Do Men Need Friends Like Women Do?

A follow up from my female friendship post.

Image credit: Centre for Ageing Better, Unsplash

While I’d been writing about female friendships recently I thought a lot about men and their friendships.

Men don’t talk do they? As a whole? Not to their mates. Not to anyone deeply.

They seem to have friends for different reasons than we have friends.

I’ve read many times that men are more surface level in their friendships and if this is true I feel really sad for them.

They’ll go the pub, the footie match, play golf with their mates but do they share what’s troubling or niggling them with each other?

Many women be moan the fact that their men don’t even share their feelings with them.

My main man in particular will talk … eventually … about stuff troubling him but it literally has to be coaxed out of him.

It’s like fishing and trying to get a bite.

I wonder if it’s a generational thing? I think my sons who are 29 and 26 are much better talking to their friends but then I wonder is that just my sons because I’ve tried to influence them to do this?

We’ve worked hard to encourage them to open up generally and right from being little fellas said they can talk to us about anything. Anything at all. But whether they have relationships with friends that could withstand anything conversations I don’t really know. That’s not strictly true. They do. I have asked but maybe I need to check in and ask them a bit more regularly.

Doing a little search on the web I came across an article that spells it out; here’s the tragedy of ‘mateship’ – many men just don’t talk about stuff that really matters.

“I keep hearing it from men and women in my orbit: too many men in their lives are lonely and have no real mates with whom to workshop their intense emotional stuff.”

and in this next quote from the article I believe is the crux of what I was thinking about,

“So many women I know talk about current and former male partners, brothers and fathers who either don’t have any close male friends or, if they do, don’t talk to them about the vicissitudes of their lives. They internalise the most devastating emotional events: the death of partners and children, the loss of physical and mental acumen with age, the frustration of retirement and job losses ... the rigours of loneliness itself.”

and another interesting quote,

“Men don’t have friends. They have wives whose friends have husbands.”

This was on my mind a lot thinking about men and their friendships … suicide.

Suicide touched our family recently. Just 8 months ago as I write this.

My brother aged 51 took his own life last November.

I know he had a great relationship with his wife but I can’t help but wonder how deep he got with any of his friends about his struggles.

I don’t think they had a clue.

His death came as a complete shock to everyone.

According to the Office of National Statistics ONS 15 people die by suicide in the UK every week – with 75% of those deaths being male. A 2012 report by the Samaritans says that males aged 45-49 have the highest suicide rate.

You can’t help but wonder that if men were raised to talk to each other about how they truly felt that the high incidence of male suicide might be lowered.

I share a lot with my husband. He’s my best friend. But like I said I have to fish for his deeper stuff if I think something is troubling him. I’ve learned how to do this after 33 years.

I’d be lost if I didn’t have my close friends to chat with as well, though.

Would you?