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?
I have never understood the “I can’t talk to my male friends” meme. As long as the vibe is right you can say anything. And nz men have a reputation for being emotional brick walls. (In a relationship I can be an emotional brick wall so I get it)
But when I catch up with a friend I havent seen in a while and we ask “how have you been” its a genuine question and sometimes the response is “not good man, …” Its easier to share mental state concerns with friends than partners.
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.
Well, very few of them remained successful. There is only like one person right now or maybe two with whom I am open enough to reveal my identity’s crucial parts and not being judged. Most of them broke my heart, maybe, cuz I have trusted them from very beginning or maybe I am unlucky person who broke the hearts of those who wanna come closer to me and also got broken heart by those whom I chased.
I only have one friendship left, which is fine with me as more would honestly be too many for me. We’ve been friends since we were boys. Long story short, we both got serious, life-threatening/disabling diseases at the same time, and because of his gentle persistence over years, he finally got me to open up to him about it and be okay with him opening up to me.
Now we have this nice thing where we actually emotionally support each other through tough times. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever known and he’s stuck by me for decades even when I didn’t bring anything to the friendship.
Guy friends are kinda rare for me, none of them i feel normal about. I had a guy friend who kinda fell off the face of the earth because he’s so miserable working at amazon and doing trade school simultaneously. Worried as hell for him. And then i made another guy friend recently but now we’re super gay for eachother so i guess i feel really good about that one? Definitely not an ordinary friendship though.
All of my friends are on Discord living several states away (one is in Canada). I don’t have any friends that live close by I could go do something with. Been with these guys for over a decade and we meet up in person every couple years at a convention. I’m happy when I’m talking to them, but I’d love nothing more than to have a friend I could hang out with in person. My therapist encouraged me to do volunteer work and look for hobby groups. I’ve been doing those and the hobby groups worked a lot better, but I never feel like I’m getting to know any of these people even after talking to them for a while. Like it still just feels no different than the Discord group where we only see each other in this one specific moment and never outside of it.
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 🙂
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.
You guys have friends?
“Gotta catch 'em all!”
Step 1: get male friends
Step 2: come back to this thread to comment on the quality of the friendship
Quick question on point number one: Why would I want friends?
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.
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.
I don’t project insecurities as lack of friendships
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.
Not really, but it’s okay because I have my wife who is my best friend period.
I’m of 2 minds about this.
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I’m jealous you have a best friend in your wife. I miss that.
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shouldn’t there be more than that? I feel like it’s a lot to put on just one person and someone who already has other ties to you.
When you’re dating, sure. But when you get married you sort of become one unit. It is a lot to put in someone but that’s sort of what marriage is about.
She puts that on me as well. That’s part of being married.
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I believe that in my previous life I must’ve done something good that brought me luck in this one.
I have a group of a dozen male friends whom I would trust with my life and the lives of my family. I think the same holds for each and every one of them.
We all come from the same small town. The group grew since kindergarten a few of us went to, adding friends through school, highschool, university. We have different careers and each one brings a unique perspective on things.
We try to get together as often as possible, but with work and kids and families it’s difficult to always make it. So we implemented the “minimum viable product” approach where any two of us will arrange to meet up, then notify everyone else about what/when/where we are planning, and have anyone else join if they can, too. So even if just the original two meet up, they get to see a good friend. And if more show up, so much the better.
I feel truly blessed in this regard. I think there’s a huge number of benefits we all reap from such a group: social safety net, psychological support, sanity checks on ideas and life decisions, reliable people you can vent to, always having someone to have a beer with, interventions when needed.
I know few people have this, and if I could magically wish things into being, it would be that everyone in the world gets a friend group like this to rely on. I feel it would make things… significantly better.
Take care of each other out there.
