Ask Lemmy

Men are taught not to care for each other

I just had an old friend hit me up to talk after his recent heartbreak. My dog had died my aunty had cancer and I’m at rock bottom with my finances. Haven’t heard from this friend in years. No idea what I was going through.

I realized all my friends from my youth were really shitty. Lack of reciprocal respect and kindness over the decades really dried up my empathy response. I sent him a rap lyric and wished him the best.

From my experience those emotions are wasted on others. This is completely anecdotal but something to reflect on. I get the sense that your friendships were not worth keeping and at this point it probably doesn’t matter whose fault that is.

I am turning 50 this year and laying in bed next to a woman who just cheated on me again.

I wish so fucking hard I could turn back time.

I parked my car in the garage, rolled down my window and went to sleep. I was shocked/disappointed I woke up when the car was running out of gas.

It sucks so fucking hard that you love this person and you have given so much, but then you realize they don't feel the same about you and then realize you don't even know who you are anymore.

Are you even someone without this person?

Take it day by day. You need to find out who you are again.

I'm sorry you don't have support. No one to validate how you feel, help you heal.

Please stay strong. Please keep looking.

Please find yourself again.

You're losing friendships by asking for support? Something's missing here...

Hey man. Late to the party but I feel for you.

Listen, good friends, the lifelong ride or die types- are rarer than fucking diamonds. There are maybe two, maybe three people you meet like that in your whole life. If folks you thought were like that actually aren't, that sucks but it's not an indictment of you or your character. Its just the odds. Lots of people suck and go where the good times are, not where they are needed. And it doesn't mean you can't meet those diamond people later in life.

Suicide is often seen as an escape because people feel trapped in the "now". They can't see the future ahead of them. Well, let me tell you as someone was cheated on, got divorced, had a nervous breakdown, (9 months of meds, doctors and living with my parents) and built his life back brick by brick - new people, new town, new job- you have a future. I'm closer to 40 than 30 these days, and I'm telling you the pain fades. You have a future waiting, if you can get there.

My practical advice is limited. You're going to feel how you feel for as long as you need to. For me, it was more the shame than the heartbreak. I felt like everyone could see my "failure" stamped on my forehead. That was bullshit, but no amount of people telling me so reduced that feeling. But it is just a feeling. Being cheated on is not a character flaw. Being abused doesn't mean you deserved it. You've got to win the internal fight first - realize that feelings aren't always reflective of reality and pull out of the tail spin. How you feel is a distortion, and it can be modulated. You'll get there.

I'm three years out of being divorced after 15 years of marriage.

It, yeah, um... yeah, dude. I got the same treatment. People's immediate family and lives all take precedent.

I basically took gasoline and a match to my life predating 2022 and went scorched earth in retaliation. Now I'm mostly family, or fuck off while I keep my head in books and hobbies.

People imo are the ultimate letdown, held up by the idea that humanity means something. It doesn't. Pet a cat.

I got love bombed and stripped of my support network over time. After the divorce it took about 5 years to rebuild my friend network. She’s still the same as she ever was. I kept being myself, and I’ve bloomed as a strong member of my community and my life is much better than coming home to play a grey man for a narcissist.

It. Will. Get. Better. Celebrate the freedom from a bad situation. Be who you are, and the best version of that. I spent days crying in the beginning, but I went through it and I’m strong now. Hopefully you find that seed in yourself as well.

Same here man, it was many years ago. My ex was crazy - I don't mean the kind of crazy like "everybody has a crazy ex crazy," I mean literally crazy. I never knew whether I was coming home to someone weeping uncontrollably with her face buried in the couch - or bleary eyed with rage, screaming - pulling knives on me in the kitchen and threatening to kill me in my sleep. I am not exaggerating.

Five years of this shit getting increasingly worse before I finally said "this ain't living" and pulled the plug. She tried desperately to get me to change my mind, but I was done. Then she turned on me in earnest, lying to everyone I knew and telling them all sorts of crazy shit. They should have known better - these people grew up with me, they knew I was a good guy.

But here's the thing (and it still bugs me to this day) - when you're the one doing the divorcing, you're the one who gets blamed, right or wrong. There's this sort of unspoken rule that the partner that wants to keep the marriage around must be the one that's blameless. Nevermind if they're abusive, manipulative, gaslighting pieces of shit who fuck around on you - they only want to make the marriage work!

But there's a silver lining. People always get the truth eventually. She won't be able to hide her true nature forever, and eventually people will come around. When they do, they will come to you and they will apologize. In the meantime, get your counseling, know it isn't you, be good to yourself, and find someone who will treat you like you deserve to be treated.

I am married to my second wife now for over 15 years. She is, was and always will be: NORMAL. Thank goodness. Sometimes you can wonder if it was maybe somehow partly your fault. A good woman will disabuse you of that notion.

Anecdotal, but this has been my experience in every big breakup. All of them were abusive, most physically so, and all of them got to keep the shared friend group. People are shit.

Younger dudes who haven't gone through shit aren't able to empathize with what you are going through. They don't have the emotional maturity to understand how and when someone needs some support. Finally they are still fighting against what they think society expects a man to be. All of which means that men hide their feelings from other men and expect other men to do the same or else they are week or something is wrong with them. Which is complete and utter bullshit. You are not the problem their programing and lack of life experience is.

With all that being said. How are you doing today? Are you able to get out and socialize this weekend? Have you considered picking up a new hobby that you have to do with other people? I recommend scuba diving. Good luck and check back in periodically because we want you to thrive.

In a variety of ways, people communicate to men, 'Please don't need anything from me, because I have nothing to give you.'

I think the devil is in the details...

I have a couple who were close friends, they separated and initially we tried hard to support him as it seem he would have continued the marriage but she was the one moving away from it. Our thought process at the time was "she has something to look forward to, he seems to feel left behind"

We did not treat her badly or anything but did basically cater to his every need, providing as much support as we could.

Then, once the initial shock was over, he started attacking her in every possible way. And on top of that, he started shunning our every invite under the pretext "he didn't want to accidentally run into her" which was complete BS as we did not regularly hung out with her.

Finally, she was so broke after years of court battles that she opened a go fund me campaign and we donated some money. Well well well, this friend who had all but shunned us suddenly calls me raging that I am helping her and by doing so undermining his righteous effort to take vengeance on her.

All of this to reiterate that the devil is in the details... were these friends actual friends of yours before the divorce? did you concern yourself with their needs back then? have you been an asshole to them before, during or after the divorce? There is a real chance these were not great people to begin with, but I find it hard to believe that all your true friends decided to just ghost you for no reason whatsoever

Yep.

Everyone in my life was done hearing about my divorce LONG before I was ready to stop talking about it. But, I just had to shut up and carry on, or risk driving them away.

Are you ok? I cant do much for ya but sorry no one has gotten outside themselves enough to see youre hurting.

Yeah this is what men deal with & guess what you'll be gaslit into thinking that YOU WERE THE PROBLEM all along eventhough evidence suggests otherwise.

I'm going through a divorce right now. For the most part the friends and people I've told have largely been supportive of me. I think it helped that I had friends that were my own and not shared with my ex-wife. The shared friends we had together have mostly supported her, but they were her friends before we had met. One of the things I have done since splitting is getting more involved with my hobby that is improv theater. Finding a hobby where you are around others can help with building a group of friends who know you not through your ex or past relationship. It would make it more likely that they would support you and not her.

People tend to side with the woman in a separation. Its the side effect of a patriarchal spciety: Toxic Masculinity. Men are just expected to have no emotions and can handle everything on their own, which isn't true at all.

I feel the same. My parents tells me I need to "stop crying because I'm not being 'manly' enough". Like, bruh I have a fucking existential crisis and disagnose depression and really wanna kms right now. So I get it.

The Left hasn't doen enough to address the issues that men are facing, which is why the alt-right pipeline is so ripe for picking off boys to their fascist agenda. But please, remember, fascists aren't your friends, no matter what they say. Plese don't fall for the alt-right pipeline, my friend.

I think the left just needs to recalibrate their priorities. Society issues can only be solved with true Egalitarianism that supports both Men and Women.

Pretty limited information, but based on it being hard to imagine a group of compassionate people all siding with the person who did the cheating, my guess is that your "friends" probably suck. My advice isto sign up for a community college acting class and try hard to immerse yourself in it. Acting and getting involved in theatre totally cured my serious anxiety problems. There's something about it that helps you get unwrapped from yourself and want to explore other people and the world more. My other advice is don't define yourself as "the divorced guy" - especially when socializing with new people. They aren't gonna want to hear all the gory details. Dig into your personal interests and what makes you happy and focus on those things.

What you're going through right now is the process of discovering the phone numbers you can stop answering. The flat tires you can stop changing, the computers you can stop fixing, the lunches you can stop lending, the favors you can stop doing.

Can you define what you were asking for in terms of support from your friends? I've not been married but I've been through some shitty breakups and I've never really even considered asking my friends for anything. Like I don't even know what they could do to help matters. I just had to deal with all the emotional stuff and move on. If anything I think a lot of them would have made the situation more toxic in their efforts to make me feel better.

I'm not asking this to tell you to get over it even though it probably sounds that way. I'm trying to understand what someone else in this situation is actually looking for that will help them. I'm sorry you're not getting what you need.

Hey man. That sounds insanely hard, I'm so sorry you're dealing with it alone without support.

Just want to say that I've had a similar experience. When I was diagnosed with cancer 2 years ago at 27, I was and still very much am so frustrated, disappointed, and heartbroken by the lack of support around me. My family and friends didn't reach out in any way, acted like nothing was happening, I was dealing with it on my own, without so much as a "how are you doing?".

I don't have much to offer you, I don't have answers. But I know when I went posting online looking for some, the solidarity of others with similar experiences helped keep me sane.

I'm a nice, good looking, talented young dude. It's not me, it's not you. At least for me, I happened to grow up in a culture where men don't show feelings or need support. My girlfriend gets more support for dealing with my condition. It frustrates and saddens me beyond belief.

The small solace I've had is that I've been given the gift of knowledge through this experience. I've dealt with my mortality very young, and have a perspective on life my friends couldn't have yet. There are others that get it, and you'll find them. I lost who I thought were my close friends but gained close friends out of people I rarely thought of as friends at all.

People suck and are incredibly, inherently selfish. A lot of people do care but you can literally get cancer and they won't break social norms to show it. Don't take time waiting for these people. In my experience, the cancer wasn't the hardest part. It was this part of losing all my friends and family. People don't want to be around hard stuff.

Good luck, keep yourself grounded. It's not you, it's our broken and fucked up society. Find those that have dealt with these things, and focus on the dumb, small things that make you happy. I'm rooting for you.

Love to see so much support here in asklemmy. This community is really great.

I went through divorce at the age of 27 and is one of the hardest things I've ever experienced. It is a lot like a death. Obviously not of a person but a dream and perhaps an identity. It's the type of thing that can feel like a personal failure and really leave you feeling hopeless and in despair.

In the first months I don't think it's reasonable to expect that the feelings will just go away or even lose their potency, and they can be extremely powerful. Perhaps they just become muted more and more as time passes and you fill your life with other people and activities. Hell, to this day (now I'm 45) I still think about her occasionally and wish it could have been a different outcome, but so much of my life since that time never could have occurred had I stuck with her. In other words I've come to learn that while I'm grateful for the good times we had, I'm also grateful that it ended and I too could move on.

The most important thing you have to do now is find out who you are as a single man - and as a human - by nurturing and taking care of this new found sense of loneliness. Find your new identity. I think you really have to lean into the pain you're feeling and express it deliberately. Let it move and let it get out of you.

It especially helps to fill your time with activities you love that also nurture you. Maybe that's being outdoors, maybe that's gaming, whatever it is you know it better than anybody.

We really need healthy people around to support us during this kind of time and it's a shame that the people you thought would be there aren't. Maybe they can still be your buddies but now you know they're not the type to really have your back when the shit hits the fan. But those kind of people are out there and now it's your mission to go figure out where they are.

I find most everyone I know had been just keeping afloat even before this year and now are facing more disruptions. Most can't handle knowing someone needs help because they are not in a position to give it. May not apply to your case but its something I see in my life.