Category: Friendships

Developing friendships is an essential component of our human connection, but also presents some unique challenges for men. In this next post for my series on The Year for Better Male Friendships, I describe the unique barriers that keep men from making deeper, more authentic friendships that I believe are needed to help us become better men.  As I wrote in a previous post, Men Do Friendships Differently Than Women. “Gender-ally” speaking, male relationships are more tactical, and female friendships are more relational. Men tend to develop friendships “side-by-side” for a specific purpose, through a business relationship or over a shared interest or activity. Females, on the other hand, cultivate intimate friendships “face-to-face” by spending substantial time together. Men move quickly from a task or relationship. They usually don’t share personal details because they can be overly competitive. Women call each other and meet regularly to share emotions, secrets, and

Through this series of posts in early 2025, I’m making my case for The Year for Better Male Friendships. The reasons for my stance are numerous: 57% of men report feeling lonely and 15% claim to have no close friends at all; both significantly higher since 1990. So I agree with others about many reasons for The Decline of Friendship. In this post, I explain that men are their worst enemies when making and keeping friends. After that, I will follow up with another post about the barriers that keep men from making deeper, more authentic friendships. The Real Reasons for Our Loss of Friends Here is a summary of previous posts in this series that explain some reasons why friendships have changed for men. These are all valid concerns and why the U.S. Surgeon General’s office released an advisory sounding the alarm on the epidemic of loneliness plaguing our

My last post in this series making my case for 2025 as The Year for Better Male Friendships, I explained some of the ways technology, smartphones, and social media impact boys and young men differently as it relates to our friendships. In this next post, I explain why our friendships are different from females and begin to detail some reasons why we struggle to make and keep friends.  Men Have Connection Issues My initial post for the series included a video by Richard Reeves on The Decline of Friendship. It stated that recent studies show that 57% of men report feeling lonely and 15% claim to have no close friends at all, which is a significant change since 1990. In my book, Get Out of Your Man Cave: The Crisis of Male Friendships and a previous post in this series, I wrote about the The Life-Stages of Friendships which is