Keepy-uppies: We need to talk about maintaining male friendships
Back in late September, the pieces finally fell into place.
One of my best friends wasn’t working as usual between Dublin and Galway but was in north Kerry at his uncle’s house, a mere two hours away from my West Cork bolthole.
It was time, after several years, for a catch-up.
It says much about my current pace of life that I communicate with this friend almost daily as part of one of the few WhatsApp groups I’m on.
And yet, the last time we’d actually caught up over a pint or even a cup of tea was in 2022 — or was it 2021?
And so it goes. While no doubt many gather with their best mates on a weekly or even a daily basis, for the rest of us, those opportunities are few and far between.
Geographical distance, work and home requirements, coaching commitments, and more mean that something as simple as a night out with your nearest or oldest friends begins to feel like organising the Yalta Conference.
Research tells us that having close friends and a broader group of mates is good for your health across the board.
According to Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford: “There is no question but friends [and close family] are more important for your psychological and physical health and wellbeing than anything your friendly neighbourhood GP can throw at you.
The evidence over the last 20 years has been simply overwhelming. Five [friends] is the optimum number, maybe a tad more for extroverts and a tad less for introverts, but essentially about five.”
Yet a 2021 American survey found that 49% of respondents said they had three or fewer close friends, whereas in 1990, a third said they had ten or more.
So what happens with those close bonds, particularly as men age? Do we gain new friends? Or do we look to substitute electronic or social media contact for the very real experiences of attending pubs, clubs, matches, or whatever else in person?
Dunbar is one of the authors of a study published in the journal that identifies differences in approach between men and women.
Titled ‘Sex differences in close friendships and social style’ and led by researchers from University College London and the University of Oxford, it’s full of intriguing findings, including that “Women were significantly more likely to declare that they had a best (platonic) friend than men.
However, men were increasingly more likely to declare they had a best friend as they aged, whereas women were increasingly less likely to do so.”
It also found that: “Men’s cliques decrease dramatically in size from around the mid-20s/early-30s, suggesting that they lose contact with even their close male friends on marriage, whereas women do not lose contact with female friends.”
Maybe this latest research will knock some sense into me. I’m more than happy to gain a new pal but I’m more reluctant to consider someone a “friend” unless we’ve put in the hard yards.
The occasional response to my wife when she hauls me up on my arguably juvenile attitude is: “I’ve already got great friends”. True — but I also have to concede that I don’t see them as often as I’d like.
According to Dunbar, old friendships can certainly endure but it is important to leave the way open to new relationships, especially as men age.
“Men are socially very casual, so there is a sense that anyone will do — providing you have enough in common,” he continues, contradicting my perceptions about the would-be ‘quality’ or depth of a friendship.
“Women are much more proactive socially and will make big efforts to find friends if they move to a new town or contact old friendships.
“For men, what matters about a friend is not who they are but what they are [what club they belong to], whereas for women, what matters is who you are as an individual, not what you are.”
In this context, ‘club’ is very loosely defined. “It’s enough of a common interest to allow an evening to be spent congenially together,” says Dunbar.
“Often, it will be activity-based — the Friday five-a-side group, the kayaking group, the mountain climbing group, the repairing-old-railway-engines group, whatever, or just the group that meets every now and again for a beer.”
Finian Murray is the senior health promotion and improvement officer for men’s health within the HSE.
He cites Healthy Ireland research from 2023, which found that men’s biggest risk of loneliness was in the 40-44 age group, with 7.1% of respondents saying they were always lonely.
By contrast, the least lonely group was the 60-64 bracket, at just 1.2%, although Murray says loneliness did increase after that age.
“Men have always met in groups —building sites, the clubs, the sheds, so the group thing is very important,” he says.
“Some of it might be about finding something that interests you and connecting with other men, it could be a book club or something. It’s about getting that interest and sharing that interest. They are the friendships that tend to last because you have a lot more in common.”
Murray refers to community initiatives that have sprung up, such as Jumpers for Goalposts, which effectively provides a mechanism for people to have an almost impromptu game of football, and the Football Cooperative, which is now in partnership with South East Technological University to investigate the health impacts of participation in recreational football.
Another recent phenomenon is Men’s Sheds, which Dunbar and Murray cite as a newer way for men to meet and either rekindle old friendships or make new ones.
“Fellas tend to find sheds or come into a shed when there are major changes in their lives,” says Ben Dolan, communications officer with the Irish Men’s Sheds Association.
“That could be retirement, bereavement, guys moving to a new location where their social supports are taken away or fall down.
“In any new thing, it can be difficult to pluck up the courage to walk into a room that is established full of people and you walk in cold. That is very tricky. I heard it said a lot of times that the expectation of sheds is that they are for old fellas, it’s not for me. I’ve heard from lads in the sheds when they go in that it is not what they thought it would be.”
There are now 430 sheds in the Republic, with another 70 in the north, with approximately 7,000 members attending weekly. As Dolan says, there is a shed in Achill in Co Mayo and Mountjoy Prison, highlighting not just diverse locations but the same need for connection.
Dunbar points out that men’s friendship groups don’t need to involve any conversation to work. “There’s a sense in which simple companionship seems to be the thing that works for men,” he says.
Murray agrees. “Those in the men’s sheds will say the most important thing involved is the kettle,” he says, noting that activity-based interventions — no matter the activity — will likely be best for forming and maintaining friendships.
He adds that adults need to create some space for themselves: “There are a lot of ‘lawnmower parents’ out there. They feel they can’t do enough for their kids and they are all the time doing that and not taking the time for themselves.”
This chimes with another aspect — that for all its illusion of greater connectedness, a WhatsApp group or social media platform will never replicate or replace the face-to-face or group gathering, the real experience.
“It’s a bit like this cartoon I once saw,” Murray says. “It was of a funeral and it showed only four people at the service and one of the characters said, ‘He had over 2,000 friends on Facebook, I was expecting a bigger turnout.’”
Suddenly, that four-hour round trip to Kerry, plus the mini-hangover next day, seems more than worth it.
