Call it a bromance, the buddy system or male bonding – whatever the nomenclature, chances are that it’s on life support.
The sad truth is that American men are getting significantly worse at friendship. A study in 2024 by the Survey Center on American Life found that only 26 percent of men reported having six or more close friends – a huge decline from 1990, when Gallup put this figure at 55 percent.
What’s going on?
Crystal N. Hutchinson, MSW, LCSW, a therapist who practices in Vero Beach, says numbers don’t lie. “There’s no denying men have fewer close friendships than in the past. I attribute it to several things, including more frequent job changes.
“Workplaces are an easy spot to build friendships – we often spend more time with our co-workers than with our families, particularly as pre-COVID norms return and working from home becomes less common.
“But men are likely to change jobs more often than they did years ago. A report published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships stated that it takes roughly 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend, 90 hours to go from that stage to simple ‘friend’ status and more than 200 hours before you can consider someone your close friend.
“Having the luxury of years in the same workplace gives lots of time to develop deep friendships.”
In his book, “We Need to Hang Out,” author Billy Baker writes that the biggest threat facing middle-aged men isn’t smoking or obesity – it’s loneliness.
He explains that boys engage in sports or just run with kids in the neighborhood, teenagers hang out with their buddies, college students often have a group of friends who might go out for a beer, go to a football game, or join a fraternity, and young adult men have girlfriends. Once they get married, many of the old friendships may fall away, as wives tend to arrange the social activities.
“That’s so true,” adds Hutchinson. “It’s easier for guys to have friends when they are younger.
Most are in sports or clubs, a built-in opportunity for friendship. School provides another opportunity to connect.
“Around the age of 20, it shifts, moving from what we could call a group sport to an individual sport.
“As a child, you do everything at the same time and on the same schedule. You travel through the first 18 to 20 years of your life in a very structured setting with many of the same friends and classmates.
“Since virtually everything was done in the same place, it made it easy for friendships. After college, everyone tends to scatter. They move away, get married, start new lives. Their wives tend to form the friendships and make the social plans.
“The old friends often start off keeping up with each other, but over time that can fade. This type of scattering happens again throughout life [in a highly mobile society] as we move from job to job and neighborhood to neighborhood.
“As the divorce rate increased, the effects on men’s friendship came into play,” says Hutchinson. “Typically, when a couple divorces, mutual friends support one spouse or the other. Most frequently, it’s the woman since she was the ‘social connection’ in the first place.”
A recent article in Men’s Mental Health magazine reports that when divorce enters the picture, one of the biggest losses that men face is the loss of shared social networks.
Stay-at-home dads, a relatively new phenomenon, can find it even more difficult to make new friends. This is a topic frequently discussed at Fathering Together, an online community where dads can connect and share experiences.
According to one post, “finding new friends as an at-home father is no day at the park. If you thought it was difficult to ask a girl for her phone number in a bar when you were 21, try asking another grown man for his phone number at the playground. But that is exactly what it has come to. Finding friends as a stay-at-home dad means you start at your new hangouts – the local park, school playground or zoo.”
Hutchinson thinks parenting can actually help dads make new connections. “Their activities [with their children] give them an opportunity to get to know the other dads. It’s a built-in friendship just like they had when they were young.”
Hutchinson concludes, “High-quality friendships involve intimacy, and being vulnerable, which is difficult for most men. When a young man shows emotion, he may be encouraged or discouraged. This will dictate how he grows emotionally as a young man.
“If he isn’t able to learn to express emotion as a young boy, then as a young man, it will be a lifelong problem. Therefore, his connections with men will be superficial.
“On the other hand, most women do not have a problem opening up and making themselves vulnerable emotionally, which allows them to create a closer bond. They learned at a very young age that it is OK to show emotion – they have had more practice at it.”
Crystal N. Hutchinson, MSW, LCSW, has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Florida and a master’s degree in social work from Walden University. She practices as a licensed clinical social at 902 20th Place, Vero Beach. Her phone number is 772-213-1369.
