How lack of intimacy – and effort – can undermine male friendships
Men have a friendship problem. You probably know this already, if only anecdotally – walk into any pub in the land and count the number of blokes sitting there drinking alone. Social scientists know this evidentially. Recent research by the mental health charity Movember, for example, suggests that one in three men have no close friends. And I know this personally – in the summer of 2020, when I was planning to propose to my girlfriend, Naomi, I realised I had no one to call on to be my best man.
Loneliness doesn’t look like me. But there I was – 33 years young, outgoing, and always quick to buy my round – and yet I had no friends. And it made me feel ashamed. Suddenly I was that guy sitting alone in the school lunch hall. I was a Billy No-Mates. This bruising realisation sent me off on a quest, not only to fill a role, but to answer a question: what goes wrong for men like me? And what can we do about it? I discovered that there are three main theories.
