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Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden (Harper's Bazaar)
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That's a shame. I have two great friends and a couple of "friends".. and i have no problem at all to discuss emotional content with them. Having said that, we do think in solutions first so we are kinda programmed to deal with out problems ourselves. But we do discuss them.
It helps that we're in a band together and we see each other every week. We have been friends since high-school and now we're old fucks. It's so weird what people do to themselves.
Toxic masculinity is bad for women but incredibly bad for men as well. Please reconsider your cultural values. All of them. Just glance over them to see if they make any sense.
It helps that we're in a band together and we see each other every week. We have been friends since high-school and now we're old fucks. It's so weird what people do to themselves.
Toxic masculinity is bad for women but incredibly bad for men as well. Please reconsider your cultural values. All of them. Just glance over them to see if they make any sense.
Huh, this is interesting. I have a LOT of friends, and within the Japanese game dev community, we hang out a lot with our friends, and have a pretty close knit group. We're all in our 30's.
That said, I do hear that for a lot of guys in the US, they don't have a lot of friends. I wonder why that is.
That said, I do hear that for a lot of guys in the US, they don't have a lot of friends. I wonder why that is.
my only question is.........how do these guys able to get a girlfriend in the first place?
kinda bonkers going by what's being described.
How does a guy confess his feelings to a girl and asked for her hand if he's 'too afraid of admitting having any emotion'?
Seems like an oxymoronic situation.
kinda bonkers going by what's being described.
How does a guy confess his feelings to a girl and asked for her hand if he's 'too afraid of admitting having any emotion'?
Seems like an oxymoronic situation.
OP, I agree that keeping in touch with your friends is harder to do when you get older and have a wife and kid(s), especially kid(s). It also doesn't help that most careers have you working ridiculous hours which means that the weekend is the only realistic time to catchup. That said, sporting events, concerts and scheduled lunches or happy hours do wonders. Also, MP gaming has become a good way to do this at least for friends who still play.
What a load of shit.
Guys are like girls. Some are nice, some are not.
I have male friends. This thread is bizarre.
32 year old guy here. Had the same core group of friends since middle school and we have no problems being emotionally intimate with each other. Feels like it could be an aspect of having grown up together though. Not sure how I'd fare trying to make new friends at this point.
35 with wife + kids. My college friends and I still hang out occasionally. Usually get drunk in someone's basement and fall asleep around 10:00 pm.
Also this:
Also this:
I have a core group from highschool, and then a group from college that kinda all melded together, we drift in and out sometimes but we're there if someone needs something
I think I agree. It doesn't help that I don't see a lot of what the article is talking about either.
And if I were to compare my own life, I just can't relate... married with a kid at 32. Wife sees a professional but I don't. We both consider us as best friends as well as a married couple. And we both have groups of friends we hang out with separately. She puts emotional burdens on me all the time, but now if I do, then I'm wrong?
Just kinda weird. And all relationships are different and anyone can be a self serving asshole, while not even having to be American. Reading this thread would have one believe American men have no male friends.
Well, you open up to that one person, rather than seeking professionals. Thus loading them up with a cross to bear that is sometimes more than what should be expected in a relationship.
Article fits me pretty well.
Been in relationships my whole life. Had 1 or 2 friends in HS, but nothing really since.
Meeting girls/talking to girls wasnt an issue.
This is so true for me as well. Basically if I don't initiate then it isn't happening, one long time friend I would call out of the blue every so often to try and set something up and he would always say I was just about to call me to do the same. Got tired of it and basically play online and meet up every so often with work friends now.
I still have friends but I don't live in my home country any more, so it's harder to keep in touch, I also work from home so don't really have any colleagues I talk with day to day.
It is really hard to make friends when you don't work with people, it took me about a year to have some actual friends after moving to another country, it's really hard work especially once you enter your 30s and most people have settled down and already have their own social circle.
It is really hard to make friends when you don't work with people, it took me about a year to have some actual friends after moving to another country, it's really hard work especially once you enter your 30s and most people have settled down and already have their own social circle.
Well, we live in a somewhat more openminded country (compared to a lot of other countries) and still there is an enormous amount of toxic masculinity.
A lot of guys don't speak about anything. But i'm happy to have friends who, while still being part of toxic masculinity to some degree, are very open about everything. I see no reason not to.
I lost like half my already relatively small group of friends over the past 5 years. There is a wide variety of reasons as to why these friendships petered out. I got into a relationship. The girlfriend and I moved to a different city, putting a lot more distance between me and said friends. I work 5 days a week and I'm someone who needs a lot of "me-time" just to recharge, at the same time my girlfriend also demands a lot of attention from me. I simply did not properly maintain a healthy balance between friendships, my relationship and my me-time Then there's multiple friends who got kids and are pretty much in a completely different phase of life. At the moment I have like 1 good friend that I talk to on a daily basis and meet up with once a month and 1 friend whom I see every 2-3 months or so. It's honestly a sad state of affairs. I frequently think of getting back in touch with people that I used to be friends with, but at the same time, these people also didn't put in any effort to maintain the friendship, so is it really worth it?
I also have to note that my girlfriend only has 1 real friend who lives abroad and whom she see like once every 3 months.
I also have to note that my girlfriend only has 1 real friend who lives abroad and whom she see like once every 3 months.
Society encourages men to pursue women and sexual relationships.
Society does not encourage men to seek deep, platonic male companionship.
Definitely the case for me. My wife is much more social than I am and goes out with friends way more than I do. I'm totally fine with it and like the alone time.
I have pretty much no individual friends here (moved for work nearly ten years ago) and pretty much just hang out with her alone or with her and mutual friends (some are people we became friends with through me though, I just rarely do anything with them without my wife now). I do have out of state friends from college and grad school I keep in touch with and see a few times a year.
For me it's just by choice as I'm very introverted and with being a professor and teaching, having lots of meetings etc I'm pretty socially wiped nights and weekends and just don't have energy for more friendships than the above.
I have pretty much no individual friends here (moved for work nearly ten years ago) and pretty much just hang out with her alone or with her and mutual friends (some are people we became friends with through me though, I just rarely do anything with them without my wife now). I do have out of state friends from college and grad school I keep in touch with and see a few times a year.
For me it's just by choice as I'm very introverted and with being a professor and teaching, having lots of meetings etc I'm pretty socially wiped nights and weekends and just don't have energy for more friendships than the above.
This is a pretty complicated issue. But from what I can tell, a lot of guys have very surface level friendships that lack the element of being vulnerable around anyone that's not a female partner. Women don't struggle with this nearly as much and are much better at putting their eggs in multiple baskets than we are.
Guys are still told to man up by other dudes and that shit helps no one. Everyone is going through something.
Guys are still told to man up by other dudes and that shit helps no one. Everyone is going through something.
For a lot it's that friendships tend to fall off after settling down with someone. I was a lot more social with friends when I was between relationships or in a long distance relationship than when I was living with a girlfriend or now wife.
As in my prior post, I'm very introverted so dealing with people at work, spending time with my wife, doing all the group outings with mutual friends and other couples leaves me little energy or interest in maintaining other friendships. The ones I do care to maintain are not within driving distance so it's just texts, chatting in online games and seeing each other a few times a year.
In terms of the not showing emotions stuff the article talks about, that's not an issue for me. But for those it is, it's really more not showing emotions around other men and most can open up for their romantic partner. Plus there's just the extra drive to out in the time and energy when pursuing a sexual and romantic partner that aren't there for a lot of men when it comes to building and maintaining friendships.
While that's part of it, it's still the case that it affects men more than women per the article and my own experiences.
I think it comes down to willingness and ability to make new friends. A lot of people move (and often far) for work, people or their friends start families and get busy while others don't and a host of other things cause friendships to fizzle out or to at least limit them to seeing each other a few times a year.
So having active friends means finding new ones to replace those that fade with people who are in similar life phase and have time to hangout and who still share common interests etc. i.e. If one's best friend starts a family and that person doesn't want/like kids they're often going to need a new best friend as that person isn't going to have nearly as much time for them, won't be going out late every Friday anymore etc. That's how people keep active friend groups more often than people succeeding at keeping the crew together over time. People and their lives change and you're only going to keep an active friend group if you manage to replace those that fall out with new friends who fit your lifestyle/interests.
Women, including my wife, in average seem to be better at doing that. She's made a lot of friends here (she's also been here about a decade) and thus has friends despite losing a lot of the ones from back home after moving, and even losing some here for various reasons overtime. I haven't really for the reasons in my earlier posts.
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I don't have many friends, but the few that remain we are very opposite of the norm. I wouldn't say I was always like this. It took a lot of introspective thought to change my way of thinking. I use to believe the whole crap about men not crying and anything else like that. If it wasn't for my wife in the beginning of our relationship helping me through that I don't know where I would be. These days idgaf if I cry in front of people, during movies, show my emotions and share them. I know that is exactly what the article is about, but at the same time it was different for us. I was her support and she was mine, I became an open book very fast with her.
I think you really missed the point of the article. It's not that men shouldn't let their wives see them as anything other than stoic, masculine men. It's that having a single source of emotional support (which in these men's cases, is their partner) is not healthy for anyone involved. These men should be talking to their life partners about their lives as well as to their friends.
I think she just wants men to have those conversations with other men and friends instead of mostly their spouse or women to balance things out.
This seems rather bizarre to me, I'm pretty much the complete opposite of this article. My wife leans on me for emotional support and vents all her frustrations to me, I never really vent to her and vent to a close group of friends instead. I'd say for sure my wife is my best friend, but I've maintained he same friendships for over 20 years already. I'm 28 and have a good group of friends and my male best friend is married and his wife is one of my wife's best friends too. Friendships are all about making time to see each other and maintain communication. I have a million different group chats and talk to my friends every day and hang out with them multiple times a month. I'm sure once the wife and I have kids things will slow down there, but i'm not losing my friends because I had a kid either.
In the end, it's all about what you prioritize and whether you really want to maintain that relationship or not. I've had friends that I've lost communication with, but they also weren't important to me as the friends I prioritize now. I think one of the first things I told my wife when we started dating was that I'd never leave a friend behind for her. and if they needed me she needed to respect how important that friend was to me. I think it's one of the things she admired about me and she quickly became friends with all of my friends.
In the end, it's all about what you prioritize and whether you really want to maintain that relationship or not. I've had friends that I've lost communication with, but they also weren't important to me as the friends I prioritize now. I think one of the first things I told my wife when we started dating was that I'd never leave a friend behind for her. and if they needed me she needed to respect how important that friend was to me. I think it's one of the things she admired about me and she quickly became friends with all of my friends.
This is almost exactly my life as well. My core friends group consists entirely of my HS friends, whom I also went to same college with. We play games sometimes, weekly/bi-weekly Skype DnD. I have really cool coworkers but we don't do anything outside of work. My fiance and I live in a different city than all of our friends, and being very left on the political spectrum makes it hard to find people who aren't shitty locally. We've tried in the past and people who seem cool at first eventually say some fucked up shit and we just revert back to isolation together.
I consider myself super lucky that my core friend group has stayed so tight over the years, it just sucks that we had to move all over the damn country to find jobs. Now everyone is super established where they are and we'll probably never live in the same area again.
Other people, even girls, don't like hearing about my (a man) emotions.
I'm a very open person, but it's not considered 'socially acceptable' for the most part.
I'm a very open person, but it's not considered 'socially acceptable' for the most part.
I have a few people i would call friends, and i'm happy with that. I've always had issues with making friends, especially male friends. And i have confidence issues when talking to females.
This.
I dont get this idea of being difficult t make friends. I thin its difficult to find people to try and be friends.
When my daughter went to kindergarden, I used the opportunnty to make friends with the other parents, and created a nice group of people to hang out with. Some I like more than others, some couples the women are cooler, some the guys, its just the normal whoever clicks best with your personality, etc.
If I didnt have this "excuse" of the school tho, I dont know where I would find other people to engage and try and make friends.
I have the same, tight circle of 10 guys I did the last 20+ years. We're all older now, married with kids but we still get together every couple of months together. Typically stuff like bbq's or pool parties etc where kids can come. Some of my friends live across the country now, after moving. But we make it a priority to see each other, we're boys afterall.
One of the core circle friends died last week, very young and suddenly. The boys are flying in from all over the country, I have them staying at my house for the next few days. I've bleed with most of these guys, and been through some shit so we face this kind of shit like a family, maybe better. I can count on my guys, and our friendship spans different political beliefs, religions etc..
My wife on the other hand has 1 real, tight friend after all her years of infighting and drama. Her friend moved to NYC, got married and settled there. She see's her once every year or so, but my wife has actually made my friends her friends so to speak. Over the last few years, wife and I have made more friends with our kids' friend's parents. Easy to hang when your lifestyles overlap, working parents, kids on sports, scouts etc etc..
But my boys are my boys, thats never changed. No new friend is the same as someone you lived your 20s together with. Its hard to develop a tight bond with people if you just shake hands and talk to them. But travel together, live broke, live together, bail each other out of stupid shit, fight, or any number of grey shit will carve you up real good and bond you stronger.
One of the core circle friends died last week, very young and suddenly. The boys are flying in from all over the country, I have them staying at my house for the next few days. I've bleed with most of these guys, and been through some shit so we face this kind of shit like a family, maybe better. I can count on my guys, and our friendship spans different political beliefs, religions etc..
My wife on the other hand has 1 real, tight friend after all her years of infighting and drama. Her friend moved to NYC, got married and settled there. She see's her once every year or so, but my wife has actually made my friends her friends so to speak. Over the last few years, wife and I have made more friends with our kids' friend's parents. Easy to hang when your lifestyles overlap, working parents, kids on sports, scouts etc etc..
But my boys are my boys, thats never changed. No new friend is the same as someone you lived your 20s together with. Its hard to develop a tight bond with people if you just shake hands and talk to them. But travel together, live broke, live together, bail each other out of stupid shit, fight, or any number of grey shit will carve you up real good and bond you stronger.
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This hits the nail on the head for me. I work all day, go home and cook dinner/eat/spend time with my baby and wife before going to bed and doing it all over again, M-F. Weekends is doing something off-routine with wife/baby, tons of house/yard work/chores/cooking, and IF I have any time leftover, chill out for an hour or two by myself in the late evening. And guess what: all my of my male friends that I used to spend so much time with in college and in my 20s are doing THE SAME THING. Hard to foster "deep platonic intimacy" with your buddies when you get to see them maybe an hour or two for the superbowl or a Christmas party once or twice a year :-P
Yeah, I understand what the author of the article is saying but women also have the same issues when they don't have friends as well.
That being said, I've found it much easier to confide in my female friends when it comes to emotional things.
All of my male friends have fell off so I'm trying to foster new male friends at the moment. I am lucky in that I have 2 brothers (1 younger and 1 older) and we all regularly confide in each other.
I'm not saying it's universally true, but it feels true enough for me. As much as I love my friends and family, they're really bad at recognizing and reacting to my cries for help. My best support comes from my therapist.
Lmao don't forget 'no mic since the wife and kids are sleeping.'35 with wife + kids. My college friends and I still hang out occasionally. Usually get drunk in someone's basement and fall asleep around 10:00 pm.
Also this:
There was an article from a couple years back from the Boston Globe about the phenomenon of male loneliness, and it was a really good article that made me think about a lot of the men that I know,e specially older men, and wonder about whether they have friends or not.
There's a strong social pressure on men to lose their friends and not become social. They have people they work with, and they have their family. Women are encouraged to be social outside of their family, but men aren't. Not everybody follows this trend. My dad always had friends when I was a kid, and he does now, though my parents also shared a lot of friends too, but he had the guys he played golf with or watched college basketball with.
My father in law falls into the type though. He's a man's man for the most part, and he loves male companionship but outside of his family, he doesn't have male friends. He's got his son, me, my other brother in law, his brother in law, and then a variety of people who come and go but who are mostly friends of his wife (or spouses of his wife's friends). We do things, like go to sports events or do some activity outside sometimes, and I really like him as a father in law, but he's still my father in law.
I'm fortunate, I have a really large group of male friends (and our significant others), and we have a strong, tight knit group of friends. We hang out with some regularity, play fantasy football together, maybe play videogames together, and then wee also have out socially with our wives/SOs, and I think we have a good balance. But, I'm not the norm.
Here's the article, it's unfortunately locked so use Incognito or w/e to see if you can get around it:
"The biggest thread facing middle aged men isn't smoking or obesity, it's loneliness"
https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazin...-loneliness/k6saC9FnnHQCUbf5mJ8okL/story.html
The people in the Globe article make a point how this is a health risk for men, and how companionship with friends is a strong indicator of health later in life.
I cite this and other pieces anytime I want to get out of the house to go get a beer with my friends... It's for my health, promise!!
IT's really important for me to keep my friendships, and it's something I've done a good job of over the last 10 or 15 years. I've drifted off from roommates in college, but I have this core group of friends who I see pretty regularly... Usually weekly or at least a couple times a month. My wife and our social group is not common though, and other people will remark on it. My sister-in-law comments almost ... negatively about how we have a lot of friends, like it's a bad thing. It's a weird thing she does, but it's also part of her personality. Her husband is steadily losing friends, we're about the same age (35 or so), but the people that come over their house for social occassions, when it's more than family, are his wife's friends and their spouses, but my brother-in-law isn't friends with those guys... they're just spouses of their wives. He doesn't really know any of them from Adam beyond the superficial stuff.
I think there's a strong social pressure on men to not have friends... that it's not acceptable, that you're supposed to work and be with your family. That socializing outside of that is weird or different, and it's "women's stuff." I try to push back on that as much as I can, and I've always been very focused on my friends, they're important to me and I'll go to bat for them... and goddam, I love hanging out with my friends without our spouses. Sure, our spouses are great and all, but if you told me that I could sit at the bar with two or three of my close friends and watch ... ANYTHING on TV, just us, and drink beer, that'd seriously be like the top thing I'd look forward to for weeks.
My wife and I are going to Europe this summer, and I'm really looking forward to it. BUt, in the fall, two male friends of mine and I are going to an away football game for a 4 day weekend. ANd... I'm excited to go to Europe, but I'm really ecstatic about the football trip. The europe trip has anxiety of managing the day to day, going to dinner, we have a baby so figuring out all that, the long travel, the time difference, being with my extended family, etc... there's anxiety with it of having to manage people's moods and activities. But, the friends trip is just 3 of us, we're going to be going to bars and going out to eat and watching football. I can't wait.
On the flipside, though, I don't have many female friends who aren't friends of my wife... and it wouldn't really be socially normal for me to hang out with one of my female friends solo. Like, we might hang out solo but usually by accident... like we're meeting up with a group and happen to be the first ones, or something. I used to have a lot of close female friends, but I'd grow apart from them when I was in serious relationships, and of course, being married, I don't really have any anymore. Outside of some colleagues who I'm also friends with, for the most part, my female friends are largely spouses/SOs or friends of friends. I'd describe them as "my friends," but it's not quite the same.
Meanwhile there's a couple of my guy friends who I am very, very close with; I share things with them that I probably wouldn't share with my wife or anybody else, and they're familiar with some of my insecurities that my wife might know passingly but isn't really familiar with them because that's not my role in the house. Of course, there's things I only share with my wife, as well, but there's 3 or 4 guy friends of mine who I am very, very close with... One who is kind of lapsed because of distance and circumstance, and now sadly when we get together it's much more superficial than it used to be. We used to be incredibly close, lived together, and we'd talk about anything, but now we've both sort of fallen into those roles that society expects us to with each other. It's a really hard pattern to break, thought.
There's a strong social pressure on men to lose their friends and not become social. They have people they work with, and they have their family. Women are encouraged to be social outside of their family, but men aren't. Not everybody follows this trend. My dad always had friends when I was a kid, and he does now, though my parents also shared a lot of friends too, but he had the guys he played golf with or watched college basketball with.
My father in law falls into the type though. He's a man's man for the most part, and he loves male companionship but outside of his family, he doesn't have male friends. He's got his son, me, my other brother in law, his brother in law, and then a variety of people who come and go but who are mostly friends of his wife (or spouses of his wife's friends). We do things, like go to sports events or do some activity outside sometimes, and I really like him as a father in law, but he's still my father in law.
I'm fortunate, I have a really large group of male friends (and our significant others), and we have a strong, tight knit group of friends. We hang out with some regularity, play fantasy football together, maybe play videogames together, and then wee also have out socially with our wives/SOs, and I think we have a good balance. But, I'm not the norm.
Here's the article, it's unfortunately locked so use Incognito or w/e to see if you can get around it:
"The biggest thread facing middle aged men isn't smoking or obesity, it's loneliness"
https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazin...-loneliness/k6saC9FnnHQCUbf5mJ8okL/story.html
The people in the Globe article make a point how this is a health risk for men, and how companionship with friends is a strong indicator of health later in life.
I cite this and other pieces anytime I want to get out of the house to go get a beer with my friends... It's for my health, promise!!
IT's really important for me to keep my friendships, and it's something I've done a good job of over the last 10 or 15 years. I've drifted off from roommates in college, but I have this core group of friends who I see pretty regularly... Usually weekly or at least a couple times a month. My wife and our social group is not common though, and other people will remark on it. My sister-in-law comments almost ... negatively about how we have a lot of friends, like it's a bad thing. It's a weird thing she does, but it's also part of her personality. Her husband is steadily losing friends, we're about the same age (35 or so), but the people that come over their house for social occassions, when it's more than family, are his wife's friends and their spouses, but my brother-in-law isn't friends with those guys... they're just spouses of their wives. He doesn't really know any of them from Adam beyond the superficial stuff.
I think there's a strong social pressure on men to not have friends... that it's not acceptable, that you're supposed to work and be with your family. That socializing outside of that is weird or different, and it's "women's stuff." I try to push back on that as much as I can, and I've always been very focused on my friends, they're important to me and I'll go to bat for them... and goddam, I love hanging out with my friends without our spouses. Sure, our spouses are great and all, but if you told me that I could sit at the bar with two or three of my close friends and watch ... ANYTHING on TV, just us, and drink beer, that'd seriously be like the top thing I'd look forward to for weeks.
My wife and I are going to Europe this summer, and I'm really looking forward to it. BUt, in the fall, two male friends of mine and I are going to an away football game for a 4 day weekend. ANd... I'm excited to go to Europe, but I'm really ecstatic about the football trip. The europe trip has anxiety of managing the day to day, going to dinner, we have a baby so figuring out all that, the long travel, the time difference, being with my extended family, etc... there's anxiety with it of having to manage people's moods and activities. But, the friends trip is just 3 of us, we're going to be going to bars and going out to eat and watching football. I can't wait.
On the flipside, though, I don't have many female friends who aren't friends of my wife... and it wouldn't really be socially normal for me to hang out with one of my female friends solo. Like, we might hang out solo but usually by accident... like we're meeting up with a group and happen to be the first ones, or something. I used to have a lot of close female friends, but I'd grow apart from them when I was in serious relationships, and of course, being married, I don't really have any anymore. Outside of some colleagues who I'm also friends with, for the most part, my female friends are largely spouses/SOs or friends of friends. I'd describe them as "my friends," but it's not quite the same.
Meanwhile there's a couple of my guy friends who I am very, very close with; I share things with them that I probably wouldn't share with my wife or anybody else, and they're familiar with some of my insecurities that my wife might know passingly but isn't really familiar with them because that's not my role in the house. Of course, there's things I only share with my wife, as well, but there's 3 or 4 guy friends of mine who I am very, very close with... One who is kind of lapsed because of distance and circumstance, and now sadly when we get together it's much more superficial than it used to be. We used to be incredibly close, lived together, and we'd talk about anything, but now we've both sort of fallen into those roles that society expects us to with each other. It's a really hard pattern to break, thought.
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Holy shit this rings so true. Once I got married, everyone started messaging/texting me when they wanted to get a hold of my husband, plan an event with him, etc. It was "expected" that because he rarely checked his messages, I would just default to being the social coordinator for us.
Also, yes, I joke with him a lot that sometimes I feel like his mom.
The rest of it though - best friend, lover, career advisor, emotional cheerleader... I mean, in some ways, isn't that what your partner is supposed to be? I'm that to him, and he's that to me. We are actively involved in each other's lives.
The dude in the article in the OP just sounds like a standard selfish asshole. The human race is full of them.
I wish I had more time to spend with friends. But honestly getting older I wish I had more time for everything. More time to workout, more time to play something with my kids, more time to go out to dinner with my wife, etc. There are only so many hours in the day.
I still get together with friends but it is not a regular thing for the most part. Everyone is just busy.
I wish I had more time to spend with friends. But honestly getting older I wish I had more time for everything. More time to workout, more time to play something with my kids, more time to go out to dinner with my wife, etc. There are only so many hours in the day.
I still get together with friends but it is not a regular thing for the most part. Everyone is just busy.
It's hard to maintain friendships through geographic distances, getting married, having kids, and all that. I don't think women handle it any better than us men do. I know my wife and I are largely each other's sole confidants. I do get the gist of the article, because both of us feel like it's a burden at points, when the other person has literally no one else. The stuff, with men refusing to deal with their feelings, is definitely a thing too. It makes our friendships sometimes more superficial because we hesitate to open up, even to close friends and partners.
I will say that, a few months ago, my best friend, who I've known 30 years now, reached out to me, and we actually had a bit of a heart-to-heart on some serious emotional stuff that we've each been dealing with. It felt... nice. I'm not used to that. I was raised to be stoic, as was he. I have also been able to talk with my parents and confide in them.
Maintaining a strong emotional support system, and reciprocating that for others, is an important life skill, I think.
I will say that, a few months ago, my best friend, who I've known 30 years now, reached out to me, and we actually had a bit of a heart-to-heart on some serious emotional stuff that we've each been dealing with. It felt... nice. I'm not used to that. I was raised to be stoic, as was he. I have also been able to talk with my parents and confide in them.
Maintaining a strong emotional support system, and reciprocating that for others, is an important life skill, I think.
I think the point is that men should be able to open up emotionally to other men too. It's healthy.