I am referring to platonic friendships, not romantic relationships. Seems like there is more camaraderie in female friend groups than male friend groups. I hardly hear about women being lonely or shunned by their same sex peers.

12 comments

  1. men are taught to shake off their emotions and to not rlly confide in anyone due to pride. it’s a vicious cycle.

  2. Toxic masculinity. And if you try to be friendly with your guy friends? Gay.

  4. It’s because most men aren’t comfortable with expressing their feelings. I mostly have female friends and I’ve never had issues saying what I needed to say but when I did the same with many men they started judging.

  5. There’s small talk and then there’s expressing deeply held values and opinions. One step beyond even that is expressing genuine vulnerability. Women are more willing to expose that side of themselves to each other and that is where those truly deep friendships are formed. Men can get past small talk pretty easily but expressing vulnerabilities is not so common unless its between brothers. That’s why some of the strongest male friendships happen between soldiers in wars, or sparring partners in combat sports gyms, stand up comedians, or even members of the same street gang. Those are situations where you are forced to expose your fears, weaknesses, sadness, etc. and support each other.

    EDIT: i also want to point out that its not fair to simply brush off this dynamic as “toxic masculinity”. Men are judged much more harshly for expressing weakness, not just by other men but by women. Men are competing for women in ways that women don’t really ever have to. If you were to flip that dynamic, like on the show “The Bachelor” where a bunch of women are competing for the affection of a high-value man, you’ll see that women won’t develop such strong friendships. And they don’t expose their shortcomings so readily. I imagine they would experience just as much loneliness if they were stuck in that state for long periods of time. Luckily women have a much easier time finding men that are attracted to them right off the bat with little effort required. Men don’t really have that luxury unless they are truly exceptional in genetics or status. That is WHY men hide their vulnerabilities more than women. Its not that they think they’ll be judged. Its that they WILL be judged.

    Thats why it’s especially important for men to build healthy self-esteem. They need a strong sense of both competence and self-worth to be able to accept brutal rejections (not just from women but from life) and not have it rattle their identity. Its about having a strong enough will to let yourself be judged but still have more respect for your own opinions/perceptions over those of the people around you. Guys like that can be vulnerable with no shame and will develop strong bonds in their lives.

  7. No one here is saying the true answer so I’ll say it.

    It’s because men matter less than women to both men and women.

    Simple as that, we’re easily replaceable.

  8. I think it’s because it’s harder to be open with other guys. It’s really easy for women to open up to other women within just a few instances of seeing them. Because of this, women also usually have more emotional intelligence when it comes to interpreting the other person’s feelings.

  9. Its because of many things such as:
    Men produce millions of sperm at once
    Women produce ONE egg a month

    “Due to this mass supply
    Demand is not as much”.

    Women look for QUALITY partner, I mean they’d go for one perfect guy over men that are easily available and who approach women more often!

    Women choose quality partner to breed,
    Women tends to go for quality instead of QUANTITY

    whereas Men would be down for quantity because the society starts judging if the body count is low

    It takes great courage for men to stand their ground and look for ONE quality women, because men have to go through humility etc

    Men are mass in number which leads women to ignore the men who are available.

    Whatever I said maybe harsh but
    IT IS WHAT IT IS.

  11. Women are plenty lonely. They typically just act out less, and realize that they have to become active to change their life for the better.

    I think the question is a bit sexist, so my answer is also just anecdotal, of course. But of the people I know that are lonely, the men stayed in their self-imposed isolation (or kept their toxic character traits that isolated them) for years or decades, while the women went on online dating platforms, joined new hobby groups, changed work places, went on single holidays, and got feedback on whether there was anything they should improve about themselves that was putting people off. Conversely, I tried to tell one of the men that if he wanted people to stay around, he would need therapy or at least to shower regularly, to which he nodded thoughtfully but then never did it.

    These are mostly older people, I’m noticing that the gender divide is a lot smaller for the next generation. The teens and early twens know how to connect with others, if they don’t thrive where they are, they switch classes, courses, cities, apartments, find friends online, hit the gym or the club (both genders) and generally are in a more active phase of life where things aren’t as entrenched as they get with age.

  12. men have feelings that are hard to express since they’re so poor at releasing them so they keep them bottled up until somebody changes lanes in front of them and not signalling

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