Last time I had a male friend was when I was 16 and in school (41 now), and I’ve never been able to form any kind of friendship with other males since. I grew up in a single-parent, all-female household, and was bullied for literally years by other males at school, so I’m assuming I’ve got some sort of psychological block. I’m not a lad’s lad and hate football lol, so I kind of feel alienated. Does anyone else struggle with this? I feel so out of touch with other guys.
Comments
Please do not delete your post after receiving your answer. Consider leaving it up for posterity so that other Redditors can benefit from the wisdom in this thread.
Once your thread has run its course, instead of deleting it, you can simply type “!lock” (without the quotes) as a comment anywhere in your thread to have our Automod lock the thread. That way you won’t be bothered by anymore replies on it, but people can still read it.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
What are your interests, there’s bound to be other dudes who are into that
Non football loving males raised by women are out there, but how do we connect?
I am completely out of touch with other males too.
On another hand, I am into gaming and I dislike speaking about it too.
I came to the conclusion that I just don’t like hanging out with humans.
I(32M) have a similar story, i still kind of struggle with men but have a lot of female friends. I found other men who also had a balance energy and found it easy to connect with them.
Truth be told that’s about 3 male friends i still regularly see. Met one in college, one through friends, and one at a past job.
I forced myself to go to a barbershop in my 20s to kind of feel more normal and that made it feel a bit easier. Once i felt more like a regular dude and was around regular guys i realized they weren’t like the horrible teenagers i was around in highschool. People grow up and tend to mature.
I’m 36m and had a few friends in my teens. As we’ve grown up, we’ve all gone our separate ways. We still keep in touch, but I haven’t physically seen any of them in years. And honestly? I’m fine with that. I’ve always been a bit of a loner, and am quite comfortable being on my own. It helps that I’m borderline autistic and work in healthcare, which means I’m surrounded by and have to be nice to complete pricks all day (both colleagues and patients). This means that, by the time it comes to my days off, all I want to do is be alone and have some peace and quiet.
I feel like I wrote this myself. Have zero interest in the lad culture stuff. Most guys I meet (via work etc) tend to only talk about football, drunk stories and women but in the perverted topics of women and I’m here craving for deeper interesting chats and connections. I also love to be silly and weird. Most guys i meet are always too serious, care about how they act and are perceived. Don’t want to destroy their “coolness” urgh.
So I usually tend to be friends with females more but I do miss a bromance.
I’ll be honest: majority of guys I encounter are quite insecure about my appearance and attitude. I enjoy dressing smart and I have “don’t give a fuck” attitude. Only guys who are similar in attitude are trying to build communication with me. The rest are visibly uncomfortable. How am I suppose to build communication with them when they themself don’t do anything about it?
interesting question but i think allot of blokes/lads tend not to actually be capable of obtaining or maintaining that sort of relationship. the lads lads/ foot ball lovers tend to be insecure and selfish, if your not that you probably wont get along with them nor necessarily want to. the emphasis on team rather than adult is due to the insecurity and compensatory bluster you hear so much. It really depends on what you want from your relationships as well, pint down the pub and banter? = shallow and light relationship, deep friendship where you have eachothers back? = rare to find, your values and interests need to align as well otherwise you dont really blend very well. thats what reationships are about, finding common ground and maintaining it. the atypical bloke/lad I dont particularly like either, how many times must you hear the same stuff before you get bored of it?
Don’t get me wrong i love a laugh and a joke but lads/lads take themselves way too seriously and are not particulalrly like that. i tend to find difference more appealing, being genuine, being nice and kind. not many folks do.
in short i dont think many blokes are particularly capable of thinking outside the box of insecurity that so often defines them. this means they wont manage their relatinships very well.
in short i think allot of blokes dont think particularly in terms of relationships and thus are difficult to be around. I know male are much more object orientated than person orientated. autism which is that but too a huge degree is called “the male disease” because auties are so object focused.
I’m right there with you. Not a guy’s guy and feel very much alienated and out of touch. I have a couple of close male friends but they moved away.
It’s not that I can’t make friends with other men, but that I have a hard time keeping a friendship going long term where it doesn’t feel like it’s superficial. We might be friends based on a single hobby, or single point of reference (ie we were both contracted on the same job). It often feels very transactional in that we are only around each other to “do” an activity be it to repair a motorcycle, or do a home renovation project etc, but once that’s done we sort of split ways till the next one. We never do something like go to the beach, or the museum, or see a movie.
I have exactly 2 long term (more than 10 years) male friends. They are both people i felt comfortable with enough to share rather intimate details of my life with. We do go out for meals, play some low competition outdoor sports together, see movies etc. They are also men that I can sit and have a heart to heart with and work through emotional issues, family problems, and my own insecurities with…and boy do I have a lot of those.
As for why this is I’m not sure. The easy answer is probably wrong and judgemental on my part that people are just put off by my overall presentation, but honestly I think that’s me being lazy and most people don’t care.
There’s probably some deep seeded issues due to my family situation : my parents roles were reversed more or less until my mum walked out on us. My father was a very emotional, soft man, and I think in a way that’s what I want from relationships with men, and it’s not often that’s going to happen because of how society has still stereotyped male behaviour.
Maybe it’s self sabotage since I’m gay, I don’t want to form close relationships “just in case” lust or feelings develop and ruin a friendship.
Or maybe I’m just not great at making friends, only decent at having buddies?
There’s an old Polish proverb that says “You’ve got to eat a barrel of salt together in order to become friends” (sorry for my lousy translation). Assuming just a few grams of sodium recommended per day for a healthy adult, it takes decades of being together and hundreds of meals in various circumstances to form a real friendship. True friendship is not just an alliance based on common interest. It must be put to multiple tests in order to mature. That’s why it is important to nourish your early life friends.