There is a friendship issue. Walk into a pub and count the number of men drinking alone. Social scientists are aware of this. One in three men have no close friends according to recent research by the mental health charity Movember. When I was going to propose to Naomi in the summer of 2020, I realized I didn't have anyone to call on.
It doesn't seem like me. I was 33 years old, outgoing, and always quick to buy my rounds, but I had no friends. I felt ashamed. The guy was alone in the lunch hall. I used to be a Billy No-mates. I went on a quest to find out what went wrong for men like me. What can we do to stop it? There are at least three main theories.
You don't have friends because of the culture in which you were raised. One of the many academics I spoke to who pointed the finger at so-called "toxic masculinity" said that it doesn't have anything to do with how you are naturally. She believes that men struggle with friendship because they have been socialised into a box of gender rules that make it hard to be intimate.
I am not a toxic person. Toxic masculinity was used to refer to monsters like Harvey Weinstein. I'm not old. Naomi said she wouldn't call you toxic. You change when you are around guys. Are you aware that?
I realized that I was a bit weird when I looked at how I was with the men in my life. At times, I experience an irrational tightening of the body and heart. I stand there like a dog being washed against its will when a man tries to hug me. I tell a male friend that I'm just as much of a fan of his as he is. It always pairs with a joke when I compliment a man. It introduces a degree of ambiguity to the emotions implied in it. What do I think about it?
I was planning to propose to my girlfriend when I realised I had no one to call on to be my best man
It's feelings. Fredric Rabinowitz, a psychologist renowned for his work with men's groups, says that there isn't any real education or encouragement for men to develop a vocabulary of intimacy. He told me to get a therapist. I quickly learned that I had developed a number of ways to avoid talking to the boys. Banter was a peculiarly male way of relating.
My therapist told me that I have an aura that I am not open or connected to. There is a feeling of separation. There is a block You may be a laugh, but other people aren't going to share theirnermost personal stuff. They feel like you can't give it back. You don't have any friends. She was correct. The only emotion I felt comfortable with was laughter. Everything was banter. It turned out that the psychologists had something to say.
There was something bothering me. We're often led to believe that male loneliness is a modern problem. The data shows that men have been struggling with their friends for a long time, dating back to the 70s and 80s. You would expect men's friendship to have improved if toxic masculinity is the cause of men's struggles. It is difficult to argue that the restrictive masculine norms the psychologists told me about have not changed. Is this not an indication that something else is happening? Something whispers something quietly in men's biology.
The leader of evolutionary anthropology believes there is. He believes that men are born with intimate friends. The social world of men and women has changed a lot in the last decade.
I had developed a number of handy tactics to avoid any sort of deep talk with “the boys”. Banter loomed large…
The male and female social styles are often described as face-to-face and side-by-side. Women prefer one-to-one interactions because of the intense emotional disclosure that comes with talking. Men prefer to hang out in groups, where they can do things together, such as playing five-a-side, climbing mountains and so on. Activities are the main course for men.
In the legendary male friendship of yore, it was shoulder-to- shoulder derring-do that was idolised. It's not any more. The modern world has redefined intimacy to become a synonym for emotional disclosure. Male forms of close proximity have become invisible to us because they are seen as pathological.
It's possible to take banter. Men can be very violent to each other. Aggressive behavior is often used as a strategy to achieve it. This underestimates the complexity of what's happening in that moment. There is a tacit agreement that we don't actually think or feel what we say. Everyone is in on the joke when it comes to perpetrators and victims. Mordant banter is a form of love. I know you trust that I am not being cruel, that I have permission, and that we are playing a game.
The idea that I was looking at my best-man challenge from the wrong direction was intriguing. Maybe I should focus on rebuilding the contexts where male friendships happen instead of improving the one-to-one friendships I had with the men in my life. What can we do together? I didn't replace these habitats in my grown up life. My best man quest was a rewilding project.
The third theory on why men have a friendship problem is that it takes a lot of time to share activities. As you get older, your job gets more serious, so does your relationship, maybe kids turn up, and your friends are the first thing to be pushed off the to-do list, it becomes more and more difficult to find time. There is no time in middle age for women. Research shows that the social networks of both men and women decline as they get older. That could be why.
Women put more effort into maintaining their friends, while men let their social circle decline and co-opt their partner's. John Mulaney has said that men don't have friends. They have friends with husbands. Men treat the women in their lives the same way they treat their own. If guys were honest, they would introduce their spouse at a wedding.
Unlike years of conditioning or the fate of our genes, effort is an easy solution. A friend of mine told me that I was called the "Sherper" because I organised everything. I wouldn't see them if I didn't do that. My new motto would be be be the shirring. I was able to reignite my social life. I found a best man as well.
Samuel Johnson once said that a man should keep his friendship up to date. I thought the owner's manual was very complex.
Billy No-mates: How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem is a book by Max Dickins. You can buy it at guardian bookshop.com.
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