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American men’s hidden crisis: They need more friends!

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Satch said:
that's not womens fault

hes not right to any extent lol
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Sure it is. If they'd just stop dressing that way, and walking that way, and wearing makeup and shit.

Edit: doh! Dumb snarky post at the top of a new page. :/
 
I hate how this thread is filled to the brim with guys who blame everyone around them for their insecurity and their problems rather than taking a step back and questioning themselves.
 
JohnDoe said:
I hate how this thread is filled to the brim with guys who blame everyone around them for their insecurity and their problems rather than taking a step back and questioning themselves.
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I think most in this thread aren't blaming something else, but more simply ambivalent to their problems (which creates issues but for another thread).
 
Guess I'm doing pretty good then. I've got male and female friends who I confide to and can ask of emotional support form and they can ask the same of me. I've always been that way though, even in high school.
 
I usually open up with my female friends because they're just easier to talk to and open up. They're great at emotional support, and I'm always there for them.

However, I been trying to open up to my guy friends, its a slow process, but it has been working and I feel closer to them as friends.


I'm in college if you guys are wondering.
 
As a guy, I don't know how I would describe it, but I feel I can't emotionally connect with any of my male friends. Basically if we describe an emotional issue with one another, it basically ends with a comment along the lines of "Damn, that sucks man." Basically it feels like I've lost a bit of my "manliness" if I talk about emotional issues.

I can talk to my sister about my emotional issues and have no problems doing so.

Based on the article, maybe I've been socially conditioned this way.
 
TheUsual said:
As a guy, I don't know how I would describe it, but I feel I can't emotionally connect with any of my male friends. Basically if we describe an emotional issue with one another, it basically ends with a comment along the lines of "Damn, that sucks man." Basically it feels like I've lost a bit of my "manliness" if I talk about emotional issues.

I can talk to my sister about my emotional issues and have no problems doing so.

Based on the article, maybe I've been socially conditioned this way.
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Damn, that sucks man.
 
As a straight male, most of my friends are female or gay men. And even the straight guys I hang out with tend be a little more in touch with their feminine side, like myself.

I just never enjoyed the hyper masculine stereotype and this never sought friends like that.
 
This article does bring to mind some questions, though. For straight male gaffers, does any of this reflect your experiences?
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Yes, pretty much on the dot.

Did you emotionally withdraw in your teenage years?
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Definitely. I tried to shut off everything during my teenage years because fuck highschool. It didn't help that when I tried to stop something would happen that'd make me want to shut it all off again.

Are your emotionally intimate friendships primarily with women?
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I have two female friends who I confide in. I also have a few male friends where the friendships are getting closer, but not at the stage where I'd consider it emotionally intimate.
 
Alucrid said:
Damn, that sucks man.
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Yeah, it kind of does. I feel I can't even talk to my father about anything that's bothering me in life. I've been raised to take care of my issues myself and not talk about it.

EDIT: Your tongue in cheek reply completely went over my head and I just caught it rereading this thread. :(
 
i feel grateful that my best friends are the same ones i've had since elementary school. people are shocked to hear this for some reason. i value my friendships more than sex because my luck with women is so random and lacking any pattern

i am the omega
 
I left all my friends behind when moving to Europe and now I'm pretty depressed. Can definitely agree with the article on that much. :\
 
I actually don't have a super huge circle of friends. I did when I was younger, but a lot of people have moved away or become interested in different parts of life in the transition to adulthood. The friendships I have maintained run very deep and openly though. Last year I had a coworker who I'd frequently BS with who is the closest I've ever had to this "shoulder to shoulder" type of friendship. And to be honest, I never referred to him as a friend. I'd always refer to him as a coworker.

I think it is easier for most straight whitebread males to feel more comfortable wearing their flaws on their sleeves around supportive female friends. But I also think that most guys are a lot more receptive to emotional bonding than the article would have you believe. You just gotta be open and noncombative. I would sometimes open up to my afformentioned coworker and after being "gently" ribbed and called "kinda gay" for a few exchanges of sentences you kinda break through the layer of BS and they can be more receptive to whatever you wanna talk about. IDK. I'm an interesting mix of personalities so I'm not sure what is true for me is true for other people, but I would never say I have difficulty emotionally bonding with other guys.
dark10x said:
I left all my friends behind when moving to Europe and now I'm pretty depressed. Can definitely agree with the article on that much. :\
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Whoa! You used to be Utah right? Assuming you're the same Dark10 from IGN/Halo/Bungie days about a decade ago.
 
Yeah the only people I can stand to socialize with anymore are girls. I've never been able to relate to other guys that much though, even when I was a kid.
 
People with friends are supposed to be healthier? Fucking great.

Sounds like crap to me, anyways.

Mumei said:
Did you emotionally withdraw in your teenage years?.
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The article doesn't represent me at all, however I was surprised to see it cite the 15-16 range for when boys become withdrawn regarding friendships. 15 is when I abandoned the few friends I had and never befriended anyone else.
 
FluxWaveZ said:
People with friends are supposed to be healthier? Fucking great.

Sounds like crap to me, anyways.
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Supposedly anyone with any sort of hierarchical control in a given community is supposed to be healthy. So at a job, even if you're the lowest of the low as long as you have control over one other or in charge of something that contributes to the greater whole of that particularly insular community its supposed to make it easier for you to be healthier.
 
My emotional support network is nearly entirely women. I've always wondered whether that was normal or not.
 
The opposite is also true "I seriously hate girls. I can only be friends with guys." Is a thing I hear from girls constantly. Probably most notably my sister, but I hear that all the time.
 
I always think about Hugh Grant in About a Boy. I'm an island! I'm bloody ibiza!

At 46, American, white male that article rings true. Everything is so competitive now. I lived in Germany for seven years and it was much easier for me to make friends in general there.
 
I'm 28 male and have no friends of any kind. All I have are acquaintances or people I know due to other people in my life. Outside of my long term relationship with my girlfriend I have no friends or anyone I can talk to or share my interests with outside of being with her. Guess that's just life, and It's not like I don't try and be friendly.

People are just awful when it comes to relationship building of any kind nowadays. Everyone is so seemingly self absorbed by what's going on in there own lives that they aren't interested in making new long term friendships. It's like any relationship you gotta be willing to work on it and most people just don't care enough to try. It'd be nice to one day have a group of friends that I could share interests with, but I'm not holding my tongue for that day to happen anytime soon.
 
Jtwo said:
The opposite is also true "I seriously hate girls. I can only be friends with guys." Is a thing I hear from girls constantly. Probably most notably my sister, but I hear that all the time.
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They don't view the men as competition.
 
Sounds like me. When I was younger my friend group was so tightly knit. But now those same friends dont really seem to be that great of friends any more. Plus we hardly see each other.

For me my issue is that no one seems to be able to keep a secret any more. When ppl tell me things in confidence it stays that way. While when I tell people things or express any sort of emotion the whole world needs to be told for some reason.

It's mostly my friends feel the need to tell their gfs or wives, partners everything. And then they spread the msg to everyone.

Sigh.. I wish I could have a confidant
 
kirblar said:
They don't view the men as competition.
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Its just nice to hang with the opposite sex. I don't know anything about anything and this might sound weirdly sexist but it instinctually makes sense to me that its easier to be emotionally closer with the sex you're attracted to. Even if in that particular instance the relationship is entirely non-sexual.
 
To be close friends, men need to be willing to confess their insecurities, be kind to others, have empathy and sometimes sacrifice their own self-interest. “Real men,” though, are not supposed to do these things. They are supposed to be self-interested, competitive, non-emotional, strong (with no insecurities at all), and able to deal with their emotional problems without help. Being a good friend, then, as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly.
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This is somewhat shifting the whole blame towards other men. Out of personal experience I can only say that this is what regular society wants.

a male crying or maybe just having a serious disease -> made fun of, left alone, called a "loser", "grow-up" etc.
a female crying or maybe just having a serious disease -> the exact opposite reaction

If being girly would be a bad thing by itself, people wouldn't care about females in that case. But the opposite is true.

Which in turn matches the typical male in pain/expecting pain behaviour (physical, psychological doesn't matter) -> wants to be alone

Typical female in pain/expecting pain behaviour -> wants to be with people

I guess even the typical "don't go to a doctor until it's too late" fits into that. And the suicide rate statistic also fits. Way more males succeed. Why do they succeed? Because a) they want to be alone and b) society doesn't care.

To summarize: society as a whole cares deeply about females and gives a shit about males.
 
The moment puberty hits suddenly every other male becomes a rival. I think this part of the rivality-thinking is not such a big thing the in female world, but I might be wrong. At one point you have more experience with connecting to women than to men. Of course gay men have it easier in that regard because they learn to communicate with other men more often. Yes, I believe human-to-human relationships are something you also need to learn. Let's not pretend shit here. We are approaching people from the other gender in a different way. It is the most natural thing. But what happens if you lack the experience with your OWN gender?

When you are 30-something you usally have moved a at least once or a few times and left the people you had a friendship with behind and need to build new ones. What is left? Right, the people you work with. Many modern relationships are founded via work. What happenes if you don't like the people at work? Well, bad luck. For sexual relationships we have online dating sites, but what do we have for building friendships? NeoGAF?

Btw. this is not a problem that only men have, women who concentrating on their career reporting equal problems with developing new friendships.
 
Though its true I confide most in my girlfriend, I have several close male friends who I feel comfortable talking about anything with.
 
jimi_dini said:
This is somewhat shifting the whole blame towards other men. Out of personal experience I can only say that this is what regular society wants.

a male crying or maybe just having a serious disease -> made fun of, left alone, called a "loser", "grow-up" etc.
a female crying or maybe just having a serious disease -> the exact opposite reaction

If being girly would be a bad thing by itself, people wouldn't care about females in that case. But the opposite is true.

Which in turn matches the typical male in pain/expecting pain behaviour (physical, psychological doesn't matter) -> wants to be alone

Typical female in pain/expecting pain behaviour -> wants to be with people

I guess even the typical "don't go to a doctor until it's too late" fits into that. And the suicide rate statistic also fits. Way more males succeed. Why do they succeed? Because a) they want to be alone and b) society doesn't care.

To summarize: society as a whole cares deeply about females and gives a shit about males.
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If a man does have a confidant, three-quarters of the time it’s a woman
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hmm....
 
kirblar said:
They don't view the men as competition.
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I think this is really it. Intra-gender competition is always a thing, but as a guy, you can definitely feel the testosterone raging through you and through others.

I also think guys tend to bond more over shared goals. How often do guys wax nostalgic over "army buddies", for example? And in Anglo-Saxon England, where femininity was basically a non-factor in most guys' lives, men drew SUPER close being on the battlefield with one another. You can read old epics and read of guys kissing one another on the cheek, exchanging emotion freely, etc. There's not much of a chance to connect in such a manner in the context of modernity, methinks, and that's the deeper issue.

Edit: And I actually agree that, while women have been demeaned and lessened through much of Western history, guys have nevertheless been more expendable. Benevolent sexism and all that.
 
youngwerther said:
Women.
They make us this way.

Same reason why gay men don't have this problem.
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This is partly true. But obviously it makes people uncomfortable. I don't think many would disagree if you suggest that men's attitudes and expectations towards women can shape how women see themselves. But you can't suggest the inverse is also true.


jimi_dini said:
To summarize: society as a whole cares deeply about females and gives a shit about males.
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This seems true, men in the past have always been cannon fodder.
 
TwEE-N-Toast said:
This is partly true. But obviously it makes people uncomfortable. I don't think many would disagree if you suggest that men's attitudes and expectations towards women can shape how women see themselves. But you can't suggest the inverse is also true.
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If a man does have a confidant, three-quarters of the time it’s a woman
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.
 
JohnDoe said:
hmm....
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Yeah and the article also states that most of the time that's his wife/girlfriend.

And then ask yourself what happens, when the male gets a serious disease.

I can tell you what - my father got horribly sick and into a wheelchair. And my mother destroyed him psychologically until he finally killed himself.
 
jimi_dini said:
Yeah and the article also states that most of the time that's his wife/girlfriend.

And then ask yourself what happens, when the male gets a serious disease.

I can tell you what - my father got horribly sick and into a wheelchair. And my mother destroyed him psychologically until he finally killed himself.
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are they the rule
 
jimi_dini said:
Yeah and the article also states that most of the time that's his wife/girlfriend.
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So?

Of course, not all men buy into these prescriptions for male behavior, but these expectations do influence most men’s friendships at least a little bit. They mean that, to make good friends, men have to take risks. In a context in which being a man is good and being friendly is being womanly, each time a man tries to form intimate bonds with another man, he potentially loses status
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jimi_dini said:
And then ask yourself what happens, when the male gets a serious disease.

I can tell you what - my father got horribly sick and into a wheelchair. And my mother destroyed him psychologically until he finally killed himself.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
 
My group of best friends are those that I can talk to anything about, and they talk about the same kind of stuff back to me, Its really comforting that I have a group of mates that won't judge me at all and I can literally talk about anything.

I have a lot of other friends too though, they just arent the kind i would entrust with some of the things I talk to my best friends about.
 
Satch said:
are they the rule
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Either that or leaving. I guess most will leave.
That's the norm. There are of course exceptions.

I read quite a bit in a forum about my own (incurable) disease. Guess what - most males in that forum don't have a girlfriend anymore and will almost 100% of the time never ever get one again. But for the females - with the exact same disease - it's not the same.

And to add to that - the disease is not visible unlike the one of my dad. Plenty of males wrote plenty of stories about: "i found this girl and she really likes me. But as soon as I told her about my disease -> instant dump". I don't blame them for it. It makes sense. I'm just saying how it is.

Don't see this as a "blames females". Because actually almost everyone leaves those people. "They could die, then I would feel sad. So I better leave them alone, then I won't have to feel sad." Which is why most of those patients don't talk about their disease with anyone at all. Because they know the result.

Of course this may be different for females, who get a disease which makes them sterile. And I think it is.

JohnDoe said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
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Don't wiki me. I had so much free time some years ago. Not only did I find a solution to my disease all by my fucking self - if I hadn't found it, I would be dead by now, but I also read a crazy amount of personal stories. Which in turn made me think and made me find that solution. And on top of that I got my personal experience, my personal extreme nightmare, that happened at exactly that time too. And on top this is about psychological behaviour. I'm pretty young, but I lived a few years the life of an old man. And it wasn't pretty.
 
hodgy100 said:
My group of best friends are those that I can talk to anything about, and they talk about the same kind of stuff back to me, Its really comforting that I have a group of mates that won't judge me at all and I can literally talk about anything.
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Just seeing you talk about your friends like that makes me feel uncomfortable for some reason. I've definitely never had friends like that.
 
Phobophile said:
I never had these strong friendships as a kid, in part due to cliques being solidified by junior high school and a domineering mother who prevented any healthy external relationships.

I honestly made the best friends in my life in my fraternity in college. Even those I weren't really close with and would consider more as acquaintances were more than willing to lend an ear and I was comfortable enough to weep around them (especially around the time of my father's death). Even a few of the guys became better friends after we graduated.

I know GAF's adherence to Greek system stereotypes (and quite frankly, were I at another college I probably wouldn't have gone Greek) but joining my chapter was the best decision I made in undergrad.
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It's a pattern I see a lot to be honest (as an English university student) the people who had the 'happier' (for want of a better term) lives back home, large social circles close friends e.t.c. go on to struggle to make new 'deep' social connections to peers at Uni. I have.

At the same time, people who for whatever reason (and there are plenty of perfectly valid reasons I wont go into) haven't had such 'happy' home lives have just about all formed some really tight friendships with people at Uni.
 
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