How men really feel about friendship
Lonely, or just... lazy? One in five men has no close friends, but is it through choice or circumstance, asks Nick Harding
What better example of the difference between male and female friendships than birthdays? Men, in the main, will forget or ignore each other’s. Celebrations only occur if organised by spouse or partner. Intermale presents are rare, or alcoholic. Women, on the other hand, gleefully arrange celebrations for each other and gift wrap specially chosen gifts.
This male nonchalance has consequences. By the time we reach middle age, men are a lonely bunch. According to a recent YouGov survey, around one in five men said they had no close friends and around a third had no one they classed as a best friend. Male friendlessness trebles between our 20s and late middle age, a 2015 study by the Movember Foundation reported.
Research shows that married men are less likely than their single counterparts to have friends to turn to outside of the home.
Last month I turned
50 and, true to gender stereotype, I remained indifferent while my wife organised a surprise party. Many of our joint friends were there, all of whom I class as good pals. Yet there was just one from outside our joint social circle, my best friend and the only person in the room, barring family, who had known me more than a decade. I didn’t feel lonely, but, compared to the social circle I had in my 20s, in the last three decades my life had undergone a friendship apocalypse.
Ben Plimpton, project manager at the Mental Health Foundation, explains that middle-aged friendlessness is usually a result of two factors.
“One is time,” he says. “It takes time to maintain old friendships and find new friends. Men are time poor. We have work commitments and, as we get older, we may also have family commitments and likely caring commitments too. These eat into any time we have left to devote to friendship. It takes time and effort to maintain friendships and build new ones.”
The other reason is cultural. “Men are also socialised to follow the familiar strong and silent stereotype, we are not so good at being vulnerable,” he says. “And although you do not have to be vulnerable to find and maintain a friendship, sometimes vulnerability can be the cement that strengthens it.”
Changing employment patterns may also be playing a part in the breakdown of male friendships, says Plimpton.
“For many men a key source of friendship is work and today our working lives are less stable than they were. If you change jobs, lose your job or retire it can more difficult to maintain the friendships you made in the workplace.”
On a superficial level, most men would agree that bonding over a shared interest in sport or a shared pastime is easy, which is why it often appears that male friendships are more simplistic than female friendships. But research suggests that there are complex evolutionary reasons why we choose to make the type of friendships we do.
Dr Geoffrey Greif is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work. His book, Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships maps the intricacies of male friendship using testimony from 400 interviews. He explains the anthropology of bromance.
“Women tend to have face-to-face relationships where they are comfortable engaging each other with few props,” he says. “Men tend to feel more comfortable in shoulder-to-shoulder relationships. This is because men and women have been socialised differently in most cultures. Historically, men protected the tribe and hunted together while women faced each other back in the village or over the fire preparing food.”
Dr Greif says these differences lay at the root of why men find close friendship with other men difficult.
“Men have been raised to compete with each other and to be consoled by women – they are usually taught and raised by women when young, while men are away from the home. It is hard to be vulnerable with another man – a necessary prerequisite for many deep friendships – if you feel you cannot trust him or are competing with him.”
While men often thrive on the banter of the locker room, Dr Greif argues that underneath, many yearn for more caring relationships. “Some men long for more meaningful contact with other men and to drop the veneer of masculinity that can handcuff them,” he says.
Men, according to Dr Greif ’s research, expect their friends to support them and “have their back”, but they are wary of appearing too emotionally needy. They also tend to gravitate towards other men who they perceive as having the same level of masculinity.
“Think of the historic two representations of men, the knight in shining armour who whisks the woman off her feet and the bard with the silver tongue who woos her with his words. Both are masculine, but they are quite different. One hangs out with other knights and one with other poets,” he explains.
This urge to keep emotion and vulnerability out of male friendships can lead to problems when men are faced with difficult life events and have no one they feel they can turn to.
Plimpton explains: “When things go wrong, the absence of a close friend can be felt acutely. When heterosexual relationships break down, men tend to struggle more, and this could be because they have fewer options for people to turn to.”
So, with all this in mind, perhaps we men need to get back in touch with our feelings – and with each other.
‘Men have been raised to compete with each another and to be consoled by women’