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Why Is It So Hard for Men to Make Close Friends?
- hobbitstan 4y agoMen don’t need friends. Men need family. You have some casual friends at work then spend your quality time with family and maybe some childhood friends you kept in touch with. This is the natural way of things.
- eatbitseveryday 4y agoYou do need friends. Spouse and kid don’t share your hobbies…
- hobbitstan 4y ago
- DangitBobby 4y agoDoes this account exist purely for you to to write hot takes in the comments?
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- nailer 4y agoLikewise it’s helpful to have someone to talk about your problems with other than your spouse. Especially if the problem is your spouse.
- deodar 4y agoI always saw men in my father's generation (he was born in the 1940s) have many close friends that would get together regularly. These close and decades old friendships are especially critical now that he's retired. Without them, he'd be completely isolated. A significant percentage of men not having any close friends feels like a recent development in the last 1-2 generations.
- popularonion 4y agoGoing by the stories I’ve heard from my dad and uncles, they all had lots of male friends and drinking buddies, guys they knew from the union, the bowling league, the VFW, the Lions Club, etc. All those institutions that have either completely collapsed or become irrelevant for young people in America. I don’t think any of those guys went to church much. The take that GP is expressing feels like a very post 1980s thing.
- klipt 4y agoI wonder how much of it is men having to move more for work than in the past. Easier to stay in contact with your highschool friends if you can all find good jobs in your hometown. If that friend group overlaps with the bowling league and the union, so much the better. Much harder to join a bowling league and make friends from scratch with no pre existing connections to the social fabric.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago>Going by the stories I’ve heard from my dad and uncles, they all had lots of male friends and drinking buddies, guys they knew from the union, the bowling league, the VFW, the Lions Club, etc. All those institutions that have either completely collapsed or become irrelevant for young people in America. None of those friends and support groups would be "close" friends per TFA's definition because they weren't acting in the quasi-therapist role that the author apparently thinks is required of "close" friends. Yet clearly those relationships filled the need.
- jdmtheNth 4y agoYou need people like yourself to be a community with, and we're all too fragmented now. Men needed friends as a foil for family responsibilities, and now that the ideal of the nuclear family has been cancelled over the last couple of decades, men don't have any use for friends anymore.
- pkd 4y agoWhy? What makes it "natural"?
- theflyingelvis 4y agoI don’t think that I agree. The two folks that I consider to be my BFF’s recently helped me (and my wife) through a difficult time. Each had a specific set of skills and were able to offer support and help in ways that my family wasn’t. Cancer and cancer treatment was a bitch. The importance of friends (and family) became evident to me during that time. YMMV I guess.
- hardware2win 4y agoIt sounds sad If that was said by married man then I'd joke that he needs a little longer leash
- atoav 4y agoAh the good old natural argument, that does ignore that reality (or as some call it: nature) looks different. What you call natural is societal behaviour that is specific to western society of this day and age. Even in our own society looking three generations back that "nature" looked different and if you cared to look elsewhere than where you live you'd find that what you call "natural" does not exist in certain other cultures as well right now. Be careful to mistake something feeling natural to you (because you know no different) to something actually being natural in an evolutionary biological sense. Those two are very different bars to clear in terms of proof.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoThe societies that look different to you are more family oriented and as such agree with the poster you're responding to. Men want people they would willingly die for, family and only the closest of friends qualify. Western individualism has, in many ways, lost that very basic need. This is why men who have been through experiences have a tendency to become close friends. Think about former war buddies. Sports is, in many ways, a simulated war scenario.
- dartharva 4y agoIf it were natural we wouldn't be facing such a situation and having this debate right now.
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- Dendilion 4y agoI enjoy the company of my male friends. It's not natural what we do in our modern society at all btw. Tribes were very normal and tribes never just focused on family. Animal kingdom also shows plenty of group and tribe behavior
- strikelaserclaw 4y agomen need friends, women need friends, everyone needs friends.
- jdmtheNth 4y agoThis is an excellent point, and it's telling that the article espouses feminization as the solution. Men in general are competition to each other, and it is difficult to feminize oneself sufficiently to become a non-threat to other men. Take the natural standoffishness of men and add that to the increasing number of women that think they can do better than any man who's interested in her, and you get a loneliness epidemic. Add the constant degradation of the male role in society, and you get diseases of despair.
- eatbitseveryday 4y agoI wish I had some. I heard once, the best or only places to make friends as an adult are where encounters are repeated and casual, so like university and church. But I don’t attend either.
- klooney 4y agoOr just do what everyone else does and watch TV instead. I'm only kind of joking.
- pram 4y agoI've made tons of good friends in online places over the years. Forums, AOL, MMOs, Discord. Heck I even met my wife through World of Warcraft. All these things are 'repeated' and 'casual' and online. They're not "social media" though (which seems inhumanly anonymous and transactional to me) more like communities built around specific things.
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- tptacek 4y agoGo to a board game meetup. Take a woodworking class.
- ido 4y agoOr...A job at an office?
- atoav 4y agoArt exhibitions and gallery openings, the gym, a sports tournament, every kind of society, concerts, bands, club or voluntary activity, ... If you don't put yourself into the places where you get to know new people and don't spend some fraction of your time there you might not find friends. Getting to know people is not luck, it happens when you want to do it. Getting to know people is the first step of finding friends (or relationships for that matter). There is enough places to go, just pick one you like and put yourself out there.
- klooney 4y agoMirror: https://archive.ph/7q7H4 https://archive.ph/7q7H4
- ReptileMan 4y agoIt is really not hard. Find decent people with which you have something in common. Give them some loyalty and support and if you get some back - you have friends. With years they turn into close friends. Men's friendships are forged they don't just happen. The town - 2010: - I need your help. I can't tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people. - Whose car are we gonna take?
- n4r9 4y agoThis doesn't ring true. Friendship is defined by a willingness to engage in violence without reason? Loyalty means supporting and accepting someone for who they are. Not just doing whatever they ask regardless of consequence.
- threatofrain 4y agoSome people do work like this. They wish to do violence and would prefer some company (for example, perhaps after witnessing a delightful soccer match in Belgium). Of course there are also many fulfilling & intimate friendships where people don't ask for help in hurting people.
- DieBruderBauer 4y agoTo steelman ReptileMan's point -- I think we should extract the _spirit_ of the back-and-forth of the quoted exchange and realize that it's about the willingness to jump in... to anything a potential friend might suggest and to see where that takes you (within reason and preference, of course).
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoI have a friend I've known since I was 16 and I'd do absolutely anything for that man. But you damned well better believe I would ask questions and make decisions based upon the answers. I'd probably also talk him down from doing something stupid. I like your point about male friendships being forged (it's very true), but your example is a non-sequitur.
- episteme 4y agoIs this really only applicable to men?
- Narann 4y agoThe title is misleading, don't read only it. The article talk about how men makes close friends almost automatically before (highly related to job) and why it's not the case now. So yes, the article only focus on men because the reason why men makes close friends almost automatically before doesn't work in how men behave now.
- Eleison23 4y agoMany of us are victims of feminism to some degree. I managed to make lasting friends in high school with some gay boys. But after high school, I preferred to hang around straight people, and a straight guy won't get too close--because it might be gay? I was subjected to decades of gender-based emotional abuse and so my relationships with women are also poor. This is a direct result of feminists and feminism. I developed an attitude that women can fend for themselves and don't really need me to assist or be a gentleman anymore, because feminists drilled that all into my head. Example: I invited a woman to church one evening and the event had a reception with delicious food afterward. It finished up around 9pm and we were right in the middle of downtown in a major metropolis. I flitted off to the train station chatting to a different woman. I hadn't given a second thought that my companion was stuck downtown wearing dark clothing and she would also need to find a bus stop, alone and female. Honestly none of that occurred to me because I didn't even consider it a "date" or a "companion" for the night. I have a close male friend but I am extremely troubled on an ethical level that we should not have such a friendship. It's difficult to explain and I'm sure I hurt his feelings but he has a huge family and, if you ask me, I mean little to him compared to others. COVID-19 and the Internet killed off all my remaining social opportunities. I sit at home and I work and I sleep and I eat, and that's existence. My closest friends are YouTubers and so they get all my likes and subscribes.
- tartoran 4y ago> I invited a woman to church one evening and the event had a reception with delicious food afterward. It finished up around 9pm and we were right in the middle of downtown in a major metropolis. I flitted off to the train station chatting to a different woman. I hadn't given a second thought that my companion was stuck downtown wearing dark clothing and she would also need to find a bus stop, alone and female. Honestly none of that occurred to me because I didn't even consider it a "date" or a "companion" for the night. You inviting someone somewhere would make you a decent human being if attend to them even if you had no sexual or emotional incentive to, it’s because you are the one who invited them.
- brozaman 4y ago> Many of us are victims of feminism to some degree. A male doesn't have male friends and this is femenism's fault? > But after high school, I preferred to hang around straight people, and a straight guy won't get too close--because it might be gay? Sounds like you have some serious insecurities... One of my best friends is gay, I don't think anyone ever thought I'm gay because I hang out with him, but if they did I just don't care. My mate is more important to me than some random prick's opinion. Also plenty of activities considered manly and not gay are done in groups. Team sports are often perceived as manly not gay activities, things like hunting or fishing are also done in groups commonly and society percieves them as totally not gay, even after Broke Back Mountain. Men hanging out with other men are usually not perceived as gay. I'm not saying that you are, but this sounds like a repressed gay man would be insecure of. And there's nothing wrong with being openly gay, but being repressed fucks people's mental health. > I was subjected to decades of gender-based emotional abuse and so my relationships with women are also poor. This is a direct result of feminists and feminism. Honestly pretty much everyone is influenced by the society, feminists and feminism are everywhere. If it was something provoked by a social movement as large as feminism it would hapen affect everyone. It would affect me, your coworkers, your cousin, the butcher, etc. Now I agree that social interactions in general have changed, but most people still manage to have functional relationships. Sounds to me that you have some internal issues to deal with... Perhaps professional wouldn't hurt.
- sph 4y agoI posted an Ask HN post yesterday, because I want to create a Discord server to idle on and talk about nothing with strangers, with no rules of engagement. Like the good old days of hanging out on IRC. If you're feeling the loneliness of our times as much as I do, you are more than welcome. Remember to share your Discord name and I'll ping you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33775355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33775355
- aaron695 4y ago
- Khaine 4y agoBecause any media that shows two males as friends, has legions of people claiming them as gay, i.e. Sam and Frodo, Sherlock and Watson. So in the popular conscience two close guys must be gay. You cannot have a relationship in popular culture between two males, without a vocal minority claiming them as gay. Men subconsciously react to that. To signal they are straight avoid looking like they have close relationships with other men.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoAs a male, that's never factored into having male friends, are you sure you're not projecting your own insecurities onto others?
- milkytron 4y agoExactly my thoughts. As a straight male, I've never had this issue. Even if someone were to think we were gay, who cares? Maybe we could be, I don't see the issue. Maybe some men have this insecurity, but if they're letting the unknown opinions of strangers prevent them from having meaningful friendships, I think they may need to work that out.
- nickthegreek 4y agoI have never seen this happen. In fact, I only see the opposite, it can be difficult to have a friend of the opposite sex without people thinking you are intimate.
- FooBarBizBazz 4y ago> it can be difficult to have a friend of the opposite sex without people thinking you are intimate. Is this really a counterexample? It would seem to me to be another example of the same phenomenon.
- hgsgm 4y ago
- favflam 4y agoI moved to a city. One reason was that the car-dominated suburbs makes it reaaaally hard to make friends. Time from getting out of bed to meeting someone is like 30-45minutes, and I have to spend money. In the city,it is more like 15 minutes, meaning you can do it twice as often, hang out longer. I would say this is a big factor. The country side works so long as your friends are close by for beer, movies, and games? maybe?
- fatnoah 4y agoI agree with this 100%. When I lived in the city with my family, I'd a) run into random friends frequently and b) getting together was trivial since a large number of people lived within walking distance.
- Tagbert 4y agoI find the opposite problem that living in a larger city makes connecting with people outside of work harder. Everyone lives far away and getting together can take an hour of driving. A small or mid sized city on the other hand has a large enough group of people but they are more accessible to each other on evenings and weekends.
- Tade0 4y ago> Time from getting out of bed to meeting someone is like 30-45minutes, and I have to spend money. In the city,it is more like 15 minutes, meaning you can do it twice as often, hang out longer. How tightly packed is your calendar that this makes such an enormous difference? I'm asking because I always met my friends in the city centre, to which the commute alone from my place was 45min.
- favflam 4y agoIt is less about a packed calendar and more about being able to say yes to spontaneous invites. Friend, “Hey man, I’m at the coffee shop. Want to join me?” Me, “ya, sure. Be there in 15min.” No prep, and no money spent (well, maybe a train fare if you can’t walk or ride a bike).
- Overtonwindow 4y agoAn anecdote I heard at a time ago was it is difficult for some men to make close friendships with other men because of homophobia - or the perception of.
- locutous 4y agoTo get a friend you have to first, be a friend. You have to invest your time into the relationship. Friendships are forged over time with others who reciprocate. We are, generally, losing this skill as a society.
- Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago> Why Is It So Hard for Men to Make Close Friends? But do we actually need it?
- cafard 4y ago"One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible." Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Ch XX, Failure (1871). Yet curiously there is constant mention of friends in the preceding chapters and beyond: I looked up the quotation in the Gutenberg Project version, and the sentence following has the 105th of 149 occurrences of the string "friends". Was Adams just being sententious, or do we have inconsistent notions of what friends are, or both?
- hgsgm 4y ago