
2.5M men 'have no close friends' - McKittrick
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/mens-health/11996473/2.5-million-men-have-no-close-friends.html
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jzymbaluk
I'm in this boat right now as a 22 year old junior in college. I honestly
don't have anyone I can call to just chill. I go to movies alone, I eat at
restaurants alone, I go to concerts alone, most things I do I do alone. It
makes me sad to think that this point in my life is supposed to be a high
water mark for having a social life, and I shudder to imagine how much
lonelier things are going to be after college graduation.

For the most part I've made peace with loneliness and being by myself to the
point that it's not crushing, but the emptiness of not having anyone close is
always there. I think the problem - or at least my problem - isn't necessarily
a lack of basic social or people skills, but an inability to escalate from
casual acquaintance to close friend.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness post. I guess I just wanted to say that
I relate to this article, and I don't know how to fix myself.

~~~
hendzen
I've had multiple phases of my life where I've done most things alone. Months
where I've gone eating almost every meal alone. Multi-day periods where I
didn't have a conversation with another person. Honestly, there were times I
felt bad about it, but most of the time I was alone - but not lonely.

Currently I have a pretty active social life - I rarely eat alone, I have a
wide circle of friends and date fairly actively (I am still single though :/).
I think the best way to break out is to make a habit of trying to do things
you haven't done before. Whether it's some athletic pursuit (tennis, rock
climbing, etc.) or maybe getting involved in your community (volunteering,
religious groups), modern society offers plenty of venues for meeting people.
You say you're in college so for you it might be as simple as joining a club.

Now even though I have ample opportunity to be around other people, I still
choose to be alone some times. After a day spent with a group I usually need
an hour or so alone to "recharge" \- I guess I'm just naturally introverted.

Finally, allow me quote the following poem by Walt Whitman.

    
    
      To You.
    
      STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak to me, 
      why should you not speak to me?	 
      
      And why should I not speak to you?

~~~
jzymbaluk
That poem is beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

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ChuckMcM
My wife and I have this conversation a lot. I have a bazillion acquaintances
and only a few people I consider close friends. She has a much broader group
of friends.

I've identified that one of the characteristic of women interacting is a
asking questions in an unprompted sort of way. Something I consider to be
"prying", and yet it opens up other conversations which deepen the
relationship.

My current position is that I was never exposed to good role models for
building relationships with other men, and childhood homophobic sorts of
taunts actually sensitized me to a notion of being "too close" to someone.
While my wife has no trouble at all saying "love you" to her friends, my early
programming makes that really hard for me with my male friends.

The process of building friendships is a process of developing trust and
vulnerability, something which is hard to do outside of shared life
threatening experiences. At some level in my younger days I always felt I was
in competition with the other men around me. How do you make yourself
vulnerable to your competitor? You don't of course. To get past that I've had
to reassess a really large chunk of the structure in my brain about evaluating
my own success and understanding whether or not I was under or over performing
on my internal metrics of success.

Bottom line for me is that unpacking all the threads that were hindering my
ability to make close friendships walked me back to kindergarten. That is a
lot of unpacking to do :-)

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knughit
Note: that headline number seems absurdly low, because it is only counting
British men.

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macjohnmcc
I'm 50 and have no close friends. I haven't for at least a decade. I am
married so I'm not a recluse but I don't have a buddy.

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chrisdbaldwin
I strongly encourage others to read "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

