Awesome article in WAPO about Men improving friendships during covid

[lindysalsagal]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2020/11/30/male-bonding-covid/

No game days. No bars. The pandemic is forcing some men to realize they need deeper friendships.

By Samantha Schmidt November 30, 2020 at 9:54 a.m. EST

It took a global pandemic and a badly timed breakup for Manny Argueta to realize just how far he had grown apart from his guy friends.

He started recognizing how dependent his friendships had become on those Sunday football games and nights at 14th Street lounges, on venting about Republicans or why the Caps fell short in the playoffs. They hardly ever talked about relationships or family, or just generally how they were doing. He had never met many of their family members.

On a rare night he spent catching up with an old friend in October, a mixture of vulnerability and intoxication led him to pour out his frustrations. “I bet you still have no idea why her and I broke up,” he said to his friend. “I bet you have no idea.” The friend paused, apologized and let him talk for a while about what had happened.

For more than a decade, psychologists have written about the “friendship crisis” facing many men. One 2006 analysis published in the American Sociological Review found that while Americans in general have fewer friends outside the family than they used to, young, White, educated men have lost more friends than other groups.

If anyone wants the whole thing, pm me.

[cmeneer]

1. That writer

Is my daughter’s good friend. She was just telling me about this article today. Amazing! Interesting topic/observations.

[lindysalsagal]

4. Please tell her I really enjoyed it, and she should write a book and start a blog. Honestly.

Men need this. Society needs this. She never got all gooey and preachy. It was cool and honest.

Younger men are better at this than their fathers. I've seen that as a school teacher.

[Mr.Bill]

2. I know one thing that the pandemic has reaffirmed for me.

My wife really is my best friend. We are retired, no interuption in our income, so we are more fortunate than many. The whole thing has actually been a positive experience for us.

[AllaN01Bear]

3. weve been going through a relationship crisis , how to meet and make friends .

part due to the internet and now with covid (trump virus ) , many are getting closer due to zoom and so fourth.

[lindysalsagal]

5. I moved states in May, so, yeah. starting over with nothing open is a drag.

I found ways to do it online, and that's saved my sanity. But I have lots of hobbies, so, I was able to find "My people" on meetup. It made all the difference.

[UTUSN]

6. Who-knows-why but the link let me in without paywall. Haven't tried the WaPo for

a year or more because of the paywall, but cleaning out the Cookies manually can bypass it, meaning all variations of Cookies such as starting with www. and all kinds of variations of "washington post" in the Cookie names. A temporary option when a topic is particularly engrossing. Other option, pay.

*****that said, getting on-topic, well, not to be disagreeing with the topic, just going on a tangent as usual. I've been retired several years, and automatically that cut off a large chunk of human interactions in one swift blow (work relationships). A smaller chunk that was left over was of the type in the article, "shoulder" type. But DU came along and this increasingly took over as a main source of interactions, really a precursor to the pandemic's Zoom and whatever virtual things that other people are breaking into now. Many of us reveal varying amounts of personal details here, sometimes in a friendly sense and sometimes in a therapy sense and (fill in the blank) sense. It might not be in-person but it's a form of engaging.

When a solid vaccine comes about, I'll venture out again (still with a mask), and will probably have to adjust partially away from this virtual/DU way.

[lindysalsagal]

7. I think articles like this are important: It encourages you to reach out: Someone else will also

need new friends and appreciate it.