In my teenage years I distanced myself from all of my friends after they started to get into hard drugs and I got in a long-term relationship. I didn’t know any better and my world centered around my then partner so I didn’t even try to make new friends; after 5 years, we broke up and I moved countries twice, and when I returned home, I felt I didn’t belong anywhere, moved town a few more times and have never managed to make lasting friends… I honestly think there’s something wrong with me…
That’s just how it is today dude. I grew up in rural Canada and had friends till I graduated. Then I moved to Calgary for college then to the coast for work. My other friends went elsewhere. I haven’t had true friends in probably 8 years now.
Same here. Moving cities is much more common nowadays and it’s almost guaranteed a hard reset on friendships. Even if put in the work of keeping in touch, distant friendships are not as fulfilling as present ones anyway.
I think it’s that way because of the world today promotes mental health issues. People are embarrassed about their life if they are not doing well and governments like to keep it that way.
i think it's really simple.. we don't gather in order to accomplish things together.. not in the real world, solving real problems.. men become friends when they solve problems and build things together.. think barn building among the Amish.. and we basically can only drop the competitive thing if we're trying to work together, but then we get right to work.. and that's our normal socialization.. when we see one another, we immediately like to reminisce about something we fixed or conquered together.. back in my grandfather's day, they spent free time at the men's social club, to brag about exactly that and drink and play cards all evening.. we haven't figured out how to replace that stuff.. so we're all just adversaries all the time, learning how to get better at combat and shit..
right, games are the current substitute.. many men aren't interested in games, because there's nothing real about them, and i don't think it really suffices as a substitute in general..
I think part of this is a result of toxic masculinity issues. I remember reading a comment by a trans man on how his friendships had changed after he transitioned, and while part of it was how his friendships changed with women he had been friends with before he even transitioned, he also talked about how his friendships with men were missing a major part that had made his friendships with women before he transitioned so deep - and that was emotional vulnerability. Similar to what you’re saying, he found that it generally isn’t socially acceptable for men to form true, emotional connections with other men outside of scenarios that emulate life or death situations. Things like hunting, or sports that were originally created to keep soldiers fit outside of war are acceptable situations for men to build that camaraderie. Outside of these kinds of scenarios though, men aren’t allowed to be emotionally vulnerable with each other and make true friendships that go beyond a surface level, leaving them emotionally isolated and stunting their emotional growth and well-being. He also theorized that this is probably why men mistake women being friendly as them being flirtatious since women have that deep emotional connection in all their friendships, while men are only really allowed it with romantic partners, but that’s outside the scope of this conversation.
This part stuck out to me. When I was younger I often got myself into bad situations that presented opportunities form connections through shared experiences. As I get older I’m fucking up less and when I do it’s just me trusting myself and going through it alone.
To truly like a person, you need trust, and that requires emotional investment – an increasingly rare commodity as you age – so as old friends fade away, they cannot simply be replaced. The space to build trust with newcomers is just not there.
I think the unsaid part is just time spent together- when you’re a kid it’s easy to have dozens of hours a week to hang out and bond. As you age, there’s other time commitments - kids, spouse, family, maintaining a house, etc. In order to have that emotional investment you need to get past the awkward first stages of friendship.
I think a lot of people lose/drop their hobbies, or the things that let them bond and meet other people. It’s hard to say “I dropped football and now I lost 50% of male conversation” without more info. If all your friends are only bonding over football, yeah. So find other things to do! There’s a million of them, and people are always passionate about their own interests. Find people with similar interests.
The author also mentions “it feels like they’re always just someone’s partner” and that’s very telling. Are the only men you’re engaging with those who are partners of your own spouse? Well no shit you’re not feeling like you have friends. I like my wife’s friends partners, but they’re firmly in the acquaintance category.
I had a good friend move to the same small town I’m in. Between work and family, we don’t get together for months on end, even though he’s a 5 min drive down the road. We want to get together, but we’re both too exhausted and burnt out.
It’s also the societal loss of “3rd places”. There’s home, work, and then… where else do you actually meet people? And if you do, where do you connect with them? Especially low-cost and not health-damaging like a bar…
The quote is totally messed up for sure. What annoys me as well is that image is not even from that scene or the same person. Doesn’t it come from the “inconceivable” poison cup scene?
If you no longer need an audience, then why hang out with them?
Oof, I hope you don’t really believe that. Aside from “attention” that you get with friends, you should also get compassion, empathy, and love. And sometimes it’s just nice to have companionship.
Hydrogen is going to be abused to white wash fossils, no doubt. It will also keep consumers dependent on gas station distribution. Certain types of companies like both of these things very much.
I don’t believe the prices presented in the article. P2X will eventually be able to produce much cheaper green hydrogen than the costs of drilling for white hydrogen. There really isn’t a limit to how cheap it can get.
White hydrogen is fine to replace the production of gray hydrogen right now, but I doubt it will continue to be the cheapest method in just a few years.
At some point it becomes suddenly, disconcertingly clear that we have very few pals left
By George Chesterton 24 July 2023 • 8:00am ‘I’m both envious of those who appear to have lots of friends and suspicious of how they’ve acquired them’
Five times a year. That’s how often I see the friends I have left. It feels like slim pickings for a man with my winning personality. What happens to male friendship in middle age? The question comes with a pang. Am I missing out, or deficient in some way? I mean, I have plenty of friends. Well, I have a decent number of friends. OK, I have a few friends.
I’ve talked myself into a kind of loneliness that’s hard to justify given that I’m surrounded by so much familial love. (“Poor widdle me,” as Kim Jong-il once sang in Team America.) I’m both envious of those who appear to have lots of friends and suspicious of how they’ve acquired them.
“Friends” is a dominant theme of the cliché-industrial complex, appearing in an endless feed of Facebook platitudes and Instagram posts. Taylor Swift said, “All you need to do to be my friend is like me”, which is either very profound or very stupid. Let’s assume it’s the former and that a definition of friendship is unconditional affection, rather than needy sycophancy. If I’m Billy No Mates, and Taylor is correct, then it means I don’t like many people and they don’t like me. So I appear to have brought this on myself.
This phobia of being clubbable is perhaps best expressed in a passage from Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, when Colonel Korn finally consents to send Yossarian home from the war on one condition.
“What must I do?”
Colonel Korn laughed curtly.“Like us.”
Yossarian blinked. “Like you?”
“That’s right,” said Colonel Korn. “Like us. Join us. Be our pal … Become one of the boys. Now, that isn’t asking too much, is it?”
“That isn’t going to be too easy.”
To truly like a person, you need trust, and that requires emotional investment – an increasingly rare commodity as you age – so as old friends fade away, they cannot simply be replaced. The space to build trust with newcomers is just not there.
Most often your partner becomes your best friend by default, which is no bad thing, while an imperceptible drift from sociability takes place over the years – sometimes it’s because of children, sometimes physical distance, sometimes lifestyle choices, like religion or polyamory.
Lasting significance
It doesn’t help that three of my oldest friends are currently unavailable. Of the men I spent most of my youth and young manhood with, one is in Los Angeles, another lives an alternative lifestyle in Devon and the third joined me in a spectacular falling out that killed our 30-year relationship overnight (mostly my fault, naturally).
It’s easier to be blasé and picky when you are young. There are so many friends to choose from and so many relationships you can roll into and out of again without the sense of any lasting significance. Having so few friends can’t be foreseen at 21, but maturity nudges out the immediate need, with the hours dominated by family and work. Once-intense friendships blow up or become diffuse, yet I still see other men managing it better than me.
Moments of envy that other men my age have armies of besties are countered by the cynical assumption that to have so many must mean a decent proportion are false or flimsy in some way. If friendship means something, then how can it be so effortless for these mysteriously popular men, who dangle their mates like an ageing hipster’s neck chains?
The more I witness friendship groups treating Glastonbury like a middle-aged Christmas (“only six sleeps to Glastonbury”), the less I want to know. It’s the fun that really puts me off. I carry the remembrance of festivals past, which is enough to dissuade me now. It’s great if 250,000 people want to enjoy music and drugs in a pop-up town with less diversity than Antiques Roadshow, but don’t sell it to me as a return to Eden. This is the kind of sentiment that evinces comments such as “I feel sorry for you”. They’re not necessary. I already feel sorry for myself.
Design and necessity
Apparently there is a dire need for a safe space for men, which is a bit like saying grey squirrels need a safe space from red ones. But I would concede there is a particular state of ease that’s only possible for men among other men.
There is also consolation that with those few friends you have left, months or even years between meetings are written off with the wave of a hand. Just as well really. This is when you notice the unfettered affection and loyalty male friends feel for each other. It’s kept simple by design and necessity.
Having lost interest in football I’ve destroyed 50 per cent of my conversation options – and I wasn’t exactly Bantersaurus Rex to begin with. Male bonding is sometimes little more than a home-cooked version of a radio phone-in on an infinite loop.
True male friendship is paradoxical, in that it is intimate without intimacy. Men neither touch each other physically nor discuss anything directly – what is said out loud is trivial and everything important is unspoken. If a subtext is identified, it’s quickly ignored before moving on, since no man wants to turn a subtext into an actual text over a few beers.
Like a lot of things about getting older, acceptance is the only meaningful response. My friends are real. My loneliness isn’t. It’s a product of a faulty memory and an ego that hasn’t yet burnt itself out. At least we have yacht rock to talk about. During those occasional and precious tribal gatherings, you all become carriers of each other’s memories, like the shaman or village poets who guard the oral history of your collective lives.
If you want lots of friends, you will probably have lots of friends. Therefore, if I don’t have many, I must not need many to begin with. Either that or I’m unbearable. Answers on a postcard, please. But don’t expect a friendly reply.
telegraph.co.uk
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