Why Some Men Struggle to Keep Up with Friendships

siva7

Is this something ai can fix?

pompomsheep

https://archive.is/2026.03.21-132826/https://www.theatlantic...

ashwinnair99

The problem isn't time. Most men never learned to maintain friendships without a shared context like school or work holding it together. When that scaffolding disappears, so do the friendships.

le-mark

I think inadvertently found some insight on this. I’m typical and have failed to maintain friends over the years. As an old dad who’s spent a lot of time at kids parties talking to men; men just aren’t that pleasant to talk to. Best case is we’re opinionated, myopic, closed off. Worst case ignorant and obnoxious.

treetalker

> By Isabel Fattal --- “What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.” ― Fight Club

homeonthemtn

It's really hard to discuss this without making overly broad statements. For my personal expense, I have found a lot of men view other men as competitors to be guarded against. You can't begin to work with the building blocks of trust and communication without getting past that first barrier. So we often just stop at the gate.

diogenescynic

Since I've had kids and moved cities, I have basically zero friends. I have a two friends about 40 minutes away but we're all too busy with kids and work to meet up more than really once a year. Having young kids really changes your social life in a way I wasn't entirely prepared for. I have no time left for anything other than family and work.

puritanicdev

I went through something similar recently. I was usually the one organizing everything. meetups, beers, board game nights. At some point I realized that if I didn’t initiate, nothing really happened. At first I didn’t think much of it, but over time it started to feel one-sided. What really made me stop and think was when they forgot my birthday. Not a huge deal by itself, but it made me notice the patern, that I was putting in way more than I was getting back. So I slowly pulled back. stopped organizing, stopped trying to keep things going. No drama, just less involvement. And, honestly, I feel a lot better now. Less drained, less frustrated, more at ease overall. Not sure what to think of it, from one standpoint I basically decided to cut connection with a group of people I was spending my time with for the last ~10 years, from another I decided to keep my energy and focus on myself. These days I mostly hang out with my fiancee and her friends, but in a much more low-key way.

bluefirebrand

I never had any trouble keeping up with friendships, but I do have trouble making new friends This has become a problem as I'm getting older and have lost friends over the years, but not replaced them I think that's the core of it for many people. We lose or become distanced from friends over time for all sorts of reasons. People move, get married, have kids, or maybe you just grow apart. It happens. But if you don't replace those connections then you eventually wind up with none

zihotki

Recently I came across a good blog post about friendship maintenance, it's worth reading https://www.avabear.xyz/p/friendship-maintenance