Unlike women, who seem to make and keep friends easily, men generally have a more difficult time doing so — and it can get worse as we get older.
For most men, work is a central life interest. Yet as we age, retire and move, there’s often no compelling reason to stay closely connected to former work colleagues.
It doesn’t always happen this way, of course. Sometimes there are common interests that help men stay connected to each other long after they retire. But it doesn’t happen too often. And it’s too bad.
When guys stay connected, we not only live longer but also enjoy life more. This even shows up in the “bromances” like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and buddy comedies like “The Blues Brothers.”
But such vibrant connections are even more important in real life. Social support is a major factor in staying healthy and living longer, according to abundant scientific data.
Despite the benefits from lasting male friendships, they seem to be fairly rare. According to a 2021 survey, 15% of the male respondents said they had no close friends at all and fewer than half said they were satisfied with the number of friends they had.
Older men, in particular, not only wished they had more male friends, but also said they were often sad and lonely.
In retirement, men may have difficulty getting out of the house and “putting themselves out there.” This may be because during our working careers we are often striving and competing. Without the same compelling need to make a living in retirement, we can feel bereft, uncertain, and maybe even unprepared for life “outside the fast lane.”
My neighbor Dave felt that way. After retiring, he moved to a new city. But he didn’t really know how to make new friends after he moved. Even at church, he sat next to a wall with his wife as a gatekeeper. More often, he didn’t go at all. After stewing for a while, Dave decided to go back to work.
“All I was doing was staying at home watching paint dry,” he told me ruefully. “I didn’t know what to do with myself. So, I did the one thing that I knew how to do: I got a job.”
As men get older, it takes more than sports talk to make and keep friendships going. One observer has pointed out that most male relationships are side-by-side — at a sports bar, walking a fairway, or watching a game — rather than face-to-face, noting that men don’t look each other in the eye.
A telling example of this side-by-side relationship among men is a video produced by the English soccer club in Norwich City — showing two men in the stands watching a football (soccer) game throughout the Premier League season.
The men are shown occasionally chatting but hardly ever looking at each other. The video ends with one of the spectators giving his mate a scarf and telling him to keep it. Later that night, suffering from loneliness, he takes his own life.
More than hyperbole, suicide rates in the United States among men over the age of 60 are more than 5 times higher than for women the same age. As one of the contributors to mental health challenges and suicidality, male loneliness is a worldwide epidemic.
My wife and I like to remind ourselves that we can’t have too many friends. But she’s better at it than I am.
Still, I do have a few close friends and I truly treasure them. Despite living 1,500 miles apart, Dwayne Guidry and I still talk regularly and occasionally get together.
We met in Louisiana and worked together off and on for more than 30 years. We don’t have a lot in common — he’s Black, enjoys drinking and lives in Memphis; I’m white, a teetotaler and live in Utah.
But ironically since neither of us are very active on social media, it has actually helped us stay in touch more directly. We talk on the phone.
We remain friends simply because we like each other. We always have. It’s hard for me to put my finger on why, but there’s something so refreshing about his honesty and our mutual support for each other.
I always felt like he had my back and he knew that whenever the chips were down, he could count on me.
He still can.
Back when Dwayne and I had jobs, people at work would sometimes refer to us as Shawn and Burton (Gus) from the TV series “Psych” because there was a connection that was obvious to others and we mirrored the ethnicity of the two main characters.
But privately we thought of ourselves more like the two characters in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” because we were pals who had a shared lingo, shared various idiosyncratic gestures, and weren’t mired in the competitive put-down culture that afflicts so many male friendships.
That’s what drew us to each other back then. That’s what keeps us connected even today.
It’s much the same with my friend Randy Bronson, a boyhood friend who now lives in Payson, Utah. We were college roommates, but lived in very different parts of the country for most of our working careers: he was mostly in Alaska, I was mostly in Texas.
The combination of shared beliefs and some common, difficult life experiences have kept us leaning on each other throughout our adult lives. When we are together, we don’t compete with each other for air time and inevitably talk about a range of interesting topics — remaining genuinely interested in each other’s life experiences.
Randy is serving a Latter-day Saint mission right now in Ohio among Nepali refugees. Rather than one-upmanship and tension, we’re all about creating “escape routes” for each other in meeting life’s “ups and downs.”
We don’t need to look for a shoulder to lean on in difficult times, we know exactly where to find one. It doesn’t even matter when we last met up with each other, each time it’s like it was only yesterday when we last were together.
Somehow, I suspect, unlearning some of the cultural tendencies of competition, sarcasm, and posturing will make it easier for guys to get together more often, find deeper connections with each other, and ultimately live better longer.
This might also mean practicing some new skills, taking a few risks, and even willingly experimenting. But the results could be a healthier life and less loneliness. Pretty worth it, wouldn’t you say?