Do Men Suck At Friendship?

http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/do-men-suck-at-friendship-20140422

by hbe_ • 12 years ago

313 256 12 years ago

Automated tweet for this article has a custom mjm.ag domain instead of bit.ly for first time. Not sure why that happened https://twitter.com/hnycombinator/status/458827145398484992

nandhp• 12 years ago

Looks like a (new?) bit.ly feature (pasting the long url into bit.ly gives the same domain); I'm guessing this is related to the Branded Short Domain feature of Bitly Brand Tools?

https://bitly.com/a/features

evan_• 12 years ago

That's part of bitly's premium offering.

nytimes.com shortens to http://nyti.ms/1gQdV1r, Amazon shortens to http://amzn.to/1mCftnd, and anything .gov shortens to 1.usa.gov: http://1.usa.gov/1iejWVe

The shortened part is totally interchangable, ie http://bit.ly/1gQdV1r still goes to the NY Times site.

leccine• 12 years ago

Semi sexist, greatly generalizing title. The sample used for the study covers only fraction of the entire data set so making this conclusion is very bold.

cowpig• 12 years ago

It's just sexist, no semi about it.

"this is how men are, this is how women are, this is how black people are, this is how gay people are..." it's a harmful way of thinking about the world

theorique8• 12 years ago

Acknowledging and cataloging real observed differences between men and women is fine. That's just science. What's not OK is shaming men for behaviors that are not better or worse than women, but just different.

vishaldpatel• 12 years ago

tl;dr; answer: no. No they don't.

dang3• 12 years ago

Can anyone suggest a better title? This one is pretty linkbaity.

abandonliberty• 12 years ago

Actually quite appropriate, since the data set doesn't answer the question.

I think we could make it more linkbaity.

Men: You're shitty friends, and it's killing you

dang3• 12 years ago

Good lord. You're good at that. Please don't do it often :)

nlh• 12 years ago

Indeed. But it is the title of the article, no?

Otherwise, maybe "The Male Deficit Model"? (which, I suppose, is linkbaity in its own way)

dang3• 12 years ago

But it is the title of the article

The HN guidelines call for changing titles that are misleading or linkbait, and we do that all the time. But I can't think of a better one here. I guess we'll leave it as is.

ggreer• 12 years ago

Maybe something closer to the title of the paper that started this discussion 30 years ago: Sex Differences in Same-Sex Friendship.[1] The paper itself is much more informative, although drier reading. It's also more engage-able. One can criticize the sample (US college students), methodology, or even the statistics. No doubt there are follow-up studies that confirm some bits of the paper and discredit others. I find that sort of discussion much more productive than the anecdotes and opinions that the Men's Journal post will likely spark.

1. http://www.peplaulab.ucla.edu/Peplau_Lab/Publications_files/...

lyndonh• 12 years ago

"Men's friendships aren't the same as women's friendships"

"People who you were once friends with aren't necessarily good friends for life"

sosuke3• 12 years ago

I feel this, my chat group I've had with friends from work for the last year just went dead. We bonded strongly at work, in work, and when work didn't connect us we disconnected. This year I made more effort than ever to make friends, but it just hasn't stuck yet. I'm not giving up though.

mixmastamyk2• 12 years ago

People at work aren't necessarily your friends, rather they are people forced to "cohabitate" together. Makes sense to keep it friendly, but don't expect it to last much longer than a year or two past your resignation.

Patio says the same thing here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...

Similarly, I've always liked to keep in touch with friends, see how they are doing, etc. When I was younger I expected others were the same, but no. Most people have their own friends and family and while you'll get a hi and smile from them if you bump into them at the grocery, they won't put any effort into keeping in touch.

I notice as people get older they tend to isolate themselves, dare I say on purpose. For example I have school friends from 20 years ago who don't even want to be friends on facebook, which is about as close to zero effort you can manage. No, I don't post much, treat others well, and keep it light.

In other words, get used to it.

ardit33• 12 years ago

I disagree. Three of my best friends were former co-workers. We happened to be new-ish to the city back then, in our 20s, going out, bars/clubs, etc, yet sharing a lot of other common career goals as well as personal ones.

If you hang out with co-workers on non work related (or sponsored activities), a lot, there is a greater chance for you to become friends on the long term after you moved on to different jobs.

They key is to have other common interests that are not related to work, and hang outside work related activities.

hosh4• 12 years ago

I have not bonded strongly with my coworkers. Well, maybe one of them. I know if I wanted to go beyond being coworkers, I'd have to go beyond it -- that is, hanging out, outside the context of work.

mseebach2• 12 years ago

People at work aren't necessarily your friends, and it makes sense to be friendly, even if you're not friends.

But it doesn't follow at all that you can't make friends at work, even that it can't be a good environment for doing so. On the other hand, it also doesn't follow that such friend-making come out of nothing, or that it's easy - which I guess is really the subject of the article.

re_todd• 12 years ago

I was surprised at how my work "friends" group fell apart. We would meet every few weeks at a sports bar. Everyone seemed so close I thought we would all be friends at least a year or two, but it fell apart after just three months.

wyager2• 12 years ago

This article implies that living a long life should be the ultimate driving goal behind our actions.

What's wrong with "convenience", "mentor", or "activity" friendships? They sound perfectly logical and reasonable to me. Just because these kind of friendships might not contribute as much to longevity doesn't make them wrong.

sosuke3• 12 years ago

I didn't take away from my reading, that those friendships weren't valuable, but that there could be another stronger connection category that could be made which would be valuable as well.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

Health, happiness, & longevity are known to be intermixed. The way I read the article, increased longevity is a more measurable proxy for health & happiness.

PeterisP• 12 years ago

The problem with "convenience", "mentor", or "activity" friendships, as the article later explains, is that they tend to rapidly go away when the convenience, mentorship or particular activity ceases.

If you want a long-term friendship, then you'd need to push those relationships beyond the convenience/mentorship/activity to have more than that single tie that may randomly disappear.

wyager2• 12 years ago

And why do you want long-term friendships? The article seemed to imply that they were good because they were healthy.

dkarapetyan• 12 years ago

I don't buy it. What stresses me out the most are groups of people jabbering about nothing in particular. Give me a hammock and a nice book and I'm good to go. No elevated cortisol and whatnot.

ashwinaj4• 12 years ago

Yeah this is clearly a American issue. It's certainly not true in Asian/South Asian countries, sure we lose touch with friends but whenever we meet there is an instant and unmistakable bond. When I moved to the US, I couldn't understand why Americans were so "distant". I don't have the same friendships with them as I do with others. Sad but true.

te_chris• 12 years ago

Anecdotally, I've noticed this when I'm in America. Everyone is normally outwardly very friendly, but there's always the feeling that they don't give a shit about the encounter you're having and they're only even talking to you out of some perverse sense of politeness.

It was even more strange for me because often our conversations would be relatively honest and about somewhat personal topics (not just the weather, what cities we'd been to etc) which, in my experience, you only broach when you really want to discuss such things and feel a connection with a person, but, apart from a few people there was still always that feeling that people were just being polite and basically waiting for you to excuse them. YMMV.

ashwinaj4• 12 years ago

You're right. Strangers are outwardly friendly for no apparent reason. The worst part was when I met them again, many of them wouldn't recognize me!

I was mainly referring to the convenience/activity/mentor friends described in the article.

zhemao2• 12 years ago

What exactly gave you the impression that people were waiting for you to excuse them?

hosh4• 12 years ago

That's how I see it, though I've also learned there is value in just chit chatting.

In my mind, those folks are classified as "acquaintances", not friends. These are folks you might be friendly to, but if you are not willing to, say, take them to the hospital because they are injured, or take them in because they are on the run and someone is after them, are they really friends?

ajuc• 12 years ago

I think part of this is bad translation, at least that's the case with Polish-English translation. Word "friend" is usually translated as "przyjaciel", but it really should be translated as "znajomy" or at most "kumpel", and "przyjaciel" should be translation of "best f*ing friend".

You couldn't possible have 20 "przyjaciel"s and spend enough time with them to keep the relationship alive. Same with BFFs. You can easily have 50 "kumpel"s and same with friends.

Keeping this mistranslation in mind I think European (or at least Polish) culture isn't much different from American regarding friendship.

faster• 12 years ago

As an American living in France, one difference that I really notice is politeness.

In the US, people are casually friendly, but not always polite. In France, politeness manifests as respectful words and actions, consistently. It doesn't hurt that formal politeness is part of the French culture. It's 'hi, how are you?' vs 'good day, sir', because most of the time the 'how are you' is not really a question, but an expression of friendliness.

There is also a fairly clear boundary between acquaintances, friends, and 'BFFs' in France. That boundary is not always clear in the US. It's not as formal as in Germany, where there is a sort of ceremony when two people want to recognize a stronger friendship. In France people (in my social circle, anyway) just switch from formal ('vous') to familiar ('tu'). I've been told that some people have a little discussion about it before switching, but I've never seen that.

analreceiver• 12 years ago

I'm from Venezuela and I must tell you that every male guy I know has very close friends. We're more outgoing and trustworthy and we've always attributed this to the fact that we're from the caribean and as such very warm. I've made acquaintances with americans and europeans alike and the difference I have noticed is that the time it takes you to share trust with other Venezuelans (also colombians and people from caribean islands) is several orders of magnitude shorter. You can meet someone and a week later you'll be interacting like you've known each other for years. I've read this elsewhere before as well, It's not a rare opinion.

allochthon• 12 years ago

How culture-specific is this trend?

adamzerner2• 12 years ago

Some people say we're past the "social fad". I think that we're just at the tip of the iceberg, and this article hints at some of the problems that we could solve.

pskittle• 12 years ago

like?

adamzerner2• 12 years ago

- The fact that most friendships are shallow, not deep.

- The fact that people lose touch with their friends at predictable points in their lives.

- The fact that married people have trouble finding friends.

victorhooi• 12 years ago

This article really resonates with me.

Many of my male friendships do seem to resonate around convenience (i.e. we help each other) or activities.

If you take that away...I'm unsure what the depth is.

This could just be me though.

I do have friendships with females who are nothing like me, which are more around just...fun/chatting/hanging out.

But either way, friendships do take work/effort - and sometimes you need to push that along a bit, and think gee, I haven't seen "XYZ" in a while, let's organise a catchup.

EC1• 12 years ago

I find what matters most in my friendships is being on the same page in terms of mindset, because then anything is enjoyable. I'm a social guy, I have lots of "friends", but I really only have three TRUE friends. I called my buddy up (one of the three) that I haven't seen for 2 years, nothing was awkward, talked for a few hours like nothing happened, all because we never changed who we were.

All three of my friends have completely different stances on various topics, topics that usually divide people, in terms of subjects like religion and politics. The thing is, even though we don't agree on much of anything really, we take pleasure in endlessly bantering between one another and "fighting" our opinions. At the end of the day though, nobody is hurt. You always end up learning something new, or exploring some other outlook.

The key is to be friends with mentally strong people. Friends that are open to whatever, whenever.

I hate being friends with people who have defined things that they like, or don't like, for no real reason. My friends and I's take on life is that the only thing that truly matters are relationships, everything else is mainly either a vehicle for fun, or to support yourself, so doing things isn't a struggle because nobody holds any personal or cultural bias against anything.

We like exploring things just by virtue of curiosity and it's nearly always a fun experience.

Just plain old hanging out like as if we were kids.

reinhardt2• 12 years ago

It really resonates with me too at a personal level but at the same time it's quite surprising if this is indeed so widespread across men.

I'm an extreme introvert with few, if any, close friends and relationships or a strong desire for such, and it has always befuddled me how smooth and effortless many friendships look from the outside. The whole concept of "hanging out" without some common ground or a common activity or goal in mind is almost foreign to me. I can "hang out" with a friend I haven't seen for ages to catch up with what's been going on with each other but I can't see how this is sustainable on a weekly basis or more.

Age is also a big factor. It seems that most friendships go back to childhood, teenage or college years. The older you get, the harder is to make new relationships that go past the plain acquaintance stage. The prospect of building a social network (in the offline sense of the word) from scratch in your mid thirties, say after moving to the other side of the country or the world, sounds intimidating even to normal extroverted people I've talked to, let alone chronic loners.

ericd• 12 years ago

I've found that there are people that I instantly click with, typically people to whom I can speak my mind without any filter, and who come back at me with theirs. I think filters and worrying about being inoffensive in general really gets in the way for a lot of people.

I think that if you want to get past the polite acquaintance stage, you have to risk offending them, which can be scary, but I think one really good friend is worth more than almost any number of acquaintances, so I think it's worth it.

d23• 12 years ago

I've certainly found this to be my experience with my friends, who are mostly males, but I've also found it to be that way with females as well. My theory has been that evolutionarily it is advantageous for us to get over loss quickly. If a person in your tribe suddenly disappears from your daily experience, there's really only one explanation -- they aren't coming back. It doesn't do much good to pine over them for your own survival's sake. I'm not saying that it's a good thing -- it actually depresses me quite a bit. Maybe it's different for females though. I'm not sure what to make of it.

doyoulikeworms• 12 years ago

As a 27 year old male, most of my friendships revolve around doing things together. Working, video games, sports, drinking, or eating, mostly.

dankoss• 12 years ago

I agree with this but, my problem is that most people have only one or two major interests so friendship is completely one-dimensional based around a single activity. So when conversation drifts off the common topic or activity, there isn't much to do or talk about. People interested in sports may not also be interested in video games, etc.

non0nsense2• 12 years ago

How are we really defining friendship here? I've mostly found in my experiences that females value self-serving relationships that build them up. Meaningless values of 'friendship' where they have no contrast for a real, meaningful relationship. See how sexism swings both ways? Who the heck posts this kind of drivel?

aestra12• 12 years ago

You've been hanging out with some terrible people.

I actually didn't find this article sexist or attacking.

non0nsense2• 12 years ago

I'm sorry? Do explain how you could read so much into a single comment. That or crawl back into whatever hole you came from please.

pabb• 12 years ago

I had an issue with this while finishing up classes at school, although I understand being a college student isn't really the main demographic for this article. I had a group of friends that I met with only through convenience (we were all in the same fraternity, and then I quit).

After some time, one of the guys made a multi-way text/chat group on WhatsApp and it gave us all an opportunity to bullshit amongst each other about whatever we felt like. The best part was that it didn't leave anyone out of the loop, and held us each accountable for responding to attempts to get together. Most of the time the interactions are pretty pointless (cracking jokes at someone, sending links to a funny picture or article, changing the group photo to a hotter girl than the last one someone put up, etc), but it's just a good outlet to stay in sync with one another, even if we don't all have time to hang out. I'd recommend it to anyone who connected with the article.

Omniusaspirer3• 12 years ago

Adding onto this:

Set up a Teamspeak or similar voice server. Like the guy above I'm only in my lower 20's at this point but it's the single best move I've made in maintaining friendships with people I'm no longer physically close to. My friends know that they can hop in any time they want and we can have a great time chatting or playing a game together.

I think the more accessible you make it to keep in touch the better off your relationships will be, but there's no getting around the simple fact that friendships require effort from both parties to maintain.

thewarrior• 12 years ago

This doesn't happen in India. This is a purely western phenomenon.

sumedh• 12 years ago

Do you speak for all Indians?

This also happens in India and has nothing to do with western culture.

wsxcde2• 12 years ago

It's certainly easier to make friends in India. I used to do it effortlessly when I was there and I never felt lonely at all. Here it just seems harder to make friends. Part of it might just be that there are fewer people so you're less likely to find someone with whom you connect.

And the other thing might be that a lot of interactions are so much more impersonal here. I haven't lived there in years but I know many of the shopkeepers who operate near my parents house in India and we always catch up and chat a bit when I visit. The supermarket here is a merry-go-round of high school kids and other temporary workers. There's no connection to be made at all.

Ashwin's story upthread about people seeming to be very friendly and then forgetting who you are really resonated with me. There was this lady who gave me haircut a year or two ago. We chatted quite a bit, I told her where I studied and what I worked on (somewhat unusual for me because I'm very private). She told me he was doing a master's degree at a nearby university, lived in a nearby town and I think we even talked politics for a bit! I felt like we had at least established an acquaintance and I gave her a $5 tip on a $10 haircut. And the next time I went there she had completely forgotten me! I understand their profession requires them to be friendly, but I did feel a let down. :-/

ashwinaj4• 12 years ago

I don't know if you live (or have lived for years) in the US or not, but if you do you'll have a very different opinion. Trust me.

yummyfajitas• 12 years ago

As an American who is currently in India, I absolutely think this has to do with western culture. It really is easier forming close friendships here. I came back after being gone for a couple of years and it almost feels like I never left.

India is a more difficult in terms of meeting people (except at work), but once you do, close friendships are far closer to the norm.

kevrone• 12 years ago

Men can be friends with women too. Just sayin'.

nailer• 12 years ago

I think men's friendships tend to be fewer but deeper. This resonates with a lot of people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hmlPtRu1SQ

vacri7• 12 years ago

There's a lot of variation between individuals, and it also changes significantly with age. 20-year-olds tend to form cliques of 5-15 people that do things together... then as they age and pair off or move elsewhere, they stop doing things as a group. Friendship dynamics change as well.

I think there's something in the research about a healthier life being one with more friends, but the author seems to make a huge jump from that to extrapolating his own experience to all other men.

rpm33• 12 years ago

This is definitely an American "culture" issue. Especially in a big city like San Francisco, i've noticed a lot of ephemeral relationships that last around convenience.

hosh4• 12 years ago

Really?

To be fair, I have only a small handful of friends who I'd entrust my body and my life to in the worse case, but I've generally made friends wherever I have lived. These friends are ones that isn't quite activity, mentorship, or convenience friends.

Maybe I'm just the outlier.

sardonicbryan• 12 years ago

As a male with more close female confidants/friends than male, I find it interesting that this article in no way acknowledged the possibility of a platonic male/female friendship.

cperciva2• 12 years ago

Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.

reinhardt2• 12 years ago

Unless there's no sexual attraction, preferably mutual. I for one don't consider every (or even most) women to be fuckable.

cdr2• 12 years ago

I really hope I'm missing some sarcasm there.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

What an heteronormative thing to say.

nzp3• 12 years ago

But the thing is, why is this considered a problem really? Should we only have sex with our enemies or persons we don't like? I understand the underlying reasoning, the questions are for the most part rhetorical, but I just don't find the whole idea very well thought out, not to mention it's completely wrong in the "always" part. Also, I never heard people say gay men or lesbians can never be friends. Why is that? Is there some bogus assumption that hetero sexuality is somehow different in nature?

The point is that the "sex part" does not have to get in the way. In most cases the sex part is very superficial, it's just an idea that comes naturally to peoples minds and it's simply not a big deal at all. People, men and women, think about sex (almost all the time, both sexes) and worthless semi random thoughts about sex with almost any person will be had. It simply is not such a big deal. The funny thing is that we are all aware of the universality and banality of these thoughts, yet act as though it's something special, extraordinary and serious. Just to be clear, I'm not advocating promiscuity (although, again to be clear, I have no moral issue with that as long as it's honest), but simply putting the whole thing to rest, it's not even worth talking about.

And it better not be true that sex stands in the way of friendship because long, commited, beautiful relationships sure involve a lot of sex and deep friendship. Sex can only stand in the way of friendship if all one wants is sex.

theswan• 12 years ago

Tangential point - what does the phrase "any dish?" mean?

saraid2162• 12 years ago

It comes from the phrase "dish it out".

More: http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/dish+out

Omniusaspirer3• 12 years ago

It's equivalent to "scoop" or "gossip".

ryanklee• 12 years ago

Yeah, and/or people are totally fucked on average when it comes to sustaining deep, long-lasting relationships. Go figure. That shit is hard. Hard. Like: fulfillment, actualization, self-discipline, happiness, etc., etc.

Do men suck at friendship? Of course. Just like they suck at vying w/ their own mortality. It's hardly a gender thing.

Start with a better narrative and you'll end up with a better answer.

saraid2162• 12 years ago

Well, if anything, the article concludes that men suck at gossip. Which is a little disappointing if true. Gossip has its insidious bits, but it was also the best carrier of information before things like internet forums and news aggregators.

There are studies that show things like health and job-finding happen along second-degree links. Friends of friends, that is, or in other words, the gossip space. Things like, "Oh, I hear Joe quit smoking" or "Oh, I hear Sam is looking for a new executive" and so on are gossip. So is "So it turns out Jay is allergic to chocolate", which tells you don't give any chocolate to Jay.

So, Mr. Duane? A suggestion? Tell your wife about how Matt reacted to biking through that one area. Or how goofy he looked when he finished taking apart the wall. Give her a connection to him, even if it's viewed entirely through your perspective. These are touchstones for her to help you maintain your friendship with him, too. Yeah, sure, you want to make sure he's okay with this. Don't gossip behind his back, or reveal things he wants to remain confidential. But she obviously knows what you're doing together; share details.

darylteo• 12 years ago

I'm 28 now and I already feel like I have no friends left. Yay.

vacri7• 12 years ago

I don't understand why the author thinks that a good friendship requires collecting some gossip for his wife for each hour or two of contact.

bolaft• 12 years ago

He doesn't. At the end of his story, after he rekindled his friendship with this surfer guy, he still has no gossip for his wife.

vacri7• 12 years ago

Looks like I read the end of it the wrong way, thanks.

scythe• 12 years ago

I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that this article refers primarily to non-poor white men in the OECD, and that most people are not WEIRD:

http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jvt002/brainmind/readings/h...

In particular attempting to draw conclusions about innate (genetic) behavior from this skewed sample is highly subject to confounding.

aestra12• 12 years ago

In particular attempting to draw conclusions about innate (genetic) behavior from this skewed sample is highly subject to confounding.

Was the author trying to do that? It didn't read like that to me at all. He tried to explain some cultural trends that contribute, etc.

pmorici• 12 years ago

I don't think men are bad at friendship I do think it takes more for them to develop the kind of deep friendship between men that the article laments are missing. I have a handful of good friends who mostly live in different cities now but we still keep in touch and make a point to get together whenever we cross paths. These all came out of things like high school cross country or roommates over several years. Point being I think there needs to be a strong shared experience over several years for men to get to that point.

The sorts of things described in the article usually don't run deep enough or last long enough to cultivate a longer lasting friendship.

namuol2• 12 years ago

All my long-term friends are women. The closest are ex-lovers or best-friends lovers/ex-lovers. Most of our banter is about relationships and general angst. Many I only see maybe once or twice a year, but talk regularly online or over the phone.

But even before I had any romantic history, most of my friends were girls.

Nearly all of my male friends have drifted, but I have female friends from highschool that I still talk to pretty regularly.

return03• 12 years ago

Maybe it's hard to make male friends when all you wanna talk about is relationships and general angst.

namuol2• 12 years ago

Or maybe I just don't bother maintaining friendships with people who aren't capable of getting real without hiding behind a veil of snark.

LoganCale• 12 years ago

I have both male and female friends, but all my closest friends these days are male. This wasn't always the case, though. I used to have a lot more female friends, and I guess now it's shifted the other way. I haven't personally noticed any sort of difference between genders that makes one better suited for friendship over the other...

serf• 12 years ago

I wrote a big long spiel about the comments in this thread, but i'll summarize to save everyone some time.

The culture-centricity in this thread is kind of sickening, and as hackers I hope that everyone who is reading through it remembers to attempt to take things as a neutral observer and apply scientific methods to your findings; and take anecdotal evidence at it's worth.

lotsofcows• 12 years ago

Oh! As a hacker I was planning on calling bullshit and doing my own thing as normal. I'll try it your way...

Hmmm... it's all anecdotal including the original post and the citations... there is no scientific method present... so it's all bullshit and I'll just do things my way as normal.

There's been some interesting discussion though.

mercurialshark• 12 years ago

While I agree with most of the author's points, I think it's missing two key aspects. Intellectual curiosity doesn't continue for everyone (I want to scratch my eyes out just watching football and never discussing anything of intrigue) and some guys don't know how to be friends outside of a group.

1. I don't find most my old friends interesting. The guys I have stuff in common with are mostly work connections/guys that understand the plight of the entrepreneur and we don't actually hang out. Activity friends are cool but like most my friends from college, it increasingly feels like a chore.

The few friends that have any depth to them live out of town. That said, in the future we have email and don't have to physically see each other all the time to coddle our friendships.

2. Some dudes just never learned how to have one-on-one friends outside of a group. This is by far the most common problem I see that transcends male friendships. If you befriend someone as an adult that you can regularly carry on a conversation with, without outside help, take note - they may become your new brosive.

bsder• 12 years ago

USian viewpoint here.

This article makes me cringe. Is the author gay or a pseudonym for a girl?

The article seems to extol what most would call "girly" friendship--continuous contact, social gossip, etc. Lots of attention to little things.

Most guys I know of tend to equate true friendship along the lines of "will help you bury the body and won't ask questions." Male friendship tends to get tested around helping with big, infrequent things--death of parent/spouse, get somebody to hospital, cover for you when you did something monumentally stupid.

Men tend to forgive the "didn't hang out last week" but won't ever forgive things like "didn't show up for your dad's funeral".

onnoonno• 12 years ago

^^ This. I know I am there for my friends and I know that they are there for me. That already gives me a feeling of connectedness. I do not need to see them on a daily basis.

colechristensen• 12 years ago

Speaking of cringing, the adjective you're looking for is 'American'.

adwn3• 12 years ago

I wonder when "America" ceased to mean "the two continents North and South America" and started to mean "USA" in the heads of US citizens. There's a reason why "European" isn't synonymous to "German", and why "Asian" isn't synonymous to "Chinese".

interpol_p• 12 years ago

The author explicitly acknowledges that the traditional "girly" friendship may not be the optimal. And implies that male friendships can be deeper than shared activities without turning into such relationships:

At the same time, a wave of feminist sociologists and psychologists began describing female friendship, with all its confessional talk, as the optimal model.
Many feminist thinkers now see those views as overly simplistic. And as recent news about gay marriage shows, America is growing more comfortable with homosexuality.

I don't think the article extols that particular type of friendship. I am surprised the article gives you that impression at all.

meric4• 12 years ago

I'm uncomfortable with the idea that feminist thinkers should be an authority on male friendships, since by definition feminist thinkers think from the point of women, and here we are discussing friendships between men.

I've a couple of female "friends"[1], and generally when talking to them I often feel all they're doing is telling me how right I am to feel in such and such way, frequently highlighting the differences between "us" and "them", whoever "them" might be, whenever the opportunity arise. (I suppose you'd call that 'gossip'). I also find often their opinions aren't decided till they figure out everyone else's, as if a fact cannot be correct until it is agreed on by other people. And when I speak confidently about a non-conformist view, they're often reluctant to outright disagree with me until they're sure my view is non-conformist, which might be weeks later when they suddenly bring it up (I assume after having quizzed all their friends).

I've been called a "best friend" half a dozen times by other men in the past year or two, but I've only got one best friend myself, who I've known for close to a decade, and we talk most days of the week. I think one of the most important qualities in a close male friendship is to mean what I say and say what I mean, even if no one would agree with me, even if it offends and hurts feelings. I think that is the stuff male bond is made of. It's hard to feel closeness when a friend is hiding what they really think about me from me[2]. To maintain the closeness of a male friendship, it's also important I put it above any romantic relationships I develop with women, even, and especially when, the women in such relationship puts pressure on me to become closer to her than to my friends. If I was "Matt" in the article, and if the author was my best friend, and a very important one at that, I would rather divorce my wife than move, if the move would endanger the friendship I had with the author. Only this willingness to sacrifice would ensure the strength of the bond in the friendship[3].

[1] I don't consider any female as "friends" even if they think I'm theirs, because of [2].

[3] It is also my opinion that "following" my wife wherever she goes and agreeing with her every word would reduce her attraction for me somewhat. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10524035/Hap...

crummy• 12 years ago

What exactly lead you to think the author was gay?

TazeTSchnitzel4• 12 years ago

Do men have to be gay to be effeminate?

Swizec• 12 years ago

This is true.

Which is why I have plenty of female friends to do everyday gossip and chatting with and a few male friends to bury bodies with. It tends to work out pretty well.

Maybe I'm a weird guy, but I find that I really need people with whom I can chat about things that are happening but are of no real consequence. Sometimes you just need someone to tell "Dude, something mildly interesting just happened!"

It's the whole "The only things worth complaining about are things that aren't worth solving" philosophy. Guy friends tend to handle those poorly. Lady friends relish it.

joshschreuder• 12 years ago

Not sure if I understand what you're saying, but if I do, that's got to be offensive to at least two large groups of people.

At the end of the day, there are not just gay men, straight men and girls. Within the straight men there are subsets who equate a lot of social contact, gossip etc. with friendship, just as there are gay men or girls who don't equate this with friendship.

The "most guys I know of" thing is probably just confirmation bias based on social circles and career choices.

gadders• 12 years ago

Good point. I can go fishing with my best friend, be at other sides of a lake and hardly talk all day. That still counts as hanging out.

theorique8• 12 years ago

The article seems to extol what most would call "girly" friendship--continuous contact, social gossip, etc. Lots of attention to little things.

This happens within the article - the writer's wife essentially shames him for his "surfing friendship" not being like her friendships.

I've encountered this too, as I'm sure many men have - being criticized or blamed by family or spouses for not talking enough or not talking about "the right things" when spending time with friends. And you're left asking yourself "was I doing it wrong?" when I come home from hanging out with friends and playing video games or hacking or whatever.

ezy• 12 years ago

"This article makes me cringe. Is the author gay or a pseudonym for a girl?"

You are officially part of the problem.

Xcelerate2• 12 years ago

That's because nearly all research into healthy aging has found that the key to a long, happy life is not diet or exercise but strong social connections – that is, friendships. Loneliness accelerates age-related declines in cognition and motor function, while a single good friend has been shown to make as much as a 10-year difference in overall life expectancy.

This makes me sad :( My mother passed away from cancer in 2001 after 16 years of marriage to my father. Their marriage was one of those ideal marriages that most people don't think really exists; they were truly each other's best friend and were incredibly happy together.

Now that my sister is finishing college and I'm in grad school, my dad goes to work for long hours each day and comes home to an empty house. He doesn't socialize much more than going to the coffee shop on weekend mornings.

I don't know what to do about this; I live three hours away and can't visit every weekend, and my sister is getting married soon and moving away as well. He's not opposed to dating, but the last time he dated was nearly a decade ago, and I know he doesn't want to date because of the sheer sadness he still feels from my mother's death. He has mentioned it would be really nice to have a companion though.

I need ideas. Solitude isn't a good way to spend the rest of one's life, and I really want him to be happy. This article has confirmed my fears about loneliness even more, and I want to help him.

probably_wrong• 12 years ago

I'd suggest him picking a hobby, and taking classes about it. He doesn't really need someone to date, apparently, but just someone to talk to and have fun. Going out and doing something he likes surrounded by like-minded people sounds about right.

curiousfiddler• 12 years ago

Just have him move with you. It's a priceless experience.

hablahaha• 12 years ago

I've been thinking about doing this in the upcoming years. I'm guessing you're speaking from experience, if so, can you elaborate more?

bra-ket2• 12 years ago

create a profile for him on match or some other dating site, and organize some good dates

wikiburner• 12 years ago

I would get him a dog.

I would also set him up on Skype so that you and your sister can interact with him in a personable way more often.

srean• 12 years ago

This is actually a great suggestion. If you are a dog person it can bring a lot of joy, amusement and companionship. The thing that sucks though is that they very short lives. My lhasa apso did live to be 17 years, but this is unusual for most other dog breeds.

About loneliness and losing people dear, my brother's friend's dad lost his parents, wife and son all at an unusually early age. I would have no idea how to deal with that.

awjr• 12 years ago

Really fantastic suggestion.

Dogs are amazing companions, however the long hours he works probably don't help, however he's probably working long hours so he doesn't have to come home to an empty house.

slavoingilizov• 12 years ago

I agree it may help, but how on earth is a dog the same as a companion? It will fill a different void but certainly not the lack of a soulmate.

protomyth• 12 years ago

add a social hobby (e.g. golf) to that list for some out of house time

Osiris• 12 years ago

When my dad retired he started participating in local organizations, like the Lions Club and a food kitchen. There may be groups, organizations, meetups, etc. that would help your father establish some meaningful relationships outside of work.

User7198• 12 years ago

Make sure he knows that dating doesn't mean he's trying to replace the relationship he had with your mother, or take away anything they had together. It's possible to meet new people, have new experiences, and still cherish those old memories.

mironathetin• 12 years ago

My father died 7 years ago after my parents had been married for more than 50 years. After a few years of solitude, my mother started to develop a whole new life (with 80). I think this will develop also for your father, it just takes time. But he has to be ready for it and there is little you can do to accelerate the process. Maybe he was busy with you and your sister until recently?

Key for him is to leave the house. Go to the doctor, buy fresh food on the market instead of in the mall and chat a few words with the farmers, join sports teams (my mother did when she was 78) or meet with colleagues for a beer (they all want an excuse not to go home, believe me).

My brother and I also live far away. That is not a problem (as long as he is in good health…), because it assures that your father has to manage his life for himself instead of sitting down and let you organize it. Also make him visit you instead of the other way round. This will let him leave the house, see different towns, revive his interest in life and discovery and he has to make plans (this is important). It worked for us, at least.

Where I live, also the church has groups for tea/coffee and cake. So has the red cross. This may aim at older people but it is great to go there. My mother loves it. (yes, I know, she is a woman and women make contacts easier). But, as I said, some day he will be ready.

yason• 12 years ago

On the other hand, it's not your responsibility to arrange for your dad what you think is best for him. He's an adult and will try to make the most of his life and will succeed or fail to be happy on his own.

I'm a father and I wouldn't want my kids to patch my lonely life if I have one: they have their own lives and I have mine and it's certainly nice to see them sometimes but it can never be a deal breaker.

l33tbro• 12 years ago

It's not OP's responsibility - but love is love, and wanting the best for your parents is not a bad thing at all.

aestra12• 12 years ago

The OP can't "make" his/her father do things, however they can suggest things. They implied the father wants to/is open to new experiences.

mverwijs• 12 years ago

My mom goes on vacations and city-trips with loads of different people. Some of those people she still has contact with, but even without that the trips themselves are a welcome diversion.

aestra12• 12 years ago

I don't know how old your dad is but I suggest he go to the local senior center.

jeromesalimao• 12 years ago

I'm not sure where you are located, but back home in Australia they've come up with the idea of "Men's sheds". I think it's a great idea on so many levels.

http://www.mensshed.org/what-is-a-men's-shed/.aspx

I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing your dad would be into (my dad probably not). But sounds like fun.

rybosome• 12 years ago

This article raises an issue that terrifies me; over-reliance on one's wife for friendship. I love my wife and I do consider her my best friend, which is wonderful...but now that I no longer live in the same city as my closest friends, I don't have any really strong local bonds other than with her. She's planning a trip out of town in a few weeks, and I've already started figuring out what I'll do: maybe go on a bike ride, play some video games, clean our apartment, go see a movie, order takeout, etc. None of those plans involve friends. Probably not a good sign. =/

It's not exactly difficult to make loose friends or fun acquaintances, but maintaining and strengthening those into deep, close friendships feels nearly impossible.

chill1• 12 years ago

I am in a similar situation, except I moved to another country with my long-term girlfriend. I know what you mean, but I think all it takes is time. You must have met someone recently in your new city? A neighbor? Is there a "hacker space" in your city to which you could go to a meetup to meet similar people?

It's almost like dating, but for friendship. Try to find people you think you'd get along with, meet them, and invite them to do things. Sure, you'll have to put yourself out there a bit, but after the first few times you don't even think about that anymore.

Aloha• 12 years ago

The article is statistically irrelevant - but feels right.

I have many close friends, most of them are worlds away in terms of distance, and I don't hang out with many locals - sometimes I wonder if its Seattle, or something specific to my generation.

finnh• 12 years ago

Having split my life between Seattle and San Francisco, I feel comfortable making the generalization that many Seattleites are very shy in real life.

If you moved to another city you might be surprised at how much easier it is to make new friends out of absolute strangers.

shittyanalogy• 12 years ago

If you have friends that are flaky and won't hang out, fuck 'em and get new friends. Get hobbies and meet people who do the same thing. Learn a language, join a book club, go to code meetups, start your own Code/BBQ/Motorcycle workshop. Be interesting and you will meet interesting people. Be boring and wrapped up in your own life and you will not.

This has nothing to do with men, the article should be titled: "Do boring, flaky people suck at friendship?" Most of the people on this planet are boring, and flaky, and wrapped up in their own lives, and if you don't learn how to cope with that and you don't have one of those miraculous, since high-school, partners in crime, friendships you're not gonna have friends. Have kids instead.

chintan39• 12 years ago

Men just talk less.But Men are equally good at friendship.

SoftwareMaven• 12 years ago

My formative years were somewhat less than ideal (moving every three months, abusive environment, fat before fat was normal, nerdy, etc). I always blamed not being able to make lasting relationships on that. I've now come to the conclusion that 80% of why I suck at friendship is innate, and 20% is learned.

I've tried hobbies and meetups to no avail; I just wind up sitting in the corner. I think this is where the 20% mentioned hurts. Even if I manage to get out of that corner (a rare event, but it does happen), I don't know how to take a conversation beyond "How's it going?"

Where's the Facebook for actually finding new friends?

lmm2• 12 years ago

At the pool is one I've heard mentioned here, though it's somewhat meetuppy. I think going somewhere explicitly "to make friends" would put most people off, it's the sort of thing that needs to be approached obliquely.

aestra12• 12 years ago

This isn't so much innate. It is most likely an anxiety problem. You can overcome it but it isn't going to be easy as it takes going far out of your comfort zone.

zequel2• 12 years ago

Like boardgames (ones on boardgamegeek.com, not Monopoly)? It's a great hobby that requires interaction. It's great for ice-breaking imo. Most men need ice broken to make a connection, alcohol helps too. Some shared common thread like kids in the same school helps a lot. Joining a sports league is good too if that's your cup of tea, I've met a number of people that way. It's a good no-pressure way of interacting with your teammates.

seanccox3• 12 years ago

Quoted text below from this source: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300997-ok-now-let-s-have-som...

OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.

What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.

Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.

A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.

But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.

When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this:

“You are not enough people!”

andrey-p• 12 years ago

Ha! I was just about to say this reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick, where people get automatically assigned to an extended family. Then I clicked the link at the bottom.

drdaeman• 12 years ago

EDIT: Didn't realize that whole parent post was a quotation. Sorry.

Well, you^W Vonnegut said that like all men and women are extroverts. Personally, I'd prefer a tiny group of pals (active, any amount of "hey, I know that dude, we talked once ten years ago" is fine), because being a well-connected peer in a large communications cluster is tiresome.

Oh, and I know at least one case where extended family caused a divorce. Guess that's a fairly common case, as finding consensus and maintaining good relationships within a large group is a harder task than between two persons.

vacri7• 12 years ago

There is more divorce now because it is no longer a burdensome shame to break from a joyless marriage. People change and mature in different ways, and young people aren't known for making sensible decisions affecting the rest of their life. In ye olde days, people would stay with abusive (or boring) spouses purely because the social stigma of leaving was worse. These days that stigma is largely gone in much of the West.

seanccox3• 12 years ago

It's a Vonnegut quote.

I think he was lamenting the shift he had witnessed in American culture, from his common personal childhood experience – in a very large family – to the 'nuclear' family that tended to characterize America from the 1950s onwward. 'Slapstick', where I grabbed the quote, was written in 1976.

xyzzyz2• 12 years ago

What you say is true, but the grandparent is arguing why people want a divorce and why today's marriages are boring for participants. The implication is that even if access to divorce had been as easy 100 years ago as it is now, people would still divorce less frequently than they do now, because of the extended family stuff.

Xcelerate2• 12 years ago

There is more divorce now because it is no longer a burdensome shame to break from a joyless marriage.

You seem to imply this is a good thing. However, my issue is specifically with the fact that people vow themselves to a lifelong marriage -- a lifelong commitment, and then they break that vow later when they get bored. It shows a complete lack of integrity.

If you don't think you're going to stay with the same person the rest of your life, make this clear up front to them! You can still get married for the tax benefits, but it should be understood by both parties from the very beginning that the relationship is only going to last temporarily. Then no one gets devastated when it comes to an end, and no one has broken a promise.

seanccox3• 12 years ago

I edited the parent to overcome the confusion I caused some people. Sorry about that.

kitsune_• 12 years ago

In my experience it's the total opposite: I've known most of my friends since kindergarten. We all know each others dreams, hopes and fears and support each other without being judgmental. We share a common set of values. I could vanish without saying a word and they'd welcome me back with open arms 10 years later.

jzzskijj2• 12 years ago

I've realized that many men (I know) want to talk about their feelings, frustrations, relationships, insecurities etc., when given a good example and opening up a little at first. I learned to do that a couple of years ago, when I was going through difficult times. Went to meet a friend for a couple of beers, started slowly talking, without whining or complaining, about things that make me insecure and we realized opening up and talking about all kinds of "non-manly" things that made us feel bad. That friend relationship deepened into totally new level and since then I've gone through same thing with many of my real friends.

1) Open up, 2) Share, 3) Listen, 4) Care.

It felt really great to get a SMS a week later saying "how are things and are you feeling better?"

Not saying that I am a perfect friend or Mr. Empathy, but I feel that I am a little bit better person than I used to be.

Lapsa3• 12 years ago

You are slowly turning into a girl. Before you'll realize that - you gonna become a transperson :(

jzzskijj2• 12 years ago

I'm willing to take that risk, if that's what it takes.

simplemath2• 12 years ago

I would be so happy if attitudes like yours didn't exist.

C'est la vie. Assholes all the way down.

jon_black• 12 years ago

That's because nearly all research into healthy aging has found that the key to a long, happy life is not diet or exercise but strong social connections

Epicurus believed that three things were necessary for a happy existence:

1. Friends 2. Freedom 3. Thought (as in personal reflection on yourself and your life)

I believe that in life there are many doors and therefore many keys. If you find a key and it opens a door, do not assume that all other doors will open for you; likewise, do not assume that what's behind the door you have opened is the answer to life long happiness.

It's quite frustrating that as a species we try to reduce such complex matters into such simple rules.

elohesra4• 12 years ago

Has anyone actually read the studies linked by the author to back up his drivel? I'll save you some time: the 2007 study isn't valid even by the low levels of scientific burden required for psychological studies (it's entirely based on self-reporting), and the 1982 study support the opposite conclusion to the author's. In fact, the 1982 study [0] finds that men and women simply have different kinds of friendships, where men are likely to only engage in emotional sharing with their closest friends, and women are more likely to engage in emotional sharing with all their friends.

This brings me on to challenging the true point of the article: slating the traditional male gender role. It's no accident that the author turns to the authority of feminists for perspectives on men -- despite that being so laughly outside the remit of feminism -- because the entire point, unstated but present, throughout the article is that women have 'got it right' and men should be more like women. In lieu of any studies which actually support his point (note that only the first two studies in the article actually even discuss his point about male friendships, the rest are an irrelevance), he instead uses anecdote as evidence for a point neither study can support, and then goes on to blame the entire mess on the traditional male gender role. I won't defend the male gender role, because I have no stock in doing so, but I would at least ask that if something's going to be blamed for mens' terrible friendships then we at least provide some proof that men do indeed have terrible friendships.

Lastly, the article, like so many in the media, is yet another argument that encourages you to accept its faulty form by providing you with a false dichotomy: the argument begs the question that either type of friend (the emotional numerous friends of women, or the close few friends of men) is a superior type of friend, links some 'evidence' which doesn't support its point, and then encourages you to ask yourself whether men or women 'have it right' before even bothering to prove if there's anything to actually get right in this situation.

I will say one thing though: if this is the kind of stuff Men's Journal prints, then either its readership is mostly women, or men sure do love self-flagellation.

[0] http://www.peplaulab.ucla.edu/Peplau_Lab/Publications_files/...

alex_doom• 12 years ago

Men's Journal is basically Cosmo. Bullshit journalism and fluff.

Ntrails• 12 years ago

Which leads to the inevitable question of what in gods name this garbage is doing on the front page of HN

diydsp2• 12 years ago

men and women simply have different kinds of friendships

I think you nailed it there. This matches what I've been picking up from books by Deborah Tannen, an author recommended to me by a guy at work.

Tannen describes men and women as having two massively different styles of communication. Communication is not at all addressed in the attached article, yet, when I perceive the dialogue in the article, it matches Tannen's model to a T. In a nutshell: men communicate in the domain of independence while women communicate about intimacy. If you remember _nothing_ else about what I write here, remember those two words: intimacy vs. independence.

So for example, when the wife in the article repeatedly asks for "dish," that's a blatant signal of intimacy. She wants to be in on secrets. She wants intimacy with her husband and is sending out "sonar" to see how intimate her husband is with his friends. Even her use of the idiosyncratic term "dish" and expecting her husband to pick up on it can be perceived as calls for intimacy.

Meanwhile, when the author describes "activity" or "convenience" friends, (with an undeserving negative air), he's failing to perceive that these types of friendship allow the men to preserve their independence. It also explains why the men felt intruded upon when the women scheduled an activity for them. The author perceives it in the parent-child spectrum, which is okay, but not insightful imo. Tannen's model of men's independence I find superior. It also explains the author's ignoring phone calls from his friend - it's a meta-communication about preserving his own independence.

Just to get meta about publishing in the 2010s, the article is a smorgasbord of irritainment, pseudo-psychology and self-doubt. Certainly not the kind of thing most men would find useful, valuable or insightful. Although that certainly doesn't it make the author "gay" as someone below suggested! However, this article is neither empowering through interdependence nor through independence, just a slab of rage press with a bit of correlation without causation statistics. (Can't you just hear an editor saying "Great, now finish up with some stats to back it up.")

So let's read Tannen's books to help our relationships and communication along, then get back to talking about Linux and signal processing and shit.

aaren3• 12 years ago

can you recommend something specific by Tannen?

aaren3• 12 years ago

because the entire point, unstated but present, throughout the article is that women have 'got it right' and men should be more like women .... true point of the article: slating the traditional male gender role.

That was not my reading at all and on re-reading I still can't see it.

Then Liz would let out a big theatrical groan that said, in essence, What kind of friendship is that?

I thought it was a great friendship, if I thought about it at all.

To me, this suggests that there is a model for male friendships that works perfectly well. I perceived the problem to be that not all men are good at implementing or maintaining this model, especially over distance.

The author acknowledges that the female model isn't necessarily the single optimal model:

At the same time, a wave of feminist sociologists and psychologists began describing female friendship, with all its confessional talk, as the optimal model. Many feminist thinkers now see those views as overly simplistic.

...before even bothering to prove if there's anything to actually get right in this situation

But there is something to get right! Not feeling lonely.

Has anyone actually read the studies linked by the author to back up his drivel?

No. I skimmed over that bit and didn't feel it was actually necessary for the point of the article. The author spoke to me on a personal level, through a narrative that I can relate to. They didn't need to prove anything to me: speaking to my lived experience was more than enough to make me think.

dgreensp• 12 years ago

The problem is that the only point of the article, besides telling a story, is to raise the question of whether the author is unsatisfied with (or sometimes merely insecure about) his friendships because men are bad at friendship compared to women. It doesn't make it better to present both sides and say "but who knows," it just makes it a worse article. Without any real facts or insight to talk about, attributing something you don't like about yourself to your gender is just psychological projection and spreads negative feelings towards men.

Imagine if a Dad wrote an article, "Do men suck at parenting?" that assessed men on what was essentially their ability to "mother." Or imagine if a male teacher wrote, "Do men suck at teaching?" or a female programmer wrote, "Do women suck at programming?" None of them motivated by a new study or based on anything but a personal anecdote. We'd all rightfully rise to the defense of men and women in general.

return03• 12 years ago

Yeah, Mens Journal is not famous for its rigorous peer review.

thelettere2• 12 years ago

There are whole field of scientific study based almost entirely on self-reports. As such, there has been much research done on its veracity, which has shown that it is largely valid and reliable when reporting on simple things (like friendship behavior) so long as it's anonymous, does not require introspection(1), and there is no fear of reprisal(2).

The 2007 study meets all those requirements, so I see no scientific reason to question its results.

Also, I can't think of any practical methodology for studying friendship behaviorally - but would love to be proven wrong.

1. Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Funder, D. C. (2007). Psychology as the science of self-reports and finger movements: Whatever happened to actual behavior?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4), 396-403. Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., & Funder, D. C. (2007). http://users.business.uconn.edu/jgoodman/mgmt%206201%20assig...

2. Brener ND, Billy JOG, Grady WR. Assessment of factors affecting the validity of self-reported health-risk behavior among adolescents: evidence from the scientific literature. Journal of Adolescent Health 2003;33:436-457. Summary at http://www.minnetonka.k12.mn.us/TonkaCares/RwR/Documents/Val...

ThomPete• 12 years ago

I am not sure I understand what you are claiming here?

Are you saying that self-reports (a.k.a. anecdotal evidence) has happened so often on this subject that it in itself has created a big enough dataset to label it a proper study?

elohesra4• 12 years ago

Oh, very well. Thank you for proving that the scientific community disagrees with me, and proving evidence for your point. I can't say I actually agree with those criteria; especially since one is wholly impossible: there is never a possibility that there's 'no fear of reprisal' when the reprisal can take the form of conflicting with one's self-identity. To be honest, to accept a self-report I'd have to see the following:

1) A study which shows that the questions themselves do not introduce bias. An actual study, where multiple groups of participants were asked the same questions in different forms so as to prove the language of the question cannot influence the result. Of course, this would cause every questionnaire and interview study to fail, because the language does indeed affect the results and is thus a confounding variable (which cannot be controlled without pretending that some language "just doesn't affect people", and yet still functions as language).

2) A proof that the demographic of the sample was controlled for all controllable factors other than those measured. For instance, in this study it wouldn't be good enough to test for the correlation between gender and friendship satisfaction by just getting a bunch of men and women: they'd all have to be the same class, race, wealth etc.

3) The study cannot draw conclusions, nor interpret its results as causative. This is really quite self-explanatory: correlation does not imply causation. Yet, especially in sociology and psychology, this logical maxim seems to get forgotten amongst the excitement of having produced a study.

I'm sure there's more objections, but you've already put up with me arrogantly berating the scientific community for 3 points now. If I were allowed to edit my post to state that the scientific community disagrees with me regarding the validity of the 2007 study, I would.

As for an experimental methodology for studying friendship, I can't say that I can think of any studies which would do so and get past an ethics committee (bloody ethicists), but making the study longitudinal over childhood through to young adulthood would help, as it would show what age-bound variables affect the output. It might just be that young adult men are, for instance, too busy developing a career to have friends, or too busy drinking beer to have friends, or whatever; either way, making it longitudinal would allow some of the uncontrollable confounding variables (such a life experiences) to become more apparent.

mvaliente2001• 12 years ago

I don't think he attacked the traditional male gender role. In fact, I think the article supports your general opinion. it starts by entertaining the idea of the male friendship deficiency, and even giving some anecdotal evidence.

But then, it turns around. He could enjoy his friendships without sharing "deep feelings", just centering around activities. That's what the ending means, when the wife asks him for entertaining gossips, and he can't tell anyone.

Bezoar• 12 years ago

I'd sooner say that men and women _currently_ have different kinds of relationships, for the most part. For men who have been conditioned toward independence but who have greater emotional needs than that model allows, the independence model can feel repressive. Likewise, I've known a number of women who lean more toward independence than intimacy. (This switching of relationship models seems to happen more than a little among the trans-men and trans-women that I know.) It isn't clear to me that the relationship categories are linked to anything other than cultural/societal conditioning.

Listening to feminists talk about relationships is actually helpful, in that by acknowledging the basic equality of women, we as men can allow ourselves to form the kind of relationships that we each want individually, rather than the kind that is trained into us from childhood. Escaping from societal pigeonholes can be good for men as well as women.

known• 12 years ago

Google "Men have bigger brains than women, research reveals"

stefantalpalaru• 12 years ago

Even though we use the same word, friendship in the male culture is a different concept from friendship in the female culture and it is a mistake to judge one with the criteria for the other.

C1D• 12 years ago

This seems more like a myth to me. I have friend that I have known since we were toddlers. Even though me and him are in different countries we Skype daily! I will be visiting him in August and he's going to visit me in December.

youRallMad• 12 years ago

Do men suck at friendships? the answer is yes but because most of us never try,

Personal Ramble

It all starts when we are children. Look at how young boys and girls play. Boys will do things together, play football, play video games talk about things they do (notice the DO, guys like to DO things). Girls will play games around social events, and developing their social hierarchy. Girls learn from a young age how to operate in social groups. boys do not tend to learn these skills until teenage years, until then they will entertain themselves

To make the point, say 2 boys have an argument, they are more likely to come to blows, fight and then drop the issue, dealing with the issue. Girls on the other hand will use talking/and social to punish those that they are fighting with. Social exclusion is the general form of punishment for girls that do not follow the established social hierarchy of a school system. This is simply to highlight the differences between boys and girls as children (aka less time for social manipulation in to pre-defined roles)

The above i feel is a biological difference in the way that men and women operate even at young ages. This is still in us as adults. (there are a number of studies about this point, boys raised as girls and so on, personally i KNOW that boys and girls are biologically different and in turn you can not just tell someone to be a girl or boy, it is hard coded (trying to highlight that I do not believe that the role of girls and boys are interchangeable as some people imply; I believe trans and other gender identity issues are based on biological triggers))

So moving on, i might be getting to a point

In my part of the world men are taught from a young age to be 'strong', 'leaders', 'money earners', 'head of the family'. Men have been exploited throughout history because of this mentality (think men front line of wars, its the mans role to defend his country and not complain (if you ran you got shot), protect our women, and supply our family with money. We are taught to ignore our emotions and to endure (work 8hrs/5days a week for 60 years). This is 1000s of years old, men are the work horses, well minus the very few at the top who pull the strings and certain people use to proclaim that men rule the world.

I also believe that we put too much focus on SO to 'complete' our lives (an extension of the idea that a man should support a family). So many people have said that their SO is their best friend and i think this is great. However as a 30 year old male I have one group of friends that have all got engaged at the same time, they all getting married within the same few years and they will be having kids at the same time i am sure. My honest option on this is that out of the 5 guys in that group, 4 of them have been pushed in to it by the girls of the group, and the first couple that started it off, well the guy was told he either asked her to marry him or she would ask him that leap year (last year) Basically what happened was one girl wanted to get married and then using that as a president the other girls banded together and got the rest of the guys to ask them.

This might sound like harsh but men need to stop thinking that their lives are about supporting other people, we need to learn that our lives are our own, we are not here to pay bills, support children (if you want to then amazing) but it is not our default roles. Sadly there is such a lack of male roles today that the 9-5 with 2-4 children is now the default. I feel sorry for men, we have been used and abused as wage earners and human targets, we work to support our families all the time self sacrificing our own social well being.

i am 30 and spent the last 9 years working on my friendship (balanced between girls and boys these days) and being close with my family. I was one of the most socially difficult people you will never know when young but thanks to lots of practice i can start a conversion with anyone anywhere. I can go to clubs by myself, dancing as an example or the pictures, it is not an issue. I guess i should put in that I have only had few relationships and i have spent more time living on my own that I ever have in relationships but on the flip side, I have a lot of friends (Sounds bad, but i have always feared some girl loading me up with kids and then me spending the rest of my life slaving to support them while they all resent me for never being at home because i am working). One thing i will say is that single guys do tend to socialize together, a lot of my single male friends are all interlinked, and most of my friends in couples are friends with couples. There is very little over lap between these groups. Single guys have different social requirements to men with SOs, and I guess it is a preference to what social groups you prefer.

So to all of you what is your priority? to become the default wage earner for a family and then complain that you have no friends? or start making your own path in life, focus on your friends rather than chasing the next SO. Find out who you are, and what you like, and you will have no issues making friends.

Be true to yourself, not true to someone else s view of you

I guess a summery is... Men and women socialize differently from a young age, i think its hard coded to a large degree. Men have lost their roles in every day life, and (personally) too many men spend their lives supporting family's because they believe it is what is expected off them. I say it's time for a male revolution, a time when men can band together (pack style) and we can entertain ourself and get out of this rat race that is a life of working to raise a family. There are too many people in the world anyway, do you really want to bring someone in to it? where the hell do you think we will be in 10 years given what has happened over the last 10 years.

It is time for Males to start redefining their roles in the world and this will start with you.

roymurdock• 12 years ago

"In Steppenwolf's case, the fact is that, like all hybrid creatures, he lived with the feeling of being sometimes a wolf, sometimes a human being. However, as a wolf he was forever conscious of his human side lying in wait, observing, judging and condemning him; just as the wolf did when he was a human being. For example, whenever Harry in his capacity as a human being had some lovely idea, experience some fine and noble sentiment, or did a so-called good deed, the wolf in him would bare its teeth and laugh him utterly to scorn, indicating how ludicrously out of character all this fine play-acting was in a wild animal of the steppes, a wolf who at heart knew perfectly well that his real pleasure lay in stalking alone across the plains, occasionally blood or pursuing a she-wolf. Seen thus from the wolf's point of view, every human action became frighteningly comic and self-conscious, vain and inane. But it was exactly the same when Harry felt and behaved like a wolf, when he showed other people his teeth or became murderously hostile to humankind as a whole, hating all its hypocritical and degenerate manners and customs. For then it was the human side of him that lay in wait, observing the wolf, calling him a brute and a beast, spoiling and souring all the pleasure he was taking in the straightforward life of a healthy untamed wolf...

His position was a lonely one; it was uncanny the way the world left him to his own devices. Other people were longer of concern to him; he wasn't even concerned about himself. The air around him was getting thinner and thinner the more solitary he became, severing all contact with others, and he was slowly suffocating as a result. For the situation now was different. No longer his desire and goal, solitude and independence were a fate he was condemned to. He had made his magic wish and there was no going back on it. However strongly he yearned to re-establish contact with others, however willing he was to hold out his arms to embrace them, it was of no avail: they now left him alone. Yet there was no indication that people hated him or found him repugnant. On the contrary; he had lots of friends. Lots of people liked him. But friendliness and sympathy were the only reactions he ever encountered. People would invite him to their homes, give him presents, write him nice letters, but nobody was able or willing to share his life. He was no breathing the air that the lonely breathe, living in an atmosphere that was still, adrift from the world around him. No amount of yearning or goodwill had any effect on his inability to form relationships."

Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse

gr3yh47• 12 years ago

"when we were all so freaked-out about seeming gay that we'd leave an empty seat between us at the movies."

or, you know, because horizontal leg room...

bluedino• 12 years ago

I wasn't sure I was supposed to be expecting more as a guy?

Most of my male-to-male interaction occurs because of shared interest. Usually a 'man activity' such as working on a car, house, or yard, working out, riding motorcycles, that sort of thing.

But there's no talk about feelings or things like that. I could help a buddy cut down a couple trees and nothing of the sort gets discussed. I'll come home and be asked, "So did Mike say how it's going with his new job/girlfriend/whatever?"

I reply, "No. Was I supposed to ask him about that?"

I think the only time there's any real discussion about things of that sort is the other activity I share with other guys: drinking alcohol

wittgenstein• 12 years ago

Some men are genuinely not very interested in forming intimate friendships with other males. This does not mean men "suck" at friendship. It just means they prefer to have intimate relationships with women, not men.

Ryoku• 12 years ago

I find it interesting how focused this article is in the "traditional" male gender role. It doesn't even touch the subject of different friendship types and relations when involving other genders than 'male'.

Without denying that sex has it's toll in the physical (duh) and psychological treats of a person, I do believe that traditional gender roles are the only roles taken into account for this article, making a great deal of assumptions on how males act towards friendship. Does anyone know if there are studies such as the ones mentioned in the article that take into account a less black and white view of gender roles or that digs into other types of friendships?

Do Men Suck At Friendship?

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