Nowadays parents of small children often live far away from their extended family, so they have the sole responsibility of raising their kids. Instead of having the part-time responsibility of caring nephews/cousins/etc. throughout their life, they have some very busy years in which they raise their own children, with barely any time to do anything else, and then nothing.
Combine that with the lack of "third places" [0] for parents to socialize with other parents and you end up with a rather disfunctional society in which fewer couples are willing to have children.
The number of people per family has been dropping in the US for a long time, the baby boom was the last 'bounce' in that graph and that was over 60 years ago now.
The number of children per capita went from 36% to 22% in the same time
We don't really have a lack of third places per se.
"Churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries, gyms, bookstores, stoops and parks" are not exactly in short supply in the United States.
The problem is that it's difficult to get a critical mass of people out to them regularly.
Getting in a car to go drive somewhere is a huge pain in the ass. Doubly so if you have children and you have to secure them in carseats and pack all the stuff they require.
Third places work where you can walk to them from your home. As long as we stay glued to car dependency, we won't have them.
> "Churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries, gyms, bookstores, stoops and parks"
Except for church, going to most of these places is going to be counterproductive for the kind of person the article is about.
These people go out to these places, yet are "invisible." The social norm (at least in America) is to not talk to strangers unless there is a reason. Especially for an older male, approaching strangers is often met with disgust/shock just as the article mentions.
Yeah, I try to make sure I go out to a cafe a few times a week but I can't remember the last time a stranger approached me to just chat (actually, yes I can but it was a very odd story. And Pre-pandemic). And going to a park as a single male to chat up random adults sounds like a recipe for disaster.
"We don't really have a lack of third places per se."
Yes we do, people traded all the good person-to-person interactions that are probably critical for human evolution for facebook.
The churches and synogogues in my town had dozens of clubs that were completely non-religions, ski-club, scuba-club, travel club, etc. Since going to church/temple became uncool, so did going to the clubs. We've replaced it with social media. One of many examples.
Getting in the car is not a pain in the ass if you have kids, doubly so if its worth it and limits screentime.
And again with the "cars are evil routine"... do you realize that the interior of the US was vibrant and well connected with many "3rd places"? This is a region of the US where it might be 10-60mins to the next "3rd place" by car, and by many accounts, society was much more healthier even with the added commute time.
I can’t speak to the interior US and how lovely it was or wasn’t.
I grew up in a car based suburb. It didn’t really have much for people to do. My grandma went and left because she couldn’t drive and was bored. I couldn’t afford my own car until I was 25, and I left shortly after anyway.
I could easily see my dad being very lonely while I was young. Everyday he went to work and then spent the rest of the evening ferrying everyone around.
He’s now doing social things like playing badminton etc. That will probably stop once he gets too old to drive.
>Since going to church/temple became uncool, so did going to the clubs. We've replaced it with social media.
1) it's not about being "cool". I have no issues with religion, but I am not religious and I see no reason to go to a religious institution to meet people who skew religious. It's that simple.
2) clubs are around without churches but have the same issues: they tend to be aimed at the youth. And we're unfortuantely past the days where having a single adult around a bunch of minors is simply okay and considered completely platonic.
3) You must be in a very high CoL area because the church clubs I saw growing up were nowhere near as fancy as ski and scuba.
I'm an atheist and most of my neighborhood is too, but my neighbor is a large church. They do end up serving more than their base, which includes our neighborhood, because this particular church views themselves as a member of the community. Residents are able to call the church, coordinate events, etc... my point is, churches can be a third place to more than just the religious, but that's a choice.
Every time I make this argument people jump at the "religion" part. It has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with the fact that 1) institutions were bringing people together for a reason other than their 2) main purpose for existing; and you need not do #2 to do #1.
It has nothing to do with religion in the same way that Schools have nothing to do with education.
Like sure, you can make meetups happen at schools and school events can bring general community together (well, not NOW given a whole cacophony of cultural shifts. But 20+ years ago), but for very obvious reason your institution will be stereotyped for having young kids/parents and a focus on learning. Not a place for a single 20/30's adults to casually hang out.
It's the same with church. Outside of a donation drive (which I am fortunate to not require) I can't imagine any reason for me to willingly visit a church in search of friendships.
>and you need not do #2 to do #1.
but they will be skewed by #2. I don't want to be showered in "Praise God" when I simply want to find a friend to chat with a few times a month and talk casually with. I don't want to make people who care a lot about their religion uncomfortable because I do not share the same beliefs.
I'm not looking for philisophical fights about God like some edgelord atheist on Reddit; they have their space and it's not for me. And that's fine.
Church aside, it doesn't address the general issues I have with club participation.
Sure, but if I was to replace "church" with "school" then I wouldn't be getting half of the downvotes I get despite there not being any real difference in how the affinity clubs at a Church/Synagogue vs. PTA (at least back in the 90s) worked. In fact, the Church/Synagogue clubs weren't remotely religious vs. the PTA affinity clubs which required you to be a parent of a kid. Yes, in my town the PTA had clubs. Mens club etc.
The conversation is about the "male loneliness epidemic" so fathers and older men, not just 20/30's adults should be included as well.
>Sure, but if I was to replace "church" with "school" then I wouldn't be getting half of the downvotes I get
my condolences, but ultimately I can only speak for myself. I was raised Catholic so it's not like Ive never set foot in a church. It's just not a scene I want to be around. For me, I'd be just as hesitant if a school hosted as Ski club as if a church did for the reasons I described. Maybe it'd e different if it was my alma mater offering various alumni activities (of course, to advertise donations), but I am very far away from that campus.
>The conversation is about the "male loneliness epidemic" so fathers and older men, not just 20/30's adults should be included as well.
Sure. But I have to admit that I am not yet a father nor older man (at least, if we define "older man" as 40+. I can't speak for them (yet). I only wanted to chime in that I don't reject churches because "they are uncool". I'm not older but I am well past the age of caring about such matters. And I don't think any of my immediate friends would give that reason either.
Actually, I think the best solution is men only gyms. I belong to one and its great. Of course, setting these types of things up takes time and money, but it can be as simple as a rented garage with some equipment.
> Actually, I think the best solution is men only gyms
If that works for you, that is great.
Personally, I strongly dislike segregated clubs, both ideologically and in practice. I want to interact with people of different backgrounds and avoid inadvertently carving myself into an echo chamber, so segregation (in any dimension) feels a step in the wrong direction for me.
the only way to solve that is to attend/join multiple groups or clubs.
the hackerspace that i visit has one kind of demographic, and the kybernetes meetup that i recently attended, quite another, which is yet very different from the people at the irish folk session or the meetup for self employed people, or the digital nomads meetup.
a single group that has a representative distribution of all sections of society does not exist
> a single group that has a representative distribution of all sections of society does not exist
That is a strawman, and you could make the same argument about any combination of clubs you belong to, as long as they don't include the whole planet.
I simply have no interest in a club that explicitly excludes half of the population. A men only club in my mind is just as appealing as a "white people only" club. I.e. not at all.
but i was not even thinking about male only groups when i read your comment. i was only trying to point out that segregation along many dimensions is kind of unavoidable.
gender and racial segregation (and maybe religion) are actually the exceptions here. yet, i have to accept that most of the groups i join are predominately white males. but it's only a problem when others are explicitly excluded and not just missing because they have different interests.
every group is its own echo chamber, and the only way to avoid carving yourself into that echo chamber is to join multiple groups.
You approve of women only clubs though. "They need their safe spaces, right?". Depression and loneliness in men is partially due to the massive hypocrisy in how we treat both sexes.
People replaced church as soon as they possibly could because it seems they don't like being abused by people that like to tell them that skydaddy is sending them to hell.
You're attempting to sell a solution that already failed in the marketplace of ideas, that is church. Because churches were tied so strongly with different clubs, they were dragged down by the same anchor. The problem was we had no other social 'third places' in place, and the greedy hand of capitalism was there to extract as much money from people looking to do something. When the internet rose to power you suddenly had a 'free' (terms and conditions may apply) alternative.
>Getting in the car is not a pain in the ass if you have kids,
Right, that's why people write papers called "The Contraceptive effect of car seats". I do believe more research is needed on your part.
Saying anything even minutely good about religion always hits a nerve. Its hard for people to cope with the fact that not everything was always bad about religion, all the time.
Also, somehow its always the people that never publish (you, I can tell) that are the quickest to cite "research". You can publish anything, haven't you heard of the 'replication crisis'? I have kids, know lots of people with kids and while its maybe anecdotal evidence, getting kids into the car is the least of my worries. Sounds like a dumb excuse for people that think they need a reason to not have kids.
We have many cities, not all of them having the same profile of car-ness vs public transportation, density, proximity to 3rd places, etc. Do we observe differences among cities, such as NYC?
While they wrote “run”, I presume they meant they can drive to various parts of the Columbus metropolitan region much more quickly and reliably than to various places in the Austin metro.
in beijing or any other large chinese city you can't go anywhere with public transport without spending an hour traveling from home, and any two interesting places are at least half an hour away from each other.
in vienna i can cross the greater part of the city in half an hour and most places of interest are within less than 15 minutes from each other.
You don't have a backpack ready to go full of stuff your child would normally need? If my daughter lived with me full time I'd probably keep a bag in the car 24/7 for that very purpose. I'd like to hear more about your carseat problems too.
// Nowadays parents of small children often live far away from their extended family,
To point out the obvious, this is a choice. And one with fewer trade-offs post-pandemic. For example, we bought our house in '21 from people moving a few states to be closer to their family, while we were moving there to be closer to our family. I am hearing this as a much stronger trend nowadays, vs the prior decades' "I have to move to NYC to get a job" ethos.
Parent poster missed some more details that do invalidate some of what you say here. Living close to your family in the past tended to also mean they had children of their own. Family sizes were typically larger too.
As an anecdotal example. I have one child. (close family size 3)
I have one sibling. (close family size 4)
My dad has 4 siblings. (close family size 7)
His father had something like 7 siblings (10)
Even if your family lives close, you still live close to far fewer people than past generations, especially ones that are close to your age.
>> Nowadays parents of small children often live far away from their extended family
> To point out the obvious, this is a choice
It may have been a choice for you, but it is not a choice for everybody.
Both my and my wife's extended families continue moving from one place to another for various reasons, often for work, so it's not like us moving closer to them today would guarantee any sort of proximity in the future either.
Your anecdote is not representative of broader trends. Economic growth continues to be concentrated in a few metros, where housing prices are skyrocketing. My lead at my previous job had kids and wanted to buy a house in the Bay Area for his parents to let them be closer to grandkids, but prices prevented this. WFH may have temporarily enabled more flexibility of location, but that seems to be diminishing.
you didn't contradict his point, you added support for it. Your lead is making a choice - pay / company over family / life. There is a cost to chasing TC (total compensation).
It sounded to me that the previous poster's point is that the tradeoff between economic opportunities and moving away from grandparents is less prevalent. My anecdote (and census data in another reply) is how someone chose to stay in an economically strong metro despite the fact that this meant grandparents couldn't live near children. People are still often prioritizing economic opportunities over proximity to family.
I don't deny that this is a choice, I'm contesting whether this tradeoff had diminished outside of WFH situations.
The choice is not so simple as it also involves volatility of future income, for which it very well could be better for your family for you to move to an economically burgeoning place.
In an up or out world, there is a cost to not chasing TC too.
I think you're talking past the folks upstream because they are talking about "tradeoffs" and you are talking about "not so simple."
The point is simply that if you pick up and move every time you can get a raise, you are going to end up far from family and thus have that problem. But not doing that has become a more viable choice lately, especially once you understand the downsides of being far from fam ~ what we're talking about here.
// Your anecdote is not representative of broader trends.
The trend is that MORE people are allowing themselves to be closer to family, not that everyone does it now. Sometimes the tradeoffs are still painful - but often less so than before.
EG: if your lead REALLY wanted to be closer to parents, they can try rearrange other things (eg where they work) over time.
>Economic growth continues to be concentrated in a few metros
Doesn’t that actually prove the op’s point? People are not moving away from the metros in which their families are, so of course the largest metros would grow larger.
Personally I am very very hesitant to move cities for an economic opportunity. And that is entirely for financial reasons; if something happens to me, at least I can easily move back in with my parents.
> People are not moving away from the metros in which their families are...
That's assuming people's parents are already in the desirable metros, which is often not the case. These metros are experiencing a net increase from migration (except during COVID), so more people are moving in than out. Internal migration is disproportionately done by young people, so parents or aspiring parents of young children are likely moving away from grandparents. The "I have to move to NYC to get a job" ethos remains strong, though there was a pronounced drop during COVID young people are still much more likely to move than other demographics and their destinations are primarily the large cities: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/07/theres-no-pla...
> vs the prior decades' "I have to move to NYC to get a job" ethos
This may seem like a thing due to social bubbles, but the numbers do not bear it out. Prior to pandemic years (stats almost impossible to find on that yet, plus I'd wait another year or two to let the noise settle) Americans have never been less mobile in recent years than ever in the history of the nation.
I've pointed it out as part of our general malaise of the past 50 years. People in general are very hesitant to uproot for economic opportunity compared to the historic norm.
One other big difference is families don't move for the current patriarch/breadwinner either - both both societal and practical reasons. Big opportunities may also be less, but that's simple speculation. People's expectations in life and not accepting tradeoffs also may be part of it as well.
Family size is certainly part of it, but the Boomer generation belies that as the only or maybe even major cause. That generation began the generations of putting grandma in the nursing home vs. living inter-generationally. It certainly wasn't for lack of kids per adult.
The suburbs also seemed to happen around the same time.
Edit:
Since this fact always gets initially downvoted, some sources from a previous comment:
"What would happen if I increased the vulnerability with one or more people in my life?" is a great question for starting this personal journey.
There's a few responses to this that determine what happens next. If your response is "I don't have any acquaintances," then you may want to concentrate on factors like isolation.
However, if your response is along the lines of "I would feel uncomfortable doing that," or "I don't have any friendships where that would be ok," then there is a simple[1] set of concepts and skills development that anyone can do to improve the depth of their friendships or develop acquaintances into friends.
The basic concept it to determine where your friendship/acquaintances currently lies in terms of intimacy, and decide to increase the intimacy level by one step. Repeated increases constitute a ratcheting effect that over long timescales cultivate deeply meaningful connections.
Lynch's Intimacy Rating Scale[2] is a good tool for both identifying your current level as well as determining in broad strokes what you would need to do to increase intimacy. You may decide that one or two of among a few friends/acquaintances might be a good way to start.
Depending on you or your social environment, a response to this may be "This goes against social gender norms," or more succinctly, "Guys don't do that." If that's the case, what a better starting point for curious questioning along the lines of that may be the case, but what if I was part of a group of people that changed that.
I wanted to be explicitly narrow my focus and not address isolation. I'm simply not as familiar with the topic of isolation so I decided not to speak about it. Intimacy expansion is not a good tool to address isolation. Sorry
There is weird disconnect between actual topic of article (loneliness), estimated causes (loss of religion, institutions such as work not being male dominated anymore) and recommendations (more parental leave for men).
Nothing wrong with paternal leave, but being stay at home makes you more lonely rather then less. Being at home with kid was the most isolating lonely experience I ever had. So while great if men do it more, I doubt it will make men less lonely.
But that isn’t the only recommendation. The article also recommends a societal shift in how we think about the role of fathers to something far beyond financial caregiving. I think there’s something valuable to that.
Although I will also say that if the goal is to enable fathers to find friends, having access to affordable/free child care would be the most impactful. Many households don’t have that, so childcare is split among working parents and nobody gets very much free time at all.
> The article also recommends a societal shift in how we think about the role of fathers to something far beyond financial caregiving. I think there’s something valuable to that.
Yes, there is a lot valuable in that. But I do not really see how it would made fathers less lonely.
The article posits that fathers are only valued for their ability to make money, are expected to do only that, and so do not interact with their community in the same way as mothers. While I don’t think it’s as dramatic as the article claims, there’s something to that argument and changing that culture would bring fathers into the community more, giving them more meaningful human interactions.
4 day work week would help give more people time to hang out. But I don't think the issue stems from fathers not having time to meet people. There are stereotypical bars/"boy's nights" in 80's, 90's, and even 00's media so there were places hang out, even as a married man.
This is odd, because making friendships of course includes hanging out with men and women. Whether your boss is a man or woman has little to do with hanging out with your peers during off time.
That being said, work is often not the best place to build enduring friendships. It really kinda depends. Sometimes the friends you make on a job will not really be friends with you once you leave.
It was for me. My best friends were ones made at my first job. Right time and people, I guess. Meanwhile, trying to make friends 4+ years post first job is a dumpster fire (tho tbf, at least 2/5 years were pandemic, if not more).
There aren't many places where people can't be flakey these days.
I'm in this boat at the moment. Married, 2 kids, no close friends.
I work from home, my university pals moved away, I can't relate to my neighbours, and remote work colleagues are equally distant to meet up.
I've tried online making friends only groups, but it's full of leching men going after young women, or people who again due to age or intellect, I can't relate to.
Actual groups outside of the house (e.g. hack spaces) are too far away or have awkward hours.
> Actual groups outside of the house (e.g. hack spaces) are too far away or have awkward hours.
If this is actually the case, most of the replies you got are going to be hard because they are about finding a group that is ostensibly not a social group (sports league, gym, &c.). FWIW, this would also be my recommendation.
If your kids are both school aged, you might need to put significant effort into rearranging your life around something that has awkward hours. Make sure your spouse is on board (e.g. if they are feeling equally socially distanced, rearranging things for just you would make them rightfully jealous), and find something that you can make happen.
I remember emerging from the blur of having toddlers and realizing I didn't spend time with anyone. I joined a gym and am part of a bi-monthly TTRPG group. It's made a difference.
Do CrossFit, or some kind of group physical activity (martial arts, Brazilian judo, archery, whatever.) Try a few different places, since each has their own vibe. Best part is that if nothing else works, at least you'll get exercise.
I'll second this one, especially BJJ, BJJ is an activity where you get very close with people very quickly. I'd recommened though if you are looking for somewhere just to have fun and roll around to look first for a BJJ specific gym and avoid the MMA places as they tend to be a little more competitive.
IDK the first bjj place I tried was so gross and intense, literally hazing-type behavior with new people. My current MMA gym has incredibly serious competitors but also grandad brown belts, 30-something hobbyists, and literally children. You can get rocked if you're specifically looking for that but it's very very chill if you're not.
I don't think either of these is representative, but I've come to think no martial arts school is representative. You just got to look around and see what you find.
For sure some BJJ gyms are just as toxic as the OP says MMA gyms are. Some are very heavily focused on competition and train in a specific way likely based on cultural issues imported from Brazil. I think the key is to try multiple gyms (regardless of sport) because there's always a chance the culture at one will be toxic. I love that in my gym you also have the 70 year old brown belt who will smoothly choke you out with very little physical effort or discomfort to the 280lb serious competitor who will also choke you with very little physical effort or discomfort but will also match intensity if you're wanting to go harder. Most of the folks seem to do a very good job of matching intensity. The guys who want to roll hard and fast as they are preparing for a tournament have all of those opportunities, but they also realize they are in a gym with a bunch of filthy casuals like me. I've never felt in danger because folks want to go all out. Brand new white belts are the most dangerous folks in the gym.
I did decide to try to keep up with my training by dropping into a class while traveling for business. That's where I got a bruised rib and had trouble breathing for a couple weeks because apparently there's some ego thing involved in putting visitors from other gyms in their place. I just stick with the place I know has good respectful folks now.
The BJJ gyms near me (I live in OC, it's practically the BJJ Mecca -- one of my neighbors is a head professor at the Gracie HQ in Irvine) just aren't that great for busy parents. Classes are at absolutely shit times if you need to help with your kids on either end of the day... 7am or 7pm. If you work and can't get away during the day, you're SOL.
I haven't been to a BJJ gym since before the pandemic because the one place with night classes (9pm) shut down and the professor left the state for economic reasons.
I second martial arts, particularly BJJ (though I haven't tried any others). Generally very chill people of all walks of life. And this might sound weird, but I do believe the close physical contact is both good for mental health and helps overcome social anxiety.
The martial arts closeness is definitely an interesting one, I think it's under recognized/discussed. A common beginner judo exercise is to have students aggressively jump-chestbump each other. It's a physical warmup but the main purpose is to break down the sense of personal space we keep in normal life. More advanced students don't generally do it, having learned to context switch into "grappling mode" at will.
I remember having one completely rough class where all got just worked, and during a break sitting in literally a pile of other students leaning back to back, helping each other rub out bruises, tape fingers etc and thinking "is this weird? this is a lot of intimacy, I barely know some of these people." There aren't many social contexts that have that level of physical interaction at all.
It can be strengthening or healing for sure. Martial arts schools are also a major venue for interpersonal abuses of all kinds. The required intimacy and the culture of deference to authority are perfect for it. Everywhere I've trained you have people who left other schools but you only hear ominous rumors of why.
Yeah it feels odd at first for sure. But like any other mammal, one of our social instincts is play fighting. You see it in kids with their roughhousing and horseplay, but as we get older it becomes less and less socially acceptable in most contexts. Socializing becomes less about having fun and bonding with people and more about observing unspoken rules and demonstrating that you know how to behave properly. There's nothing wrong with the latter, but you can't create genuine connections without the former. I believe this is why many people have the sense that their work friends aren't "real" and will fade away when they move on to their next job.
The abuse thing is certainly an issue, unfortunately. The "coach waiting until student turns 18" scenario is apparently so common in BJJ that it's practically a meme at this point, though I've been fortunate enough to go to a school where it hasn't happened, as far as I'm aware.
Can recommend contemporary dance. The people are about as different from the I.T. crowd as you can imagine, and it addresses the chronic sense of disembodiedness that I.T. can engender. You can also approach it intellectually via (say) embodied cognition.
Join a rec league in the sport of your choice, or find a pickup game.
Become a regular at a church, or if that's not your style, at a bar. (Drink responsibly, if you go that way.) Or even just a gym.
Find a way to meet some people in real life, not online. If you try one way for a bit and it doesn't work, try another. Keep trying, because you really need this.
It obviously depends a lot on where you live, how old your kids are and what you are interested in, but here's some places I've made connections since moving from NYC to the 'burbs:
- Religious organization
- Parents of kids in our children' school (this is a big one.)
- My wife making connections around town and then us taking a shot at having dinner w the couple.
- Hanging out at the firehouse - I considered joining as a volunteer before we had our 2nd kid.
Also.. these are kinda suspicious statements " I can't relate to my neighbours" or "due to age or intellect, I can't relate to." That just sounds like you've defined someone who struggles to relate and isn't interested in most people - which isn't a fruitful starting point for getting to know them well enough to discover what makes them interesting.
The "suspicious statements" were actually a cover for explaining in depth.
I'm (reasonably) well paid and that doesn't go down well with some people, which I've seen first hand and accused of lording it over (e.g. explaining some gardening I was doing and accused of being posh, or using proper English, accused of being a snob and looking down my nose - nothing I'd said in conversation mentioned anything remotely suggestive of this - nor would they tell me why they said this).
The aggression is to my mind unwarranted (i.e. why would I go out of my way to alienate a potential friend) and honestly I tried to avoid those situations.
The age part isn't so much of a problem, but I tried to join a HAM radio group for help with a SDR as a possible new hobby, mainly because it was local and one of the only tech focused groups nearby.
After the initial welcomes, nobody actually wanted to speak much to me although I would ask radio questions, and occasionally get half answers it seemed to be a close knit group of men in their late 50s/ early 60s using radio call signs and phrases when online (which being radio and having meetups, isn't actually that much). I suppose I could have invested in more equipment and a beginner's licence and got on the local radio but it just didn't seem worth it.
So yep, I can keep falling off this (kind of) bike and keep just getting back on, but I was hoping to try other more successful options.
figure out the benefits vs the drawbacks (such as not finding friends)
i was in this situation, and i decided to move. you don't need to move, but being aware of why you made that choice, makes the downsides easier to bear, and also opens up new ideas how to approach the situation.
after more than 10 years in china, we moved to a small city where i had no friends, and finding friends was difficult. there were other benefits of living there, and so i reconnected with old (and new) friends from back home who, thanks to covid had started online meetings. you could say, i made lemonade out of lemons.
on online meetings, keep searching, there are many more groups out there, and not all of them are like the ones you experienced.
i realize that online meetings are no substitute for meeting face to face, but consider this: when i develop a good relationship with someone in person, (even just a good vibe after a single meeting) then this carries over into an online connection. so if you can't find local friends, find friends online that have a chance to meet face to face at least once in a while. (this should also help with avoiding those weird groups you seem to have found)
for example that hackerspace may be to far away for a regular visit, but maybe it is possible to visit once every few months? check if they have an online community. join that, get to know people online, then meet them in person once, and then continue to stay in touch online.
i am actually not big on online meetings myself. from the sound of it, you probably aren't either. but if you are selective, it's better than nothing.
Examine what's preventing you from relating to your neighbors. In the past, people were friends with people older and younger than them and from different social classes. Millennials seem to have completely lost those skills which severely limits who they interact with.
We get on reasonably well with one neighbour, who we often discuss house maintenance but whenever I've offered to help fix something in their house, they only want advice.
Strangely this person will stop and have full on conversations for 30+ mins in the street with me, but nothing comes of it aside from catching up on local news.
At the back of my mind I do wonder if not being more social is something to do with one of my kids being mentally disabled and somehow that's awkward or intimidating for them (e.g. they might not know how to react, or might think I'd like them to babysit etc).
Maybe this will change and improve over time.
Spend your daylight free time hours outside gardening and playing with your kids and being a part of their day and get to know your neighbors. All of 'em. You'll be surprised how soon you'll have no time without friends all around you.
Or, you can look at actuarial tables, realize that you have an aggressively finite amount of time on this Earth, and take proactive steps to live each day like it's one of your last 16,739 (assuming you just turned 30)
In modern life in cities men can choose to have friends or a family but not both. That’s my pet theory as to why straight people are putting off kids or not having them entirely—the outlook is very bleak.
I mean they really aren't your friends now are they? The relationships are really conditional on your children, not on your own interests and personality. You are basically agreeing that you can no longer have friends, but countering that you can choose to socialize with fellow parents.
I mean, that's pretty dystopian when you look at it unless you really think that raising children is the highest purpose a person can have.
Female friendships also follow that pattern and the loneliness problem is supposed to be smaller for women. The big thing is that having kids really changes a lot - times when you are available, amount of money you have, the sort of acute problems you have in your life.
An adult person with children can not have as much free time as childless one, can not go on longer weekend away as often, can not spend as much time in hobbies.
Children's parents are people you meet naturally, in exact same way you meet collegues of people in se share hobby activity.
>unless you really think that raising children is the highest purpose a person can have.
While I don't think that, what's encoded in your DNA puts that up really high on the priority list. No children = DNA line extinction. Therefore the most likely DNA you see are the lines that put a lot of effort into reproducing.
The particular issue with having children is you've made a commitment. It's perfectly fine to have non-children conditional relationships until there is a conflict of interest between the two groups. If one group says "come out and drink all night" while the other says "teach your children things make sure you provide them a stable environment", you are probably living a life of regret and should not have had children in the first place.
>I mean they really aren't your friends now are they? The relationships are really conditional on your children, not on your own interests and personality.
Is it any different from your "church friends" (contingent to going to church) or your "gym friends" (contingent to going to gym) or your coworkers (contingent on staying at that workplace. i.e. not being laid off or pursuing a better job) who may or may not be friendly? It's how school friends are made, and I'm guessing we all lost contact with many of them upon graduation.
Some may become regular friends outside the activity, many probably won't. But bonding over a common interest seems to be the most common first step, and (for better or worse) "having a child of X age" is certainly a vested interest to bond over.
>I mean, that's pretty dystopian when you look at it unless you really think that raising children is the highest purpose a person can have.
Some may indeed feel that way. But for it being dystopian, I just see it as a way of life. you don't HAVE to make friends with other parents, but it's an avenue that you have that I as a single male would have less access to.
> unless you really think that raising children is the highest purpose a person can have.
No, it's not that, but there are purposes in life aside from social gathering, for which social gathering is a natural side-effect.
Going to school or work is a big example. But it can be more subtle: try sometime, look actively for opportunities to help others. That is, don't try to fix them or their situation, but rather look for genuine opportunities where your skills, resources, or luck puts you in a place where your'e able to do something without great cost to yourself, but which has a massive impact on another person.
> You are basically agreeing that you can no longer have friends, but countering that you can choose to socialize with fellow parents.
wut.
you make friends from the people you're around, not the ideal people you'd like to talk to.
like in HS, where often you were friends with the kids in your classes.
if you're desperate for people just like you then move to get them, or make the effort to find those groups. there is a cost there, in terms of moving, or babysitters, but that is a choice that can be made. otherwise learn to love people for their foibles and make friends with those nearby.
Maintaining relationships is the hardest part. When you are young you don't maintain relationships with friends you see them everyday at school and this is true all the way through college.
Once out of college it is the people inside your routine that are your friends, be it a work or a hobby. Upon having a child your routine changes yet again and will change rapidly as the child grows. It is the difficulty of maintaining relationships through the shifting routine of life that is so difficult.
You need one aspect of your routine that has stability through the change. Mine is physical activity.
Also co-signing, though it involved choosing my friends over the course of the last decade and making an effort to stay in touch, my friend circle has a fair amount of parents and non-parents. Paradoxically, I talk to one of my oldest pals more frequently now, because he logs on to a game after his kids go to sleep and is always happy to party up. We are also pretty distanced from one another, but make the effort to check in with each other so we stay close.
Not saying it isn't hard, and not saying it isn't a challenge at times (I certainly don't see my friends in person as much!) but the idea that having kids forces you to be friendless is absurd.
In the past, lets say baby boom years, almost everyone had kids so the family friction coefficient was very similar between different friends.
But these days it's quite different. We typically don't leave our kids at home alone any more (GenX represent!). There is also a much larger group of people without kinds (DINKs and SINKs) that have far more free time than those with kids. So for them the equation changes.
They have the cost of inviting you and the friction you experience. Or the cost of inviting the childless friends they know. Or the cost of the myriad of entertainment options we have these days.
They're not friends, they're acquittances that I (have to) tolerate.
I don't think my bar is high, or that I'm much of a snob in this respect, but I find other parents insufferable. Were they always like this? Did this happen to them after they had kids? Is it that only those types of people have kids, and I'm in the exception group? Whatever it is, I can not have any fun with them.
For a long time I thought it was me, but then it occurred to me that I shouldn't be able to have fun with non-parents if that were the case. The problem with non-parents is, they're not parents :/ Your lives are just too different, but I _can_ have fun with them!
Modern life in cities just equates to spending money at restaurants, bars, and breweries. Only so many events and museums you can attend. Go to a brewery on a Saturday/Sunday - its just young couple with a kid and dog, one gets drunk, the other drives (and maybe drinks less).
Good Christ, go play football or D&D or something. The average age in my D&D club is probably in the 40s, we've got everyone from students to retired folk who played back in the 70s.
america is kind of a shitshow when it comes to meeting people. I found it a magnitude order easier to make friends and sexual partners when I left america to travel from country to country. even just hanging out in cafes, I'll get to know the people working there and get invited to gatherings. girls working there will chat me up and show me around the city.
meanwhile in america? I see the same baristas every day for months, go to the gym and see the same people. sometimes I even start a conversation. never really goes beyond superficial. its depressing.
I sometimes come back to visit my parents but I can't help but feel like living in the states is a constant attack on my mental health at this point. it sucks and I completely understand why so many people are going unhinged.
Geopolitically, sure, but most people are aware that US citizens are as much responsible for the decisions of President Trump, as the everyday citizen of Russia is for invading Ukraine.
what I mean is that making friends requires almost no effort from my part when I'm in latin america or asia. maybe it is the cool foreigner effect but having a 2 min chat turn into being invited to a party is not somethign I ever experience when I'm in the united states.
dating prospects are better too. the few times I start a conversation with women, it ends up in a soft rejection. Meanwhile I have plenty of female friends (sometimes with benefits) come out of interactions with women down in latin america despite the language barrier. they are far more open to meet people and seeing where things go, american women always seem so guarded by contrast and at this point I dont even bother with them anymore because they are always so avoidant.
> having a 2 min chat turn into being invited to a party is not somethign I ever experience when I'm in the united states
Having that experience in a city (in the US) is why I chose to live in a city, rather than the burbs, but you do need to put out the right vibe for that to happen. It's hard to be an interesting foreigner with a hot acccent just visiting the city when you sound native because you live there.
All these married people talking about how they are lonely is so alien to me.
I'm actually someone who can make male friends very easily. I'm charismatic, nice, and extraverted.
That said I have no interest since I enjoy spending time so much with my best friend, my wife. I don't feel like spending the time investing in other deep friendships.
You said 17 years, so maybe this isn't applicable to you but it does sound like it explains a lot of my issues in struggling to find friends as a single person. Seems like friends used to be a shortcut to meeting a partner and now people just skip the literal middleman and use Tinder. Some people simply don't want much more than a life partner in their life.
I even have existing friends I try to invite out to meetups and they are too busy or too disinterested. Existing friends I made and still would go to parties/concerts with. They are still friends, but they clearly don't prioritize trying to get out (and yes, we are all in tech. Great job living to the stereotypes!)
> All the traditional male institutions have been eroded, and that’s not to say that the disruption is a bad thing. Those power bases kept women subjected to the will of men.
when i hear about male institutions my first thought is misogynistic bro groups. sure, not all groups are like that, but given the complaints of women in male dominated organizations, any group that is male only comes across as suspect. i know it's a prejudice. but there still are lots of men out there who behave in ways that i absolutely can't condone.
> given the complaints of women in male dominated organizations, any group that is male only comes across as suspect
Believe me, any male dominated groups I've been in were not male only by design. You simply live in tech or geek culture and try to arrange meetups, and you will end up 80+% male. I wager in terms of "individuals" it's more like 70%, but many women who show up come with an SO so that pushes the statistic higher.
I dunno if this is some odd Gen X/Boomer divide, but I can't recall a purposefully male oriented space. Ironically enough, the first that comes to mind is... single father gatherings. The one example given in the article is church, and IME churches were slightly skewed female (note, I come from a black background so that may affect experiences).
If you think you can make deep friends when you're 40+ with 4 kids, you either don't have to work for a living and your wife does 90% of the work with children or you don't understand what deep friendship means.
Given that I nor the GP ever mentioned "deep" friendships, I probably don't understand your definition, no.
I'm simply saying there are places to meet other people 40+. Whether it becomes "deep" or not depends on both your and the recipient's dedication to maintaining such a relationship. And since you can't control the recipient, it's basically a crapshoot. But there's nothing wrong with more casual frienships.
To be honest, I think this just completely avoids the elephant in the room: culturally speaking, with the ascendancy of women's rights, men have gained responsibility, whereas women have gained options.
Rising equality between the sexes has not translated to men transferring some breadwinning responsibility to women, but it has resulted in women transferring some childrearing responsibility to men. A stay-at-home mom is culturally well within her rights to ask a working dad to put in a shift watching the kid(s) after he gets home from work so she can get some downtime. But if the working dad goes out for a drink after work instead of immediately relieving his partner of childcare duties, he's a bum (or worse, a drunk).
These are things each couple has to work out for themselves, but culturally, this is the framework we've got. It's a reaction to decades of media portraying dads as complete nincompoops, incapable of changing diapers and barely qualified to keep a toddler alive for more than 3 hours at a time. So men feel like they need to do it all: they have to be comfortable being primary or sole breadwinners because of a persistent income gap between the sexes, and they have to put in equal time in childrearing.
I think the solution here is pretty simple: pay stay-at-home parents a salary until the kid enters the school system, and don't fucking means test it. They're performing an unquestionably necessary service for society, and they should be compensated for their labor and lost career opportunity. This relieves the pressure on the primary breadwinner and frees them up to contribute more to childrearing without going insane because they have to also climb a career ladder. It also recognizes the labor that mothers have been performing for centuries as legitimate work that deserves compensation.
I disagree with your premise that women have not gained responsibility. Dual incomes are basically needed if you want to afford a home in decent neighborhoods, so both parents have a responsibility of earning money.
Also, parenting babies and toddlers is a different kind of stress than working, especially an office desk job. No man goes through what a woman has to for the 2 years of pregnancy/breastfeeding, including multiple significant changes to their body with risk of complications.
I was happy to skip my socializing so that my wife could get rest. If you have 2 kids with a 2 to 3 year gap, that means about 5 years of exiting the social scene.
Unless, and this is the big difference, you have grandparents or aunts/uncles around to help out. The biggest difference I have noticed in parents’ quality of life is if they have familial support (or if they are rich enough to afford help, but that is a minority).
Dual incomes are not required to afford housing; one partner with a good job can do it. You may not be able to live in a major metro, but you can definitely afford a decent house in a good neighborhood on one salary, especially if you're not shelling out the mini-mortgage that is childcare. The sad reality is that when both partners work, one of them is probably just working to pay the cost of childcare... so they can work. This is just fine if it's what both parents want, but it really deflating from a budgetary perspective.
And of course parenting toddlers is a different kind of stress from working. The point is than both things are stressful. If you're a sole income provider, it doesn't matter whether you're a desk jockey or a construction worker. You live with the stress that if you lose your job, your family is fucked. And while your wife can ask you to take a shift watching the kids, you cannot ask her to take a shift at your job. One thing is fungible, and the other is not.
That type of stress is barely recognized in contemporary culture, and if it is recognized, it's treated as some sort of privilege (i.e. "Oh you get to pursue your career? How nice for you, your wife is at home doing more work than you could ever imagine").
And yeah, family support is huge. But it's getting less and less common. Kids move away from home more often, and they have their own children later in life. A 75 year-old grandparent just isn't going to be able to keep up with a toddler a lot of the time.
The government really has to step in to help make childcare more affordable. Family connections aren't going to cut it on a societal level, and private-sector childcare is enormously expensive. Something's gotta give, and the way things are going, it'll just mean fewer children being born and an aging society.
The idea in masonry is that by having something of your own and doing something for yourself, you have something you can actually share and replenish. It's also an art you practice and you grow as a man as a result, so it's not like the binge drinking to make up for lost time I see married people get up to when they are apart. This idea of escaping family is from people who have internalized narratives from sitcoms and are playing a role instead of engaging life directly. You're a man, you do things because you like them, and there is no explanation required. If you can't leave the house for a few hours at night once in a while, you're mismanaging your life and relationships.
> Masons. Where these do exist, they've been gender integrated.
Not true of the Regular Freemasons at any rate - "The attitude of most regular Anglo-American grand lodges remains that women Freemasons are not legitimate Masons" (Wikipedia).
Order of the Eastern Star, a craft for women, is in concordance with most of regular masonry I believe, but some continental european lodges that are mixed, particularly those in France (and I believe Italy) are not accepted as regular masonic organizations. There are a variety of organizations that claim to be masonic or deriving legitimacy from masonic origins or traditions, but they are not acknowledged by the legitimate grand lodges. Some of the graduation rituals for engineering schools are very masonic, as are some fraternity initiations. I haven't done a PhD, but I hear some of those have related ritual as well.
The reason those organizations are not recognized is because they are at cross purposes. OES is to masonry as the girl scouts were to boy scouts.
Just what are men gatekeeping when they associate with each other without women, other than maybe their own attention? If you want better men, they need to learn it from each other.
but OES is not masonry, or is it? if it is, then it should also be allowed to use that name.
i am not against male only groups, i just don't like male (or female) only groups claiming a domain for themselves. if there are male only masonry groups, there should also be female or mixed masonry groups. just like we have male and female and mixed soccer groups or other sports. nobody should be saying that women are not allowed to do something as such an activity is reserved for men. (and the reverse)
boy scouts and girl scouts are explicitly recognizing each other as two different forms of the same activity. saying that girl scouts are not recognized as boy scouts makes no sense. both are scouts (even in countries where the girls call themselves guides)
but you said above that mixed lodges are not recognized. that makes no sense to me, unless they deviate from the ideal of masonry in other ways than just gender. unrecognized scout groups do exist too, for various reasons. the gender of their members is not one of them.
It's not gender, it's sex, and the organizations are different because sexes are different. The things that make men better men don't necessarily make women better women, and vice versa. This idea of men and women being social constructs, as opposed to some sexless personhood eunuch with gendered attributes being a social construct, is not consistent with an objective reality. The idea behind these organizations is they are for men and women in support of a social fabric that provides peace and stability, and not say, permanent revolution and chaos.
Personal beliefs, and these doesn't apply to all males (live in choice!):
- guys bond when they do things together: build, play, mock fight
- remote work makes it hard to find that building community at the office
- having kids wipes out your leisure time for at least a few years
- and thus you're left with no community of guy peers IRL
- guys need less talk therapy than women, and the institutional solutions that support women won't work as well for the males, on average
- more paternal leave sounds like a recipe for more solitude and dysfunction
- guys probably don't function as well as stay-at-home parents, on average, as women (yes, these are rank generalizations which contradict many modern assumptions). all other things being equal, which of course they never are, the kids will probably get better care if mom stays home during the early years while dad works
- tech has replatformed us all into virtual communities that physically isolate us
> more paternal leave sounds like a recipe for more solitude and dysfunction
like that corporate boot harder
plenty of time to meet with friends when you're not stuck on a work schedule, and even when I was on leave I still checked in once a week just to make sure there weren't any fires. 1 hour once a week was enough contact with work colleagues.
Meanwhile the wife and I worked out a decent schedule and I did morning yoga and later took rowing lessons. Fun stuff.
There are fundamental issues to the dissolution of community (in the US):
- People working more hours
- People moving more frequently
- Reduced home ownership rate
- Lack of reciprocal interdependency: people don't "borrow hedge clippers" anymore
- Deference to contractors and service providers over DIY*
- (Discounting religious aspects) Downfall of church as the basis of local community
- Fear of other and strangers promoted by mainstream media
- Status snobbery increases greatly in a society where material needs are satisficed
- It can feel like wasted effort or carrying the relationship to arrange social gatherings and parties when there is a lack of reciprocation
* As far as I know, I'm the only one on the block who can operate wire strippers, soldering iron, backhoe, auger, vehicle jack, air compressor, angle grinder, and sourcing specialty items (sometimes from overseas). Most of the people on my block are introverted game players, TV watchers, and don't have many hobbies. Meanwhile, I'm bugging my second cousin for single prop Cessna engine hours over at thriving aero sales and training school in between doing PPG which doesn't need any licensure in the US.
>As far as I know, I'm the only one on the block who can operate wire strippers, soldering iron, backhoe, auger, vehicle jack, air compressor, angle grinder, and sourcing specialty items (sometimes from overseas). Most of the people on my block are introverted game players, TV watchers, and don't have many hobbies.
I feel like you might be not talking to your neighbors at all. I live in a tech metro area and people are always working on their houses and have many hobbies. A neighbor borrowed a belt sander from me last week.
i have a few hobbies that you wouldn't notice if you didn't spend a significant amount of time with me. even the people who share one of those hobbies have no idea what else i do.
Would add that wealth separates people. Both in the form of larger houses and lawns, and hiring contractors instead of entering into reciprocal interdependence.
There's a weird gravity to media and entertainment that sucks people out of the old analog forms that include community (church) into new digital forms that impose for distance (games and TV). We have been replatformed for the sake of capitalism.
more paternal leave sounds like a recipe for more solitude and dysfunction
how is that? you can still go out and meet friends. paternal leave is time to bond with the baby. it's not about how good the care is the kids are getting from you, but the relationship that you develop with them while you are at home. i was rather bad at it, and i had difficulty with my time at home with the kids (feeding and changing diapers was not the problem though). but now i have a wonderful relationship with my kids, and i believe that being home with them early one made a big difference. (later i was also working from home which helped too)
He worked for years as a licensed therapist counseling individuals and couples. If you are looking for a source of authority, he's better than nothing, if not as good as a randomized control trial.
I think you vastly overestimate the qualifications required to be a therapist, and it certainly isn't nearly as good as a randomized control trial? What?
That's putting aside any marketing reasons this person has to appear on a podcast and have "the answer" to male loneliness.
i don't know about the qualifications of this guy, or whether what he says about the difference between men and women has any bearing on reality, but what he says about wanting to solve problems and not just feeling good does resonate with me. as does having a purpose.
for me that connects to believing that the purpose of humanity as a whole is to contribute to an ever advancing civilization. that means even if one particular purpose that kept me going disappears, i can find others because there is plenty of help the world needs, and finding a new purpose is much easier if the overall purpose is: do something useful for the world and not: you are supposed to provide for your family. if you can't do that, you are useless.
i am not sure if men need less therapy, but i think for men it is more difficult to talk about problems and share their feelings, making talk therapy more difficult and less effective.
more of something that is not working? how would that help?
and if you are sarcastically referring to alcohol, then no, please not. while alcohol may make you more talkative, it also robs you from the clarity of mind that you need to actually solve the problems that you are talking about.
For one class of people,
let's say talk therapy is totally, 100% effective. After x hours of therapy, they are considered healthy, well-adjusted individuals, and won't shoot up a school or music concert.
Let's say talk therapy is only 20% effective for this other class of people. Given y hours of talk therapy, they recieve only .2 * y benefit.
For this group, they need 5 times as much talk therapy to gain the same benefit. 5 is more than 1. The end goal is the same though; healthy well-adjusted people that don't shoot up schools, don't go online and DM random women with mysogynistic screeds,
aren't sad sacks of a human being, and live fulfilling lives. Of course that's up to each individual to decide for themselves as the system is architected, but I think that whole "not shooting up schools thing" bears consideration by society as a goal that's worth pursuing on a wider level.
As for alcohol, you don't even believe in therapy, who are you to tell others how they can make it more effective for them? Obviously black out wasted does no good, but a beer to take the edge off does wonders. A prescribed anoxalytic would do better, but those are far less available.
they need 5 times as much talk therapy to gain the same benefit
this is where i disagree. a friend of mine is a therapist, and she won't take people for more than half a year. if in that time she can not help them, then this most likely means that these people are simply not receptive to the therapy that she was able to provide. so more therapy won't help them.
my reading of therapy being 20% effective means that it is 100% effective, 20% of the time, and completely fails 80% of the time.
(well, i suppose there are also cases where therapy is partly effective, but i do not believe the relationship is linear, and that a partly effective therapy can be turned into a fully effective one by simply adding more time)
(and i am aware that 20% is a made up number, we can fill in what actual statistics provide if there are any)
so basically i believe any specific form therapy is effective with some people and fails with other people. that doesn't mean that there is no working therapy for those people, just that they haven't found it yet, or haven't found the right therapist yet. (sometimes the success of therapy depends on the personality of the therapist and the patient)
i agree with the end goals, but the examples you list are the extreme cases, that i hope are actually easier to address because i think they are caused by some very painful experience that a therapist should at least be able to detect. (i don't really know, but i hope anyways)
the cases of concern in this thread are the more subtle ones that prevent people from sharing their feelings, and the cause for that i believe is much harder to detect and address.
Men don't need support systems the way women do. Men need to take charge of our lives or we feel worthless. A lot of these men just need something that's theirs and not approved by anyone, and something other men do. Friendships are found with other men in spaces where they don't feel the need to apologize. We need support systems and friendships, but we don't make them directly deliberately. We take charge of our lives, do things we want to do without asking permission, and meet other like minded men that way. You will not find fulfillment following the Approved Path™.
> Historically, men have made long-term bonds through religious institutions, friendships at work and our sense of worth derived through the family by what we could provide.
Is this true? or did men (having relegated family chores) made friends basically everywhere and tended to hangout in cafe places
I think the whole thing is about the lack of "third places".
Being an elder Millennial, the answer seems obvious.
In the 90's, it was hard/uncommon to access the internet. Personal computers were just on the rise.
Before ubiquitous screens and computing, the only thing you could do is socially interact with others (or go read a book/play solitaire). So, it tended to happen organically almost all the time.
Churches and synagogues in my town had literally, dozens of interest clubs. Ski club, scuba club, travel club, etc. Non were religious, the church/synagogue was more of a meeting place but driven mainly by congregants. Now religion is uncool and no one goes, but the interest clubs weren't replaced by anything anywhere else. Definitely not by social media at least.
This year, I found https://f3nation.com/ and it's been great. Very welcoming group of men and these group of men are each others support group. Many of them seem to have known each other for years. It's free so more approachable than some expensive gyms. The one I go to in Puget Sound also has a bunch of their kids show up and I've started to bring my 11 year old.
For some of you that might be turned off by the part that might look religious, at least in my area, nothing seems religious but I'm told that's different in other parts of the country.
This seems a myopic article. The problem is surely male loneliness, being a father or not. Several of my friends and I (male and female) have struggled to make new meaningful friendships over the last 15 years. Between us we've lived in London, moved countries, changed jobs, etc. Some of us work from home, some own businesses, others are on-site employed.
It just seems to be a nightmare once you actually have to work at making friends (i.e. post school/uni). We're all really at a loss. Between us we have 2 or 3 good friends each, but it's not enough. We've tried clubs, meetups, going to sociable places, nights out, etc. but the success rate is so low it's depressing.
In some ways its encouraging to see fathers suffer the same loneliness. I had assumed since we're in our late 30s/early 40s and none of us had kids that we'd missed a life stage. That is, most people our age are too busy raising kids and meeting friends through their kids to hang out with us. At least this points to a deeper societal breakdown.
The issue I think is somehow finding people who have space for new friends. It's like, I might meet someone at work with kids, but they're just too busy to meet up after work. Or people are too irregular with work/fickleness. They might go to a hobby club one week, then you never see them again. The rate of attrition is so high. And that's even before you get choosy about wanting to meet people who are actually on your wavelength.
I'm at the point where I'm considering just moving to Asia to find a group of people on career breaks in Bali or something. While I like WFH, I now meet no one. Luckily I have actually made a good friend in the last few years, but I won't see him if he ever manages to find a girl or he moves back to his country like he plans to.
For me, the only place I really meet anyone in my age group (or with the sort of ambitious, interesting mindset I like) is London, and I just can't live there. So all in all, I feel pretty stuffed, but I know I'm not the only one. And even when I did live in London, all the above still applied and it was almost impossible to meet people I clicked with despite trying loads of different things.
Anyway, a bit of a ramble, but I think this is a big problem for men and women. I've wracked my brains, but there's just no easy solution :(
My guess is that we're collectively victims of an individualist society. We want our safe home and we don't want to share it with other people, we want intimacy, but we have too much of it: our own kitchen, living room, bathrooms, even transport is exclusive.
We should live together in small groups, at least spend the morning and evening together to eat, that should NOT be exclusive to families.
It's almost like family values are trying to exclude "undesirables". Why do people want to be in family? That's weird.
You know what? Americans are going to call this communism, 100%. But living as a collective IS WHAT SOCIAL SPECIES DO.
>We should live together in small groups, at least spend the morning and evening together to eat, that should NOT be exclusive to families.
who would we group with? This is sort of what coworkers do for lunch, but thats one consequence of more WFH/Remote initiatives. Forget Third Place, we may lose our Second Place within the decade for some industries.
Thing is a lot of people seem fine with this. They have families and it's a very common response to say "My best friend is my wife" or "I don't need work to make friends". To my charaign as someone not interested in a romantic relationship right now, many people seem to isolate by their own will.
No, people used to do things like social dancing, folk dancing, and Elks lodge, church. We stopped doing these "family friendly" things, and then we discovered that's not good.
On top of what's always been said, I have some thoughts. You might be offended by them, but that's not my intention. What I'm about to say is based on experience.
To keep things simple, I'm going to use the term "woman" instead of saying "girlfriend or wife" and "man" or "guy" in place of "boyfriend or husband." I don't like using "partner" as a substitute.
I've seen many people in relationships and marriages either monopolize their partner or allow themselves to be monopolized. This is a psychology that doesn't come naturally to me since I'm particularly stubborn and individual-minded. Most of my male friends, once they are in a relationship and especially if they are married, allow their relationship to take over every aspect of their social lives. It's one thing for a man to be spending a lot of time with their woman and going on many social outings together, but the healthy boundary (IMO) ends where both parties must be involved with everything.
For example, I've known many guys who believe that their woman should become a de facto member of his male friends circle; while I have known women who can absolutely be "one of the boys," that is more often not the case; by doing so, the man may be uninviting himself to future outings by his male friend group without even realizing it. I love women, but there are some topics and issues that men need to be free to hash out man-to-man without being subtly chastised by a woman who likely doesn't understand things about the male perspective. The more subtle effect is that the man has less quality time to allow him to feel close to other men, and he may not even realize it as it's happening. The same is of course true with the sexes swapped. In any case, the hypothetical man in this scenario may, at 30 years old, find himself wondering why he has no regular friends anymore; chances are some of his friends found other new friends, and others of his friends became monopolized.
In a similar fashion, something I've seen women do is have their man in tow for things that obviously an average straight male would have no interest in. An example is how it's become popular for pregnant women to have multiple baby showers: one that's girls-only, and another for both girls and guys. I'm not saying that some men wouldn't want to participate in a baby shower, but let's be honest, most men don't identify with baby showers. In my limited experience, these celebrations end up as the men in one room and the women in the other, and virtually none of the men actually want to be there. My point about this is that the way I see women monopolizing their men often involves bringing them into feminine spaces they probably won't feel comfortable with, whereas usually men are either more accommodating if a woman is in the group or simply not invite women to things they know they will not be interested in.
To summarize this point, I see many men and women as not respecting a healthy level of autonomy in the other person, and that women respect the time of their men even less than the men do of their women.
I don't believe that making friends in adulthood is as difficult as people make it out to be. Yes, it's more difficult, but I'm not a fan of the excuses people make in this regard. When I was a kid, I was emotionally stunted, had few friends, spent some years with no friends at all, and ended up "walking the desert" for some time after college. Yet somehow I still ended up with friends at 34. I'm not going to ramble about how I approached adult friendship, but I can summarize it by saying that, if you want friends, practice being friendly, keep promises, refrain from being judgmental, think about what the other person wants, and just get out there.
What keeps many people back, I think, is this idea that being by yourself while in a relationship is awkward or wrong. I think this affects men a lot more than women. If they can be spending time with a woman, the pseudological part of the male brain informs them that they should be spending time with their woman. You absolutely should be spending time with your man or woman, but not at the expense with having bonds with others. I would never expect my girlfriend to not spend time with her friends, and it seems to be more acceptable today not only for women to spend a lot of time with their friends, but also male friends. In such a case, I think women should be conscientious about whether their man is getting enough friend-time; if you know he has friends but he's not nursing those friendships, tell him to go out and play billiards with the boys. Go with him if you like, but also allow him times to go by himself. If you don't trust him to be out having fun by himself, then you have a relationship problem you need to discuss with him.
> The more subtle effect is that the man has less quality time to allow him to feel close to other men, and he may not even realize it as it's happening. The same is of course true with the sexes swapped.
Not as strongly. "Women spaces" are much stronger established and men are much more strongly punished for trying to invade them. There aren't many women-only activities that I can imagine a woman trying to bring a husband into. Maybe baby showers are becoming a normal exception, but it is ultimately a one off event.
>I don't believe that making friends in adulthood is as difficult as people make it out to be. Yes, it's more difficult, but I'm not a fan of the excuses people make in this regard.
They aren't really excuses, they are simple facts. Meetups are a revolving door of different people who only come once or twice. Can't make a deep friendship that way. I don't know if that's a generational issue, but it's a common trend I've seen over the years. Friendships aren't like learning to cook or losing weight; it's not a solitary activity completely in your power. If another person simply isn't seeking that friendship there's nothing I can do.
and note I am a late 20's single male, so I don't have any other relationships "holding me back", per se. No pets, no SO's, no kids. Just a dude living alone in a house trying to reach out. Turns out there's not many hands reciprocating that reach. At least not in my demographic
> Not as strongly. "Women spaces" are much stronger established and men are much more strongly punished for trying to invade them. There aren't many women-only activities that I can imagine a woman trying to bring a husband into. Maybe baby showers are becoming a normal exception, but it is ultimately a one off event.
Totally fair. I didn't intend to suggest the effect is as strong on both sides.
> There aren't many women-only activities that I can imagine a woman trying to bring a husband into.
My experience doesn't totally reflect that one-to-one. I agree that there are more women-only activities that have more or less stayed that way, but I have witnessed (and sometimes experienced) plenty of cases where a woman trots out her man in scenario where he neither must be there nor is likely to actually enjoy what he's taking part in.
> They aren't really excuses, they are simple facts. Meetups are a revolving door of different people who only come once or twice. Can't make a deep friendship that way. I don't know if that's a generational issue, but it's a common trend I've seen over the years. Friendships aren't like learning to cook or losing weight; it's not a solitary activity completely in your power. If another person simply isn't seeking that friendship there's nothing I can do.
No, they really are excuses. Sure, there are simple facts, including that making friends as an adult can be much more challenging than making friends as a youth, but this framing of reality can easily become a crutch.
> Meetups are a revolving door of different people who only come once or twice.
Sure, they definitely are revolving doors. There's a lot of truth in what you're saying here. Though I have made both friends and relationships through meetups as well. Maybe I'm lucky, given that I'm a 6 on the decile scale at best.
But meetups aren't the only way adults can become friends. Striking up conversations with neighbors and guys at the gym are some of the ways I've made very good friends. Your local bartender can become a friend of sorts, especially if you make their working hours a little more interesting and you are an exceptional customer.
> Can't make a deep friendship that way.
The likelihood is very low, but not beyond the point of not being worth trying. I used to believe what you're saying, and trust me, I'm sympathetic to seeing things like meetups as futile for long-term friends, but my mind has changed on this over time.
> Friendships aren't like learning to cook or losing weight
They can't be merely reduced to being like learning to do something solitary, but what you are effectively trying to communicate here simply isn't true, in my experience. Being a good friend is actually a skill, and a person can learn to be a better friend through introspection. Friendship skills need to be built and refined by being with others, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways a person can work on their friendliness by thinking about it. A lot of people, including myself at times, do things that sabotage their ability to make friends, both short-term and long-term.
> If another person simply isn't seeking that friendship there's nothing I can do.
This is probably true, if the person really isn't interested in more friendship. That said, I actually think most people are interested in friendship, but only the right kind of friendship at that time. If one can add something to another person's life that they aren't getting from other friends, and said person doesn't detract from the other person's life, the chance that they can form a new friendship is actually pretty good.
> and note I am a late 20's single male, so I don't have any other relationships "holding me back", per se. No pets, no SO's, no kids. Just a dude living alone in a house trying to reach out. Turns out there's not many hands reciprocating that reach. At least not in my demographic
I hear you, bro. Totally have been there, myself. I'm in my min thirties now and, to a certain degree, I may be retroactively applying my current station in life to a situation where not everything applies.
Since you said you're "trying to reach out", I'll assume you'd be receptive to some experience from an older brother from another mother.
There's a lot that's wrong about the world that puts us in this kind of situation where we can be in our 20s and struggle to make friends, so I'm definitely not saying we are at fault for this. At the same time, our own outward behavior is a determining factor on what kind of opportunities present themselves to us, and we are responsible for that behavior; in retrospect, the primary reason my early to mid 20s were so weird and solitary was because of my attitude. I wasn't doing very simple things that would put myself in situations where I'd have the opportunity to know someone. I would have gone to concerts in my 20s but didn't have the social confidence to find someone who looks receptive, start talking to them, and end up swapping numbers at the end. Even if I did, I probably would have been more interested in talking about myself rather than the other person. Thus, I would have felt like I'd done all the right things, but concluded that nobody is looking for friends, or that I'm just broken. That is, of course, just one example. Back then, I also didn't realize that my need for "the right kind" of friend was also holding me back from having more friends. The problem with not having any friends, besides being lonely, is that you have no new sources of adaptive behavior. One of the ways I learned to be more social is that I became friends with very prosocial people and saw what worked for them.
Anyway, I hope I don't come off as condescending. Like I said, I think your perspective is totally valid. We're in a particularly rough time in terms of getting to know people in meatspace. If you're tried everything and have had no luck, it's possible that you could benefit by visiting other localities to find a culture with people who are more likely to vibe with you. I wish I had done that earlier in life. Things ended up working out in my home city (of which I never truly felt I belonged to), but had I realized that I'd get along better with people on the east coast of the US, I probably would have moved there in my early 20s merely for the social aspect.
This isn't the easy solution you might think. While some churches/denominations/whatever may get more progressive, others grow more conservative. The place your dad went to may not be a place even he recognizes any more.
The problem you have here is one of conflation of causality.
Successful religions are a self sustaining meme. "You must have kids", "You must teach your kids the religion", "Attack/destroy/other anything that interferes with the first two directives".
You're not successful because religion is great or whatever, the success came from the prerogative of "religious reproduction".
Sure, but there has also basically been no secular societies to speak of at all until relatively recently... Like I'd love to see you name as many as you know just to see how many you get beyond "Soviet Union", which had a bunch of issues that would lead to it's collapse beyond the lack of religion.
It seems unfair to say "oh there hasn't ever been long standing secular societies, therefore something about secularism causes social breakdown" when barely any secular societies have ever even existed
I’d argue that Greeks were about as secular as modern Canada or America are. There was the concept of religion but it wasn’t relevant. There was also a push towards leaving religion behind as evidenced by philosophers.
if we want to continue to have children in the future then all parents will need special treatment. if they don't get it, humanity will eventually die out.
"1 in 5 said they had gotten emotional support from a friend in the past week, compared with 4 in 10 women." -TFA
There was no need to change the demoninator - it was done to confuse people by having them compare 1 vs 4. It's hard to take the rest of the article seriously when they game the numbers to manipulate people so obviously.
I feel like there is a real problem here, even if it is played a little too hard for the article. I do a lot of parenting but am lucky that my college friends all married and reproduced around the same time. So now instead of 12 people hanging, gaming, and BSing, we have 30-40 people in a glorious mob of activty. Thing is - the kids kinda entertain themselves reducing the parenting load for everyone. And everyone know how each family does stuff, so any 'random' adult can provide guidance or escalate to their parent. I don't know how I would do it without the group - likely I would try to build one from my kids new friends without the 20 years of common history.
Thank you for that awareness. I didn't look at the source before jumping to conclusions. :)
Still, that is mightly close to 2x, and a little bit of rounding would have made the message clearer (and likely stayed within the error bars of the original paper (which I did not read))
I honestly believe most journalists actually don't understand fractions. I often see a sentence that uses whole fractions when talking about statistics and percentages right next to each other.
Always makes me think of how in America the 1/3 pound whopper was beaten in the market by the 1/4 pounder from McDonalds, and when surveyed people responded that the 1/4 was bigger.
Maybe it could start by requiring ads to prominently include a non-fractional representation of the size as well. 'quarter pounder (0.250Lbs)' and '1/3rd pound (0.333Lbs) Whopper' - though IMO I just hate charbroiled generally.
I like the charbroiled fine but BK is mediocre IMO. The smells that come out of those restaurants write checks that the food just cannot cash.
That said, while I'm usually inclined towards any policies that I feel will annoy marketing, I feel it's pretty straightforward that 1/3 is bigger than 1/4 with a very basic amount of reasoning. I'm frankly shocked at how many people struggle with it.
Not sure if my tastes were less refined when I was young or if the quality of everything at BK is just trash now. I remember back in the days of the 99 cent whopper they were pretty good and at least flame broiled tasting.
I mean they're fine. That's the description. They aren't gross, they aren't disgusting or whatever and if someone wanted to get one I'd probably be amenable? But like... it smells so good. And then you get it and it's just... eh. It's fine.
> A Yorkshire horse fair nearly a century old may not be able to go ahead this year as it runs out of options for places to hold it.
> Lee Gap Horse Fair has been taking place in some form in West Ardsley since 1136, making it 887 years old. Since 1995 the horse trading fair has taken place on Baghill Green fields off Heybeck Lane.
Combine that with the lack of "third places" [0] for parents to socialize with other parents and you end up with a rather disfunctional society in which fewer couples are willing to have children.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place