In my experience as an adult, people having time/willingness to socialize goes in the following order (gender irrelevant)
In order of most to least:
- Single
- Married without children
- LGBT couples (not married)
- Heterosexual couples (not married)
- Parents
A lot of my friends are married, but child free. The ones with kids I hardly see.
Go volunteer for a cause you believe in. Great way to meet likeminded people.
Are male friendships considered not normal??
There really isn’t. It’s just a growing subset that sees any long term friendship as a homosexual relationship. This usually stems.from the “way too queer but not gay enough” crowd.
It… depends. Not as normalized as they should be, and a lot less emotional support than you’d expect.
It also depends on which circles you run in. Some of my friends I will see at least once a month and we talk about each other’s problems from time to time. A big factor is whether you’re in shared hobbies and whether those hobbies push people to grow and improve
There is nothing non-normalized about male friendships. “Normalizing” means you are making something which has a social stigma not have that social stigma. There is no social stigma against men having friends.
Like I said, depends on the friendship and the environment. If two friends get too close, they may be called faggots, or get jokes about them being gay for each other (meant to be deeply insulting because homophobia, yay). Maybe it’s just the fact that I live in the southeast US. I don’t know whether you’re a man or not, also just my personal experience.
It doesn’t. There is literally no where in the world where there is a stigma against men having male friends.
I used to think that is absurd too. Then i got older and a lot of my frieds got married or in serious relationships and then most of them disappeared. My thought was always that they just found new friends or whatever, in reality they just don’t have time besides relationships and children and work.
My best friend from 10+ years ago just came over, i haven’t seen him in 3 years or so. He kept telling me that we always have such a good time and he wants to come over more and drink coffee and talk. All while looking at his watch saying things like: ooof i gotta go soon, my girlfriend is gonna be pissed. When he left he said: we should do that soon, he can’t wait. The same thing he said 3 years ago. We used to live together and go on vacation together. We pretty much shared the same interests. It happens super fast.
But, none of this points to male friendships being considered abnormal, which is what a call for normalization means to me.
Male friendships are less common than they used to be, at least anecdotally, but they’re still socially acceptable, AKA “normal”.
Normalization means that to you because that’s what normalization means.
I heard a perspective that helped me understand male friendships more in depth, and it went kinda like this, (massively paraphrasing, sorry) apparently men do this parallel play, kinda friendship. They just do stuff side by side, without the deeper knowledge or emotional support or growth together. I found it hard to even imagine that existed, probably because I have adhd and no filter, so I dig the deeps out of anyone I encounter and similarly dump my deeps on even poor random people who have not asked for such horrors, so I struggled to fathom that level, where that doesn’t exist. And if they move away they just ghost out. Sad! Like, here’s the guy I am randomly sitting next to, I know nothing about. It hurts my heart.
I don’t think I can connect on a deeper level than that. Like, I have friends. We go fishing, camping, play video games. But I’m probably as close to friends I’ve made this year as I am to ones since the fourth grade, and as close as I am with my brother. All the same. We can talk about hobbies, and work, and family, but I’m not going to have any deep conversations about feelings or fears or dreams with them. I don’t even know what a conversation like that would be like. I’d probably be really uncomfortable if they started one.
One time, I messaged a friend about wanting to spend more time with my daughter because my dad worked a lot growing up, and I ended up deleting it because it felt weird to say that.
I don’t in any way mean to pressure you into feeling like you “should” be doing things in any particular way. If it’s really outside your comfort zone, that’s ok, but also, you tried to reach out to someone, and then didn’t, so I feel like maybe you want that level of connection with someone. Sometimes it’s easier to start trusting someone with your deeper feelings and emotions when you see that vulnerability from someone else, too. Vulnerability requires a level of trust in someone. Steer away from men who tend to degrade others, if you’re choosing someone to open up to, they aren’t going to have a lot of empathy and aren’t going to, therefore, be in connection with their own emotions. How do you feel about your current relationships? Do you feel like there’s something missing? Would you like more? I feel like there’s this tough bro code where guys are socialised / made to feel like they have to uphold this mask of “man”, but that’s not being authentically you, so it makes it really hard to connect with your own emotions and therefore trust others with them, if you feel like you have to hide the real you, all the time.
I feel really similar. I’m a dude, and I’ve always struggled with male friendships. I’ll ask people about themselves and their interests, get answers, and then the conversation stops with no reciprocation. I have a hard time just talking about myself unprompted, so since it’s rare for men to ask me stuff, I just get to know a lot of people but it never seems like they meet me.
That sounds really, frustrating. There’s a socialised culture built where men are taught they can’t operate outside “man” and I feel like I’m finally noticing how limiting that is, wearing the “prove I’m part of the club” mask all the time. I feel like that mask is getting less rigid, by each generation. But I can imagine how hard it would be to be able to express your feelings, when you’re in the constant practice of ignoring your feelings and replacing them with “what fits in” so that might make it really hard for some of the men you try to befriend to even know how to reciprocate in questions, to deepen your connection. But also, even asking or answering questions about your feelings requires a genuine and authentic connection with them, and if you keep telling your feelings, all your life, it isn’t safe to feel, or say feelings, that would cause some hugely damaging repression. It’s understandable, even, that some men never get to a level of emotional intelligence that they could, because getting to a certain level of emotional intelligence requires that connection with your own emotions. I can see how all those factors could really stunt friendships. You would almost have to teach them how to do all the things, from the ground up.
Its funny but this is why I believe car guys are so weird.
Playing with cars is an expensive hobby, so you cant engage in it as often as you like without a LOT of disposable income so when you meet another car guy and he mentions “Yeah I have to yank the engine out of my race car this weekend” if you dont have plans you actually really DO want to help even if you barely know the guy because you get to engage in your hobby on someone elses dime.
So you go around, spend a day swearing and getting filthy, busting your knuckles and putting sweat into their passion for nothing more than maybe lunch and a few drinks, so they really are appreciative.
All that Fast and Furious “Family” shit is overblown, but my son is named after my best friend and we became friends for life engine swapping and building a 89 Honda.
I think you just described my Dad and his whole tribe. He has so many friends and they all trade favours, all the time, there’s this deep connection and they read people by how much they give to others, in balance of course. He’d give the shirt off his back to just about anyone, but he knows when someone is only out for themselves. He loved cars so much he built a business around it, but it’s essentially become a men’s shed. I think you’re spot on, and that’s a great test, if someone is willing to bust a knuckle open, trying to shift a tight bolt, with you, you know they’re a good one.
