I'm not Sure What to Make of this? "American men’s hidden crisis: They need more friends!"

[KoKo]

American men’s hidden crisis: They need more friends!
Men aren't making the same kinds of intimate friendships many women have -- but they want to


Of all people in America, adult, white, heterosexual men have the fewest friends. Moreover, the friendships they have, if they’re with other men, provide less emotional support and involve lower levels of self-disclosure and trust than other types of friendships. When men get together, they’re more likely to do stuff than have a conversation. Friendship scholar Geoffrey Greif calls these “shoulder-to-shoulder” friendships, contrasting them to the “face-to-face” friendships that many women enjoy. If a man does have a confidant, three-quarters of the time it’s a woman, and there’s a good chance she’s his wife or girlfriend.
When I first began researching this topic I thought, surely this is too stereotypical to be true. Or, if it is true, I wondered, perhaps the research is biased in favor of female-type friendships. In other words, maybe we’re measuring male friendships with a female yardstick. It’s possible that men don’t want as many or the same kinds of friendships as women.
But they do. When asked about what they desire from their friendships, men are just as likely as women to say that they want intimacy. And, just like women, their satisfaction with their friendships is strongly correlated with the level of self-disclosure. Moreover, when asked to describe what they mean by intimacy, men say the same thing as women: emotional support, disclosure and having someone to take care of them.
Men desire the same level and type of intimacy in their friendships as women, but they aren’t getting it.
***
In an effort to understand why men’s friendships are less intimate than women’s, psychologist Niobe Way interviewed boys about their friendships in each year of high school. She found that younger boys spoke eloquently about their love for and dependence on their male friends. In fact, research shows that boys are just as likely as girls to disclose personal feelings to their same-sex friends and they are just as talented at being able to sense their friends’ emotional states.
But, at about age 15 to 16 — right at the same age that the suicide rate of boys increases to four times the rate of girls — boys start reporting that they don’t have friends and don’t need them. Because Way interviewed young men across each year of high school, she was able to document this shift. One boy, Justin, said this in his first year, when he was 15:
[My best friend and I] love each other… that’s it… you have this thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it. It’s just a thing that you know that person is that person… I guess in life, sometimes two people can really, really understand each other and really have a trust, respect and love for each other.
By his senior year, however, this is what he had to say about friendship:
[My friend and I] we mostly joke around. It’s not like really anything serious or whatever… I don’t talk to nobody about serious stuff… I don’t talk to nobody. I don’t share my feelings really. Not that kind of person or whatever… It’s just something that I don’t do.

What happens?

During these years, young men are learning what it means to be a “real man.” The #1 rule: avoid everything feminine. Notice that a surprising number of insults that we fling at men are actually synonyms for or references to femininity. Calling male athletes “girls,” “women” and “ladies” is a central part of motivation in sports. Consider also slurs like “bitch” and “pussy,” which obviously reference women, but also “fag” (which on the face of it is about sexual orientation, but can also be a derogatory term for men who act feminine) and “cocksucker” (literally a term for people who sexually service men). This, by the way, is where the ubiquitous slur “you suck” comes from; it’s an insult that means you give men blow jobs.
So men are pressed — from the time they’re very young — to disassociate from everything feminine. This imperative is incredibly limiting for them. Paradoxically, it makes men feel good because of a social agreement that masculine things are better than feminine things, but it’s not the same thing as freedom. It’s restrictive and dehumanizing. It’s oppression all dressed up as awesomeness. And it is part of why men have a hard time being friends.

To be close friends, men need to be willing to confess their insecurities, be kind to others, have empathy and sometimes sacrifice their own self-interest. “Real men,” though, are not supposed to do these things. They are supposed to be self-interested, competitive, non-emotional, strong (with no insecurities at all), and able to deal with their emotional problems without help. Being a good friend, then, as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly.

Of course, not all men buy into these prescriptions for male behavior, but these expectations do influence most men’s friendships at least a little bit. They mean that, to make good friends, men have to take risks. In a context in which being a man is good and being friendly is being womanly, each time a man tries to form intimate bonds with another man, he potentially loses status. Men who want truly close friends have to fight the instinct to protect their standing above all else. This isn’t easy, as they’ve been told for a lifetime that their status as male, and their place in that hierarchy, is a significant part of why they’re important and valuable human beings.

More of the article that I don't know what to Make Of, at:

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/08/american_mens_hidden_crisis_they_need_more_friends/

[redstatebluegirl]

1. My husband has very few close friends.

He says the fact that I need girl time is odd to him. He has a new hobby that has a club attached to it and he s beginning to make a few friennds.

[KoKo]

3. There's that. Some of our older men friends had "Model Train Clubs" and such

but for Our Generation...we've not found separate ways to have "In Commons."

We do for politics..but, it's not the same...we feel.

We think it's a Generational Thing. We had friends with older ...but they are dying off and we sort of in a gap with the "Football Tail Gate/Hunting Crowd" and the "Constant Political" of the ones our age or younger...who we share ISSUE oriented causes in common...but, have little in common beyond that because we are a bit older than they are.

Sometimes we feel like "TWEENIES" the wedge between Generations.

[Seeking Serenity]

2. I read that article

and I found it to come from a very gynocentric point of view. The real issue posed seemed to be, "Men need to have more friends the way women do."

As a woman, I'm quite sure I wouldn't react favorably to a man telling women how they should do things the way men do.

[KoKo]

4. I thought it was a bit "biased" myself. But still...we've had discussions in

our house about how "Man Things" don't seem to be the same as they were with our Parents Generation. So, it was an interesting read from that standpoint of WHY? to the questions we've been batting around.

[westerebus]

5. 15-16 year old hetero males.

This is pretty much the time frame that dating of the opposite sex takes precedence, it is not a surprise that boyhood companionship would begin to take second place. As males and female pair off into the couples relationship stage of courting and sexual experimentation.

The course nature of male banter is no worse than that of their female counterparts. In the locker rooms or in the classrooms or on the internet.

It is a horrible stage of adolescence for either sex, well may be horrible is overstated, awkward none the less. Sex roles begin to mean something. We were all taught from an early age we were meant to love and be loved which in progression is the movement from friendship and companionship to the next level of human relations, intimacy.

This has to be put in context, it is not diminishing the feminine, it is the attraction to the feminine that distances males from other males as competition arises.

Past the college years on to the marriage eligible years comes more distance once the consummation of vows takes place.

Just my observation.

[Blue_Tires]

6. Speaking for myself, I can say that I've had an unbelievably tough time trying to make real friends

At age 37, I can honestly say I only have two at the most...Sadly I "know" many DUers whom I've never met much better than people IRL (one of the reasons I still continue to hang around after all this time)...

I don't necessarily agree with all of the writer's points, but I think for a lot of us this is a much bigger problem than we'd care to admit...