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female looking for male for friendship - franklinkelsey5 - 09-12-2025
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Article about female looking for male for friendship:
What’s holding them back? | Psyche Ideas
Some masculine norms are a straightjacket, depriving men of the connections they need. It takes bravery to leave them behind
Too many men lack close friendships.
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What’s holding them back? is a developmental and social psychologist. She is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and a postdoctoral scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. is a developmental and social psychologist. She is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and a postdoctoral scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Some masculine norms are a straightjacket, depriving men of the connections they need. It takes bravery to leave them behind. ‘I get sad at weddings, but not for the reason you might think. When I see the groom with his best man, I can’t think of any man who knows me well enough to fill that role.’ Lawrence, 32, is one of more than 500 class- and race-diverse men in English-speaking countries whom I’ve canvassed on the subject of intimacy and friendship over the past two years. A software engineer in Hawaii, Lawrence wishes he had more close friendships with men, but even initiating a coffee feels like a risk: ‘With a woman, you can be like: “Hey, let’s go to the park, let’s get a coffee.” With a man, it’s like, will he think I’m gay or something?’ Another interviewee, Kieran, 40, a white primary school teacher from Ireland, said he regrets fumbling his chance to offer support to a friend, Sam. Over drinks at the pub, Sam confided to Kieran that he struggles with an anxiety problem. Kieran’s immediate reaction was: ‘Don’t embarrass yourself.’ Kieran hadn’t ever heard male friends his age talk about their mental health conditions. Ill-equipped to meet the moment, he stumbled through until the conversation switched back to one of their ‘on table’ topics: sports, politics and work. On his way home from the pub, Kieran realised that Sam’s experience mirrored something he had felt himself, though he had never been able to name it ‘anxiety’ until he heard another man say it out loud. But the moment to ease Sam’s shame, and disclose his own struggles, had already passed. Ranging in age from 23 to 95, the men I surveyed answered questions about the nature of their intimate connections. Were they satisfied with their social support network? Who does their support come from? Is there anything – or anyone – missing? Such questions are timely. Recent research indicates that one in five men in the US and one in three men in the UK lack close friendships entirely. Two-thirds of young American men say: ‘No one really knows me.’ Nearly half of men in the UK feel they cannot confide in a friend about their problems. American men are 50 per cent less likely to report receiving social support – having someone check in on them or offer help when they need it – in a week than women, and also report having fewer friendships than they did 30 years ago. But it is the quality of men’s bonds, measured against the human psychological need for deep social connection, not necessarily the number of their friendships, that paints a gendered picture of social deprivation. What men often lack is not friends, but closeness. H igh-quality, close friendships involve intimacy, the fragile closeness born of risking ourselves and being met with acceptance and belonging. This kind of closeness can evade men in environments that operate on norms of indifference or active hostility towards expressing what is happening in their inner worlds. Luis, 31, a Latino primary care doctor in California, touched on this indifference when he told me about the time he shared the painful story of a breakup over a meal with his childhood friend Andrés. ‘That sucks, man,’ Andrés responded, but then had nothing else to say. Bids for support are not always met with the willingness or emotional competence required to provide what many men are looking for. Navid, 44, a Persian American business coach, spoke about being mocked as a teenager by his friends for expressing affection toward other boys. For a look that lingered too long or a pat on the back that seemed more a stroke than a thwack, ‘they called me a faggot,’ he said, recalling the all-purpose signifier for any behaviour deemed ‘too feminine’. Later, when someone in his circle made similar attempts at physical or emotional affection, Navid caught himself flinging the same word at them. ‘If I’m calling you that, there’s no way I can be it,’ he explained. It’s a hallmark of how men surveil each other’s behaviour: the punished becomes the punisher. In the pub, at school, in the office or on the sports field, men in most Western societies (though growing research suggests these dynamics are not geographically confined) are asked to perform a masculinity that values self-sufficiency and disdains emotional ‘oversharing’, especially with other men. This process is learned.
Female looking for male for friendship
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