The Art of Manliness - #360： Why Men Have a Hard Time Making Friends in Adulthood

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well it's a common

00:00:18.880 trope that adult men don't value friendship as much as their female counterparts and that men

00:00:23.380 really don't need or want friends like women do but my guest today argues that that assumption 1.00

00:00:27.540 is wrong and comes from viewing friendship from a strictly female point of view in fact based on his

00:00:32.380 research most adult men very much want good friends but just don't know how to make them what's more he

00:00:36.640 says male friendships look different for female ones and we should stop judging the quality of

00:00:40.820 male friendships based on how women do relationships my guest name is jeffrey greif he's a professor of

00:00:45.680 sociology at university of maryland and he's the author of the book buddy system understanding

00:00:49.940 male friendships and today on the show jeffrey shares the common myths about male friendships

00:00:54.120 the benefits men get from having friends and how male friendships are different from female

00:00:58.500 friendships he then discusses the four types of friends a man will have in his life how friendship

00:01:02.420 changes as men age and how fathers have huge influence on both their sons and daughters on

00:01:07.240 whether they'll have friends as adults jeffrey then shares his research on how couples navigate

00:01:12.000 friendships together and why some brothers are best friends while others won't talk to each other

00:01:15.800 for years even though there's no grudge there at all really fascinating show after the show's over

00:01:19.960 check out our show notes at aom.is buddy system where you find links to resources where you can

00:01:24.640 delve deeper into this topic jeffrey greif welcome to the show thank you very much brett so you wrote

00:01:33.500 a book highlighting research you did on male friendships called the buddy system curious before we get into the

00:01:40.200 details about the book what what led you down that path to research friendship but particularly male

00:01:45.280 friendship since my master's program in the early 70s i've always been interested in men in non-traditional

00:01:53.060 roles i did my dissertation a few years later on single fathers raising their children alone

00:02:01.140 after divorce and then i followed that up with another book on the same topic and a book on

00:02:08.080 mothers without custody and so that's how i became interested in the topic i was a father who was very

00:02:17.360 engaged and i've always been married to the same woman very engaged in raising his children so i've had an

00:02:24.020 interest in men in non-traditional roles men's consciousness raising groups in the early 70s so it was a natural

00:02:32.360 path to follow to look at men and fathers and then as i did a bunch of other research i came back to the

00:02:40.000 notion of what about men and their male friendships how do men handle a range of roles in which they are

00:02:48.280 placed so that's sort of is the genesis was maybe 25 years before i actually did the final work on this

00:02:57.140 and as you highlight in your book there's a lot of myths about male friendships what are the most

00:03:03.960 common ones that you found in your your research i think the most common myth around men's friendships

00:03:11.380 is that they are not as important to men as women's friendships are to women and what i try to

00:03:21.160 describe in the book is that this is a relationship that is highly important to many men it just does

00:03:29.440 not look like what a woman's friendship might look like women tend to have friendships that are more

00:03:37.100 emotionally and physically expressive than do men and men's friendships tend to be on the other side of

00:03:46.280 this of course less emotionally uh and physically expressive so when a man might go and watch the

00:03:54.700 football game at his friend's house and come back home his wife or partner will say uh wife might say

00:04:04.140 did you know that bill was breaking up and the man might say it never came up and she might say what

00:04:09.980 kind of a friendship is that well a lot of men don't necessarily want friendships where they have to

00:04:19.140 open up emotionally a great deal but that does not mean that the friendship is not incredibly important

00:04:27.260 you think of the men in war who share a foxhole with each other and then 25 years later

00:04:36.900 one combatant will call the other former combatant and say can you come and help me and either friend

00:04:46.360 would drop everything they're doing no questions asked and go and help the other guy without

00:04:51.980 necessarily needing to talk about it so i think it's a matter of men tend to be in general and they tend

00:04:59.280 to construct their friendships differently than women but they tend to be in general less physically and 0.92

00:05:05.120 emotionally expressive but it does not mean that their male friendships are not incredibly important

00:05:11.040 to them and why do you think like the female type of friendship is sort of held up as the ideal 0.98

00:05:16.400 right like you know and because of that men's friendships are seen as defective i think that

00:05:22.160 women because they are greater experts at communication are able to communicate uh that this is an important 1.00

00:05:30.040 part of their their lives and that also a lot of men do open up to women more than they open up to men

00:05:38.920 and it's been said that if you ask a lot of husbands who their best friend is they will say it's their

00:05:45.640 wife whereas you ask that same question of the wives they will often mention other women not their

00:05:54.280 husband in part because men have not been trained to the extent that i wish we had been trained to be

00:06:01.720 good listeners and to be good processors but again i want to frame this as it doesn't mean that men's

00:06:09.160 friendships are less than or it's a deficit model of friendship it's just that we're interested in

00:06:16.440 different things and different relationships that are women and another difference you highlight between 1.00

00:06:21.480 um the male female friendship is men's friendships tend to be side by side and women's tends to be you know facing

00:06:28.680 each other what do you what do you mean by that yeah yeah in the book we talk about i talk about this being a

00:06:33.880 shoulder-to-shoulder relationship men like to get together and do things with other people and we can say that's a

00:06:43.480 throwback to the early years the cavemen years where we had to go out in groups and hunt or we had to go out

00:06:53.560 and defend the homestead the fields the cave whatever it is that was being defended and we had to travel

00:07:03.960 that way shoulder to shoulder so we got accustomed to going out in shoulder to shoulder ways and we still feel

00:07:11.240 more comfortable relating to each other so men tend to call up their friends and say let's go out and

00:07:17.960 do something let's go play sports let's go to the bar and watch sports come to my house and we'll watch

00:07:25.480 sports women tend to feel more comfortable and going back to the cave women while the men were out the 0.97

00:07:32.680 women in the beginning of the neolithic age would go and be working together in tandem maybe tending 1.00

00:07:40.280 the crops maybe taking care of children maybe preparing a food they were doing much more face-to-face

00:07:47.000 activities women today still feel more comfortable having an intimate face-to-face discussion with another

00:07:54.440 woman so it's rare you'll hear men say let's get together and have a glass of wine at a at this great

00:08:02.680 new intimate french restaurant that just opened up men i think in general would not feel as comfortable

00:08:09.320 talking about that and going to that kind of an event as would women so in your book it's called

00:08:15.480 the buddy system and it's it's this system of categorization of friends that men have can you

00:08:21.800 walk us through these four types of friends that men have and where do you see most men like lying

00:08:28.280 like where do they get most of their friendship at good question i was able to after reading through

00:08:33.720 the qualitative interviews the survey data to come up with four different categories and to make them

00:08:41.400 easy to remember maybe for only me i rhymed them so the most intimate are your must friends these are people

00:08:51.800 that you must call if something catastrophically bad or catastrophically good happens you lose a

00:09:01.160 family member or you win the lottery who were the first two three or four men that you're going to call

00:09:07.080 these are your closest your must friends and that's a pretty small category there's

00:09:14.280 a second wider category called trust friends and these are guys that i might see at parties i might

00:09:23.880 run into them in the store or at some event and i love talking to them i trust them i feel

00:09:32.840 we have something good going but we're often traveling in different circles and are not going

00:09:39.400 to necessarily find a lot of time to get together and maybe they don't have quite that level of

00:09:45.400 intimacy with me but i can still trust them and feel very connected to them so that's a a nice size

00:09:54.200 category you get into a larger category of people that are just friends those are acquaintances people you

00:10:01.720 know at work people maybe you go out to lunch with they may know about your life they may not know

00:10:07.640 about your life they are certainly not going to know about your most personal details should you

00:10:14.440 choose to share those with your must or your trust friends but they're still people that you

00:10:20.120 hang with from time to time though maybe not in a planful way maybe more spontaneously

00:10:27.080 and then there are your rust friends those that are friends from way back a lot of people have

00:10:34.280 friends that they made in high school college early jobs that they really haven't kept up with but

00:10:41.480 every time an alumni event comes up your 30th your 40th your 50th you go back and see these people

00:10:48.840 again and you are taken back to the time when maybe you were very close with them but your lives have

00:10:56.280 settled in different parts of the country or in different professions or in different

00:11:01.960 political interests and so your rust friends can be your must friends a lot of men hold on to

00:11:10.680 friends from high school and say these are the most important friends that i i have because i need to have

00:11:16.920 known somebody for a long time to really consider them a friend so there can be overlaps between the rust

00:11:24.040 and the must friend or the trust friend but it's just a way of my trying to categorize friendships

00:11:31.960 and saying well wait a minute there's a way of thinking about these and do women have these same 1.00

00:11:36.040 type of four friends or is it just sort of a more type of you see this more in men you know i've never

00:11:41.720 been asked that question before um and i did interview 120 women for the book um and compared 0.75

00:11:50.440 some of their responses to some of the men's i would say that there is a great uh similarity between the

00:11:58.680 two i think these do work across gender and where do you see most men i don't know what category of

00:12:05.880 friends do most men have when you ask men and we ask them specifically do you have enough friends

00:12:11.960 um a fair minority said no i wish i had more friends there were men that did say that they

00:12:19.080 have enough and sometimes that can be two three or four friends i want to say that there was at least

00:12:26.760 one or two men who said i only have one good friend and that's all i need so i want to get away

00:12:32.760 from the notion of one has to have a lot of friends in order to be a a good person or to have uh strong

00:12:42.760 friendships if somebody says all i need is one friend to sustain myself i'm going to take that

00:12:49.880 person at his word it does get into some of what of what the greek philosopher aristotle said about the

00:12:57.560 number of friends and he wrote a great deal in nicomachean ethics about friendships and one of

00:13:04.840 them one of his key points is that friendship is such a wonderful state of affairs and should be held in

00:13:13.000 such high esteem that one really can't have too many friends because a true friendship takes so much out

00:13:21.320 of one so when we get into the number of friends i think it's hard to really classify these things we

00:13:30.760 do know and the data not mine but others public health data support the obvious that people with

00:13:39.880 large social networks people with friendships live longer happier healthier lives and of course that

00:13:47.400 makes sense you get more social stimulation from people and you also may learn more things i may see

00:13:55.000 a friend who says you don't look very good have you been going to the doctor and that may be the kind 0.72

00:14:00.920 of encounter that would push me to finally go and see the doctor to realize that i need to do something

00:14:07.560 about an issue that i have so i know we've morphed from the discussion about uh the categories into the

00:14:14.600 the the number and now into aristotle but i think it's important to sort of look at this

00:14:20.520 from a perspective of where do friendships sit in our life and what are we trying to accomplish and

00:14:27.960 what do we gain from them right um but i've also you know going back to that the you know you

00:14:33.240 highlighted the research saying that friends friendship provides all these amazing benefits

00:14:38.120 in terms of health there's also all these reports that men today are lonelier than ever

00:14:43.400 or i mean just like not just men it's like people in general are lonelier than ever but particularly

00:14:48.840 men because maybe there's not a depth at making friends since you've done this research have you

00:14:53.720 know have you been following up you know and seeing how things have changed in terms of the number of

00:14:59.000 friends people have or how important friendship is i think it's conflated a lot with and the pew research

00:15:06.440 center does a fair amount of research on contacts and friendships through media like facebook do i have

00:15:16.200 more friends now because i can track people down and see how they're going how they're doing am i less

00:15:23.320 isolated now because i can decide to track somebody down and send them a quick post whereas before

00:15:30.920 would have required me to find their name in the phone book someplace so i don't know about how that

00:15:39.400 is sitting in terms of greater ease of contact but does that equal less meaningful contact i think

00:15:47.560 it's a really difficult thing to determine if men are and women are more lonely than they are

00:15:53.400 today i think certainly men are more open they are more emotionally and physically expressive younger men

00:16:02.680 are more openly expressive than were their fathers and their grandfathers and i think that can in fact

00:16:10.280 bode well for people we're much more accepting of people that are different than ourselves especially

00:16:16.600 in relations to to gays and lesbians they are much more accepted and if gay men are more accepted it

00:16:25.400 makes straight men not feel as uptight about being emotionally expressive as their fathers or grandfathers

00:16:33.160 would have been yeah that's interesting point we've done a lot of uh writing and research about

00:16:37.080 the history of male friendship and one thing i was surprised about and struck by if you go back to

00:16:41.240 the 19th century or the 18th century and even the ancient greeks is like how the the male friendships

00:16:47.080 then were very uh emotive and they're very expressive yeah and they you write you see these letters from

00:16:53.240 the founding fathers to each other and they're just like you're so dear to me and i love you and i wish

00:16:57.480 i could be next to you and you know the sociologists who've done this stuff they said well the reason why

00:17:02.120 they were able to do that is because there wasn't like homosexuality or gay didn't really exist like the idea

00:17:07.880 of it it was an identity didn't exist so they weren't worried about that but as that changed

00:17:11.720 happened the late 19th early 20th century that's when men became like okay i can't i can't be that

00:17:16.920 because i don't want people to think i'm gay yeah and of course i write about that in the book but uh

00:17:22.760 borrowing the research of other people the other historical research and i didn't know that the term

00:17:27.960 homosexual didn't exist until the end of the 19th century and i'm citing someone else's work on that

00:17:35.000 because i haven't looked at the primary source material but i concluded from what i read at that

00:17:41.720 point was that somehow the role of straight and strong man became it came under fire as more african

00:17:50.920 americans and more women entered the workforce men's privileged role white men's privileged role and we

00:17:58.680 still have a great deal of privilege now being white men i believe came under pressure so people

00:18:05.160 tried to distance themselves you used to see young boys two and three year olds with bowl haircuts and

00:18:12.440 long hair and at some point that became uh not something that mothers or fathers wanted their

00:18:19.480 children to be photographed as or painted as so there was a push away and an attempt to be more

00:18:27.560 more masculine i think that's when men started to separate themselves more emotionally and to be

00:18:33.640 a little more concerned with how they came across to each other and to society you know the image of the

00:18:42.040 the lover is twofold from 400 500 years ago you were the uh the poet the the man with the golden

00:18:51.880 tongue who could woo a woman by standing outside her her window and reciting poetry on the one hand but

00:19:01.080 there was also the knight in charming shining armor on the other hand so it's an interesting balance between

00:19:08.360 the between the two one could be masculine and be a great poet silver-tongued or one could be masculine

00:19:17.240 and be the strongest best knight on the playing field yeah they had a much more i guess broader

00:19:23.240 idea they kind of encapsulated the brains in the bra and we seem to be very mono monolithic

00:19:30.040 today well let's get into the chapter i thought was really interesting i never really thought about

00:19:33.880 in terms of my friendships is when you interview the men interview the men you talk to about how their

00:19:40.280 father father's friendships influence their ideas of friendship can you talk a little bit about that

00:19:46.440 yeah and it's not a real surprise that borrowing from the family therapist murray bowen who wrote a

00:19:56.120 great deal about the intergenerational transmission of values and what we learn from our fathers and

00:20:05.080 grandfathers obviously we stand on the shoulders of those that came before us and i think it's important to

00:20:12.920 think about that we clearly learn a lot from our mothers and our fathers and we found that people

00:20:19.800 learned about friendships from their fathers about what kind of friends did my father keep and what are

00:20:26.520 the implications of that for me and there are usually uh three ways to go with this either you follow in the

00:20:34.600 the same pattern as your father you take the exact opposite approach or your father's uh patterns have

00:20:43.480 no influence on you a lot of the men that i work with now and i had been running uh groups for fathers

00:20:51.240 in prison uh we talk about what message did you get from your father and a lot of these guys did not

00:20:59.320 have fathers in their lives and they swore to themselves before they got into prison i'm not

00:21:05.880 going to abandon my children the way that my father abandoned me and they feel guilty about

00:21:13.400 not being there anymore for their children after their father weren't there was not there for them and

00:21:19.160 we of course encourage in the group that they stay involved even though they are physically absent they can

00:21:24.840 still be emotionally present but what we learn from our fathers and from our mothers is incredibly

00:21:31.880 important and can guide a lot of what we do in a more recent book i have out on adult sibling

00:21:39.720 relationships we found interestingly enough that and these are interviews with people 40 to 90 if you

00:21:48.520 believed your father was close with his siblings you were more apt to be close with your siblings

00:21:56.200 whereas mother's closeness with her siblings which is much more common than fathers being close with

00:22:04.120 their siblings is not a predictor of closeness with your own siblings so if you grow up and see your

00:22:11.080 father very engaged with his brothers and sisters it's going to encourage you to be engaged with your own

00:22:16.360 siblings and that's an important part of a public health also so in general this is under the whole

00:22:23.800 mantle of the importance of what we learn from our parents and in this case we're looking at at dads

00:22:29.960 yeah i mean it's amazing sometimes we underestimate the power of of a father we had a guest on a while

00:22:34.840 back ago highlighting the research and he saw something similar where the father had more of an influence

00:22:40.200 on the children than the mother did it was like if there's a father in the like the children track like

00:22:45.480 their father's bmi so like the father was weight but the mother was not like their the children were 0.56

00:22:51.320 more likely to be overweight but if the mother was overweight but the dad wasn't then the children 0.89

00:22:56.760 weren't going to be overweight so interesting i didn't know that yeah mother had no influence 1.00

00:23:01.560 on it but the dad did right interesting so going back to i like this idea of sibling relationships

00:23:07.320 so the dad has a big influence but are there any other factors that contribute to

00:23:11.960 i know some siblings particularly brothers who are like they would say their best friend is

00:23:16.680 their brother but there's some sibling like their brother just like it's just some person like after

00:23:21.560 after they leave the house they really don't have much to do with each other it's like not that they

00:23:24.760 don't love each other or care about each other but they wouldn't say these are best friends so

00:23:29.000 what besides the dad are there any other differences you found there in your research

00:23:32.760 in terms of the sibling findings yeah the sibling like why why are some siblings best friends or why

00:23:37.560 some brothers are best friends and um there are brothers that are best friends that was a minority

00:23:42.600 of those we talked to it's such a complicated relationship with your sibling if you're talking

00:23:48.440 about two brothers there's often a great deal of competition between them there are you know 10

00:23:54.440 million interactions you have with your siblings as you're growing up and your siblings rather than men's

00:24:01.080 friendships and women's friendships are in most cases the longest relationship you're ever going to have 0.99

00:24:06.840 longer than with your friends unless you become a friend at a very young young age before another

00:24:11.880 sibling is born longer than your relationship with your partner and your parents and with your

00:24:16.760 children so the notion of trying to get through childhood and then into adulthood and staying close

00:24:25.640 with somebody is very difficult i can drop a friend if i don't like him if he does something i think

00:24:31.720 is beyond repair for our relationship it's harder to drop a sibling because they are always a shadow

00:24:40.520 in your life whether or not you're close with them or emotionally cut off from them and have no

00:24:46.760 contact with them in comparing men's and women's or brothers and sisters relationship sisters like women

00:24:54.840 tend to play a more central role we found in navigating these relationships they tended to

00:25:00.440 be the conduit they tended to feel more comfortable talking to each other than did uh brothers though the

00:25:09.560 younger brothers in the 40 to 55 range looked pretty comfortable too and had a comparable level of

00:25:17.480 comfort in talking about important matters with their siblings as did all of the women it was the older

00:25:24.200 men the 55 to 85 or 90 uh group of brothers that tended to have the least amount of communication

00:25:33.960 so having a brother with whom one is close and is a best friend that i'm very very close with my brother

00:25:39.960 is to some extent based sometimes on what our parents did on what the siblings parents did we found that

00:25:49.640 if there's more perceived interference from a parent when siblings are young that means siblings are not

00:25:56.920 going to be as close to each other and interference is essentially cross-culturally looked at from the

00:26:06.280 speaker's point of view everybody knows what interference is but what interference in some

00:26:11.560 culture might look from the outside is different from what it might look like in another culture and

00:26:17.800 that's different from a parent intervening to protect one child from the other or stepping in and

00:26:24.040 saying look stop beating up your your younger brother it's more the sense that a parent incorrectly

00:26:31.000 interfered and tried to do too much um to try and solve a relationship for brothers or for brothers

00:26:39.640 and sisters whereas the siblings by the time they got to be adults thought they probably could have worked

00:26:46.280 out some of these issues by themselves so there's a lot of learning that we get from our parents but

00:26:51.640 there's also a lot of behaviors that we get from our parents if they are overly involved where maybe they

00:26:58.360 shouldn't be involved so you mentioned just now that um in your research you talk to men throughout

00:27:04.600 the ages so different age demographics from their 20s into their 90s you even highlighted so let's talk

00:27:09.720 about how do friendships change for a man as he goes through these different decades of his life

00:27:14.280 and let's start with the 20s like what does a typical man friendships look like when he's 23 24 25

00:27:21.000 pretty much across the lifespan what happens is that friendships when you're in your late teens

00:27:27.560 early 20s take on great importance and even from the time we go to kindergarten the teacher sends

00:27:35.480 home a report of johnny plays well with the other kids or johnny has friends so it's always been on

00:27:41.720 the radar and it stays on the radar through adolescence and young adulthood what tends to happen is when

00:27:49.480 people get married and again we'll just assume a heterosexual marriage at this point that the

00:27:55.480 man um tends to have less time for his friendships and tends to put more time into his relationship

00:28:03.960 with his spouse tends to put more time into his job because he's climbing the career path or trying to

00:28:11.160 hold on to his job and tends to of course spend more time with his children the hardest thing for

00:28:18.360 all people men and women to balance in relationships is time how much time do i as a man have to spend

00:28:27.080 with my male friends without my wife around how much time do i have for me alone how much time

00:28:34.760 do i have for just my wife alone how much time do my wife and i have for our couple's friends and how

00:28:40.680 much time do we have for family so there are a lot of different spheres of time that we have to try and

00:28:47.320 balance and in the 20s assuming somebody gets married in their late 20s is when some of those

00:28:53.560 old friendships might get let go in favor of spending time with one's wife and trying to build

00:29:01.240 a relationship with that wife in the 30s you have children in many families and then of course it just

00:29:08.680 takes up more time what's interesting is that when children are first born fathers tend to spend time

00:29:17.320 around sports that the father or mother has entered the children in so if i grew up playing tennis and i

00:29:25.480 play tennis on my college tennis team i'm probably going to put a tennis racket in my kid's hand before 0.97

00:29:32.200 i'm going to put a soccer ball uh in front of the kid so maybe we'll go to to tennis lessons and i'll

00:29:38.760 meet other fathers that are sitting there watching their kids and then we make friendships around

00:29:45.480 tennis and maybe the the father and i go and hit some tennis balls because he's like me but as the

00:29:51.400 child reaches seven eight nine ten maybe the child says you know i don't like tennis i like soccer

00:29:57.240 or i like football and if i let the child play football i'm then going to be hanging out with

00:30:03.240 football dads who i may not have as much in common with so there may be some distancing there from

00:30:11.080 people that i might meet through my kids and a lot of people in our study said they made friends

00:30:18.120 through their children you obviously make friends in school college work and through your children and

00:30:25.560 sometimes in the neighborhood too or through common interests biking chess playing basketball whatever

00:30:32.760 you do and then of course it's in the i'm skipping the 40s because it's a little bit more of the same

00:30:39.000 it's in the late 40s or early 50s depending upon the age of one's children that all of a sudden

00:30:45.000 the children are saying you know dad get out of my life but first drop me and susie off at the mall

00:30:52.200 or whatever the story is and the father then finds that his marriage hopefully is stable his children

00:31:00.680 no longer need him hopefully his job is stable though that's much more up in the air than it

00:31:05.640 was generations ago with the many job changes that we see in society and that's when men begin to say

00:31:13.320 i really have more time on my hands now saturdays can go back to me again my kids are doing their

00:31:19.240 homework or they've left for college or they're playing sports and they don't need me they can

00:31:23.160 drive themselves and that's when men start to need their male friendships more and i have out another

00:31:30.200 book on how couples make friends with other couples and that's when couples begin to hang out again

00:31:36.760 together with other couples in their 50s and 60s when both mom and dad or the husband and wife or it could

00:31:43.320 be the husband and husband and the wife and wife have more time to themselves and they're looking for

00:31:49.240 meaning they may start to connect again with other couples um once that couple's kids are out of the

00:31:56.360 house too so that's sort of a brief look across the lifespan but friends become very important in the 60s

00:32:05.080 70s 80s though we begin to lose friends as they die as they move to florida or arizona if you live in a

00:32:13.640 northern clime and you don't see them as much anymore maybe they're spending more time with

00:32:19.240 grandchildren if they're involved in grandchild rearing and helping out there and one of the things that

00:32:27.320 i learned from the men and buddy system is that a lot of them said they couldn't make friends again

00:32:33.320 they their only true friends were the ones that they had from when they were children

00:32:38.360 or when they were in college and i try to disabuse people though it's hard to do with the notion

00:32:44.840 that you can of course make friends at the age of 75 that become good friends i agree they won't know

00:32:51.240 you as they did when you were 20 but it doesn't mean that you cannot value that relationship that you

00:32:57.400 can build now and that can become very beneficial to your happiness and to your well-being

00:33:03.640 yeah there's a lot to unpack there i mean going to that idea of friends becoming more important as

00:33:07.800 you get older um it was really sad so my grandfather died last year he's 100 wow one of the things that

00:33:13.880 you know he would talk about you know it's like you know grandpa how you doing and he would say oh

00:33:18.280 you know it's just i had to go to another funeral right and he's like all my friends are dead yeah and

00:33:23.640 you can tell it affected him right because he had his family but he didn't he didn't have his friends

00:33:28.200 anymore yeah and that was hard on him um i think that's another issue you're going to start running

00:33:32.040 into more as you know the lifespan starts extending thanks to our you know advances in health care

00:33:39.640 absolutely go back to this idea of couple friends um so i'd love to dig into this because i think

00:33:45.160 whenever you get into your 30s and you're married i know for a lot of men that's how they make their

00:33:50.520 friends is like they don't they don't have time to go out by themselves and do or they feel they

00:33:55.320 don't have the time or they feel bad for going off by them by themselves how so they they rely on their

00:34:01.000 wife to basically for their social life how does that play out though because that's a weird dynamic 0.99

00:34:06.040 because you have you know the wives might get along together but then the the the men you know they're 0.60

00:34:13.240 not they might not hate each other but like they don't have a lot in common so when they get together

00:34:17.160 it's like uh i mean did when you interviewed your the men in your study did did they talk about that

00:34:23.560 dynamic yeah there's the general dynamic about we like him but we don't like her or you like her but i

00:34:31.240 don't like him and that happens in every couple that it's rare not every couple some couples and

00:34:37.720 i'm sure you if you're partnered and i and my wife have couples where we really like both members of

00:34:44.040 the couple and i don't care if i'm talking to one of them or the other one but there's always going to

00:34:49.640 be someone who you like a little bit less and maybe you're convincing your partner we really need to

00:34:57.000 spend some time with them and she'll say okay but let's make it for a movie so i don't have to talk

00:35:02.760 to them that much or that kind of thing there's that balancing i think and we i talk about this in

00:35:09.560 two plus two the couple's friendship book there's a broader way of looking at this and there are couples

00:35:16.760 that we were able to classify kathy deal and i into seekers keepers and nesters and forgive me for

00:35:25.880 going through these three categories i love it this is great seekers are couples that are always

00:35:31.800 looking to add other couples so if i go out to dinner with my wife and we happen to chat with

00:35:38.120 a couple at the next table we'll say oh you know come on over for dessert and you're always sort of

00:35:42.280 looking to add people these are obviously extroverts uh in general and there there are not too many it's

00:35:50.600 impossible to have too many couples friends because you just love talking to people there are keepers 1.00

00:35:55.640 which is a large group of folks that have a lot of friends or a lot of obligations with their

00:36:03.000 children or family members and they've got friendships they're open to other couples but

00:36:08.360 they're not out looking to add to their pile of couples friends and that's a fairly common uh experience

00:36:18.520 to have enough friends and enough family and not really looking to add on and then there are nesters that

00:36:24.440 tend to tend to be introverts or tend to be couples that are

00:36:28.680 marrying maybe for the second time or finding each other late in life and really only feel

00:36:34.120 comfortable with very few other couples want to spend time with each other maybe alone or with one

00:36:40.120 or two couples and tend to be introverts now i talk about couples as being similar they are not i am a

00:36:47.960 seeker and my wife is a nester she would rather hang out with one or two couples only i'm the kind of guy

00:36:56.760 that picks up other couples at the restaurant and say come on over and that can be a little bit annoying

00:37:01.960 to her so she pulls me in to the middle and i pull her more into the middle and we have to balance

00:37:09.000 that we have to have a discussion so these categories are a way for couples to talk about

00:37:14.120 you know how much do we want to add uh friendships to our our lives uh what do we want to do with

00:37:21.240 keeping the friends we have and there's another axis to think about that cross cuts this which are

00:37:27.880 whether or not you are emotion seeking or fun seeking as a couple a lot of couples are fun seeking

00:37:36.200 they want to go out and play golf together have a nice dinner see a movie and they don't want to get

00:37:43.240 into heavy stuff they want to keep it light and if you have a very packed in week and you just are

00:37:50.920 a busy person you've got a lot of stuff going on a lot of people especially men don't want to go out

00:37:55.960 and have some heavy emotional talk um on the weekend it goes back to the shoulder to shoulder friend

00:38:02.600 uh face-to-face issue we raised a little bit ago but there are also people that want to have

00:38:09.160 the emotion seeking couples feel really comfortable and want to connect with people around emotions

00:38:15.080 now emotion seeking people also like to have fun but they're interested in really a much more

00:38:21.080 in-depth discussion and those are men that are going to be more comfortable having a face-to-face

00:38:27.000 conversation and so that's how we can think about these couples on two axes number one are you seeking

00:38:34.600 more couples are you comfortable with what you have or do you really want to keep the small number you

00:38:39.240 have and secondly what do you want to do with your friends and so with that blueprint couples need to

00:38:45.640 talk about that and think about what do we want to do with our our friendships and um what is the dynamic

00:38:53.000 like for friendships where it's just like the man has his friends nothing to do with the wife the

00:38:59.400 wife has her friends nothing to do is that like a did you talk about that and is that like source of 1.00

00:39:05.720 yeah yeah we talked about that and usually you know couples can ideally come to some understanding

00:39:11.560 look why don't you go out with with your male friends tonight i'll go out with my female friends

00:39:15.320 tonight and you know i i appreciate joe is a good friend of yours but i really don't want to hear his

00:39:22.440 his talking anymore about sports because all you guys talk about is sports when we're together so why

00:39:27.240 don't you go hang with him and i'll either hang alone or i'll go hang out with one or a number of my

00:39:34.760 friends and as long as couples talk about this and they are clear the other side of this is of course

00:39:41.400 uh for men if we're focusing on men is some wives don't want their husbands to go and hang out with 0.99

00:39:49.320 certain guys because especially when they're younger they're they're not a good influence on them so if

00:39:54.440 you are a recently married couple and your wife has sort of taken you away from your fast crowd of guy

00:40:03.640 friends you may as the wife be understandably uncomfortable with him going with your husband

00:40:09.400 going back to the bar hanging out with the friends and you're worrying that they're going to get into

00:40:14.200 some kind of trouble or drink too much or whatever it is they're going to do so she may slowly try 0.78

00:40:20.040 and rest her husband from those friends and then she's going to need to find other male friends 0.99

00:40:26.920 other couples friends to take the place of those friends and that can be a struggle too some women 1.00

00:40:34.040 surreptitiously look for friends for their their husbands because some women said they believe

00:40:40.760 they don't think their husband has enough friends or their husband has talked about having not having

00:40:45.320 enough friends and so they'll be on the lookout for girlfriends of theirs that are married to guys 0.99

00:40:51.320 that they think their husband might enjoy being with right then there's that whole dynamic is like

00:40:56.040 well do they actually get along right the frustration and attention there um so going back to the the life

00:41:02.680 cycle um in the influence of fathers on friends as you said in your 30s your life is basically just

00:41:10.840 you're running i'm in my 30s that's how i feel like i got work i've got family i've got other responsibilities

00:41:16.040 and yeah sometimes i feel like i don't have time for friends at the same time if you think about the

00:41:20.600 influence that you have on your children i'm thinking well my son and my daughter like they're they're

00:41:27.080 watching me and and if they're seeing that i i make no time for friends then uh they're gonna not

00:41:34.360 put an importance on that and like i want them to that's or it's important to me i want them to pass

00:41:38.200 that on uh so it seems like you know it's sort of like a perpetuating cycle cycle like you you're in

00:41:45.720 your 30s you make this focus not on friends and results in your children and not putting that emphasis

00:41:50.120 on on friends so you have to be very intentional about breaking that right and i think the advice i would

00:41:55.320 give to anybody in your situation is to find other couples that also have children and get both

00:42:02.440 families together so they see you interacting with both other men and other women too and you can then

00:42:09.800 get a sense about what values around friendships you want to pass on to your children now you have to

00:42:16.200 find couples that have children that match up with your children so that's another layer of difficulty in

00:42:23.080 this in this friendship match and the other message to give your children goes back to what i said

00:42:28.520 before is i don't know if you have siblings but you would want to also try and have good relationships

00:42:35.480 with your siblings so their children and your children as first cousins can be close and so they

00:42:41.160 see that they should be close also with their own siblings man socializing is complex friendship is yes

00:42:47.960 it's super complex well based on your research and the talks with the men you you've done in your

00:42:54.120 book um how do most friends go about making friends i'm sure there's a lot of men who are listening

00:42:58.520 it's like they want some more friends they just don't know how to do it so based on your interviews what

00:43:03.480 what did you find yeah well if you haven't made them in school and most of the men that are listening

00:43:08.920 probably uh are out of school or soon to be out of school school is the natural place to

00:43:14.440 try and make friends the next stops on the friendship train would be work and would be

00:43:23.240 the neighborhood and then through your own kids the interesting thing about men trying to make

00:43:30.280 friends is you have to get involved in things that you like to do if you like to play chess join the

00:43:36.200 chess club if you like to bike go to the bike uh store or go biking and try and chat up people there

00:43:43.880 you don't make friends staying home and not being open to it you have to get out there you have to

00:43:49.080 organize things have a football party to go back to you know men in sports and invite over a number of

00:43:56.520 men uh some men may feel uncomfortable only inviting over one man and it's goes back to the fear of

00:44:04.840 appearing gay a subtext in all this is that there were a significant minority of men in my book who

00:44:11.960 said they were afraid to appear gay by approaching men to be their friends uh again my research was a

00:44:19.480 decade ago that's not as much of an issue today as it was then but believe me it's still an issue for

00:44:26.520 some men regardless of their age one guy i talked to on the phone on the plane who i met was had just

00:44:34.600 moved to a new city and he would meet guys and would want to be friends with them and maybe would call

00:44:40.760 them up once but if they were not available he didn't want to call them again he didn't want to

00:44:47.000 seem like he was stalking them to be a male friend that's not something that men like in other men this

00:44:54.440 notion of i'm emotionally needy and i want to be your your friend so there has to be some comfort

00:45:02.760 in approaching other people and doing it in a way that is not appearing overly needy there's always

00:45:10.920 the question of how much do i open up to somebody and a lot of men don't like too much emotional

00:45:17.160 vulnerability too soon they want to wait a few times before somebody opens up to them so if you

00:45:24.120 want to make friends part of it is gauging the person you're with and how open are they to hearing

00:45:30.280 some of the things that you may or may not want to talk about it's having a radar out that can read

00:45:37.400 some of the other guys feedback to you so it sounds like you you're probably going to start off just

00:45:43.480 friends right with these because you're just doing stuff with them and then sort of through the natural

00:45:48.920 origin of the relationship it might turn into a must friend or trust friend or a must friend nice

00:45:54.840 nicely said okay well jeffrey this has been a great conversation um i'm curious where can is

00:45:59.800 anywhere people can learn more about your work because i mean it's not just friends you're talking

00:46:03.000 about you talk about sibling relationship couple friends is there a place where people go can can

00:46:06.680 see all this stuff that you're doing aside from my my bio at the university of maryland school of

00:46:13.240 social work where i'm a professor you can look at the books i've read or you can go to amazon and look at

00:46:18.920 those books i have a new book i'm working on on in-law relationships and we'll have some interesting

00:46:24.840 data on how sons-in-law and fathers-in-law maintain this very unique relationship as compared with

00:46:32.360 mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law that that sounds really really fascinating well jeffrey thanks so much

00:46:37.880 for your time it's been an absolute pleasure thank you i've greatly enjoyed it brett my guest is jeffrey

00:46:42.120 greif he's the author of the book buddy system understanding male friendships is available

00:46:45.720 on amazon.com he's also got a lot of other books that he's written about couples and friendships

00:46:50.680 siblings and friendships so check it out it's all there on amazon also check out our show notes at

00:46:54.360 aom.is slash buddy system where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:46:59.960 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:47:16.520 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you've enjoyed the show

00:47:21.640 have gotten something out of it please take a minute to give us a review on itunes or stitcher helps that

00:47:25.800 a lot as always thank you for your continued support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

00:47:30.520 stay manly

The Art of Manliness - November 30, 2017

#360： Why Men Have a Hard Time Making Friends in Adulthood

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