Why many men struggle to maintain deep male friendships later in life

John Yang:

A recent Pew Research center study found that 54 percent of women say they turn to a friend for emotional support, but only 38 percent of men say they do. Men's lack of deep close friendships has been in the spotlight lately. To try to understand more about it, we asked men across the country to tell us what friendship means to them and why some of them struggle to maintain social connections with one another.

Erik Pangelinan, San Jose, California:

It's about feeling comfortable with somebody enough to be your authentic self.

Bob Mertz, Martinsburg, West Virginia:

It's somebody that is there for you and you are there for them.

Giovanni Galarza, Lyden, Washington:

I define friendship as being a mutual connection between two people. It's very much a two way street.

Bob Mertz:

I think friendship is definitely harder for men. I don't think men open up as much as they should.

Jakob Balandran, Sacramento, California:

From my experience, I think that men are sort of more the type to isolate themselves.

Bob Mertz:

There were a lot of times where I was closer friends with women than I was with men.

Erik Pangelinan:

Sometimes women, you can connect with them better on an emotional level as opposed to men.

Giovanni Galarza:

I think a lot of my male friends mirror my personality. They're softer. They don't feel the need to be headstrong or to compete innately with each other.

Jakob Balandran:

My best friend, his name is Mateo, I really trust him. It's the type relationship where we just. There's a mutual vulnerability.

Erik Pangelinan:

I know it's cliche, but my wife actually is my best friend. With her, it was — there was this natural genuineness. And so it actually helped me open up more with her and to be my genuine self with her. And she was very accepting of everything.

Bob Mertz:

Personally, I'm still in the spot where it is hard to make new friends. I guess I'd like to see more events going on, more things, more places that people could go just to hang out, whether you know somebody or not.

Erik Pangelinan:

I would definitely welcome more male friendships. I mean, I can't — I got to admit, I get jealous when people hang out with the guys, and I don't really have that sort of dynamic.

John Yang:

So why do some men seem to struggle with friendship? Novelist and essayist Sam Graham-Felsen recently wrote an essay in the New York Times Magazine entitled "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?" And Richard Reeves is the CEO of the American Institute for Boys and Men, which focuses on research and policy.

Sam, I want to start with you. In your essay, you had a line that struck me. You said that when you were younger, you had friends that I loved and needed and who loved and needed me and whom now I almost never talk to. What did you learn about how men interact with each other? And also, what did you learn about yourself in doing this?

Sam Graham-Felsen, Novelist and Essayist: Well, you know, I was aware of the fact that there was a loneliness crisis in this country and that men were hit particularly hard. But I never really accepted that I was one of these data points. I always thought of myself as an exception, somebody who had lots of friends.

And then I had kids. I got married. I got busy with work and days, weeks, sometimes months would go by without seeing a friend. And I finally started to admit to myself that I actually was lonely. And that's kind of the impetus for wanting to write this article, was exploring how did someone like me, who I had always seen myself as a hyper social person, somebody with tons of friends when I was a younger man. How did I get to the point where in my 30s and 40s. 40s, I was spending most weekend nights in my house, not going out, not seeing friends?

John Yang:

Richard, do men and women socialize differently?

Richard Reeves, American Institute for Boys and Men: Yeah, that's one of the differences is that men tend to socialize through an activity of one kind or another. Men tend to socialize somewhat more shoulder to shoulder, is how the social scientists put it, as opposed to face.

So whether that's fishing or hiking or watching sports, they need those spaces where men can kind of hang out. Women seem to be a little bit better at just doing face to face, meeting up just to talk to each other. Men tend to need some sort of structure. And so what that means is if those structures fall away, then that makes it just a little bit harder for men.

John Yang:

Sam, having acknowledged that you were lonely and written this piece, have you done anything differently in your life since then?

Sam Graham-Felsen:

So I really did the most basic possible thing you could do. I got over my fear and I just started picking up the phone and calling friends, and not only calling friends, but just saying yes to when friends asked me to do something. I mean, it sounds so strange. I love hanging out with my friends, but I can't tell you the number of times in the past when I would come up with some reason, any excuse to not go out, usually something related to work.

But I've just committed to if a friend asks me to hang out, I. I'm going to say yes. Because basically what I've come to realize is that relationships are the most important factor in terms of feeling better and happier. You know, I tried all kinds of things. I tried meditation, I tried getting in really, really good shape.

And all those things helped a little bit, but they didn't cure the fundamental problem, which was loneliness. And the only thing that cured that was actually starting to hang out more. And it turned out that my friends were totally eager to get back in touch and start hanging out again. And might have been awkward for a few minutes, but pretty quick we found a groove and ended up, you know, enjoying Hanging out again.

John Yang:

Sam, I know you've written another essay since then about a road trip you took with your son. You said you talked about masculinity. Did you also talk about friendship?

Sam Graham-Felsen:

Part of why I wanted to take him on this road trip is because he's now nine. But were watching a movie together, "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." And it's a movie about male friendship. But there's a point in the movie where Bill and Ted embrace each other and then they quickly pull away. And I watched my son react to that.

And I heard him say things like, you know, I used to say to my friends, I love you, but I don't say that anymore because I don't want them to think I'm weird or something. And that just struck me as a kind of sad thing because I have a daughter who's a couple years younger, and she has no problem at all saying I love you to her friends.

So part of my goal was to teach him resilience and toughness and some of these quote, unquote, traditional masculine values. But I also wanted to leave room for him to challenge some of the conventions of what we think of as masculine, to be the kind of person who can express his feelings openly and tell his friends he loves them.

John Yang:

Richard, on your website, your group's website, you write that broad measures such as overall loneliness, satisfaction with emotional support, and the number of close friends, men and women, look pretty similar. Take away the gender differences. Is this a societal problem?

Richard Reeves:

There are some differences. Men are more likely to be socially isolated than women, and some studies find this friendship gap, but there's really a huge class gap as well. I think it's worth mentioning that it is really men and women from lower income backgrounds that are kind of struggling the most actually, with these social connections.

But I think there's just a broader question of isolation, disconnection. It's easier to stay at home now. And so whilst I really applaud this move in my own life to try and definitely be more open about expressing love and physical affection for male friends, we should also be very careful not to end up treating men as if actually we can't have some differences in the way that male friendships work, there are differences in the dynamics of male and female friendships, and that's okay.

One of the things that really seems to bring men together is when they're doing things for other people. And voluntary organizations all over the U.S. are desperately short of male volunteers. So maybe one of the ways we can connect with each other is by doing things for others.

Sam Graham-Felsen:

After I wrote this article, I heard from hundreds of men all across the country who said that they were struggling with this issue. One of the people that I heard from is part of an organization where it starts out being about fitness, but it's morphed into a nationwide movement of men working out together and then doing community service work together.

Richard Reeves:

I think, Sam, this is, in a way, the win-win which is to connect through providing service, through purpose. And so there's a hunger for connection. But this isn't a selfish desire necessarily. We're also, I think, looking for connections so that we can have a kind of positive impact on the world.

John Yang:

Richard Reeves, Sam Graham-Felsen, thank you both very much.

Richard Reeves:

Thank you.

Sam Graham-Felsen:

Thank you.