Early in 2023 there was a story on NPR about how difficult it is for adults to make and keep friendships. They had a guest named Dr. Marisa Franko who wrote a book called, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make–and Keep–Friends. Well, now they had my attention because my most recent continuing education pursuits have been about attachment. As the segment went on, I reflected on my friendships. My closest friend in the world is someone I’ve known since elementary school, and in reality, we don’t see each other often. This is in spite of only living about 20 minutes apart. I have another great friend whom I was also very close to throughout childhood, but she lives an hour and a half away, and the majority of our interactions are via Facebook. Another good buddy of mine is someone I met when we lived in southern Illinois, but we moved to the metro east, and he moved to Florida (guess how we stay in touch…by saying goofy stuff to each other on Facebook). I have other friends that I really enjoy spending time with, and when I reflect on those relationships, they tend to be couples that I only see during couples get-togethers. I feel like I married my best friend, and I also feel very lucky in that respect. However, she’s my wife, not my buddy, and there is a big difference between friendship and romantic love…enough of a difference that they can’t really replace one another.
This reflection didn't exactly yield new information to me, but I hadn’t really considered it a problem. Still, I went to get Platonic from the library and liked it enough that I bought myself a copy. It turns out that friendship really is a big deal, and throughout human history, it has been an important key to our survival. Even though we live in a much less savage and dangerous world than our ancestors, without friendships we tend to feel lonely. Dr. Franco cites research suggesting that loneliness is a killer…an actual killer…as in a on-par-with-cigarettes type of killer, and she says that our level of happiness is closely tied to our social connections. The book referenced an article from the Boston Globe, by Billy Baker, who then went on to write his own book, We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends. (This book turned out to be really good too). In being asked to write an article for the Globe about how difficult it is for middle-aged men to maintain friendships, Billy discovered that his own friendships were being neglected. In fact, someone that he had considered to be one of his best friends was living in another country, and Billy had no idea that the friend had moved. He decided to chronicle his journey to learn the secrets of friendships and how to restore his own in his book. His article and his book begin with the same line: “Let’s start with the moment I realized I was a loser.” Here’s the deal, Billy isn’t actually a loser. In fact, he’s a pretty normal guy. Remember the friend that I said lives less than a half hour away, and we barely see each other? Well, we both have jobs and families. One of Billy’s quotes in the book is, “When people become over-scheduled…they don’t shortchange their kids or their careers. No, they shortchange their friendships.” That line hit home.
The trouble with maintaining adult friendships is a problem for both men and women, but it seems to be something that is even harder for men. Anecdotally, my wife is great at maintaining her connections, reaching out to friends, letting them know how much they mean to her, and prioritizing them. I’ve always joked that she’s a lot more likable than me, and before you assume that I’m just being self-deprecating, you should know that my mom once told me that if I ever screwed things up with my wife, they were keeping her instead of me…thanks mom. Part of the reason that making and keeping friends seems to be harder for men than women is that we get so hung up on the idea of masculinity. In his book, Billy notes that, culturally, we have decided that any same sex friendship that approaches anything resembling intimate or affectionate is inherently feminine and called out as gay. Heterosexual men have then become so afraid of this term that our ability to actually bond with one another is sacrificed. When we look at it like this we can see that, yes, we really are busy with our work and our families, but we are also finding it unmanly to admit that our friends bring us joy and add depth to our lives. It is then easier to only connect with our spouse or romantic partner (and, of course, we need to devote time to that person in order to maintain that relationship), but also any downtime we have is usually devoted to some form of screentime (which is harder to justify as actually important). It may not be as fulfilling as actually including an effort to connect with our friends, but at least it’s not girly. See, doesn’t that sound completely ridiculous?
Does any of this sound familiar yet? Have you been convinced that making and sustaining friendships has value? My hope is that any men reading this are also thinking, “I do need to spend some time with my bros.” (See how I even felt compelled to make that sound masculine? It’s messed up, so I left it there to point out how this masculinity nonsense shows up in strange ways). I knew from the start that I wanted to make this blog a little more personal because this is a problem that many of us deal with. I didn’t want to write this one sounding like the counselor dishing out advice, but rather to show that this is a cultural trap that we’re all stuck in. I also knew it meant that if I included Dr. Franco’s research (which tells us what the heck we need to do in order to make and keep friends) this would be a rather long blog, and I specifically want to keep them as five-minute-reads. Please bear with me, and even though I specifically talked more about male friendships, I hope you’ll check out next week’s blog. It will contain useful information about building and keeping adult friendships, regardless of one’s gender.