Do adult men have problems making new friends?
The Daily Circuit live chat for April 12, 2012
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Our guest, Geoffrey Greif, says "men have 'shoulder-to-shoulder' friendships and women have 'face-to-face' friendships.
"Men meet to do things, not just to have coffee or drinks. We men meet at a bar to watch sports or to do things. Women are more comfortable talking face to face and having a nice dinner or just chatting." -
James wrote to us through the Public Insight Network,
"I am likely a bad sample to choose for this, as I am an extreme introvert and in terms of “close personal friends”, very, very few.
"I have several acquaintances and I interact with many people on a social level, generally when my spouse sets something up and I am expected to go with her.
"The stereotypical “male bonding, beer drinking, deer hunting, fishing whatever” is as far away from my life style as I can possibly imagine.
"Truth be told, I much prefer the company of dogs to the vast majority of humans I have encountered. Or reading a book, or listening to MPR." -
Matthew wrote to us through the Public Insight Network:
" I'm a little confused by the question. While I have observed men who do not make many close friends, I do not know if they have a "harder time" doing so. Is the comparison to women, who are supposed to make friends easily? Really, I think gender has nothing to do with how easily one makes friends. Instead, the ability to befriend has a lot to do with one's role models. The men I see who have difficulty befriending had male role models who used friendship for business purposes, i.e. to make a living, but not for emotional support." -
The original question on the Public Inight Network was about men over the age of 25 making friends. I am not sure why the comparison with women is relevant here.
I do think that men tend to be very competitive in nature, and that this tendency makes it harder for them to make friends with people they did not grow up with. This is because men see other men more often as competition for jobs, women, and attention.
(Ed note: After we made calls to find experts to weigh in on male friendships to move this beyond the anecdotal, we found a lot of research about men in comparison to women.
Not to mention that comparisons between men and women was also something that arose from the men who answered through the Public Insight Network.) -
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From Michael via the Public Insight Network:
"The very basis of the question is incorrect - it presumes that making friends is a high priority for me, and if you just look at psychological type, such as the myers-briggs type indicator, you'll see that men generally prefer Introversion (55%) over Extraversion and prefer Thinking (75%) over Feeling (aka values/rapport). So they don't care to - it's not a priority." -
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Glenn via the Public Insight Network:
"Our culture is the culprit, mostly. Our society is based too much on competition and consumption of things, instead of collaboration and fulfillment through human bonding. Then there's homophobia. Homophobia hurts straight men in ways that are seldom recognized, since the fear that one "might be gay" or that another man might make unexpected sexual advances keeps men more distant from each other.
"Another factor is how family life is "supposed" to work - the women at home with the men on the job all day. Families have changed dramatically since this was the norm, but the world of work still pulls men more away from home and community and more to work long hours on the job. In addition to all this, there is still some perception that men, when compared to women, are more crude, typically slobs, prone to violent behavior, socially inept, etc., all of which mak es it more difficult to get close, emotionally." -
I think there is a vital evolutionary component here. Males are evolved to be active "do-ers."
It was more successful for our male ancestors to be task-oriented, whereas it was more successful for women to be relational oriented. However, we're now a dominantly social species still running on hundred-thousand-year-old software. Women have the advantage, whereas men are trying to catch up. Of course, this is a very broad observation. -
stephanie--at times he does. At a colleagues funeral he saw the sense of loss for what this man meant in their lives, and he knew his passing would not have the same effect. It's not only for his own health (mental & physical) that I wish he had friends, but so that he would also understand my need for friends and social outlets outside of the immediate family. Sorry to whine . . .
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In my experience it is the opposite.
Most of the guys I've known in my life have way more life-long friends than women do. I often feel that guys have less stringent standards for what they expect from a friend and they are generally less judgemental.
Most of the women I know (including myself) have changed friends through different ages and hold higher standards for who they consider friends and want to spend time with. -
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Texting! It's all about the texting. My husband is 25 and out beats me with his texts every month. And they're always to his guy friends. From what I can tell, they share interesting news stories or photos that they've found online. It's like a constant stream of talking ... but through texting. It's great for me so I don't have to talk about motorcycles, video games or other "guy" things!
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@Jay Sieling Great observation! Male friendships seem to be forged through shared interests and activities and tend to be centered around those. Male relationships are utilitarian as male speech tends to be more utilitarian. We don't mind as much if we lose contact with someone we don't really have reason to stay in contact with anymore. That does make it harder to make really close friends...
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Season 1 epsiode two of Seinfeld: Male-Unbonding. Classic Seinfeld relationship comic/drama.
Jerry tries to break up with an obnoxious childhood friend. His friend starts weeping and Jerry has to give him another chance. It's interesting how the friendship originally developed: through shared experiences. His friend had a ping pong table and Jerry liked to play ping pong "I would have been friends with Stalin if he had a pingpong table!"....His friend had a perception of still being 'close friends'. but the whole friendship...however one gauges the intimacy...is predicated on shared activities. -
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I’m in my 40’s. In my 20’s, all my best friends were women, gay men, and Sci-Fi Geeks. I just found these groups to be the most open to talking about how they feel - and talk about fun geeky things.
Now, I’m married with two kids. That’s even better. I moved with my wife to MN ten years ago and lost all my friends in my process.
It has been a HUGE challenge building new friendships. My wife is not too keen on me hanging out with other women, we are not church-goers, plus I really have next to no free time. It’s hard to build a network of friends when I only get out every other Thursday after 9 PM. So, right now, my friends are my wife, and my two kids (and my wife’s cousin who is gay). :) -
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Kevin said via the Public Insight Network:
"Several of my closest friends are from college. The shared crucible of the college experience during a very formative part of most peoples' lives contributes to the bathos underpinning these enduring friendships. It seems to me, men create friends easily when in a shared, us against them, foxhole condition. For a number of reasons, these foxholes disappear with age and hence, the decline in the quantity/quality of friends. " -
I have found tennis to be a great way for me to make male friends. When we went to the bar after our regular Thursday games, we even called that time "Men's Support Group." I don't make support group meetings anymore, but I'm still getting together with a couple of those guys on a regular basis.
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@lpinebrook I think part of it too might be that young men today don't have models of adult male of close friendship. As we moved into large cities during the Industrial Revolution, we lost the institution of deep father-son mentorship and men learning to connect with each other emotionally that we see historically. Male friendships used to be the locus of a man's life. Modern work models have disrupted that and moved male friendship to the periphery.
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I found the health aspects of this discussion so interesting!
A lot of our friends are newly married and I see these strong male friendships being put on the line when these new brides force their husbands to choose them over their friends. It is so frustrating to see that they don't understand that these close friendships only make these men better partners because they have a much more well-rounded life! Great great great show!!! -
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A 1989 study shoew that 75% of the men surveyed said that their most meaningful experiences with friends came from activities other than talking. they reported that through shared activities, they "grew on one another". For many men, closeness grows from activities that don't depend heavily on disclosure: A friend is a person who does things for you and with you.
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I told my husband about this morning's topic and shared the teaser I heard--something like "as long as I have a steady girlfriend or a wife, why do I need friends?" He totally AGREED!!
He said men who need friends don't have happy home lives. My husband is NOT a recluse, has great social skills, and is very comfortable in social situations. But he genuinely feels that I am enough for him when it comes to real friendships. Hmmm. Do I even have to say how different that feels to me? I love him to pieces and we have a great relationship! But I need my friends, too. He understands that, supports it, but just doesn't feel the same way for himself. -
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I'm very lucky to have a best friend that is more like a brother than a friend.
But beyond him, my wife makes it very difficult to have many other male friendships let alone close ones. She finds fault with all of my guy friends and even when it comes to my best friend, she makes comments like "I've just learned to accept it", calls him her "other husband" or worse, my "husband's other wife". So, like most other guys, I just follow the path of least resistance and accept it because I just don't need the stress. -
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A lot of the discussion here resonates with me. I'm a gay man and have a number of friends - men and women - with whom I engage in activities and who serve as confidantes. I have two straight male friends who talk to me about their relationships and "intimate lives," which they feel they can't get out of their straight male friendships.
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