The “male loneliness epidemic” is the hottest talking point in town. So much so that it has almost become a meme. A lot of people are lonely, and it only gets harder as we get older and the technology meant to connect us often drives us further apart.
But men do face unique challenges creating and maintaining friendships, especially as they age and become fathers. That much is true. What’s more: A lot of the boilerplate advice on how to make friends as we age just doesn’t work for dads, or busy men over 30 in general.
One dad offers a brilliantly simple way of rethinking male friendship
A lot of the popular advice pins much of the blame for male loneliness on men’s (societally enforced) difficulty opening up and showing genuine emotion and vulnerability. It keeps friendly acquaintances at bay and makes men overly reliant on their romantic partners for any kind of emotional support.
It may be true, but it also somewhat misses the mark. At least according to Taylor Calmus, a wildly popular content creator known as “Dude Dad.”
In a recent video on YouTube and Instagram, he says friendships get hard for guys when the structured activities of their youth evaporate:
“Like kindergarten, you’re eating blue crayons and the kid next to you also likes blue and then boom, a decade long friendship is formed. … You see, men make friends through proximity. Guys they go to school with, play sports with, work with. But as we get older, these structures start to disappear.”
For dads, in particular—Calmus’ audience—things get even more difficult. Free time dries up, priorities change, and the time to join a sports league or go bowling alone in the hopes you’ll meet another enthusiast pretty much disappears. This happens to women, too, of course, but Calmus says they’re usually better equipped to deal with it.
“[Women] do this thing called emotional connection,” Calmus said. “They can literally sit down to coffee together, look each other in the face, and have a conversation.”
In other words, moms may be better at sustaining a friendship through quick chats at the bus stop, text messages, or grabbing coffee on the weekends. Guys can do this, too, but it misses the root of how we are truly wired to connect with each other.
“Men don’t have relationships face-to-face. They have relationships shoulder to shoulder,” Calmus said. “We need a grill to stand around or a hood to look under or a fence to fix. We need something to work on together that gives us a chance to connect. We need shared experience.”
(He also suggests a six-pack of beer: Completely optional.)
Calmus says the best thing men, or dads, can do is invite a friend—or a budding acquaintance—over to help with a project: “Trust me, you are not being a burden. Guys like to save the day. We love to be useful.”
‘Shoulder to shoulder’ friendship comes straight from scientific literature
If the advice sounds like it’s oversimplifying the differences between sexes, it might be. But there’s a good bit of academic research to back it up.
Deborah Tannen wrote in her incredibly popular 1990 book You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation:
“For males, conversation is the way you negotiate your status in the group and keep people from pushing you around; you use talk to preserve your independence. Females, on the other hand, use conversation to negotiate closeness and intimacy; talk is the essence of intimacy, so being best friends means sitting and talking. For boys, activities, doing things together, are central.”
Psychologist and researcher Geoffrey Greif likely coined the “shoulder-to-shoulder” theory of male friendship in the early 2000s. But Richard Reeves, CEO of the American Institute for Boys and Men, affirmed it as recently as last year on PBS:
“And so whilst I really applaud this move in my own life to try and definitely be more open about expressing love and physical affection for male friends, we should also be very careful not to end up treating men as if they’re malfunctioning. As if actually we can’t have some differences in the way that male friendships work. There are differences in the dynamics of male and female friendships, and that’s okay.”
In other words, science and psychology agree that for a lot of men; yes, it’s good to learn to be more vulnerable and affectionate and to open up.
But just talking with friends more may not be enough.
This concept even inspired a beloved episode of Bluey, called “Stumpfest.” In the episode, Bluey and Bingo curiously watch their dad and a group of guys from the neighborhood try to remove a tree stump from the yard before realizing: This is how they play together.
Back to Calmus, who recalls only having one friend when he moved to Colorado, where he currently resides. But that one friend had a hunch he’d hit it off with one of his own buddies.
“His name is John. And he showed up in my house with beer. And I proceeded to spend two hours with John as he installed a ceiling fan for me. I don’t even know this guy,” Calmus recalled. “But now me and John have been friends for six years.” In fact, Calmus still calls him “Ceiling Fan John.”
Male friendships matter. Not just for health and wellness, but for dads, they are for the greater good of the whole family.
“Our wife and our kids should always be our number one priority,” Calmus said. “But having an identity outside of that allows us to show up to them more fully.”
