I would guess it has something to do with the loss of third places.
Comment on what are the grievances with the "male loneliness epidemic"?
sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 20 hours agoMen aren't taught how to make and maintain emotionally open friendships,
If this was true... Why is this an issue only now?
Or all these men were lonely in the closet?
howrar@lemmy.ca 18 hours ago
sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 18 hours ago
That's definitely a factor... Suburban experiment is objective failure on many levels but it is like as much to do with cost of being out too.
Can't go to bars or restaurants anymore. Shit is too expensive for normal income person to sustain in any meaningful way.
Also, DUIs but that ties into first point.
zeropointone@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I would argue that loneliness is primarily a problem of luxury. If you have to constantly fight for survival you don’t have the resources left to think about how lonely you are, you only focus on food, water, shelter, how to avoid predators and so on. You’re simply too occupied, too tired to think about how lonely you are.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
It’s not an issue only now. But we’re not isolated than before because we lost our third spaces and communities. Bunch of lonely wolves.
kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Yep. Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone” turns 25 this year, and it’s as relevant as ever.
garbagebagel@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Its gotten worse because women are no longer forced to stay in or get into shitty, unfulfilling marriages. Men before had guaranteed companionship in the sense that it was societally and financially expected for a woman to stay in a relationship and provide emotional (and physical) companionship. With women becoming more independent, they’re able to leave abusive situations or to avoid getting into them in the first place.
Therefore, if men are not socialized to maintain friendships and no one is being forced to emotionally support them anymore, then they are lonely.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
A lot of social organizations that men had used started dying. I have a friend who runs a freemason lodge and he struggles to get people to join. Other similar social clubs have also fallen by the wayside. Similarly the decline of long term geographic community has been brutal and people are less likely to get to know their neighbors or become regulars at the local bar.
I see a lot of talk about how women’s liberation and the power to leave a bad marriage has been a component, but I suspect otherwise, having grown up with parents in a failing marriage. I strongly suspect that what a lot of these lonely men need is friends and community in a way that even a loving wife won’t cut it, much less a cold and distant wife and resentful children.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
It’s easier to not care about a guy’s mental health when he’s married, even if it’s a shitty marriage. How can he be lonely if he has a wife, after all?
I’m happy for divorces. I’m happy for the increase in male loneliness BEING NOTICED. It used to just be the guy would work all day, or drink himself to death silently, to avoid the issue.
But the next step has to be for guys to be open to make emotional friendships.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah as a woman I see a certain portion of men who seem to want to push resolving male loneliness onto women. But like, we genuinely can only help here. If men want advice from women on how to make friends and find community, we can do that, but like, even if the friends a man makes are women we didnt fix his loneliness, he went out and made friends and was vulnerable and supportive and got supported in kind.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 35 minutes ago
And that’s why the incel culture is so popular. Anytime you have a hard problem, and pitch that it’s someone else’s responsibility to fix, people will love that.
Poor people " just need to work harder", immigrants " just need to come in the right way", women " just need to be less picky", and I don’t have to change or help.