cart before the horse. First you must work hard together. I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. I've had great success meeting people within the context of group workouts. It has regular class schedules, and provides a way to ease into social interactions at your own pace as you'll be around the same people regularly. Often this leads to opportunities to do things together outside of the classes. Additionally, there are likely individuals with similar disinterest in the common activities you mentioned in you CS classes. Finding opportunities to work with someone on class assignments, studying or projects together would fall in the "shared struggle" category."
k__ 5y ago
Similar "problem" here. I got raised by my mother alone. My father left when I was 5 and even before, he was at work all day anyway. Then I got a step dad when I was 13, but most of my formative years I was raised by my mother alone. I imagine that's one reason for this problem. I only have interest in female friends and basically went all polyamory because of that. This way the feelings problem isn't a problem anymore. I had the experience that many people would somehow value me as a good friend of them, but I only see them only as an acquaintance.
ronnier 5y ago
You are competition to other men. Why would they invite you into their social group and then have to compete with you for relationships with women (which are increasingly hard and harder for men to secure). That's my crazy theory anyways. Before we had hard social and religious contracts to pair one man with one woman... so the threat was low. That's all thrown out the window now, so there's a real threat that the man you make friends with might actually be the person who ruins your chance at a relationship -- I think that's in peoples mind. Anyways, just a crazy theory.
- pc86 5y ago
  What evidence is there that finding a relationship is "increasingly hard[er] and harder for men to secure" compared to any other time in history? And what evidence is there that monogomy is "thrown out the window now?"
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    it probably is harder… but that’s because families can’t intimidate 15 year old girls into marrying grown men anymore
Madmallard 5y ago
I don’t really thinking feelings potentially throwing a wrench in a male female friendship is actually a problem. It’s not like anything in life is permanent.
h0l0cube 5y ago
The problem with reading the results of broad statical analyses like these is that it primes you to think about cohorts in a homogenous way, whereas the individual differences, which are often far greater, are underemphasized by the paper that's motivated to establish its relevance
nicoburns 5y ago
28 year old male here, and I totally agree (although I’ve had far less problems with female friendships than you). I have some male friends, but far fewer, and I think it’s because I’m looking for this “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” , and not that many men are open to that.
sharikous 5y ago
Having read the paper it seems that the strongest, most consistent differences are in mate-seeking ("introduce me to potential romantic partners") and emotional support ("reach out if I'm having a bad day"). The other stuff you mention, social information ("tells me when someone says something negative about me") has basically no consistent difference between the sexes. And to answer your question I definitely think there is some biology involved. Like most of this stuff, cultural builds on that and creates even more structure.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Yes, my last good female friend ended up getting married and her husband became jealous. Stopped trying making friends with women because of the jealousy factor (happened once before too). I gave up having male friends years ago because I was tired of doing all the work. Haven’t had a friend other than my wife for 10 years. It sucks, but I’ve learned to live with it.
greggman3 5y ago
this will be controversial on HN but many non USA cultures, specially asian, the people you work with are your friends. You go out drinking with them 2-3 times a week after work. You celebrate with them on weekends etc... So many people on HN have the attitude that making friends at work is something to actively avoid but there's another way to look at it. You're going to be spending 40hrs a week, ~2000hrs a year with these people. If you make them friends that's 2000 hours a year or more spending time with friends. If you don't make them friends well, then ... I can only guess that ~2000hrs a year is less enjoyable that it could be. Yes, some of those relationships are shallow. I have coworkers who I really seemed to hit it off with at work but once I left we stop contacting each other. OTOH, My 4 closest friends are x-coworkers. I was best man at one's wedding and attended the 3 others. I often consider if I should give up a FAAMG salary to be in a small 10 person company where they are all friends, we share our lives outside work too, but I get paid 1/5th to 1/6th what I make now. I know 50+ people living that life and they seem pretty dang happy. That doesn't mean you can't have both but for some reason I get the impression it's easier at smaller companies or at least smaller groups.
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  Why do you expect that you'll be good friends with your team at a small company if you can't find a team at a large one?
  - greggman3 5y ago
    that's my experience having worked at both. Camaraderie is easier in smaller groups. Larger companies have teams but various parts of the larger organization put a damper on getting as close. For example all the obligations to the company outside your team. Those same obligations don't exist at the small companies I've worked at. Also having so many people around that aren't the team.
- wenc 5y ago
  My closest friendships were my grad school friends. We were all working on different topics so there was no competition. On the contrary, there was a sense of questing -- we were trying to tackle difficult unsolved problems. We would be in the office till midnight -- catching the last bus at 1 am -- and working out ideas on the chalkboard. We would celebrate after exams, go to conferences together etc. I'd often imagined this was the kind of environment that existed in places like Bell Labs.
fallingfrog 5y ago
I absolutely agree.
irrational 5y ago
The best (only?) way I’ve found to make same-sex (male) friends in middle age is to have a common interest to do together. Board gaming is what has worked for me. I have a group of guys that we get together to play board games on a regular basis.
jozvolskyef 5y ago
I'm a 30 year old male and I've always found it easy to make male friends and maintain meaningful male friendships. That includes men of all ages. I don't know how, except perhaps by being genuinely interested in their lives and projects they're working on. I'm guilty of being too honest for my own good which may or may not play a role. Despite treating females exactly the same, more often than not they mistakenly assume I'm romantically interested in them. When I was a teenager I was often taken aback by their negative reactions to my messages. I'd copy-paste the offending my message to a male, or have the same conversation with a male, and the men always reacted positively. It was quite puzzling.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  The problem is that you’ve been lied to when they taught you that men and women are identical. They aren’t. So you shouldn’t expect them to react the same way, in general.
  - idontknowifican 5y ago
    - deleted 5y ago
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    - jtbayly 5y ago
      lol. I mean, I don't know if this is satire, or what. Are you aware of testosterone?
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        It's not (directly) about testosterone in this case, women are more guarded/suspicious because they're being hit on all the time. For men it would be an opportunity, for them it's a nuisance/threat.
    - bronzejaguar 5y ago
hiptobecubic 5y ago
I have two "real" male friends, neither of which I made in the last decade. I wonder if their point is not that our society doesn't generally agree that the "collaborative" aspects of friendship are better than the "competitive" benefits, but that despite this, we still behave as we do. I wonder if we'd see the same results if this study had been done in a more matriarchal culture than the US.
- greggman3 5y ago
  I'm curious if church attending people have more friends on average. They have a social gathering they go to at least once a week. Some religions have many more meetups. I'm not a church person but I'd love to find a social club that met a similar amount
dsugarman 5y ago
There's a lot here, I just want to respond to one small thing and not central to your larger post but genuinely hope it's useful. Networking events are not a good place to make meaningful relationships, period. People are going in hopes to further their careers in one way or another so the interactions are somewhat superficial on the social level.
Mezzie 5y ago
This is very interesting to me because I'm the reverse of you: I'm a female who is more drawn to the male version of friendship. I don't want friendships that revolve around emotional support and intimacy; I want friendships that revolve around exploring and trying new things together. In my experience, friendships revolving around emotional support also demand that you need a certain amount of support and that you support the other person in the same way, and despite having a vagina, I'm not good at emotional support. Emotional friendships, in my experience, turn my emotions into a social display instead of just letting me feel them. Men are also better at letting my main emotion be anger/annoyance. Women always want me to be sad or upset about things, but I'm more of a 'swear-filled rant and then work on something unrelated' type of person. So I'd agree that it's cultural as well as biological. Either that or we're biological outliers (which would also make sense).
e-clinton 5y ago
I make friends very easily with both men and women and have lots of them, but I honestly try to avoid it as it’s such a time suck. :)
gexla 5y ago
> “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” Where's the element of PLAY in this? What about FUN? When you mention "my whole life" - does that include when you were South Park age (5th grade?) For me, it's all improv and it's a fun game. I seek out the opportunities to play it. It's "yes, and" as you pass the ball back and forth in conversation. Some do better with this than others. For some, conversation might be totally a status game or some other motive involved. For most people, it's good to simply excuse yourself and move on. I'll often LARP along, but subtly parody the situation, to grind down the seriousness. In bars, I can "take the piss" or "bust your balls" with the best of them. If you haven't heard those terms, it's basically banter, but with different terms for people from different regions. Again, it's all improv and adaptation to the person / group. I find that groups are the best, but they are hard to find. You can't just form a group, and they won't last forever. It's a bit of a spontaneous thing. But once you find a good one, it's better than any individual friendship. Maybe the bonds are strengthened by a sense of shared comraderies within a group that you don't get from an individual friendship. In any case, you have to get out in a search for some shared fun.
yibg 5y ago
I’m kind of similar. I have many more female friends than male friends. I just get alone better with them for the most part. I’ve always been in long term relationships so it’s not a romantic thing. My males friends, even though fewer in number are closer though.
tarboreus 5y ago
I think the way men are "meant" to have friendships (i.e., what biology suggests), is to bond over shared initiatives, organizations, or projects. This can look like working together on a job site for 10 hours, having two beers over 2 hours, and saying 5 sentences that are extremely meaningful. However, modern life doesn't really have the infrastructure for this. Most of us on this site are not engaging in woodworking, sailing, or warfare on a daily basis with the same group of men. I've had some success in tweaking the female model to male friends, but it takes a lot of work on my part. I call male friends on the phone, which is something most Americans do not do. We either talk work, hobbies, or joke around, maybe 10% of tehse conversations would qualify as more intimate. Those, and they are many, who can't or won't talk on the phone I tend to drift away from, or only see occasionally.
- Viliam1234 5y ago
  > I think the way men are "meant" to have friendships [...] is to bond over shared initiatives, organizations, or projects. I feel similarly, but I classify "life" as a project. And a very important one. I have friends with whom I can discuss various ways how to make our lives better (e.g. how to take care of health, how to learn, how to get rich, how to help others, how to live meaningfully).
aj91fl48znv3mpk 5y ago
I'm a 44 year old male and also have had trouble with generating meaningful friendships. I don't have any acquaintances. I'm not shy or socially awkward (I think?). I suppose I'd consider myself a rare reader of ycombinator that has always earned near too or under the poverty line. I can see that people like me might try to cling onto any sort of positive opportunity for a relationship outside family - and in that process, absolutely destroy whatever potential was there. I guess what I'm saying is that relationships can get weird fast. Boundaries must be understood either implicitly or explicitly for a plutonic relationship to flourish. I'm drinking a 12-pack of beer as I type this, alone. Been doing this for over a decade. I don't like drinking with others. This is normal for me. I don't like most people, because most people come off as either asshole or idiot. I'm self aware enough to realize that I too will at times be either an asshole or idiot to someone else. As much as I try not to be.
flippinburgers 5y ago
I have only one good male friend. I have a couple acquaintances who are male. As for women who are friends: my wife. Trying to be platonic friends with women has never really gone well for me because at least one of us actually wants something more. Unlike yourself, I haven't really tried to make friends, but that is mostly because it feels like a dead on arrival concept to me.

by d4nt 5y ago

marktangotango 5y ago

> I’m a 42 year old male and have found it very hard, my whole life, to establish meaningful friendships with other men. Same here. Maybe you, like me, have none of the characteristics the fine article mentions? > (men) value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates.

xapata 5y ago
Interestingly, having female friends to fulfill the need for emotional support will create the "access to potential mates" characteristic that makes it easier to have male friends.
bilbo0s 5y ago
I think it may be even deeper. I have 3 male friends who are extremely close types. And others I would say are very close types. However, they are not particularly wealthy, afford me no access to potential mates, and are definitely not what anyone would term "physically formidable". (Maybe one is? If you only look at his height and ignore his freakishly gangly frame.) Point is, I was willing to initiate friendships with them 25 years ago or whatever despite them checking none of the boxes I should have been looking for. (According to the study). I wonder if most men are simply unwilling to do that? Maybe most men actually do look for those things, and will never consider friendships with any man who doesn't have them? There is a concept in dating called "settling". I wonder if most men are "unwilling to settle"? So, you're right, it is possible the commenter has none of those things, but it's equally possible that the commenter has all of those things, and simply wants to be around the rest of the "cool kids"?
stereolambda 5y ago
I find this list very weird, like someone would look for a... strong patron? not a friend? My understanding of manhood (which I don't pretend to be normative) is that you're supposed to make do with as much of those things as you have yourself, work with your limitations, not attach to someone else. A friend is supposed to be pleasing/interesting to be around (i.e., compatible) and trustworthy. I would even tone down signalling the qualities mentioned in TFA to avoid attracting into relationships the people who are looking for gain. It would be dangerous to build your life on these.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

xapata 5y ago

I have the same problem. Luckily, I do have male friends in the emotional support category, but they are all old friends from school and none live in the same city as me.

snarf21 5y ago

It is definitely hard to make friends as an adult male. Most of mine at this point are ex-coworkers. I think the one under appreciated place is in a hobby. I design and play board games. There are lots of meaningful ways to build relationships around that. Most other hobbies are the same, however you have to really get into the hobby, not go once a month. Running clubs, photography groups, cooking classes, hiking clubs.... just find something and dive in until you find the right thing for you. Also, When Harry Met Sally was right. Men and women can't be friends. Eventually the sex gets in the way. Speaking for my self, men tend to confuse all closeness with romantic intimacy. I've never seen even explicitly sex buddies work either, sooner or later someone gets jealous or serious.

edgyquant 5y ago
I think this depends. I’m a male but my two best friends are women who are in a relationship with each other. I think that it’s true that most straight people of the opposite sex can’t really be friends long term without one of them becoming infatuated with the other.
johnny22 5y ago
it doesn't actually HAVE to be that way though. You can have closeness without romantic interest if you realize that's what's happening. It's a learnable skill. Having a nice cuddle is good to recharge your batteries.
- bigiain 5y ago
  And you can have romantic interest in someone, while at the same time knowing that’s just not going to happen and behaving accordingly. I have at least half a dozen close woman friends, all of whom I have or have had “romantic thoughts” about, but for various reasons have either not tried, or tried and been rebuffed but stayed close friends with. One example, a girl I met in ‘99 (I still remember the day) and fell head over heels in lust with. She had a boyfriend, so that was out of the question. In the next 15 or so years we were never in a position where both of us were single at the same time. That situation happened about 5 years back, and we ended up in a drunken flirty conversation, where we both agreed that we weren’t going to do this, because we both valued the friendship too highly to risk losing it over a hookup. (Neither of us have great track records of staying friends with exes…) Others had/got boyfriends/partners/spouses, and while all of them involved awkwardness and sometimes outright distrust, I totally understand and acknowledge that’s a normal human reaction to a girl having very close guy friends they’ve known a lot longer than “new boyfriend”. You need to earn trust in those situations, and all you have to do is behave like a rational and respectful human being. It can take a long time though, the girl from the example above got married, it took 3 or 4 years before her husband go ok enough with our friendship that we can go out together alone. And that’s Ok, I reckon I’d have acted exactly the same were the positions reversed.

strickman 5y ago

I think it's more biological than cultural. Men evolved with preference for solving the production problem (are we creating enough?), and women evolved with preference for solving the distribution problem (does everyone have enough?). But as with everything, the behaviors are described by a normal distribution, and these two curves with offset means overlap.

xapata 5y ago
What's the evidence for this evolution preference? I am skeptical, because historically, women were substantially involved in agriculture and textile production.
- strickman 5y ago
  I think one piece of evidence would be the studies in psychology on the "big five" personality characteristics that show women scoring higher than men on agreeableness. But this is more of my guess on how things work. And it's probably not a massive offset in the bell curves; your examples would not be in conflict.
  - xapata 5y ago
    That's an observation of modern characteristics, not evolutionary pressures.
    - strickman 5y ago
      It wasn't my intention to limit my comments on this to statements for which I have links to supporting academic studies. I wanted to propose my guesses, because it's fun to see who else has arrived at the same spot. I was careful to start with "I think it's" rather than "it is true that" or "consensus exists that".
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

oneoff786 5y ago

> I’ve often found it easier to establish friendships with women, but (being straight) they get complicated. Either I develop feelings, or they do, or there’s a suspicion from someone’s parter about the real nature of our relationship. It’s just too problematic. I find it pretty weird to suggest you can’t have an overtly platonic relationship with someone. I’m a straight male, tall, relatively attractive, and on the wealthier side of my social circles. I’m married. It’s very easy to behave in such a way that it’s clear I have no romantic interest in other women. I have never once felt that a woman failed to understand this and behave in kind.

austhrow743 5y ago
Do you have a preference for female friendship for emotional support and intimacy like the poster does?
- oneoff786 5y ago
  I don’t think that’s particularly salient. It’s not difficult to portray yourself as non romantically interested. I’m not buying that the poster behaves in a way consistent with just looking for friendship at all. Especially with the comment that partners get suspicious.
  - austhrow743 5y ago
    I would struggle greatly to portray myself as non-romantically interested and still have the level of intimacy many women have with their close friends. They're real touchy and huggy. Resting heads on laps or shoulders. My current partner regularly has sleep overs with her best friend where they rug up on the couch and watch movies late at night. They share the bed when my partner hosts. And its not exactly something strange I haven't seen before. Physical touch is huge to me when it comes to feeling close to someone so when I think of women's more emotionally supportive and intimate relationships these are all the the things I think of. Maybe it's different for you. But I've seen lesbians express frustration at how it can be difficult to tell if someones interested because of it, with some relationship origin stories being that they were both having late night movie dates with their 'straight' friend, wishing the other was gay too.

openknot 5y ago

>I have many acquaintances, I’m not shy or socially awkward. E.g. When I was running a business I would often go to business networking events alone, start conversations with people, establish a rapport and spend hours chatting, but all those interactions have essentially left me with one good friend. I have a similar experience when attending more professional environments. However, I think it's easier to create relationships marked more by friendly intent — rather than professional advantages — when working with people outside of your industry, especially in non-profit contexts. In these contexts, as there are less/no immediate professional advantages, you are likely staying in touch due to liking their personality. >I think the female “model” of friendships outlined in the abstract just makes more sense to me. “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” is what I want from a friendship. I suspect there are other men in this position and that the dominant male “model” of friendship that we have (and which is outlined in this article) is more cultural than biological. But I have no proof. I have no problems having a friendly but tactful relationship with other men who are competitive, but I would idly prefer a close friendship with a guy similar to the friendships I experienced in elementary/middle/high school due to spending lots of time with the same people. I really missed that kind of relationship when I was in university. However, I've shifted expectations to only expect a "best friend"-like relationship (where I can let my guard down and act like myself) with a romantic partner. I just don't think most people in my bubble are willing to set aside the time and energy to nurture and maintain close friendships (e.g. meeting up with someone just to hang out or grab dinner) in other contexts.

dnautics 5y ago

likely cultural. There are a lot of (possibly "extreme") male environments where males DO provide emotional support to each other, though probably at a lower throughput that the "typical female" friendship, and where they don't, it's empirically dysfunctional -- for example, groups of men living together in submarines, deployed in the military/bootcamp, prison, but also some less extreme stuff like fraternities. On the other hand, for men, finding yourself a "band of brothers is "your job". If anything the cultural defect that we don't tell men that it's up to you to create your own band, and that we don't give them the tools to do so (note my examples are almost all "men forced together by happenstance"). There is a cottage industry of male support groups that is starting to address this that's getting really popular, if you want a rec, I'm doing one starting mid-next-month, I trust the pod leader, he's my housemate, and really good at this. Contact info in my bio As for the sex differences, I suspect both men and women need approximately the same amount of emotional support, just that in our culture, men undershoot how much they think they need (often by a factor of infinity) and women overshoot.

darod 5y ago

it's actually very easy to make friends with other men but it will typically be done around an activity. my mentor used to categorize these activities as Tools, Toys, Tinkering and Ball Handling (Sports). If you want to make friends join a club, play a sport, etc.

PKop 5y ago

I think it is biological, and also that "culture" is generally an expression of biology also. Why wouldn't biological factors influence the collective expression of human nature? Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum outside of these forces. There are probably some men like you describe but your lack of success finding what you're looking for speaks to the likelihood the standard model for male friendships closer to accurate and more prevalent..and dare I say natural. Depending on what you actually mean by "intimacy", here's a relevant comment I made on another thread about difficulty finding friendships for men: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28969047 copying below: "True friendship comes mostly from shared struggle. Think sports teams, military, small teams at work, even childhood friends and the experience growing up. It is hard to establish anything meaningful of a connection with casual interactions, and expecting to just "party/play hard" with people you don't really know is putting the cart before the horse. First you must work hard together. I'd suggest joining a Crossfit gym or similar. I've had great success meeting people within the context of group workouts. It has regular class schedules, and provides a way to ease into social interactions at your own pace as you'll be around the same people regularly. Often this leads to opportunities to do things together outside of the classes. Additionally, there are likely individuals with similar disinterest in the common activities you mentioned in you CS classes. Finding opportunities to work with someone on class assignments, studying or projects together would fall in the "shared struggle" category."

k__ 5y ago

Similar "problem" here. I got raised by my mother alone. My father left when I was 5 and even before, he was at work all day anyway. Then I got a step dad when I was 13, but most of my formative years I was raised by my mother alone. I imagine that's one reason for this problem. I only have interest in female friends and basically went all polyamory because of that. This way the feelings problem isn't a problem anymore. I had the experience that many people would somehow value me as a good friend of them, but I only see them only as an acquaintance.

ronnier 5y ago

You are competition to other men. Why would they invite you into their social group and then have to compete with you for relationships with women (which are increasingly hard and harder for men to secure). That's my crazy theory anyways. Before we had hard social and religious contracts to pair one man with one woman... so the threat was low. That's all thrown out the window now, so there's a real threat that the man you make friends with might actually be the person who ruins your chance at a relationship -- I think that's in peoples mind. Anyways, just a crazy theory.

pc86 5y ago
What evidence is there that finding a relationship is "increasingly hard[er] and harder for men to secure" compared to any other time in history? And what evidence is there that monogomy is "thrown out the window now?"
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  it probably is harder… but that’s because families can’t intimidate 15 year old girls into marrying grown men anymore

Madmallard 5y ago

I don’t really thinking feelings potentially throwing a wrench in a male female friendship is actually a problem. It’s not like anything in life is permanent.

h0l0cube 5y ago

The problem with reading the results of broad statical analyses like these is that it primes you to think about cohorts in a homogenous way, whereas the individual differences, which are often far greater, are underemphasized by the paper that's motivated to establish its relevance

nicoburns 5y ago

28 year old male here, and I totally agree (although I’ve had far less problems with female friendships than you). I have some male friends, but far fewer, and I think it’s because I’m looking for this “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” , and not that many men are open to that.

sharikous 5y ago

Having read the paper it seems that the strongest, most consistent differences are in mate-seeking ("introduce me to potential romantic partners") and emotional support ("reach out if I'm having a bad day"). The other stuff you mention, social information ("tells me when someone says something negative about me") has basically no consistent difference between the sexes. And to answer your question I definitely think there is some biology involved. Like most of this stuff, cultural builds on that and creates even more structure.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

Yes, my last good female friend ended up getting married and her husband became jealous. Stopped trying making friends with women because of the jealousy factor (happened once before too). I gave up having male friends years ago because I was tired of doing all the work. Haven’t had a friend other than my wife for 10 years. It sucks, but I’ve learned to live with it.

greggman3 5y ago

this will be controversial on HN but many non USA cultures, specially asian, the people you work with are your friends. You go out drinking with them 2-3 times a week after work. You celebrate with them on weekends etc... So many people on HN have the attitude that making friends at work is something to actively avoid but there's another way to look at it. You're going to be spending 40hrs a week, ~2000hrs a year with these people. If you make them friends that's 2000 hours a year or more spending time with friends. If you don't make them friends well, then ... I can only guess that ~2000hrs a year is less enjoyable that it could be. Yes, some of those relationships are shallow. I have coworkers who I really seemed to hit it off with at work but once I left we stop contacting each other. OTOH, My 4 closest friends are x-coworkers. I was best man at one's wedding and attended the 3 others. I often consider if I should give up a FAAMG salary to be in a small 10 person company where they are all friends, we share our lives outside work too, but I get paid 1/5th to 1/6th what I make now. I know 50+ people living that life and they seem pretty dang happy. That doesn't mean you can't have both but for some reason I get the impression it's easier at smaller companies or at least smaller groups.

hiptobecubic 5y ago
Why do you expect that you'll be good friends with your team at a small company if you can't find a team at a large one?
- greggman3 5y ago
  that's my experience having worked at both. Camaraderie is easier in smaller groups. Larger companies have teams but various parts of the larger organization put a damper on getting as close. For example all the obligations to the company outside your team. Those same obligations don't exist at the small companies I've worked at. Also having so many people around that aren't the team.
wenc 5y ago
My closest friendships were my grad school friends. We were all working on different topics so there was no competition. On the contrary, there was a sense of questing -- we were trying to tackle difficult unsolved problems. We would be in the office till midnight -- catching the last bus at 1 am -- and working out ideas on the chalkboard. We would celebrate after exams, go to conferences together etc. I'd often imagined this was the kind of environment that existed in places like Bell Labs.

fallingfrog 5y ago

I absolutely agree.

irrational 5y ago

The best (only?) way I’ve found to make same-sex (male) friends in middle age is to have a common interest to do together. Board gaming is what has worked for me. I have a group of guys that we get together to play board games on a regular basis.

jozvolskyef 5y ago

I'm a 30 year old male and I've always found it easy to make male friends and maintain meaningful male friendships. That includes men of all ages. I don't know how, except perhaps by being genuinely interested in their lives and projects they're working on. I'm guilty of being too honest for my own good which may or may not play a role. Despite treating females exactly the same, more often than not they mistakenly assume I'm romantically interested in them. When I was a teenager I was often taken aback by their negative reactions to my messages. I'd copy-paste the offending my message to a male, or have the same conversation with a male, and the men always reacted positively. It was quite puzzling.

jtbayly 5y ago
The problem is that you’ve been lied to when they taught you that men and women are identical. They aren’t. So you shouldn’t expect them to react the same way, in general.
- idontknowifican 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    lol. I mean, I don't know if this is satire, or what. Are you aware of testosterone?
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      It's not (directly) about testosterone in this case, women are more guarded/suspicious because they're being hit on all the time. For men it would be an opportunity, for them it's a nuisance/threat.
  - bronzejaguar 5y ago

hiptobecubic 5y ago

I have two "real" male friends, neither of which I made in the last decade. I wonder if their point is not that our society doesn't generally agree that the "collaborative" aspects of friendship are better than the "competitive" benefits, but that despite this, we still behave as we do. I wonder if we'd see the same results if this study had been done in a more matriarchal culture than the US.

greggman3 5y ago
I'm curious if church attending people have more friends on average. They have a social gathering they go to at least once a week. Some religions have many more meetups. I'm not a church person but I'd love to find a social club that met a similar amount

dsugarman 5y ago

There's a lot here, I just want to respond to one small thing and not central to your larger post but genuinely hope it's useful. Networking events are not a good place to make meaningful relationships, period. People are going in hopes to further their careers in one way or another so the interactions are somewhat superficial on the social level.

Mezzie 5y ago

This is very interesting to me because I'm the reverse of you: I'm a female who is more drawn to the male version of friendship. I don't want friendships that revolve around emotional support and intimacy; I want friendships that revolve around exploring and trying new things together. In my experience, friendships revolving around emotional support also demand that you need a certain amount of support and that you support the other person in the same way, and despite having a vagina, I'm not good at emotional support. Emotional friendships, in my experience, turn my emotions into a social display instead of just letting me feel them. Men are also better at letting my main emotion be anger/annoyance. Women always want me to be sad or upset about things, but I'm more of a 'swear-filled rant and then work on something unrelated' type of person. So I'd agree that it's cultural as well as biological. Either that or we're biological outliers (which would also make sense).

e-clinton 5y ago

I make friends very easily with both men and women and have lots of them, but I honestly try to avoid it as it’s such a time suck. :)

gexla 5y ago

> “emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information” Where's the element of PLAY in this? What about FUN? When you mention "my whole life" - does that include when you were South Park age (5th grade?) For me, it's all improv and it's a fun game. I seek out the opportunities to play it. It's "yes, and" as you pass the ball back and forth in conversation. Some do better with this than others. For some, conversation might be totally a status game or some other motive involved. For most people, it's good to simply excuse yourself and move on. I'll often LARP along, but subtly parody the situation, to grind down the seriousness. In bars, I can "take the piss" or "bust your balls" with the best of them. If you haven't heard those terms, it's basically banter, but with different terms for people from different regions. Again, it's all improv and adaptation to the person / group. I find that groups are the best, but they are hard to find. You can't just form a group, and they won't last forever. It's a bit of a spontaneous thing. But once you find a good one, it's better than any individual friendship. Maybe the bonds are strengthened by a sense of shared comraderies within a group that you don't get from an individual friendship. In any case, you have to get out in a search for some shared fun.

yibg 5y ago

I’m kind of similar. I have many more female friends than male friends. I just get alone better with them for the most part. I’ve always been in long term relationships so it’s not a romantic thing. My males friends, even though fewer in number are closer though.

tarboreus 5y ago

I think the way men are "meant" to have friendships (i.e., what biology suggests), is to bond over shared initiatives, organizations, or projects. This can look like working together on a job site for 10 hours, having two beers over 2 hours, and saying 5 sentences that are extremely meaningful. However, modern life doesn't really have the infrastructure for this. Most of us on this site are not engaging in woodworking, sailing, or warfare on a daily basis with the same group of men. I've had some success in tweaking the female model to male friends, but it takes a lot of work on my part. I call male friends on the phone, which is something most Americans do not do. We either talk work, hobbies, or joke around, maybe 10% of tehse conversations would qualify as more intimate. Those, and they are many, who can't or won't talk on the phone I tend to drift away from, or only see occasionally.

Viliam1234 5y ago
> I think the way men are "meant" to have friendships [...] is to bond over shared initiatives, organizations, or projects. I feel similarly, but I classify "life" as a project. And a very important one. I have friends with whom I can discuss various ways how to make our lives better (e.g. how to take care of health, how to learn, how to get rich, how to help others, how to live meaningfully).

aj91fl48znv3mpk 5y ago

I'm a 44 year old male and also have had trouble with generating meaningful friendships. I don't have any acquaintances. I'm not shy or socially awkward (I think?). I suppose I'd consider myself a rare reader of ycombinator that has always earned near too or under the poverty line. I can see that people like me might try to cling onto any sort of positive opportunity for a relationship outside family - and in that process, absolutely destroy whatever potential was there. I guess what I'm saying is that relationships can get weird fast. Boundaries must be understood either implicitly or explicitly for a plutonic relationship to flourish. I'm drinking a 12-pack of beer as I type this, alone. Been doing this for over a decade. I don't like drinking with others. This is normal for me. I don't like most people, because most people come off as either asshole or idiot. I'm self aware enough to realize that I too will at times be either an asshole or idiot to someone else. As much as I try not to be.

flippinburgers 5y ago

I have only one good male friend. I have a couple acquaintances who are male. As for women who are friends: my wife. Trying to be platonic friends with women has never really gone well for me because at least one of us actually wants something more. Unlike yourself, I haven't really tried to make friends, but that is mostly because it feels like a dead on arrival concept to me.