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Men 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

Men 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 ago
You do need friends. Spouse and kid don’t share your hobbies…
- hobbitstan 4y ago
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    Does this account exist purely for you to to write hot takes in the comments?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- nailer 4y ago
  Likewise 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 ago
I 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 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. 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 ago
    I 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 ago
  You 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 ago
Why? What makes it "natural"?
theflyingelvis 4y ago
I 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 ago
It sounds sad If that was said by married man then I'd joke that he needs a little longer leash
atoav 4y ago
Ah 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 ago
  The 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 ago
If it were natural we wouldn't be facing such a situation and having this debate right now.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Dendilion 4y ago
I 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 ago
men need friends, women need friends, everyone needs friends.
jdmtheNth 4y ago
This 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 ago

You do need friends. Spouse and kid don’t share your hobbies…

hobbitstan 4y ago
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  Does this account exist purely for you to to write hot takes in the comments?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nailer 4y ago
Likewise 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 ago

I 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 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. 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 ago
  I 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 ago
You 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 ago

Why? What makes it "natural"?

theflyingelvis 4y ago

I 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 ago

It sounds sad If that was said by married man then I'd joke that he needs a little longer leash

atoav 4y ago

Ah 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 ago
The 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 ago

If it were natural we wouldn't be facing such a situation and having this debate right now.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Dendilion 4y ago

I 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 ago

men need friends, women need friends, everyone needs friends.

jdmtheNth 4y ago

This 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.