Ask Lemmy

No, I'm down to like 2 male friends at this point. All the others have gone off and had children and don't really make the time for friendship. Of those 2, both of them want kids so I'm sure I'll lose them too.

I'm glad I still have all my girls, they're all child free, so are fun and we hangout pretty often, but yeah, long gone are the days of hanging out with the boys.

Nah literally cut off my last main male friend group. I basically hung out with one dude and he'd hangout with other guys I've known for maybe 15-20 years but never I never hungout with them 1 on 1, just this one dude. I stopped responding to the group texts, don't accept invites and slowly weened my way out. These are the guys:

• One is in a "punk band." He grew up with a house maid. Tried to mock me multiple times for things like; wearing Docs, wearing band shirts(that he doesn't like), my tattoos(which are cool af). He's definitely just mad I am naturally way more punk than him without even trying.

• An alcoholic who has become more annoying as we aged.

• A pot head who doesn't share his weed, like ever. His dad bought him a house only one of us with a house, his dad paid for his college as well. No debt, doesn't share weed.

The main guy I used to hang with you could've called an anti-establishment/conspiracy theorist type. We would play co-op couch games and shoot the shit, drink a little and smoke a bit. Since 2015 he's slow walked down the path you imagine, never really diving head first, but walking it. He doesn't vote, but started listening to Tim Poole and slowly got worse from there. Just an absolute idiot that even when presented with information doesn't accept if it isn't what he thinks. The last time we hung out a few months ago we were talking about politics loosely and he kept doing this little bitch hand wave thing with this disgusted grimace on his face to anything about everything happening. The last thing I said was "You know man I miss talking about politics with you, it never used to be this pathetic we could just say whatever." Then I said bye and decided I don't ever wanna hangout with these dudes again.

Now my main friends are some ladies I used to work with and my online D&D group, which has two guys in it but they're like chill nerds.

I'm satisfied but I think my bar is really low.

I hardly talk to any of them but if they ever messaged me out of the blue for help, I'd be there for them and I'd like to think they'd lend me a hand if things got really bad, too. That's all I could ask of them. I have one I see once every few months for a beer. We talk about games and general frustrations with life. He's an American living in Japan and I'm Canadian, but we seem to align politically so we don't need to tip-toe around that, which is nice.

What kinda friends are you looking for?? What needs weren't met when you say your peers disappointed you? Did they actively hurt you (emotionally or otherwise)?

If other guys are like me, they don't want or particularly feel the need to express their feelings because they already have a particular set of people who they feel comfortable being vulnerable in front of, so they can't reciprocate even if you want to open up.

I’ve tried, man. I at least got better at socializing in a common atmosphere, so I don’t feel so distant, but many peeled just don’t reciprocate communications. I invite a repeating occasion for people, and they’ll need 8 reminders or just not show up, to the point I don’t bother. When I realize I’m always the initiator, I decide that connection isn’t important to them.

God forbid a deeper need like confessing to traumas or needing emotional support. Some of the slightest favors I’ve asked of people have been too much. All the “above and beyond” actions I’ve ever seen in my life where people do things for one another have been in fictional media, never between actual human beings.

I have an amazing set of male friends. We have been friends since college. We game, go on vacations, go to events, go out for dinner together, we help each-other out. We all talk to each-other at least once a week. We have weathered marriages, divorces, kids, grandkids, moves, addictions, hospital visits, and funerals.

Yes, we nuture it mostly on discord but also get together once a month or more and everyone is very supportive of each other. Just a handful of dudes hanging out and doing stuff together for decades. Very lucky they all stayed within an hour or so.

Don't know if I could form new friendships if I started from zero.

Fortunately, my male friendships were formed through shared experiences at difficult workplaces. I feel like only a percentage of workplaces are conducive to this type of bonding. Working front line tech support is one of the places where that can happen but also I've just been fortunate to have been adjacent to some great people when those situations arose.

I barely chat with my long ago male friends; we live in different regions and while we used to talk on the phone a lot, now it like once or twice a year. But I've got new long-haul friends from said workplaces and though we we only get together maybe every month or three, it's in person and that goes a long way.

I hope you keep at looking. Loneliness is a terrible feeling. I was utterly lonely for a lot of my life and it's very hard.I don't wish that for anyone except for the hateful bigots that need to be shunned to tell them their views, words, and actions are not acceptable.

Yeah. I have several active groups of friends:

Neighbor friends. These are the people I tend to reach out to when I'm taking my kids to a playground or a local neighborhood restaurant or other activity. I usually coordinate with them for local neighborhood events.

Work friends. These are the people I tend to socialize with during the day, or with the periodic happy hour or work outing. Sometimes I travel with some of them for work, so it's sometimes a friendly partner to explore another city with in our down time, and usually some sort of shared project for the actual work time.

Text message friends. These are people who I don't necessarily hang out with in person all that much, mostly because we don't live in the same cities, but I have about 3-5 very active group text threads around some shared interest or common friend group or former social connection (like going to the same school), maybe 3-5 more somewhat active group text threads. We share memes, news stories, links, just general discussion about our lives, etc.

I've had to reset and make new friends probably 5 or 6 times in my life, moving cities somewhere new. Each time I get a new local friend group, and I try to stay in touch with the ones I got along with best. A lot of that social stuff was out of necessity, but it built some social skills and got me used to making friends well into my 30's and beyond.

All of the males around me are conservatives. No

No. Too lonely

Nope. Not at all. I used to. I had a decent group, for the first time in my adult life. Then we moved 1000 miles a few years ago. I haven't been able to find it. Got a few guys who might pan out but it's slow going. Several guys have let things wither. Idk why. No one invites me first, it's always me, though they do mostly say yes. It's frustrating.

I have stopped socializing.

I don't have any friends other than my wife. Am I satisfied? Yes, mostly. There are rare occasions where I'd like to spend time with a male that shares my hobbies but I don't really have time or the drive to go too far, so still waiting on a neighbor that smokes weed and is a nerd to move in.

I am very fairly satisfied. And yes, I get cuddly with them because I can, and why not?

How often do you find such friends?

Not really, but it's okay because I have my wife who is my best friend period.

I wouldn't call my male friendship status any better or worse than my non-male friendships.

Lots of people that I wish to hold contact with but also don't wish to be in contact with too often. It's not too difficult for me to pick out similar folks or be picked out by similar folks in a crowd of people, so I'm not in a rush to make more connections.

I have nobody :(

No. I grew up with parents who cut me off from the entire world and now I can't make friends without it getting awkward. It's usually because I don't know proper guy behavior, and they end up thinking I'm gay, but a new low was achieved recently, where I was actually the problem this time by leaning into the stereotype and freaking all the guys I know out.

I just grew tired of getting friends, hanging out the first time, and never getting a call back. Or, "if you need anything, let me know/hey bud, how's it going?" Making random ass promises that we'd hang out. Then never following through. So I just leaned the hell into it. I don't even remember what I said. A lot of the guys have stopped being friendly with me now though. Used to talk about their home countries and shit.

It was just frustrating, trying to find authenticity and constantly getting people who couldn't see me as a person. It had happened over and over and over and over. And they all just wiggle out of it with fakeness, so they don't have to be a bad person. Which hurts more than them actually manning up and just telling me the truth.

Not really. I have a lot of trouble relating to other straight/cis men. The more time I spend around someone, the less I like them. I pretty much hate most "masculine" stuff. I have started to prefer ephemeral stuff like talking people up in public, doing board games and trivia nights, and attending niche meetups. Friendships rarely stick, but I do see the same people periodically which is nice

I've tried gaming, but card games are too expensive for my interest level, and I get burned out out video games too quickly to get into competitive stuff. A bunch of my friends from college bond over this, and it kinda sucks to feel incompatible with it. I sometimes get in on an D&D game which is great, but not especially frequent.

I have more female and LGBTQ friends than anything, but it's hard to feel fully included in those communities either because I'm pretty much a normie. It's still the most positive community I am a part of and tend to earn trust and an ally pretty quickly, so I lean on it.

I'm also pretty autistic and mostly want to talk to people about Linux, mesh networks, and data hoarding, and I have my best luck online. I'm a part of a few niche online communities and do IRL meetups and stuff.

I work in word tech startups, and like my coworkers, but they're not my close friends. Still, it's the closest I get to "my people", but it's mostly remote work and hardly anyone ever lives near me.

I an excellent relationship with my wife and she has a much easier time making friends. She and her friends all think it's weird that I don't have many close friends, and it really does feel like it's just hard to be a social man these days.

It does get to be hard. I do sometimes worry that I am uniquely unlikeable, but I also don't ever get that feedback. I just have no idea where I would find the kind of friend that thinks writing NixOS flakes and Terraform scripts is a fun leisure activity.

You guys have friends?

I believe that in my previous life I must've done something good that brought me luck in this one.

I have a group of a dozen male friends whom I would trust with my life and the lives of my family. I think the same holds for each and every one of them.

We all come from the same small town. The group grew since kindergarten a few of us went to, adding friends through school, highschool, university. We have different careers and each one brings a unique perspective on things.

We try to get together as often as possible, but with work and kids and families it's difficult to always make it. So we implemented the "minimum viable product" approach where any two of us will arrange to meet up, then notify everyone else about what/when/where we are planning, and have anyone else join if they can, too. So even if just the original two meet up, they get to see a good friend. And if more show up, so much the better.

I feel truly blessed in this regard. I think there's a huge number of benefits we all reap from such a group: social safety net, psychological support, sanity checks on ideas and life decisions, reliable people you can vent to, always having someone to have a beer with, interventions when needed.

I know few people have this, and if I could magically wish things into being, it would be that everyone in the world gets a friend group like this to rely on. I feel it would make things... significantly better.

Take care of each other out there.

My closest, only and true friend is a friend of 25 years.

We live in different countries today, don't speak everyday, but any opportunity we have to talk it seems like nothing has changed and we're still the same two goof balls we were back then.

Just added with a strong dad vibe. And jokes.

Yes, but it took time to get there. Two things shifted: I opened up and I lowered the bar to be called "friend".

Opening up: geek out. Find the people that share your interests. I know, it's hard to do. But if you can find some people with a common thread, you'll likely find people with a few common threads and several tangential threads. Obviously, it's hard to find people, but chances are if you find one, they'll bring you more similar-minded people. Secondly obviously, you have to throttle yourself to not overdo the geeking until you know it's someone that has similar levels of interest. Most people geek out about something, but your local societal norms tend to direct you on what's normal. Watching every sports game of a particular team, knowing their stats? Geek. Cars? Geek. Guns? American Geek. Weight lifting min/maxing? Geekmaxing. These are just the normal masculine hobbies. Weather, space, physics, electronics, gardening, cooking, reading, so many other things to geek about. Try going to events that are part of or are tangential to your interests. Even if you dont grab anyone's contact info, enjoy vibing with your kind. Depending on the gig, you might even start seeing the same people.

Lowering the bar: I spent souch time feeling like I had no real friends. I had work friends. I lost school friends. I left home city friends. I lost prior work friends. Then I threw a big party and invited people from across my life. They showed up (mostly) and it literally felt like I was just catching up with old friends. The party itself wasn't important (to this topic), but the realization was. I always heard this notion of "fair-weathered friends" and "friends of proximity" and thought it applied to all of mine. Now I know: they're all friends of proximity because everyone is. Even your own family. If you lose the proximity, the friendship fades if you don't make the time for them. But it doesn't mean it's gone. It doesn't mean it needs a formal restart. I have summer friends, winter friends, work friends, concert friends, and so on. No, they're not all deep friendships, but they're people I can message on mutual topics and get together for mutual interests. But, among the ~30 people I can think of off the top of my head, there's maybe 5 I can talk about anything to. Doesn't mean I do. But they're people that i can spontaneously have deep conversations with.

Opening up can be as a simple as "I'm having a bad time with [blank]". If you're surrounded by masculinity, you might just get some dumb curt answers like "fix it" or "so don't do it". But you might find people with relevant experiences. I know I have selection bias, but most of the people in my life now would lend an ear and try to help. Humans like solving problems.

Similarly, when I was younger, I had more female friends than male. I'm sure being horny was an underlying factor, but I have little interest in most male interests here. By 25, I felt like I had no one. By 35, I was surrounded by 20 men and 20 tangential women, all friends, all open emotionally, all with just a seemingly small amount of common interest. But all about the same vibe.

And yet I can go a week and only talk to my spouse. And I'm happy with that. My spouse is my best friend, but I'm in the orbit of all these other people to share hobbies and interests with, both with and without my spouse.

It's unfortunate, but friendships seem to be worn down by time. I've always been the person who will reach out if I feel like the other person also does but as soon as it feels one sided I lose motivation. When I was younger and lived closer to several people I considered friends, it felt nice. But as the years roll on, I find myself growing apart from friends in several ways. One of those ways is that despite seeming like not "kid people" several friends now have multiple kids and that's their life now. Which isn't really my thing. Other friends, I just feel I have less in common with than before, or they've gone off one deep end or another. Politics is a non zero factor. Conspiracy theories are another thing, unfortunately.

I had a large group of friends (50+ people), then I was laid off due to AI and other stuff, and I changed from one specific hobby to another. I lost them all in a few months.

I'm old enough to understand that it is my karma to go from group to another. I made new "friends" with sports and music, but I now accept that I must now rely on myself only, and friends are fleeting.

My father is an asshole, friends are temporary, I am now trying to be my best friend because everything else is unreliable.

No

But I'm doing fine work and giving it my best.

Let me pat myself on the back instead of getting depressed about it for a change.

Yes, I don't hang out with toxic people.

Not totally satisfied, to be honest.

Don't get me wrong, they are good friends and nice people in general, and we get along well when we get together, but we just don't hang out often enough for the relationship to feel very strong or satisfying. I see my friends a couple times a year at most.

I can't say I don't miss the old days of hanging out together, playing games and music almost every weekend! And yeah, I feel that we all live very separate lives these days, so I don't exactly know them as well as I used to, and vice versa.

I have great friends, but they live far away so I only see them a couple times a year. I'd love to make more friends who live nearby, but it feels more difficult the older I get.

Had a friend all through high school and my early 20s. Kinda lost touch. His mum gave me a number that I messaged a couple of times but other than that not really had ‘friends’ for the last 20 odd years.

Just work colleagues from time to time.

Yes.

I think the 'lonliness epidemic' is really born of delusional expecations. Most of the sad lonely people expect things from others they'd never give of themselves...

my most socially unhappy time in my life was the one when I had the most friends.

As I've gotten older, I've got more responsibilities which compete for my care and attention. With that said, I make time. What that looks like for me is I visit with one of my old friends quarterly-ish and then go fishing or hunting (depending on season) once every other week with a closer friend.

Then for sharing things on the emotional front, in my experience that may come as a natural consequence of sharing other things going on in your life and asking about another's own experiences.

Over the various years growing up, I'm friendly with a lot of people, but I keep in touch with a select few from each time period, and they tend to keep me in the loop of the goings on in that circle.

And many of these good friends I am currently physically far away from, I try to make the effort to go and visit them, and invite them over if they ever consider coming to where I live.

My best friend (friends for about 40 years now) and I still talk a few times a month. His schedule has always been busy since he's a workaholic, but we always find time for each other.

We've talked most of our lives about emotional stuff, but he came out about 15 years, so I don't know how much that plays into him being more emotionally available. I'm straight but feel fine talking about personal stuff with people. I just know that stuff is important to talk about.

My other closest guy friend is more a typical dude. We've had some personal chats. He's kinda had like a prolonged 5 year split with his wife, so there's been a lot he's needed to get off his chest.

He doesn't like to get too open, but now that he's kinda living on his own (partial custody of kids) I've been trying to be really supportive of him because I know he's going through a lot and doesn't really have anyone else to talk to as most of his lifelong friends are 3 hours away. He kinda thanked me the other day for always being so positive and upbeat around him, so it seems to be working even if he can't always acknowledge it.

My brother is probably my next closest guy friend. We're very opposite in lifestyle, but humor-wise we are the same and we grew up the same crappy ways, so we get along well. He's much more social than I am, so he's busy a lot, but we still BS a few times a month and have dinner sometimes.

It's important to have bro friends. I have a good amount of female friends as well, but some things are just more bro-ish. The girls can give equally valid, if not better advice sometimes, but it's nice to have a guy to get another guy's opinion on things too.

I wouldn't just get all sobby on someone out of nowhere, but if you want to get more personal, just lean into it a bit and feel out how receptive people are. Sometimes, guy or girl, people are cautious about getting into someone's personal life, either they're insecure talking about personal things, or they don't wanna get blamed if they give advice that doesn't work out, etc, but you just gotta go for it in a reasonable manner if you want to be more open.

Yeah. I don't expect anyone to help me with anything. I try my best to be available to people and I have a pretty active social life.

I have dozens of cousins who I've known and been friends with since I was born. I have family friends that I have some vague memories of us taking baths together. I have a group of friends I've known since middle school (~25 years ago) that probably includes 7 people. I have some friends who I've known since college which could be 2 to 15 people depending on how I'm feeling that day. I am still in touch with 5 friends from med school and maybe 4 friends from residency and I've got a bunch of friends I've developed in the last few years.

Dang, typing that all out made me feel incredibly blessed.

It's funny, if you ask me most days, I'll tell you dudes are lame and women are more interesting to talk to, but tbh most of my closest and longest running friendships are with dudes. Dudes just need an activity. They don't need to talk to each other. The vast majority of my male friendships at least originally centered on some activities like basketball, playing Warhammer 40k, playing video games, being in med school/residency.

As far as being emotionally vulnerable with another man, I think maybe like 3-4 guys in total. I am pretty emotionally closed off. I'm more of a "bust your balls" type of friend.

I am. I pal around with five guys. Our link is we all live on an “island” in the Chesapeake Bay. I put island in quotes because it isn't an island, but it is called one.

We run around on the bay in our jetskis, get together for football games and other social events.

I have a really good friend actually, we open up to each other about what we've got in mind, our emotions, anxieties, etc. We got each other's back, we started a band and we even work out together. He's married so sometimes he's a bit busy though.
I met him this year in a DnD group and I'm in my mid twenties, so although finding friends becomes a bit harder with age, it is not impossible. Cheer up mate, I hope that you'll find a friend like that soon :D

I have like one actual male friend I still talk to every week left, I'm okay with that. One or two female friends too depending on the week. My male friend I've known for like 10 years now since my first week in college, so we usually have no issue talking about whatever, theres no emabrassment or anything like that. I don't really talk about emotional sht with my female friends, it's always been more about entertaining each other and making the other laugh.

I never got the whole woman are more emotional and want to talk about sht like emotions or whatever, they can handle it better and are more used to it, sure, but do they actually want to talk about that stuff, probably not.

I'm not as hungup on needing friends or wanting to be social all the time as I used to be. I feel like I still don't have enough alone time to do and learn all the things I want to.

Having friends that share the same hobbies I do seems like a dream (I've had that in the past, but I hobby hop, maybe these friends are also into yugioh but I lose interest and swap to blender and they don't care about that at all, so eventually we stop communicating and maybe a year or two later im back into yugioh but now its been too long.

I swap hobbies way too often and I never know when, I at least return to most of them eventually but the friends related to it are gone. The friends that remain are the ones I've spent years drinking with (and ocasionally hanging out sober, but im a social drinker, I go mute otherwise)