UK: 2.5 million men 'have no close friends'. Stark new research shows chances of friendlessness trebles by late middle age

Black_caped_man · 2015-11-15T13:54:38+00:00

Fuck that struck home really hard.

I have plenty of acquaintances and get along well with people at work or at school, but I really don't have any close friends at all.

I do wonder how these percentages look in other countries and how they relate to womens percentages. The article reads as if there is a big difference and while I suspect that's true I prefer data over suspicions in cases like these.

Raidicus · 2015-11-15T13:06:15+00:00

"Oogy poo you don't need your friends, you have my friends! My friends are better. They don't do all those things WE agreed YOU will never do again."

KrisK_lvin · 2015-11-15T23:06:42+00:00

I think some reading behind the headline and between the lines is in order personally … See my italics here:

A YouGov survey for Movember asked men to say how many friends, if any, outside the home they would discuss a serious topic such as worries about money, work or health with.

Just over half (51 per cent) said two or fewer but one in eight overall said none.

That equates to around 2.5 million men across the UK.

I can’t speak for other countries, but not having a friend "you discuss a serious topic with” is not the same at all as saying that you “have no close friends”.

I feel like this seems to be judging the quality (and quantity) of male social friendships using a feminine model as a yardstick.

I’m really not being flippant when I say this, but this is why (older) British men have at least three things open to them: a) the pub; b) the allotment (= a vegetable garden basically); c) fishing.

The fact that not all men articulate explicitly their worries is not necessarily a sign that they are emotionally retarded - sometimes asking or pressuring a man of a certain type into spilling his guts actually does far more harm than good.

All manner of things can be communicated through a conversation at a bar that superficially have absolutely no relation to a “serious” topic but that doesn’t mean it’s any less cathartic for all that.

EDIT One other thing - there’s an old 19th century red-brick canal not far from where I grew up where the only things you can catch (if you’re lucky) are a tampon, a rusted shopping cart or crushed Cola can bleached bone-white.

Even so, go there on a Saturday afternoon and there’s a line of blokes practically shoulder to shoulder with fishing rods and tin-foil wrapped sandwiches who’ll sit there for hours. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t, but one thing for sure is they aren’t doing that for no reason at all.

theQuandary · 2015-11-15T17:39:12+00:00

The effect of having no friends is avoided by the article to it's detriment. While suicide is a big problem here, the majority of those friendless people don't commit suicide. Instead they develop personality issues leading crime or just a general burden on society.

The promotion of male-only places where men can get together and enjoy each other's company would solve a huge percent of this problem, but the current, Feminist-run governments believe in their ideology more than they care about the men they claim to represent.

Lethn · 2015-11-15T14:00:32+00:00

Well I can tell you I'm still friends with the school friends I did make, the problem is they've all fucked off to university now. I don't know if I entirely agree with this article, but it looks like they've done proper poll sampling on this one.

As I'm this particular demographic and I live in the UK what I will tell you is the reason I don't go out and 'befriend' other people in my country is a lot of them are just utter cunts. It's also a good reason on why I'll be leaving the country when I can, people here just aren't generally friendly, they're either paranoid feminists, or they're a bunch of knife wielding chavs.

To be fair, I do have a few people I still get along with in some circles, but really, I just can't fucking wait to leave this shit hole and just find some genuine human beings to hang out with. I can tell you now I didn't really get along with many other people well until I found various Anarchists and Libertarians out there which I found vaguely interesting.

Vance87 · 2015-11-15T16:26:10+00:00

So basically there are 2.5 million LOSERS in Britain.

/s

Jizzmaster3000 · 2015-11-15T18:30:01+00:00

I wonder if this has any correlation with the war on male spaces...

autotldr · 2016-02-07T22:16:44+00:00

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot)

While 11 per cent of single men said they had no friends to turn to in a serious situation, that rose to 15 per cent among married men.

Strikingly, married men are also more than twice as likely as men who cohabit unmarried with a partner to say the same, suggesting that marriage itself, rather than being in a long-term relationship, cuts their ties with their friends.

Although the survey only looked at men, research among younger people published by the Office for National Statistics last year which asked a similar question, showed that women are significantly more likely than men to say they have someone to turn to for help in a crisis.

Extended Summary | FAQ | Theory | Feedback | Top keywords: men^#1 friendship^#2 more^#3 friends^#4 thing^#5

Title	UK: 2.5 million men 'have no close friends'. Stark new research shows chances of friendlessness trebles by late middle age
Author	TR6Cool
Upvotes	84
Comments	17
Date	November 15, 2015 12:29 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3sw341/uk_25_million_men_have_no_close_friends_stark_new/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/uk-25-million-men-have-no-close-friends-stark-new.967201 https://theredarchive.com/post/967201

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