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hat number at 63%!
Another study showed that less than half of men say they are satisfied with their friendships.
In 1990, 40% of men said they had six to nine close friends while only 3% said they had no close friends. Today, those numbers are tied with both groups at 15%. That’s roughly 1 in 7 men who today would say they don’t believe they have even one other person that they can trust to walk through life with.
These statistics and many others have led many, including the Surgeon General of the United States, to declare a national epidemic of loneliness, with those affected the most being men. Today, we continue our October series on the problem with men, as we breakdown three reasons we see behind the loneliness epidemic and why men keep trying to go it alone.
The first cause that most people will point to is the social pressure caused by our cultures unhealthy depictions and expectations for masculinity. From John Wayne, to Clint Eastwood, to Batman! Strong men in movies are always supposed to have a chip on their shoulder that make them always want to be the lone warrior. Stoicism is the name of the game. We’re not supposed to show emotions, if we have any emotions at all, except for anger. Men don’t need help. We’re supposed to be reliable, strong, supporting everyone else with the weight of the world on our shoulders but no one around to care for us because we shouldn’t need that. This is the common trope that many people point to as the epitome of “toxic masculinity” that is permeating our culture. The problem is, even going back to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, those traits that supposedly made them the paragons of manliness were almost always exposed in those films as being character flaws and weaknesses they needed to overcome. That’s the whole point of a character arc – the man they started the film out as is not the same man we see before the credits roll. Even Batman, the dark knight himself, had robin...and robin...and robin... and even a girl robin one time and then another robin or two after that. Even outside of the cave, there’s an entire extended bat-family and beyond that the Justice League. Of course, there are always going to be a certain number of people who miss the point, but for most men who grew up watching these movies and reading these stories, we know that what makes Batman or Rooster Cogburn heroes was not the fact that they did it alone, but that they were willing to sacrifice and put themselves on the line for the safety and wellbeing of others. I mean, even the Lone Ranger himself had Tonto! So, I don’t think the movies and comics can take all of the blame here.
If we look into those characters arcs, though, we will usually find a common thread at the root of why they started out alone in the beginning that could give some insight into what men are experiencing in real life. There is almost always some sort of tragic backstory or traumatic event which pushed them into a self-imposed isolation. It’s SUPER tempting to stop there – that's the reason, right? That’s as deep as it goes? Not quite. To dig deeper into the pathology behind the behavior, you have to ask the question, “Why?” I mean, a lot of people experience loss, but most of those people don’t put on a cowl and cape and fight clowns in the streets. What is it about pain and trauma that causes some people to reach out for support and others – oftentimes men – to retreat into solidarity? How we respond to hurt is directly related to how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive others. Did we deserve the hurt? Was it the result of our own failure? Did it hurt others we were meant to protect or have some responsibility towards? Sometimes, men will remove themselves from community and relationship because they believe that they are the problem – that eventually they will be the cause of pain to the people they love, so they learn to stay away. Even then, though, we still haven’t dug to the root. This may be a sympathetic sounding reasoning but, isolation doesn’t just hurt the person pulling away – it impacts everyone in their lives who still needs them. This is the all-too-common example of the emotionally detached father or husband who will do all the work to “provide” for his family while depriving them of the connection that they need. This type of behavior often becomes cyclical, passed down and exacerbated from one generation to the next without intentionally breaking the cycle and replacing unhealthy patterns. So, if the heart of isolation isn’t really about protecting others, then who are so many men trying to protect? In reality, one of the biggest causes for this epidemic of loneliness in men is fear and insecurity. Retreating from relationship and putting up walls is an unhelpful means of self-preservation.
Social pressures. Insecurity. The third reason we’re going to cover for why so many men are trapped in loneliness is one I might be getting some flak for, but it has to be said: laziness. I know that sounds harsh but hear me out. Relationships are hard work. It’s been said that we, as people, are like icebergs and our natural tendency is always to drift towards isolation. The effort and intentionality necessary to maintain a relationship, much less trying to make it better over time, is constant and sometimes it seems easier to just let them deteriorate rather than work to make them grow. So, we’ll convince ourselves we don’t need them, we’re better without them, and that we actually like it this way. These are the same types of reasons many Americans make for all sorts of other unhealthy lifestyles and they’re all just covers for laziness. Again, though, there are deeper layers to it. One of the hardest things to do is be motivated to exercise when the numbers on the scale just barely seem to change, or worse, get higher as muscle replaces fat. This is the point where a lot of people give up and think to themselves, “What’s the point?” Relationships require time, conversation, confrontation, intimacy and sometimes they get better before they get worse when you have to deal with the challenges that life throws at you. Throughout human history, however, people have usually found some way to push through the hardship because we’ve always known that we need each other. With social media, however, many of us have found a superficial form of connection without many of the challenges of face-to-face communication and when things get bad, all we have to do is block and unfriend. Social media still left a lot to be desired, though, in the area of intimacy and romantic relationships, but we now have a technological answer for that in the form of AI girlfriends who are trained through our interactions to give us exactly what we think we are looking for in a romantic partner and the tech interface’s for the physical aspects of the relationship are right around the corner, as well. So, it looks like we’ve got it all figured out then and we really don’t need anyone else, right? Not even close. We need people. Relationships not only feed our need for connection and intimacy, but they also challenge us. When we take on the weight of responsibility for a spouse or a family, it is designed to mold us into the men we are meant to be. I’ve said it before, but Jesus’ response about the greatest commandment is the clearest presentation of what our purpose is as human beings; to love God with everything and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We cannot remove, in the very least, a whole half of our purpose and expect to have fulfilled souls. And, if we aren’t obeying God in the commandment to love others, how can we say that we love Him, either? Sure, we might have had crap dads, no dads, experienced trauma or hardship or a million other possible excuses, but at the end of the day they are just that; excuses. If we don’t want to be just another broken man in a long cycle of broken men, we need to stop making excuses, step up to the call and become the men we were made to be, together.
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