As I sat in the car on my way back from a short vacation in North Carolina, I began to scroll through my phone contacts. Some names were fresh on my mind but others were people I hadn’t spoken to in weeks. Others months. The longest was 9 months.
These people weren’t fly-by-night acquaintances. They were people I considered friends. They knew personal things about me. The person I hadn’t spoken to in 9 months—he’d been a close confidant when I went through my divorce. I don’t know why so much time had gone by since our last exchange. To be honest, there was no reason for it other than life was taking us different directions. Neither one of us had thought to pick up the phone. So the friendship, as it was, had been put on hold.
Male friendships are strange and unique that way. We don’t often seek strong emotional ties with each other, therefore, it’s easy to cut them off without a second thought.
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The way men form friendships is different than women. We look for a common bond or interest that can sustain the friendship for a period of time.
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The way men form friendships is different than women. We look for a common bond or interest that can sustain the friendship for a period of time. In college, it’s often the experience of maturing from a boy to manhood—the shared struggle of navigating relationships, sexuality, and job-hunting. But after college, the lives of men hit a critical point of deviation. And the friendships we have reflect that. Our investments change as our phases in life change.
When I observe my friendship circles, I see far more separation than overlapping. After opening up in The Good Men Project Facebook group, I noticed that this isn’t an anomaly. As men get older, our friendships become less of a priority. That is, we don’t rely on our friends and we don’t think about nurturing new friendships the way women do.
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Interpersonal relationships can only function with effort and reciprocity. The older you get, the less likely you are to submit to someone else’s whim.
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One of the main reasons for that is that once men get married, they often scale back on spending time with the guys. Guys night out becomes a rare treat rather than a regularly scheduled occasion. We tend to take marrying your best friend in a literal way. Along with getting married comes fatherhood, which means you have even less time for yourself to be carefree. As a 45 year old father in the Facebook group pointed out, “As the father of a young boy, my friendships are less active. We speak less but when we do it’s deep and personal. My time is limited so I waste little with small talk.”
Another reason why men don’t hang on to friendships is because some friendships require a lot of work. I don’t say that in a brusque way. Interpersonal relationships can only function with effort and reciprocity. The older you get, the less likely you are to submit to someone else’s whim. And let’s be honest, there are men who can be extremely needy and annoying. I used to have an associate who — because his wife was always doing things with her friends — kept inviting me out to different functions in DC. The problem was he had no consideration for the fact that I didn’t make the kind of money he did and I didn’t live close to the city. So eventually we stopped hanging out. Our friendship never got the chance to develop because it was evident early that he was the selfish type. That type of one-way friendship was never going to work, no matter how much we had in common in other areas.
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Every man needs a solid circle of men who he can trust and he who can be his total self with.
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While in North Carolina, I brought up the topic of male friendships and why we don’t fight for them the way women do. The most interesting takeaway was that male friendships have little to no expectations. You meet a guy, you bond with him, you have fun, but there’s no expectation that it’ll be a lifelong relationship. We let them fade because they’re superficial at inception. Men are rarely vulnerable with other men to the point that there’s an emotional commitment. It actually becomes a significant surprise when men can say they’ve had friends for longer than a decade. Those relationships haven’t been tested in the way that women’s friendships have. However, they’ve grown and matured in the same way.
When I think about the friends that I have now, I believe that they’ll be the guys I’ll still be friends with five years from now. I hope they’ll be at my wedding. I hope they’ll be at my childrens’ birthday parties. I hope we’ll continue to go on vacations together. The friends that knew me 10 years ago—I’m trying to rekindle those friendships. Every man needs a solid circle of men who he can trust and he who can be his total self with.
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Photo: Getty Images
