it’s not male-male relationships.
it’s every relationship.
Comment on There Is No Male Loneliness Crisis. What’s Actually Happening Is So Much Darker.
griselbrandalf@reddthat.com 6 hours agoAdding to this, and with a side note that this is not my field of expertise, my reading of a few articles from the “tsunami” of articles about male loneliness is that they don’t just focus on quantitative but also qualitative differences of social connections between men and women at large. There’s this hypothesis that close female friendships tend to be more intimate than close male friendships. This is also supported by anecdotal evidence I heard from trans-men, that the absence of love and caring in their new male-male friendships hit them like a truck after socially transitioning, compared to previous (perceived female-female /) egg-female friendships. So I don’t know whether self-reported data like number of close friends is a good metric, or if it would be more informative to ask “how many friends do you have for whom you know the names of their parents” or “how often did you talk to a friend about your feelings this month” or whatever. Again, this is all anecdotal, but this is a vibe I’m getting from other reports on this topic that I was missing in this article. Still, very good article with many valid points, particularly in the second half.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 5 hours ago
The qualitative aspect is also something I was wondering about. I wouldn't even say that men don't have intimate friendships. Men can have very intimate relationships, but they're intimate in a different way. I could also well imagine that men have less of those intimate friendships.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
that’s true. male intimacy is activity based and less talk-based, and it’s devalued as such.
this also has a lot to do with male mental health. men improve their mental health by doing things, not by talking about feelings.
but our therapy industry/culture highly values talk therapy and regards intimacy as primarily verbal.
when i tell people, women specially, about what I do to maintain my mental health. they immediately dismiss it, because it’s not talk-therapy. if I’m not in talk therapy, I must be mentally ill, if I don’t have ‘deep’ talks about my feelings with friends, they can’t be real friends, etc.
you are entirely right, it’s a massive massive mismatch in expectations and definitions of what these things mean.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz@sopuli.xyz 22 minutes ago
What a stunningly obtuse thought terminating belief.