Title. Well these days I’ve been feeling lonely, and I feel somewhere male friendships I have aren’t that strong. I’ll be honest, I don’t have many female friends either, but I’ve been particularly felt disappointed by my male peers, especially when it comes to talking emotionally. What are your experiences?
This is one of the things that I’m pretty satisfied with and grateful for in my life. No romance, currently no job, not much I’m excited about on the horizon, but I’m very happy with the friendships I’ve cultivated with other dudes. I just wish we all lived closer together. A handful of us do a semi-regular video chat where we check in and see how everyone’s doing. We hold space for emotional vulnerability and support each other however we can. We talk about issues with life, family, or sometimes just shoot the shit and have a regular chat about whatever we’ve been up to.
When people talk about holding your male friends accountable for saying sexist things or reinforcing typical toxic bullshit, I feel very fortunate that I just don’t have friends like that. I like to think I’d call it out if it happened, but I just never have to hear that kind of shit from my friends and I don’t think I’d cultivate a friendship with someone who’s comfortable saying that kind of stuff.
We’re all in our 30’s at this point and some are starting families. I don’t get to see everyone as much as I’d like, but any time I get to spend around them always feels so restorative. I’ve never been shy about expressing my true feelings and I tell each and every one of them that I love them. I used to really enjoy making my more guarded friends squirm with an “I love you,” but it doesn’t really work anymore because now everyone is just as comfortable saying it as I am.
I wish every dude could have guy friends like this. There’s a lot of cultural baggage that makes it harder than it should be. I appreciate the question because I often struggle with feeling gratitude for the things in my life that I’m most thankful for. I spend too much time in a negative headspace, but I’ve got a good bench of bros I can lean on and I need to appreciate that.
I don’t project insecurities as lack of friendships
I have a wife and kids and a good amount of friends. Some are friends of convenience (neighbors and such I see everyday or kids are friends and we hang out or are part of our puckleball league) and some are just aquiantances but I got like 4-5 friends I really enjoy seeing and hang out with twice a month or more.
No. Mainly for these reasons.
I tried more when I was younger. At some point I couldn’t be bothered with those kind of things anymore.
Maybe it’s just me or the places I’ve been, but men are value superficially. Most guys I’ve thought were friends were shallow or based on value extractions.
There was one man only who didn’t care about tangible values. Whether that be monetary, social capital, or what have you. We drifted apart over the years and lost contact all together. Might be the only true friend I’ve ever had.
It seems from my experience the gateway to most male friendship is animalistic headbutting. I’m not about that. Maybe I tired of that too soon before my age group moved on from that phase. I don’t know.
Hell yeah, I love my homies. Most of my friends I met through conventions, which is a pretty easy way to meet people. We game sometimes, we’ve worked on cosplay, had wild parties, and we talk and hang out sometimes. A bunch aren’t local but I’ve also got a lot of guys who I hang out with locally.
You just gotta find the right people and don’t hang out with the people who you don’t vibe with. Throw a party for the people you do like and they can invite people that are cool they like.
I’ve moved too many times, and now I’m in that difficult age where I have teenage children, and all my peers are too focused on their careers. It’s lonely, but I have four (or more) hobbies that I’m really passionate about, so I’m weathering it well enough… And I have my own career, but I work remote.
If any of you find yourselves in San Diego, California, and you want to get coffee/tacos/beer/whatever, send me a message.
I have painstakingly picked a few guys from literally all the guys I’ve ever met, and these guys are the best. It’s been a lot of trial and error to get here, but it was well worth the effort.
Yes, my best friend and I have been friends for 35 years, even though he lives 1000 miles away. I’m close with one of my male cousins and we talk regularly. My wife and I also just hung out with another longtime male friend and his wife and just spent the night bullshitting. Also making new friends, including men, at the living history museum I’m on the board of.
I’m not always sure why these folks want to hang out with me, but I’m glad to have them in my life.
I have no friends.
it’s mostly a personal choice, but also a lack of acceptable partners.
I rely on nobody. I lean on nobody. I share with nobody. not because I feel masculine doing it, but because I don’t feel the need to. I’ve been “alone” for decades at this point and anything else feels foreign.
should I find one or many friends, they would inevitably need me more than I them and that would be unfair to them and me. if I would befriend someone like me it negates the friendship entirely. the importance of a friendship being built on bilateral support is often undersold or ignored entirely.
Am I lonely? sometimes. Am I happy? rarely. Am I satisfied? satisfactorily. introducing a friend to my life would inevitably destabilize my balanced world where it was no longer within my control.
should I find one or many friends, they would inevitably need me more than I them and that would be unfair to them and me.
I feel the other way with the few friends I have. I need them more than they need me, and it shows, it’s always me reaching out. this makes me have the unfair feeling too, that I am taking their time
that’s why it’s important for that bilateral support.
people who haven’t experienced a need for support can’t understand the level of strength it takes to receive it.
in a friendship where you’re given everything, guilt builds, which festers into regret and animosity. sometimes that can happen on both sides. sometimes just the figment of it happening is enough to end a friendship.
if the friendship is important to you, find your strength and find a way to support your friend. sometimes it’s as easy as finding the strength to support yourself.
Eh, control’s overrated 💜
Yep. I have a few really old friends elsewhere in the world that I’m no longer in regular touch with that were having a great time when we meet. Then I have my homies around the city that I’ve known for twenty odd years that we have a group chat with almost daily messages and I meet at least one about once a month. Finally I have the local dog people that have become friends over the last years that we happen upon outside, and some go on dog walks and I’m invited to their events and parties.
All these circles are both men and women, curiously progressively younger than me the more new friends and acquaintances I make. I feel that I can ask people in any of these circles if I need help or talk about something, selectively depending on the need but still.
I’m really an introverted dude with a need for private time so this is quite sufficient for my social needs and with my dog by my side I very rarely feel lonely.
I’ve tried, man. I at least got better at socializing in a common atmosphere, so I don’t feel so distant, but many people just don’t reciprocate communications. I invite a repeating occasion for people, and they’ll need 8 reminders or just not show up, to the point I don’t bother. When I realize I’m always the initiator, I decide that connection isn’t important to them.
God forbid a deeper need like confessing to traumas or needing emotional support. Some of the slightest favors I’ve asked of people have been too much. All the “above and beyond” actions I’ve ever seen in my life where people do things for one another have been in fictional media, never between actual human beings.
My closest, only and true friend is a friend of 25 years.
We live in different countries today, don’t speak everyday, but any opportunity we have to talk it seems like nothing has changed and we’re still the same two goof balls we were back then.
Just added with a strong dad vibe. And jokes.
I had a close friend too, but it feels like we’re drifting apart . Both Ideologically and socially. And again, he’s not the guy I feel comfortable being emotionally vulnerable to. I don’t think there’s any friend who I’m genuinely comfortable being emotionally vulnerable to. And I don’t know where to find such friends anymore. I’ve become a working man(started interning, still a fresher), I feel like my days of finding close friends are over.
To maintain a friendship at least one has to occasionally reach out. Ideally both.
Be the one if you must.
No, I don’t have a handful of friends but “drifting apart” is easy.
You have a job now, so does he, maybe you have a partner and so does he, maybe one of you will have a kid soon, or both, you have bills to pay and other hobbies, you like to go out, and guess what? So does he.
It’s easy to keep delaying because you don’t have time. Make time. It does not have to be a lot of time. He’s busy, just like you, but if he wants to maintain the friendship, he’ll answer the call when he can make time too.But honestly, its kinda complicated. Like I want to give an anecdotal evidence. Just a few days ago, we were talking, and there was another friend of mine talking to a girl, and he was obviously trying on her. Then we talked for sometime, and he asked her, what do you do for living.
She said she’s in grade 8.
And honestly all of us were perplexed cause we thought she was an adult. Now what I felt was the right thing to do would have been terminate convo, or just have a casual conversation and never mention it again. Instead, the second the girl stepped away, both of them started discussing how she’s bluffing and stuff, and they were so loud and unsubtle about it, she was standing 10 feet away and could hear it.
I saw 3 options in front of me of what could have happened
- She’s actually a minor
- She’s lying cause she wasn’t interested in the other friend
- Some stupid games
Neither of the 3 cases invite a conversation in my opinion. And come on have some manners, she’s standing 10 feet away from you, that’s such an awkward spot to put someone under if it was one of the first two things. I even told him this, he shrugged it away, saying she was just playing games.
And honestly it’s kinda become a pattern. I’ve become more opinionated on several topics, those are the convos I just cannot have with most people around me.
I have few friends already because I am a socially awkward guy, and I have no Idea what to do when I’m faced with situations like these.
Well, my comment was to encourage you to maintain friendships you want to maintain. If you don’t want to maintain the ones you currently have, for whatever reason, you are in the right to not do it.
I don’t have suggestions on how to make new friends unfortunately. I’ve often seen suggested to join new hobbies or volunteer for that. Maybe try that 🙂
You guys have friends?
Yeah. I have several active groups of friends:
Neighbor friends. These are the people I tend to reach out to when I’m taking my kids to a playground or a local neighborhood restaurant or other activity. I usually coordinate with them for local neighborhood events.
Work friends. These are the people I tend to socialize with during the day, or with the periodic happy hour or work outing. Sometimes I travel with some of them for work, so it’s sometimes a friendly partner to explore another city with in our down time, and usually some sort of shared project for the actual work time.
Text message friends. These are people who I don’t necessarily hang out with in person all that much, mostly because we don’t live in the same cities, but I have about 3-5 very active group text threads around some shared interest or common friend group or former social connection (like going to the same school), maybe 3-5 more somewhat active group text threads. We share memes, news stories, links, just general discussion about our lives, etc.
I’ve had to reset and make new friends probably 5 or 6 times in my life, moving cities somewhere new. Each time I get a new local friend group, and I try to stay in touch with the ones I got along with best. A lot of that social stuff was out of necessity, but it built some social skills and got me used to making friends well into my 30’s and beyond.
All of the males around me are conservatives. No
You need to turn off the machine in your belt that turns men conservative!
I’m not a conservative and I’m RIGHT HERE IN YOUR CLOSET.
God help you for what you’ve seen from in there
