In my experience as an adult, people having time/willingness to socialize goes in the following order (gender irrelevant)
In order of most to least:
- Single
- Married without children
- LGBT couples (not married)
- Heterosexual couples (not married)
- Parents
A lot of my friends are married, but child free. The ones with kids I hardly see.
Go volunteer for a cause you believe in. Great way to meet likeminded people.
I heard a perspective that helped me understand male friendships more in depth, and it went kinda like this, (massively paraphrasing, sorry) apparently men do this parallel play, kinda friendship. They just do stuff side by side, without the deeper knowledge or emotional support or growth together. I found it hard to even imagine that existed, probably because I have adhd and no filter, so I dig the deeps out of anyone I encounter and similarly dump my deeps on even poor random people who have not asked for such horrors, so I struggled to fathom that level, where that doesn’t exist. And if they move away they just ghost out. Sad! Like, here’s the guy I am randomly sitting next to, I know nothing about. It hurts my heart.
I don’t think I can connect on a deeper level than that. Like, I have friends. We go fishing, camping, play video games. But I’m probably as close to friends I’ve made this year as I am to ones since the fourth grade, and as close as I am with my brother. All the same. We can talk about hobbies, and work, and family, but I’m not going to have any deep conversations about feelings or fears or dreams with them. I don’t even know what a conversation like that would be like. I’d probably be really uncomfortable if they started one.
One time, I messaged a friend about wanting to spend more time with my daughter because my dad worked a lot growing up, and I ended up deleting it because it felt weird to say that.
I feel really similar. I’m a dude, and I’ve always struggled with male friendships. I’ll ask people about themselves and their interests, get answers, and then the conversation stops with no reciprocation. I have a hard time just talking about myself unprompted, so since it’s rare for men to ask me stuff, I just get to know a lot of people but it never seems like they meet me.
Its funny but this is why I believe car guys are so weird.
Playing with cars is an expensive hobby, so you cant engage in it as often as you like without a LOT of disposable income so when you meet another car guy and he mentions “Yeah I have to yank the engine out of my race car this weekend” if you dont have plans you actually really DO want to help even if you barely know the guy because you get to engage in your hobby on someone elses dime.
So you go around, spend a day swearing and getting filthy, busting your knuckles and putting sweat into their passion for nothing more than maybe lunch and a few drinks, so they really are appreciative.
All that Fast and Furious “Family” shit is overblown, but my son is named after my best friend and we became friends for life engine swapping and building a 89 Honda.
Are male friendships considered not normal??
There really isn’t. It’s just a growing subset that sees any long term friendship as a homosexual relationship. This usually stems.from the “way too queer but not gay enough” crowd.
It… depends. Not as normalized as they should be, and a lot less emotional support than you’d expect.
It also depends on which circles you run in. Some of my friends I will see at least once a month and we talk about each other’s problems from time to time. A big factor is whether you’re in shared hobbies and whether those hobbies push people to grow and improve
There is nothing non-normalized about male friendships. “Normalizing” means you are making something which has a social stigma not have that social stigma. There is no social stigma against men having friends.
Like I said, depends on the friendship and the environment. If two friends get too close, they may be called faggots, or get jokes about them being gay for each other (meant to be deeply insulting because homophobia, yay). Maybe it’s just the fact that I live in the southeast US. I don’t know whether you’re a man or not, also just my personal experience.
It doesn’t. There is literally no where in the world where there is a stigma against men having male friends.
