Like, why is it so widespread, what causes it, what solutions are available, etc. I don’t really know how to ask this question so I hope I’m making sense
What’s the deal with poorly explained questions?
Why don’t they provide more context for their perspective? Do they think people will magically know what they mean without them explaining it?
I think that’s part of the fun of an “ask people” forum, the answers reveal the common understanding of the definition of the question itself!
For example, In this question the term “male loneliness” is seemingly semantically meaningful. It seems to be a name given to the popular perception or understanding of a certain phenomenon.
Part of the fun of a forum is interacting with people as well, which OP didn’t do. Just shit in the forum and fucked off.
DUI laws.
What?
Lol. Bad joke. What I was getting at is people used to hang out at bars and drink more (alcohol use was worse). More generally, it’s a lack of third places and car-based city design. More, and more engaging in-home entertainment/Internet also probably plays a part. Though, it’s probably not a completely new phenomenon either, judging from art like Taxi Driver, Catcher In The Rye, etc. So, toxic or even plain masculinity likely makes it harder to make and keep close friends.
I’d bet female loneliness is also rising in modern society as well, due to modern phenomenon. Humans didn’t evolve to live like we are. We used to mostly live in small, close-knit tribes.
What
When you have a significant change in the population dynamic, it takes a significant time for the population not (really) effecting this change to adjust.
From my perspective as an old bloke, Women now treat relationships as transactional, men haven’t kept pace. There are obviously a number of reasons and I’m not making that statement to judge or analyse; mass change requires motivation. The motivation presented itself. Society is in the same incredible flux as when the pill became a real and common thing fifty years ago.
The risks for a man of a relationship significantly outweigh the rewards. Being aware of the overwhelming risks and deciding not to engage doesn’t stop one being lonely.
“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.” - Robin Williams
Could you please elaborate on what you mean by risk and why is it worse for men?
The juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
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https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/risk I’m assuming you’re not familiar with the word and English is not your first language.
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- 80 - 90% of women win custody battles, despite prisons being almost entirely of fatherless homes. Homes where the father is the single parent have the same recidivism rate as two parent homes.
- False accusations of violence are free or fully funded for women. In the England/Wales when legal aid introduced the requirement of domestic violence before legal aid was granted, on the quarter of this rule coming in (2011) applications under domestic abuse were multiplied by 10 times. Either men collectively decided to start beating their wives in that quarter or fully funded false accusations were exposed as an issue.
- About 20-30% of children are not related to their father as named on their birth certificate. Statistics from the child maintenance body in the UK shows that for the thousands of men placed on child maintenance applications over a third were shown to be false applications citing unrelated men. Google for other numbers. In France, it is illegal it seek the DNA child - father match for your own children.
- In the UK the 1971 law (MCA) says effectively that joint marital assets follow the children. The woman typically gets around 80%+ of net assets because they have custody of the children. that’s a personal observation because these are private law cases. The government refuses to publish the real numbers.
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(I’m tired of typing now) Domestic violence against men is ignored; or the victim is arrested. There are no shelters for men and children in the whole of the UK. Erin pissey, a lovely woman, who came up with the idea for shelters for DV survivors for both sexes was removed from the organisation she started by feminists and now campaigns for DV shelters for men. All of these government money for supporting male victims of DV is given to 'Women’s Aid" after their successful bid years ago. There is still no support for male victims; it doesn’t take a genius to imagine why.
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Someone else is going to have to finish these.
Thanks for typing these out! I asked more because I wanted to know where exactly you were coming from, not strictly because I didn’t have the language skills. Then again, i think it is very much worth it to have the information on these shared more widely
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Here’s a theory. I’m sure it has lots of holes in it.
Male loneliness has always been a thing. In cultures where it isn’t/wasn’t, there was a strong family relationship and older men modelling how to relate to others.
To hide from loneliness, men were able to join clubs, hang out at pubs, volunteer, or bury themselves in work.
In fact, those same pastimes are still available today.
What’s changed is that it is now socially OK to talk about loneliness (at least in online forums like this), so more people are aware it’s an issue.
In fact, those same pastimes are still available today.
That is glossing over a lot of context, a big one being that club membership is down (that’s a big point of Bowling Alone). I would not be surprised if many clubs relocated or shut down due to low membership, especially after raising membership fees. Or y’know that they were already a middleclass thing, thus canaries.
Pubs are also going to rely on prices, but the most social ones likely are accessible by free public transit or are located in a walkable/mixed-use area (particularly cities designed before+not-bulldozed-for cars).
I don’t think this is about awareness, especially when most people have less friends and less (or no) social engagement.
I think you may have missed the point I was making though— clubs and other pastimes didn’t make people less lonely; they only distracted people from their loneliness. Today the same distractions can be found via social media, so instead of all those other activities, people just need a phone.
But the anonymizing nature of social media means people feel more free to discuss their loneliness when they do self-reflect.
The entire country is designed to physically isolate people into shiti suburban houses.
Only solution is to quit being poor and live in specific major cities that didn’t get ruined by shiti car lobbies 🤡
Women are not putting themselves out anymore
Women don’t owe you sex, learn and grow as a person
I am not sure what this means. Women will always make themselves available to a guy they like, they all just like the same few guys while the rest of male population gives them the ick.
People simply just don’t like men
There ain’t never a shortage of dick!
Society has always put premium on women due to biology. Yeah it results in some weird externalities for men. Women got their own bags though.
Men have been taught not to approach women in public unless it’s online in a dating app. Women have always been taught not to approach men.
So no one is having relationships except for a very small portion of people who are disproportionately physically attractive.
Pair that with the hypergamy that women are doing where they only chase men out of their league now for the most part and it makes things that used to be normal and taken for granted like getting married and having a family exceptional jewels that are hard to come by.
Interesting that you took this post to be entirely about romantic/sexual relationships, especially since a partner should not be solely responsible for assuaging your lonliness.
Even if everyone had a partner/spouse male loneliness would still be a massive issue because men aren’t socialized in a way that equips them to have emotionally intimate platonic friendships. If my wife was my ONLY friend, I’d still be very lonely. Furthermore, even if I wasn’t in a relationship, I wouldn’t be lonely because of the friends I have.
I was about to write this exact thing and you’re already getting downvotes for it. People refuse to except reality.
There is an extremely large portion of men that are scared to put themselves out there because they are ostracized as creeps and fear the consequences of social shaming. “The worst she can say is no” is no longer true. The worst she can do is take a video of you while she publicly shames you for being a creep and trying to rape her.
Met my wife online during the pandemic.
Dated a fair few women before her, meeting online and in real life.
I’m not super attractive, and pretty awkward, but I always make the effort to be polite and actually listen instead of waiting to talk, you’d be amazed how far that actually gets you.
This is an anecdote, also having good social skills was always a clever way to make up for looks.
Most people have not been properly socialized since childhood. They need to level up but it is one of them things kinda like being poor, you are starting behind and you need to work 2x to get to mid.
If you don’t have good looks, that’s one thing, you can’t really change that.
But then if you don’t look good and you can’t try to hold a conversation, that’s your problem.
Learn to speak, it’s not hard. go talk to people and gain some confidence. All this talk about poor socialization or being unattractive and creepy just demoralizes people that I’m sure could actually make friends and meet spouses if they didn’t preemptively pull themselves out of the situation before they gave themselves the chance
I think the reason for down votes is that the comment suggests that issues with dating are the reason for male loneliness, when most people in the thread would argue that believing that ‘a romantic partner is the only acceptable source of meaningful emotional connection available to men’ is a big part of male loneliness.
This isn’t true. This is what right wing loser podcasters claim to further the idea of women or libruls as the problem, and themselves as the solution. It’s a much deeper problem than that.
If you actually spend time around women you’ll find that looks are a way lower priority for them than for men. You’ll find that they value things like being understanding, doing interesting things, being trustworthy, and for physical things as long as you’re hygienic and have a semblance of style they really don’t care much even if you’re heavier. And guess what? These are ALL things you can work on to improve yourself.
Want to have more women like you? Work on yourself first. Women aren’t attracted to men who complain online about “I’m not allowed to go talk to them in public”
If you actually spend time around women you’ll find that looks are a way lower priority for them than for men. You’ll find that they value things like being understanding, doing interesting things, being trustworthy, and for physical things as long as you’re hygienic and have a semblance of style they really don’t care much even if you’re heavier.
Oddly class and status is missing from this list… I wonder why
At least in my experience, women tend to care about looks just about the exact same amount as men, that is to say some care almost exclusively about looks and some not at all, and everywhere in between, and at about the same rates from what I’ve seen. Anecdotal tho, and the general gist of what you said still applies, I’m just being pedantic lol
Patriarchy harms and isolates men first so that they become the monsters that women fear.
The same way women are expected to look and act a certain way, so is for men, with different criteria.
Not by people per se, but by a sort of cultural subconscious, like a chaos creature from warhammer it exists because people believe in it, not necessarily because they agree with it. Everyone fears it, so most comply.
That’s why it is so important to destroy the social gender binary, the idea that we all neatly fit in well defined labels that apply to our body and mind. It’s just complete bullshit and internalizing it is one of the many ways this system traps us in its oppression
Never don’t downvote posts with the word “patriarchy” in them. The right says “DEI hire” the left says “Patriarchy.”
Except if you did just the slightest bit of research you’d know patriarchy is an anthropological and well defined phenomenon not based on prejudice but on research of oppression throughout millennia, while the other is just an excuse to be intolerant.
This kind of false equivalences really show people’s disinterest in going deeper with their judgment. There’s nothing comparable about the two other than widespread use
Absolutely agree.
One of the ways we’ve gone wrong so far is that people do need some guidance at least on what is possible and acceptable.
Just saying to young people “Be whatever you want to be” is unhelpful and confusing.
Role models of all kinds and representation matter so people who are figuring these things out as they grow have inspiration, ideas, can see who they are reflected in the world around them so they can put a name to the feeling.
If we can do that without shaming, blaming or excluding then people can find their way without the need of gender binary.
Caveat, not everyone is a suitable role model. Some people are warnings, not examples.
There was a meme the other day about how Aragorn from lotr is the kind of male role model men need. Kind, shows his emotions, strong without being cruel.
Male loneliness has probably always been a thing. Lonely men were expected to work difficult jobs, or fight in wars for kings, or just kill themselves.
Some women would have experienced similar issues, along with probably greater rates of sexual abuse, etc.
I think there have always been quite a few people with shit lives throughout history; it’s just that society doesn’t want to acknowledge these people. People who are doing fine in life want to pretend that life is fair, when actually it isn’t.
Too many cars. No more third place.
Funny you should phrase it like that.
My uncle is a machinist specializing in automotive engine repair and modification. Over dinner last month, he mentioned that he’s used to seeing middle age customers for hot rod engine builds, midlife crisis “Always wanted to do this” kind of guys, but lately he’s been seeing men in their teens and twenties come in wanting heads ported and polished and shit like that.
They’re not spending money on women because women have made themselves impossible to want, so young men are turning their attention to things like cars.
So you’re saying they want their heads polished by a man because women are unattainable? Interesting…
Hmmm
women have made themselves impossible to want
No sure what this mean… There is never lack of demand for pussy. It is always supply constrained ever since people figure how to trade
With that being said, yound adult men generally no market value since they have no status which is a key in getting with women. Status is linked to class but that’s just a part of it.
I would posit that the internet and abundant screen entertainment contributed to killing third places far more than cars. The US has had a car culture for a very long time. (I’m not saying that makes it a good thing.)
Maybe. But if people had the sqme amoubt of screen time and wqlked or biked, or took public transit there would be more forced interaction than there is in car culture.
I think they go hand in hand. And right now we got both.
Oh, too many cars! Absolutely, makes sense…
How much time do you willingly spend in public interacting with others?
There was a lot more of it happening before society required everyone to have personal transportation.
I’m an introvert so I am at home, work, or errands. I probably would talk to a lot more strangers if I had to use public transport and it wasn’t so expensive to do anything fun in public.
You would?
I use public transit daily and hardly ever interact with anyone. Maybe there is one interaction every 100 days? I don’t frequently see two strangers interacting either, it’s unheard of except maybe for retirees with effectively infinite time.
A challenge for you (or anyone interested in taking it up): Once a day, while waiting for public transit, pay attention to the people around you. Does anyone have something interesting about them (hair, clothes, jewelery, weird keychain thing on their phone, etc.)? Ask one identified person about it. See someone who looks like they are on the verge of tears? Ask them “Hey, is everything ok?”
9/10 times you’ll have a brief Q-A-back off interaction, but sometimes it’ll turn into a longer conversation. Yes, it feels awkward. Yes, in some places you’ll come across as rude/uncomfortably weird (keep your dominant culture in mind - you probably wouldn’t try this in some place like Finland or something). But I’ve had some very interesting experiences doing this in the past (usually with the ones who look upset - if you’re willing to be a sympathetic ear you might just make that person’s day).
I can imagine little worse than doing what you just described although that is (in part) due to moderate social anxiety. I behave in the exact opposite way - ignoring people regardless of how much they stand out because I don’t want to stare.
Though I can imagine what you’ve been doing has helped others.
Well, people will ask you for directions sometimes so that’s something…
The best you get in a car is road rage
What’s “third place”?
In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. Examples of third places include churches, cafes, bars, clubs, libraries, gyms, bookstores, hackerspaces, stoops, parks, theaters, among others
The colloquial “third place” is, as I understand it, a (usually) public place OUTSIDE of Home or Work where people can meet, hangout, play, or just exist without the expectation of spending money or being productive in some way. Examples would be Parks, Libraries, old-timey Public Houses and Cafes, Playgrounds, Forests and Wilderness within walking distance, and more.
Car culture killed a lot of that by removing the ability to reasonably walk places outside major metro areas, as businesses relocated to cities, and because they straight up increased the fatality rate for walking substantially. Internet Culture also killed it since you can just talk to your buddies through the Demon Rectangle instead of meeting IRL.
Automotibles are not car culture. If anything car culture turns a garage into a third place, by your definition, and brings other people out of their houses and out of the workplace, to meet. Car culture is more an adaptation people have made due to the advent of the automotible and the problems you attribute to “car culture”. Everything has expanded and is cut up by streets and shit because automotibles are useful… as a side effect has made it harder to have a third place, as you have pointed out, and so people who engage in car culture actually overcome the challenge by integrating automotibles into their culture, they persevere.
I would actually make the same argument for internet culture. The internet isn’t internet culture, and if anything internet culture has allowed people to express themselves through the internet, embracing it and integrating it into their lives rather than just living beside it. For people who consider themselves part of internet culture, the internet is their third place where they play.
With that said, it’s still an interesting idea. I do think we pay a high price for the luxuries that we have today and it’s not well understood. Having infrastructure designed around automotibles, for example, fucking sucks.
Places that aren’t home or work. Social places, like bars.
Others have explained it (places where social interaction is the primary intent - not home and not work) but I’ll add - old European cities (and most smaller towns) have some sort of public square. Many have lasted to this day and are still used. We can still build them, we but our chosen form of urbanization isn’t that conducive to it so we don’t. In North America in the 80 and into the 90s, malls we’re 3rd place. Then they started aggressively going after loitering in malls since simply sitting in a mall doesn’t produce economic activity. Many malls died and many are still dying. Those that survived achieved the - nobody goes there to chill anymore. Just to buy what they need, maybe eat, and then leave. Nobody plans to “meet at the mall” anymore.
Bar culture is still very much alive but I think people are less inclined to go to those places alone now.
This is basically it. It costs money to hang out with people IRL, everytime, all because of cars. We are all spread out so far now, except in a handful of places. Even without factoring in cars, the amount of activities that people can do for free or cheap is dwindled to basically nothing. This is simplistic, but the reality is no one can really afford real friends anymore.
Yes because only males can be lonely.
If people are lonely it’s because they cause it themselves.
I’m in an activity group and it’s mostly the women of the group who are organizing the events. The men sign up to attend. The women are the ones who make plans and the men just go along.
Why don’t the men take initiative?
Even playing a board game, the guys just sit there playing a game. The women are the ones who introduce themselves, ask other people their names, what they do for a living, engage in conversation. This is all stuff men could be doing themselves but choose not to.
Some men isolate themselves using video games and didn’t join any social groups then complain that they are lonely. It’s like complaining you’re hungry when the food is right in front of you but you just won’t eat it – you’re expecting someone else to literally feed you.
A lot of men were never taught to do this. We raise young girls to be incredibly social, but boys are not socialized to nearly the same extent. You can see this in Autism diagnoses. Girls are diagnosed as a much lower rate and the ones that do receive the diagnosis tend to be really severe cases. The leading theory as to why is that society places so many social expectations on girls that the more mild cases quickly learn to mask and pass themselves off as neurotypical.
Hell, I’m 35 and I just started a group chat with some of my bros in order to help with motivation to get things done (it’s basically a stand up meeting but for our personal lives/goals). NONE of them even know each other, they were just doing this to help me out because I’m burned out. 2 weeks in and they had all thanked me privately for giving them a social outlet and improving their mood. None of us usually text people unless we need to, and now we’ll routinely get roped into conversations because someone shares an interesting update.
Meanwhile my wife is juggling 3 different group chats in addition to half a dozen friends she keeps in touch with 1-1.
There might be some biological mechanism too, but I think a lot of it boils down to boys have “productive labor” modelled for them as ideal behavior while girls are taught how to be considerate friends.
This makes it seem like men can’t learn. There’s nothing biological about organizing an event or talking to people.
We absolutely can, but it’s still a lot harder to pick these skills up as adults vs internalizing them as a kid, and a lot of men don’t even realize the cause of their suffering.
Like, I’m not trying to give men an excuse not to change-- you asked why men are bad at planning and I’m just giving you an answer.
It always felt like between the ages of 12 - 18 (basically while you were in middle-/highschool) you need to get some sort of “seal of approval” from the other sex as a prove that you are relationship material. If you didn’t get that you’ll always be seen as somebody to stay away from.
I’ve heard a lot of times that those young relationships are completely inconsequential, but I think it’s those lack of consequences that serve best as a social teaching tool on how to recognize and have an actual meaningful relationship when you’re older.
And I feel like this experience is exactly what a lot of men and women are struggling to get. They have trouble finding partners and if they do they are not good partners themselves. Which is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy, you are deemed bad relationship material so you’ll become bad relationship material.
I recognized this about myself. At my age the only people left are either young divorcees, people with small children or people that are like me - single for a good reason. There will be expectations towards me that I’m neither aware of nor will probably be able to fulfill. Dating well below my age range is neither something I can pull off nor something that I am comfortable with. So I’m forever stuck in this weird limbo of wanting a relationship but knowing that whoever will be my first partner will probably not have a great time with me.
I think this is also the root of a lot of toxic behavior. People turn to sources of knowledge to at least get some idea about what an relationship is about. But all they find is the Cosmopolitans and the Andrew Tate’s who prey upon peoples’ loneliness and desperation for profit. I understand that nobody wants to be a teacher, I understand that nobody wants to throw away years of their life so that the next person will maybe have a better time with your partner.
Ali Wong had a good joke about this in her special with something along the lines off not wanting a divorce because then she’d have to teach the next guy how to please her. Taylor Tomilison also had one about wanting to call her ex during sex just so he could explain to the next guy how he did it for her. I know those are just jokes, but it think there is a bit of truth in them.
I’m just autistic\BAD and indecisive and had a romantic trauma at school and my environment (mom) is not mentally well at all (right now it’s not worse than hoarding and forgetting everything, but it was).
However, with my looks it’s somehow enough for me to just be kinda clean and shaved and in a public place for very pleasant young women (and I suppose much kinder than that girl from school) to try to talk to me with possible romantic perspective (which I usually realize after the conversation ends).
Except it just doesn’t work, either I don’t understand them, or I’m petrified and don’t know what to do or say, or I postpone interpreting the conversation to somewhere late, or I’m ashamed of the mess where I live and showing my life to that person if it goes somewhere.
So - sometimes it’s just about never having the courage to go forward. Not about other people discarding you.
EDIT: ah, also about BAD - in the mania phase one might slowly build up background dreams about some women one knows, and when trying to make a decision in regards to the woman they are really communicating with, to feel ashamed both before everyone touched by those dreams and before that woman ; I guess some people are fine with that, some even have open relationships, but this is not a common thing.
I know the feeling too well of not having a place to invite somebody to. But I always told myself that if it ever came down to it, I hopefully could convince the two halfbrained adults that call themselves my parents to behave for a few hours. But in the end it didn’t really matter because it never came down to it anyway.
A long while ago there was a post by a distressed young woman who struggled to enter relationships. I really connected with what she said but of course had no answer for her either. But what I’ve noticed is that all comments completely missed the point of the question.
I used a casino as a metaphor for dating which I think applies pretty well. Dating is essentialy that - no matter how much effort you put in, nothing is ever guaranteed or given, it all essentially comes down to luck.
What the vast majority of people hear when somebody is asking for dating advice is that they play the game but lack any success. They then give you advice on how to play your cards right, how to increase your chances, how to cut you losses, etc. But they don’t understand it’s not about how to win the table, but how to get into the casino in the first place. Not what to I tell the dealer at the table, but what do I tell the bouncer at the door?
It’s not about the rejection I’m facing, its about the fact that my mere approach is seen as an insult. It’s the audacity to ask to be included in something that is considered a normal part of life for others.
There’s a disorder, I forgot what it’s called but it makes people feel especially uneasy around psychopaths, even if the psychopaths themselves are extremely good at hiding their psychopathy. Basically those people can pick up on queues nobody else, not even the psychopaths themselves are aware of. This is essential how I and many others feel, like there’s something about us that we are unaware of but everybody else picks up on that tells them to keep their distance. Something that is outside of our control. We could have every trait that would make anybody other than us attractive, yet we would still end up being alone because at some point nature pointed her finger at us at said “Yes, but not you”.
At my age the only people left are either young divorcees, people with small children or people that are like me - single for a good reason.
How old are you?
I don’t want to tie any personal information to my lemmy account but let’s say I’m still in YouTubes biggest advertisment age bracket.
A quick search says you’re 55-64. I bet you can get old divorcees at that age too.
Its 25-34.
Is that by dollars spent or just population size?
By CPV, did you mean most populous.
I think it’s because people are overworked. No time for love, no time for friendship, sometimes not even enough time to take care of yourself properly.
I think that many of the approaches that tried to explain it are mostly dangerous.
Like blaming it on gender norms, and toxic masculinity, the most common answer. Because plenty of men who do not comply to gender norms or toxic masculinity (or masculinity at all) still feel alone. And their experience get invalidated by this explanation.
I think a more neutral approach is needed to explain it. Instead of trying to take some explanation that fits your political views and then try to push it as a solution to the problem, the problem should be investigated by itself, and once an explanation is reached accept it even if it does not fit your political mindset.
One hint is that most people that feel alone lack a romatic relationship, the most common approach seems to be that “nah romatic relationships are not needed and we will not even consider them part of the problem”. When it’s pretty obviously that the lack of this kind of relationships is fundamental in male loneliness.
Because plenty of men who do not comply to gender norms or toxic masculinity (or masculinity at all) still feel alone. And their experience get invalidated by this explanation.
It sounds like you completely miss the application of the explanation itself. The phrase toxic masculinity describes the social norms and expectations that men act a certain way. Society imposes gender norms on people such that those who don’t comply are at the highest risk of being shunned or ostracized, and having trouble making social connections. And the social pressure may make men act in ways they wouldn’t otherwise, so that they grow up poorly equipped to be introspective and understand their own wants/desires/emotions/drives/motivations.
Toxic masculinity tells men what they’re not allowed to be, and tells men what they must be. Both sides of that same coin are toxic to men, and by extension those that the men interact with.
Feels more like an explanation looking for a question that otherwise. Explanation doesn’t seems to emerge from the problem, but from the solution.
Again not talking about the main issue that every men that feel alone will tell you as the root of their problem:
-Lack of a relationship.
-Lack of friendships due other friends being invested in their relationships.
I haven’t meet a man that accused male loneliness because “others expect me to act manly” or because “I don’t know what I want because toxic masculinity”. Toxic masculinity may cause anxiety, discomfort or things like that in not complying men, but I don’t see it causing lack of romantic relationships. The cause of the former must be other.
The whole “men are wrong for wanting to be loved and they should be happy being alone” feels a little too much invalidating on people’s wants and desires.
While sexism and male toxicity is bad I don’t see how ending that would improve in anything male loneliness as it’s solution does not address what’s making many males feel lonely.
Again not talking about the main issue that every men that feel alone will tell you as the root of their problem:
-Lack of a relationship.
-Lack of friendships due other friends being invested in their relationships.
Actually, your comment touches on something that is really interesting to me, and a major part of where you and I differ on what male loneliness means. You’ve elevated the romantic committed relationship with a woman as the primary means by which men are expected to derive social standing and stability, but I view it primarily as an issue of friendships, mainly friendships with other men. The loneliness problem, in my view, comes from men being unable to form strong relationships with other men, and a wife or girlfriend or whatever is secondary to that.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always had stability in my friendships but didn’t have committed romantic relationships until my 30’s, but it seems like the problem of loneliness comes from not feeling like you have people in your corner (friends, family, even work colleagues), but I think focusing on sexual and romantic relationships is itself isolating and lonely, even for men who do get married. Now that I’m married I still spend plenty of time with my friends, married or single, based on the topic/activity/interest that ties us together.
Toxic masculinity is definitely not a part of relationships falling apart.
Anyone who had live through being in a group of single people through their youth and, as years pass, became the only one single on that group could probably confirm the experience. Friendships do not fall apart just because some male toxicity. It’s way simpler, it’s just that when two people do not have partners they can devote a lot of time and emotional energy to each other. When you are single a friend can easily be the most important person of your life. When you have a partner the amount of time and emotional energy that you have for friends is inferior, as you want to spend a great deal of that time and energy to your partner (as it’s natural). Then relationships became different. It’s not that it’s impossible to have “married friends”. But it’s certainly not the same as having a close single friend. And toxic masculinity does not take a part in any part of this process. The process is just a natural thing to happen on these situations.
Yes, people can cope trying to make new friendships. But that’s just a way to cope. Same as filing your live with hobbies and social activities can help coping with the lack of a romantic partner. But it does not solve the base issue. It’s like taking antidepressants for a depression, it helps, but it’s no solution, and the lack of antidepressants was not the issue.
Having a romantic relationship is important for many people. Denying that can be alienating, as you are denying personal experiences and personal feelings. I don’t think that solution is convincing people that their natural desires of being as loved as they see other people to be is just wrong and that they should live with even wanting that love (while they see plenty of other people enjoying that kind love).
That’s what I’m talking about, though. You see male friendships as a method of coping with a more fundamental problem relating to women, and I totally disagree, and argue that healthy male friendships are social connections worth developing and maintaining in their own right, whether you are or aren’t in a committed relationship with a woman. Even your framing of why male friendships fall apart involves women. It’s the centrality of women in your worldview that is preventing you from seeing how male friendships are a critical thing to have in addressing male loneliness.
Put another way, married men need healthy male friendships, too. Putting all of that emotional labor into a single link with a woman is fragile and unreliable, and I’d argue inherently unhealthy. People need multiple social links and the resilience and support that comes from whole groups connected in a web, not just a bunch of isolated pairings.
And to be clear, I’m not saying that friendships are a replacement for romantic and sexual relationships. I’m saying that social fluency, empathy, and thoughtfulness necessary for being able to maintain deep friendships are important skillsets for maintaining romantic relationships as well. The lack of romantic partners, then, isn’t the “base issue,” but is a symptom of the internal state of the person and how that person interacts with the world.
So I maintain that your worldview switches cause and effect, at least compared to mine. And maybe I’m wrong, and I’m not trying to convince you that I’m right. I’m bringing all this up to share that the surprising part of this line of comments is that I was genuinely not expecting someone to treat romantic difficulties as a primary or fundamental cause of male loneliness. To show you that at least there are other people who view these issues very differently from you, and that there’s a broad diversity of thought on the topic.
Fun fact. At no point in my comments you’ll see that I referred to “male friends” or “female friends”.
Plenty of men had female friends that got away because they fell in love with some other man/woman. And I don’t think toxic masculinity would have any impact in a friendship between a woman and a non-toxic man. And those relationships also break apart anyway.
It makes no difference the gender of the friends in my theory. And if course I don’t think that woman (or men) are, as a gender, the cause of male loneliness, or that women are to blame for anything, much less for also wanting to have a romantic relationship.
The only gendered part of the issue, and the reason on why we call it “male loneliness” is that women seems to have an easier time achieving romantic relationships when they want to. While men tend to have a much harder time and their loneliness tends to be involuntary more often than not. (Again not that women, as a gender, is to blame for this situation).
The thing is that you can be the best friend in the world, a partner will always come first for the other person. It’s not a matter of lack of empathy or any other"toxic male behavior" here. It’s just people having different priorities in life. And a problem with some people being no one’s priority. And I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with feeling bad about not being anyone number one priority in life, it’s just a plain sad fact that’s normal to make people sad about it.
I’m not convinced that my theory is true. As this is an incredibly complex topic. I just think that the whole “male toxicity is to blame” is just an easy scape goat or political dogma. “Toxic masculinity and sexism is bad so it must be the cause of every gendered issue in society”, and then constructing the argument needed for that statement to maintain true. And while sexism it’s obviously bad, it does not need to be the source of any and all problems. Some problems, I think, have other sources.
