Why do we make it so hard for men to make friends?

Photo by Donovan Grabowski on Unsplash

Not so long ago, I sat in my therapy room and spoke with a nice man who had no friends. Zero friends. He had a wife and a social life, and he got on fine with the partners of his wife’s friends. But the friends he once had were no longer in his life. And this man was not unusual. In fact, I have lost track of the number of times I have asked a man ‘do you have a 3am friend, someone you can call in the middle of the night in an emergency, and you would trust that they’d be fine with that?’ to be met by a blank stare. And then, perhaps a few moments later, the revelation that not only do they lack a friend of that kind, they actually have no personal friends at all. Work colleagues, yes. Perhaps some guys they might play sport with. But that’s about it.

And so I began to wonder, why do we make it so hard for men to keep friends? I guess I should preface that I’m talking here mostly about UK heterosexual men over the age of 40. These are the guys I see in my practice.

What I’ve noticed about millennial men is a difference; that they are more likely to have male friendships. I apologise if this sounds simplistic, but for many, one of their most influential cultural experiences as teenagers was watching the TV show Friends, which played all over the world. In it, the three male principal characters hugged each other, talked, and connected in a way that didn’t echo the female characters, but which nevertheless denoted a strong and lasting friendship bond. I honestly think that we cannot underestimate the impact of this role modelling on a generation of young men. Their fathers, on the other hand, missed out on this.

One of the themes of my work with couples is that men and women are not that different. Yes - we experience profound cultural and societal differences - but we want the same things. To be loved; to be respected; to be valued and to feel that you can make a difference. All of these intrinsic human needs are met not just by a romantic partner, but by friendship. We seem to have created a society where this is endorsed for women, but not really for middle aged and older men. They need to be able to compete and to impress other men. But not to feel loved, respected and valued by other men. Men are three times more likely than women to kill themselves. One of the factors leading to suicide is emotional isolation. It doesn’t take much to piece together the idea that lack of friendship for men is actively harmful to them.

Yet many are in a prison of their own making. Every time they engage in competitive banter ‘you’re going bald, mate’ instead of asking ‘how are you doing?’ they distance themselves from the prospect of genuine connection. When did we all give tacit approval to the idea that this is a perfectly OK way for half of humanity to operate? Of course there are many exceptions. But what I observe is that deep and enduring male friendships are for the minority of men, not the majority. Cultural conditioning runs deep. But it is not impossible to change. This is not about men being more like women. It’s about them being given permission to access their full humanity. The TV show Friends offered a generation of men a great service. But it ended in 2004. We need to pick up the baton of endorsing male friendship and keep running with it.