The Ins and Outs of Male Friendship

My twenty year high school reunion is this weekend, at a bar in my hometown. I want to want to go, but I just don't. I didn't have a bad experience in high school; I had a good group of guy friends, and we would hang out in each other's basements shooting pool and watching Saturday Night Live reruns, take off after school on Friday afternoons to hike in the woods and walk the railroad tracks, play backyard football, and cruise around town in our cars. I wasn't a Christian then, and so it seems like another life when those things were what we were really living for. Our common bonds were, for the most part, external; it was what we did together that bound us.

I don't, however, remember feeling like I could always rely on them when it came to inner struggles. One close friend in particular was more fair weather than I may have liked. Though we had grown up together, he never visited me when I was hospitalized, and he only seemed to call for his own purposes--when he wanted to hang out, or no one else was around. It was never completely without some kind of self-gratifying ulterior motive. We reconnected a few years ago and I had hoped all that had changed, but I saw relatively quickly that it hadn't. I was someone to hang out and have a good time with when it was convenient or suited him, but beyond that there wasn't a whole lot that bound us together. Still kind of stings to this day.

Men are often pegged as simple, uncomplicated creatures. This is generally true when speaking about our needs--when we're fed, working, feel respected, and having marital relations regularly, we are 98% taken care of. It's not rocket science.

However, if there's one variance between men and women where the inverse proves to be true, it's in the realm of friendship. From my vantage point, making and maintaining female friendships as a woman appears to be vastly less complicated than what it takes to forge lasting male friendships. If women are more relational in general, being relational comes naturally. For men, however--even the most normal, well adjusted men--forming lasting friendships can feel akin to what it takes to dismantle a bomb. There are a lot of wires, and touch one to the wrong cathode and boom show's over.

Men tend to view friendships as optional rather than ancillary--good things that they may long for but not know how, or be willing, to forge. And yet we see articles like this one in the Boston Globe, that the biggest threat facing middle-aged men isn't smoking or obesity, but loneliness. As I approach middle age, I can relate to this. It seems harder and harder to make friends. We are in a busy season--working, trying to advance in our careers, raising families, yard work and house maintenance.

Making friends as a guy can be tricky, though--there are a lot of factors and conditions that need to be right for the kernel of friendship to find good soil and take root. These are a few of the things that I have noticed:

1) Men do not just pick up the phone and call with a desire to relate their struggles or connect. If that is the objective, there needs to be an external modus operandi to facilitate the internal, something to "do." It could be going camping or building something, some activity to couch it in. Generally speaking, men do not call each other to get coffee and talk. Having a beer at the bar may be the exception to that rule, but it would have to be clear that the reason for getting together is the beer and not the talk.

2) Protestant men seem better equipped to support one another in their faith journey by way of "fellowship" and bible studies. I have heard Catholic men speak of such gatherings as effeminate (sharing, talking, etc); I don't necessarily think that is always the case, but the Catholic paradigm is one in which it is commonly posited that "the sacraments are all I need" or "I go to Mass to worship, not to meet other people." Men stand alone, as the thinking goes. If you're not isolated and holding your own on your own, there's a deficiency, a weakness, in your inability to stand on your own two feet.

3) You have to be mindful of the "weird" or "gay" factor. Men (and boys, generally) have a pretty strict code of conduct when it comes to revealing weakness and emotions in a group. No man, generally speaking, wants to be associated with effeminate men, because you might be regarded as effeminate by association. It sounds so stereotypical but there is truth in it, like it or not. Now, that being said, I feel pretty strongly that men with same sex attraction can benefit from friendship with heterosexual men, and that heterosexual men can extend such invitations to friendship as a mutually-beneficial act of Christian charity and brotherhood. But the maleness piece needs to take precedence over sexual identity, and that can sometimes be difficult for men with SSA to adjust to, because they don't know always know the codes and inner ways of relating in that way. That's ok--they are men first and foremost.

4) The mentor/mentee model works well with men. Again, it may necessitate revolving around some rite of passage or activity (working on a car together, for example), but the opportunities to pass on wisdom and life lessons are appreciated by both the one passing it on and the one receiving it.


St. Augustine had such a high regard for friendship that he posited it as one of two things in the world that are of the utmost importance:

"In this world two things are essential: life and friendship. Both should be highly prized and we must not undervalue them. Life and friendship are nature’s gifts. God created us that we might exist and live: this is life. But if we are not to remain solitary, there must be friendship."  [Sermon Denis 16,1]

As tricky as making friends as a guy in middle age can be, and as much as I have always wanted more from a friendship than seemed possible in this life, I still think it's indispensable for our social and spiritual well-being. No man is an island, no man is completely self-sufficient. It's perfectly fine to share common interests like sports and activities, but how much more so a common desire to cast ourselves on Christ and live the virtues? Friendship with other men, when it is built on the foundation of Christ, helps us to grow in holiness and shoulder each other's burdens. It doesn't have to be weird or awkward, but it more likely than not does require a degree of intentionality. As St. Thomas wrote, “There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”