Aaron M. Renn (Author, Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture (2024)), The Problem of Male Friendship:
The lack of male friendships was the subject of a great article in the NYT Magazine [Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?]. The piece, by Sam Graham-Felsen, doesn’t just have great content. It’s also well-written, something that in itself helps explain the enduring dominance of the Times in America.
He explains the problem:
The notion that men in this country suck at friendship is so widespread that it has become a truism, a punchline. “Your dad has no friends,” John Mulaney said during an opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live.” “If you think your dad has friends, you’re wrong. Your mom has friends, and they have husbands. Those are not your dad’s friends.”
What I didn’t know 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. Polling a similar question in 1990, Gallup had put this figure at 55 percent. The same Survey Center study found that 17 percent of men have zero close friends, more than a fivefold increase since 1990.
This not only describes the problem, but it conveys an important truth that I keep hammering. Too many men only have the illusion of friendship. They think they have friends, but those people are actually just the husbands of their wives’ friends. …
In the past, work would have been one key venue where male friendships were forged and sustained. The work world used to be largely sex segregated. Men worked primarily or even exclusively with other men. As women entered these occupations, their dynamics changed considerably.
The loss of all-male spaces has made male friendship enormously difficult to create and sustain because it destroyed the milieux of that friendship. If you want to be friends with other men, it’s now something you have to do outside of everything else in life. No wonder so few men have the time or energy for that. …
I should point out that from a Christian perspective, a distinguishing characteristic of the manosphere is reliance on the self. The secret to life is to be found inside the self, both in its goals and desires, and the self-discipline and hard work necessary to achieve them.
In this framework, there’s no need for God. And as the author points out, there’s no need for friends either. Or at least they are secondary to everything else you are doing.
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