[HN Gopher] Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study ...
___________________________________________________________________
Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men's social
networks
Author : clockworksoul
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-01-25 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psypost.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psypost.org)
| execat wrote:
| That's a wide range, isn't it?
| creinhardt wrote:
| Yeah, you could also say "Most men die between 30 and 90".
| marssaxman wrote:
| > reflecting an average decrease from two to one
|
| What this really seems to be saying is more like "men generally
| don't have emotional support networks".
| bombcar wrote:
| This is why there's the joke that the miracle wasn't Christ
| rising from the dead, it was having 12 close personal friends
| in his 30s.
| goodpoint wrote:
| That so bleak.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Were they friends or his downline?
| mmastrac wrote:
| "Emotional support networks among men shrink by 50% between the
| ages of 30 and 90, reflecting an average decrease from two to one
| emotional support providers"
|
| Or, to rephrase,
|
| "Men grow up with an average of two emotional support providers
| and lose one in mid to late adulthood"
| jfengel wrote:
| Any idea how many women have?
|
| The form of this study was specific to men and very long-
| running, so I don't know where you'd get comparable data.
| Still, it would be interesting to take a stab at it. Is it 2?
| 1? 10?
| bitwize wrote:
| Unlike men, women tend seek out emotional support networks as
| a matter of course. There's probably some reduction as they
| age, but it's probably from like, the entire glee club to
| their husband, kids, five or six girls they keep up with from
| high school and the neighbor lady. A particularly gregarious
| woman like my wife can grow her support network. This is
| definitely an area meriting more research.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| As a trans women, I have a unique perspective on how gender
| impacts social relations having lived life in each of the
| two worlds.
|
| Like commenters above mention, emotional support is table
| stakes in friendship among women. It is a kinder, gentler
| world - the kind of world you perhaps remember growing up
| in. That world still exists, but it's typically not
| accessible to men once they reach adulthood.
|
| How could men access the world of emotional support? By
| disassociating the idea of gender and emotional support.
| Growing up in the 90s and 2000s, I remember emotional
| vulnerability being associated with homosexuality - it was
| "gay" for men to be emotionally vulnerable with eachother,
| typically leaving men with women[spouses] or family members
| as their only source of emotional support. The way out is
| decouple these two things, to un-"gay" emotional
| vulnerability between men.
|
| What does it look like? Checking in on friends, learning to
| open up yourself, increasing emotional intelligence,
| learning how to hold space and reflectively listen. Not
| trying to solve people's problems when what they want is to
| be heard. All of these skills and norms exist within
| feminine spaces as a matter of course and when folks say
| "putting in the work" it means learning to employ these
| things.
|
| It means that being emotionally vulnerable doesn't imply a
| sexual advancement. It means enforcing that as a reality.
| watwut wrote:
| What is emotional vulnerability?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's a state of being emotionally exposed in way that
| includes uncertainty. Like sharing emotions when you're
| unsure how the other person will respond. In this case,
| it might mean opening up more to an acquaintance as a way
| to develop a friendship but being unsure how they would
| receive that or reciprocate.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Female stereotyping.
| clockworksoul wrote:
| That's a very valuable insight. Thank you.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't feel very exceptional in terms of my social network
| among my peers and I would say probably 20-25. I think it
| mostly comes from emotional support being pretty much table
| stakes for female friendships. I feel like most "biological"
| explanations are bunk but like if you're gonna be friends
| you're gonna be friends when you're on your period and going
| through it.
| iterance wrote:
| Anecdotally I'd say I can't imagine living with like, one or
| two people I turn to for emotional support. Would be a
| nightmare. I know probably 20 or 30 people I could turn to if
| I needed something, even just to vent.
|
| I wouldn't even necessarily say I'm that close with most of
| them. It's sort of just... table stakes?
| sosuke wrote:
| Imagine three other possibilities:
|
| You have a dozen people who would give you emotional
| support but you don't ask for any because you aren't sure
| you could give emotional support in return.
|
| You have a dozen people you think might give you emotional
| support but you don't want to burden them with your
| problems.
|
| You have a dozen people that would give you emotional
| support, maybe once, but you are too afraid to burn the
| single emotional support coupon until its more important.
| em-bee wrote:
| i have one friend that i can trust to be able to talk to
| with challenges in my life and especially with challenges
| in my relationship. i know that because he has been open
| and sharing many of his personal challenges for by now
| decades with a group of friends that i am privileged to
| have been invited to.
|
| for everyone else it is pretty much like you describe. i
| have probably over time met people from each of those
| categories. and some of them may actually have turned
| into real friends that i could trust like this one friend
| above. but moving around meant that we didn't keep in
| touch. (and it's worth mentioning that almost none of
| them are from my home, so without moving around i would
| not have even met them)
| jasoneckert wrote:
| And with such a small sample size, the variance will be high.
|
| For example, I estimate that my own emotional support network
| quadrupled from about 1-2 before the age of 30 to 5-8 after the
| age of 40.
| cauliflower2718 wrote:
| Is this to be interpreted as most men have two parents, and in
| adulthood one of them dies?
|
| Or, men have a parent they are close with plus a spouse, and
| then the parent dies?
| seneca wrote:
| I interpreted it as the latter being the most common pattern.
| I'm sure it differs fairly widely though.
| fawley wrote:
| Men typically rely on their wives as their sole emotional
| support, and then people are surprised when 70% of divorces are
| initiated by women.
| wryoak wrote:
| Well, let's look at two things here:
|
| 1. Men often suck at providing emotional support, as is a
| common complaint from women. So are men expected to rely on men
| for emotional support, or extramarital female relationships?
|
| 2. Men are typically limited access to female peers when they
| get married. For example, my first wife told me flat out which
| of my friends were too attractive for me to maintain
| friendships with. Reiterating that men are pretty lousy at
| providing emotional support so women who don't have the weight
| of marriage forcing them to maintain the relationship are going
| to feel an imbalance and stop offering the uncompensated labor
| means we can't rely on other women either.
|
| Until men are raised to give emotional support, we're not going
| to be effective at or equitable about obtaining it, either.
| avidiax wrote:
| I've heard it said that romance for a man is that she still
| loves you even if you can no longer provide.
|
| Sadly, I think very few men have such a relationship that would
| survive an extended job loss, or getting seriously ill. There's
| plenty of anecdata of men opening up emotionally, only to have
| their partner recoil in disgust.
| dijit wrote:
| Only half?
|
| Thats a really wide range too.
|
| By 90 it is increasingly likely your spouse and close friends are
| mostly dead.
|
| My emotional support network consists of two people, my long-term
| partner and my parent(s). My long term partner loves me
| conditionally (and don't let anyone fool you into thinking that
| this is abnormal).
|
| Only your parents might love you unconditionally, and they have a
| pretty decent head start with their mortality.
| passwordoops wrote:
| > My long term partner loves me conditionally
|
| I've come to learn the only unconditional love is that between
| parent-child
| zie wrote:
| Even that can be conditional. Parents deliberately remove
| themselves from their children's lives sometimes for various
| reasons. Child is gay/trans or othered in some other way.
| Child commits some serious crime, etc.
|
| It could also be the parent is too much of a mess(drug
| addict, etc) that they can't love their child.
| layer8 wrote:
| Some people come to learn that it can be quite conditional
| between parent and child as well.
| exe34 wrote:
| And only some at that. Mine only "loved" me if it made them
| look good.
| purple-leafy wrote:
| This is sadly true, my long term partner left me last night. I
| really thought it would go the distance, and I'm almost not sad
| - it's just typical
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Hope you do something kind for yourself to feel better <3
| nadermx wrote:
| As a man I'm vigilant on making my happiness a priority in a
| relationship. Since if I'm happy it trickles to my partner.
| Vs if she's happy her mood might change on a whim due to
| period or other things, so its not consitant or dependable.
| And if she leaves me, it's because I failed in some way or
| another, so I work on seeing where I gave up happiness for
| her, and work on fixing that.
| avtar wrote:
| > And if she leaves me, it's because I failed in some way
| or another
|
| With all due respect, chances are this view won't be
| helpful in the long run. It's challenging enough to
| influence our own minds or predict with certainty what
| journeys they'll embark on, let alone assume we can be
| responsible for another person's happiness.
| nadermx wrote:
| I don't mean I failed to make her happy. I mean I failed
| in asserting myself or sacrificing my happiness for her.
| As her happiness generally feeds of mine.
| breaker-kind wrote:
| the problem might be that you are a misogynist
| thrwaway223 wrote:
| Well for me, half of 0 is still 0 and I'm not even 30 yet.
|
| > My long term partner loves me conditionally (and don't let
| anyone fool you into thinking that this is abnormal).
|
| I haven't told anyone but a therapist the abuse I've been
| facing from a partner because it would break my parents heart.
| I've been back-stabbed now 3 times from different people I was
| closest with relationship or friendship-wise over the past
| decade (because you're right it's conditional).
|
| I honestly don't see how informing friends and family around me
| that I've been physically attacked many times, forced to wipe
| all evidence, hunted down, de-escalated 20 bloodcurdling
| screaming panic attack episodes, stop 2 of their suicide
| attempts, lied to at every turn, was cheated on, and then
| abandoned (BPD & drug abuse). I should make the people around
| me share in how awful I feel? That won't resolve anything, just
| like the therapist that can't change it.
| swatcoder wrote:
| FWIW, much value in talking about intense and traumatic
| experiences is in discovering that you're not alone in
| general, and often not even alone among your peers. Life can
| indeed go pretty smoothly for some people, at least for long
| stretches of time, but many more people than you might
| realize have experienced the kinds of things you describe.
|
| Being open about it helps each of you spot the other amidst
| the crowd, provide a sense of community and comraderie that
| it sounds like you might be lacking. Not only do you both (et
| al) get helped by it, the experience of helping _them_ can
| often provide yet another inspiration for feeling less
| burdened and alone.
|
| Maybe look up some intimate group talk opportunities. These
| could be informal men's groups, therapy- or church- mediated
| groups, or 12-step groups (like maybe CODA, in your case).
| These are almost always private opportunities to achieve what
| I mention above, where nobody outside the group is going to
| hear a whiff of what you share, and many of them are free or
| reasonably priced. And they're lurking all over the place. If
| you're feeling as defeated and hopeless as you sound, it
| could make a difference.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| For many people telling the stories is a form of processing
| them, or processing their experiences in different ways than
| they have before.
| horrible-hilde wrote:
| Why would you even want unconditional love? Are you planning on
| abusing and taking advantage of your spouse? People who want
| this are not ready for marriage.
| dijit wrote:
| Maybe I want to be vulnerable sometimes, or weak sometimes,
| or to have unfinished opinions on things and be listened to
| in good faith without risking an entire relationship because
| I would like to talk about it.
|
| Like privacy, people can come up with nice catch-alls like
| "nothing to hide", but the default is not abuse.
| em-bee wrote:
| this. unconditional love is not blind love. but it means
| that i am not being needlessly criticized for my faults but
| receive care and encouragement to work on them. it means
| that i am treated with compassion, even if i am a criminal.
| it doesn't mean that i get a free pass to do whatever i
| want. if i hurt someone, i need to fix that, especially if
| it is my partner.
|
| and the same goes in reverse. i love my wife and only wish
| the best for her. but that does not mean i need to be blind
| to her problems, or not expect her to stop doing things
| that hurt me or others. but it does mean that my love for
| her does not stop even if we should separate.
|
| however, this assumes a different kind of love than the
| love that most people think they have for their partner. a
| kind of love that is exclusive and can only ever go to one
| person. unconditional love is the kind of love that accepts
| everyone for what they are. the kind of love that all the
| major religions out there are talking about.
|
| (edit: expanded further)
| bowsamic wrote:
| You can have that with conditional love. It sounds like
| your marriage is just bad
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I think parents love you conditionally true. In the end if you
| turn into a really bad person, they might not love you anymore.
|
| That's not bad though. If I stop talking to my partner, I
| suspect at some point they wouldn't want to stay with me
| anymore. If I attacked my parents repeatedly, same goes for
| them
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > My long term partner loves me conditionally
|
| Sounds right, relationships require effort to stay healthy.
| It's not always an easy dance, as veterans of marriage will
| attest.
|
| No healthy relationship should be a _cage_ containing 2 or more
| martyrs. If people are accumulating resentment, it 's time to
| seek help or dialogue or renegotiation.
|
| That said, it's a mark of mature introspection and humility to
| be able to ask for help and support. It's also a mark of
| maturity and kindness to give help and support.
| Rhapso wrote:
| Loving is the easiest part of having a healthy relationship.
| Love can be unconditional where a relationship shouldn't be.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| This is AI emotional support come in
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| "However, generalized responses, such as "family" or "friends,"
| as well as mentions of non-human sources like pets, were excluded
| from formal analyses."
|
| They excluded everyone that had a large support network from the
| study.
| some_furry wrote:
| Oh, that explains it.
|
| I was sitting here wondering how anyone has only _two_ to begin
| with.
| drdec wrote:
| I had none for a very long time. Happy to report I have
| someone now.
|
| Your dismissal of people with small emotional support
| networks angers me if I'm being honest.
| some_furry wrote:
| > Your dismissal of people with small emotional support
| networks
|
| That's not what I was doing.
|
| Like, I'm an extreme introvert. Most people are more
| extroverted than I am. Despite this, I have more than two
| close friends.
|
| Whatever's causing some people to have small emotional
| support networks is something that should be studied by
| scientists, rather than taken for granted like this article
| does. Preventing unnecessary suffering is a net-positive
| for society.
|
| But the article excluded the people who have more than two
| close friends, and kind of took that for granted. So I was
| responding to the article, not the circumstances other
| people suffer through.
|
| I can see how someone could misread my comment to mean
| something else, but that wasn't what I was stating.
| drdec wrote:
| Thanks for responding and clarifying. My apologies for
| misreading your intent.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| You guys are getting emotional support???
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| It has declined by 50% since one of the two local liquor stores
| closed.
| matrix87 wrote:
| nah it's too expensive
| pixelpoet wrote:
| And an entire NETWORK?!
|
| Literally had no IRL friends since half my life, and am mostly
| single. Not uncommon among my coder friends, either.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| > This research was limited by its all-male, predominantly White
| sample and its reliance on self-reported data. Additionally, the
| quality of emotional support and its impacts on well-being were
| not assessed.
|
| So: we don't know if it's just men, we don't know if it's true
| for all ethnicities or just white men, it's a reduction from two
| to one, I don't mean to be dismissive, but someone got funding
| for this?
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Of course, "Further research is required." ;-)
|
| More telling, "This study utilized a unique longitudinal
| dataset drawn from a sample of 235 men who were originally
| recruited as Harvard University students between 1939 and
| 1942."
| standardUser wrote:
| Middle-aged white men have long had the highest suicide rates,
| so that may explain the narrow focus.
| swatcoder wrote:
| That's basically the critique that some weigh against huge
| swathes of psychology-adjacent research (among other domains),
| but is quite hard to overcome in practice, so money keeps
| flowing because its the established norm and because many
| people would rather have low-confidence pseudoscientific
| insights than no "scientific" insights at all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
| notjoemama wrote:
| > predominantly White
|
| So, the ones that commit suicide at the highest rate. But I
| agree, this is not a good study and little if any meaningful
| information comes from it. Perhaps its failure can bolster some
| _actual_ research into the issue?
| supportengineer wrote:
| We get an emotional support network? Nobody told me.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I know it's supposed to be a joke but it actually encapsulates
| one of the core issues about this already on the language
| level, men thinking they'd "get" something out of thin air. Do
| you think women have 31.41x larger emotional support networks
| out of thin air? Of course not, they put the effort in. Men
| don't.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Men don't.
|
| Even the idea repulses me.
| exe34 wrote:
| > they put the effort in. Men don't.
|
| Or you know, they do, and get used and cast aside enough
| times and stop.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Compassion is helpful here.
|
| Consider that many men (among others) don't consciously
| experience regular or frequent _need_ for verbal or tactile
| emotional support as such, so they don 't get a lot of
| practice culturing it as a skill, either as a giver or
| receiver, and don't often get to feel out which people in
| their network are going to be well-suited for it anyway.
|
| Infrequent needs are hard to "work on" and often benefit from
| _institutional_ support rather than _ad hoc_ support:
| therapists, churches /etc, discussion groups, etc
|
| It's sort of like changing tires, in that way. Now that
| manually changing a car tire is rare, because tires are more
| durable and crises can generally be remediated by calling
| some number on the cell phone you're certainly carrying,
| fewer and fewer people have actually done it and have a
| working, practiced familiarity with how to do it. But
| thankfully, roadside assistance and tow trucks are widely
| available and there's mostly no shame to using them now.
|
| Supporting _instutitonal_ access for emotional support would
| go along way towards helping the many _people_ who just don
| 't have an opportunity to "work on" building support networks
| the way you suggest.
| watwut wrote:
| Women do not build these networks by needing frequent
| emotional support. It is build on mundane stuff, when you
| do not need support, when no one need support.
|
| The emotional support thing is a consequence of building
| relationships when you do not need help, when you are fine.
| If you build them only when you need emotional support, you
| will be perceived as needy and people will get tired of it.
| swatcoder wrote:
| If that's all it was, there'd be no distinction at all.
|
| Men, broadly, have plenty of "relationships" that they
| invest themselves in and are extremely loyaly to.
|
| What the study was about, and the discussion is about, is
| emotional support, and that _quality_ is often not seen
| (or at least acknowledged) in the intense, loyal,
| committed, and earnestly worked on relationships that men
| do form, because its only one quality among a whole
| plethora that might define a relationship.
| watwut wrote:
| I get it, but my point was that it is not the frequency
| of the need that makes the difference. The
| acts/discussions/whatever that let you find and get
| comfortable with people able to provide emotional support
| are happening when no one needs emotional support.
|
| You build emotional support network by building it when
| you do not need emotional support.
| acuozzo wrote:
| It's a problem of the commons.
|
| It's particularly hard to bootstrap. You can take the plunge,
| attempt to open up to dozens of different guy-"friends", and
| repeatedly run into replies like "sucks, bro" or even "man
| up".
|
| I have a hobby which exposes me regularly to men of different
| ages, backgrounds, financial circumstances, etc. This seems
| to be the case for all of them.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Men have emotional support networks?
| thelastparadise wrote:
| I had two, then only one once the liquor store down road closed
| up shop.
| thih9 wrote:
| > However, generalized responses, such as "family" or "friends,"
| as well as mentions of non-human sources like pets, were excluded
| from formal analyses.
|
| Pets - fine; but rejecting generalized plural responses might
| mean rejecting cases where people genuinely had more emotional
| support providers.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| well good thing today they often dont even aquire one in the
| first place. good thing they would vote ever more radical to end
| that torture..
| seneca wrote:
| While the average is 1, a strikingly high number will have 0. The
| loneliness epidemic is a very real thing, and impacts men to a
| brutal degree.
| viraptor wrote:
| There are programs/orgs that try to address that. In Australia
| for example there's https://mensshed.org/ , https://dadlan.au/
| and probably a few others I'm not familiar with. If someone's
| aware of the US equivalents this may be a good place to link
| them.
| mrxd wrote:
| Incredible findings. Apparently your mom dies sometime when you
| are between age 30-90.
| w10-1 wrote:
| 293 Harvard men, last sampled in 2010, with "network" sizes of
| 2...
|
| Pseudo-science is dressing up a few true facts as a vehicle for
| opinion. It's typically relatively harmless, except perhaps when
| it happens to reflect a regressive zeitgeist.
|
| My own experience suggests all men take a lot more care on this
| point, but the effect of that been mostly overwhelmed by
| increased competition.
| wayoverthecloud wrote:
| I am doing my PhD and occasionally my supervisor and I come
| across papers that don't have any meaningful results/statistics
| but you gotta publish somehow. Like, they conclude with "We
| observed that the latency can be reduced by 2x-300x." I feel like
| the group that did this research spent a decade, and their
| supervisor was like, well, we gotta publish something. Choose an
| age interval that fits the whole data. 30-90.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Exactly what I thought put into words. There is not even a
| comparison to the obvious first question. Do women have the
| same effects or is it limited to men?
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Agreed. They followed this cohort for decades and this was the
| conclusion? It reads like an update from the pitch drop
| experiment.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_drop_experiment
| matrix87 wrote:
| Once you're an adult, do you even need one in the first place?
|
| I'm 24, I don't go to anyone for help pretty much ever, I just
| follow my own goals. That's gotten me way farther than most
| people I know
|
| I don't think this talk about "male emotional support networks"
| is actually intended to help men, it's meant to infantilize them.
| They'd be better off just buying into the nietzschean "support
| yourself" type of worldview
| 1shooner wrote:
| >Once you're an adult, do you even need one in the first place?
|
| >I'm 24
|
| No offense, but you're barely an adult. Life is hard, everyone
| needs help at some point. This is not a new concept.
| drdec wrote:
| You don't think you will want some support when a tragedy
| befalls you? A child or partner is hospitalized or dies? You
| develop a potentially terminal illness? A partner betrays you?
| Are you just going to "follow your goals" in these situations?
| constantcrying wrote:
| How is "emotional support" going to help with any of that?
| drdec wrote:
| It's right in the name, it helps you handle and process
| your emotions.
| constantcrying wrote:
| I can do that on my own perfectly fine.
| drdec wrote:
| That's fine that it is not for you.
|
| (Username does not check out)
| matrix87 wrote:
| > A child or partner is hospitalized or dies?
|
| everyone processes grief differently
|
| > You develop a potentially terminal illness?
|
| I mean, I'm probably going to die anyway. At least if you're
| alone you don't have to worry about the trade off between
| extreme medical bills and a few more months of life vs
| leaving family more money
|
| > A partner betrays you?
|
| I don't really plan on marrying so I'd just replace them with
| someone else
|
| In all of these situations, you can figure out ways to get
| through them alone
| drdec wrote:
| > In all of these situations, you can figure out ways to
| get through them alone
|
| That is not the point.
|
| The point is that an emotional support network will help
| you in these situations and suggesting that someone build
| one is not "infantilizing" them but giving them valuable
| tools.
|
| I could care less if you find one personally valuable or
| not (I don't have trouble imagining that there are people
| for which they are not), but I object to your
| generalizations and implication that men who pursue them
| are somehow lesser.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Yes, I don't even know what "emotional support" would look
| like.
|
| I have never wanted to externalize my emotions and the idea of
| talking to my friends about my feelings seems utterly bizarre.
| matrix87 wrote:
| I mean, I talk to friends and family about stuff that's going
| on. But I don't turn to them for actual advice because
| usually my own advice is better
| constantcrying wrote:
| I like to talk to my friends about many things, my emotions
| just do not include that and at no point in my adult life
| have I ever felt any inclination to do so.
| watwut wrote:
| You have never talked about being angry, about being
| happy? Those are emotions. And I see men writing about
| feeling lonely on hacker news all the time.
|
| Developers talk about being frustrated by tasks.
| Frustration is an emotion.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >You have never talked about being angry, about being
| happy?
|
| No. Why would I?
|
| >Developers talk about being frustrated by tasks.
| Frustration is an emotion.
|
| But they do not seek _emotional support_ , they seek
| advice on how to overcome that frustration.
|
| >And I see men writing about feeling lonely on hacker
| news all the time.
|
| Coincidentally I have also never felt lonely.
|
| Not once in my life have I felt the need to externalize
| my emotions. Of course I have had problems in my life,
| which I talked about with parents and friends, but my
| emotions where never part of that.
| jrgoff wrote:
| As a man in my mid-40s who has gradually become more aware of
| my emotions and the need I have for connection, I disagree. Of
| course I can't make claims about anyone else's needs or
| happiness, but for myself my life has been a lot better as I
| have built supportive friendships. I don't feel infantilized, I
| feel more able to have my needs met, be happier, work through
| blocks that are triggered by old wounds, etc. I feel more
| capable of living a satisfying life.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| I don't know you, but respectfully, people didn't start dying
| in my life until I was in my mid-30s.
|
| The most heartbreaking experience I've had was my 88 year old
| neighbor ringing the door, and informing me that his wife of 60
| years had just died. He managed to say three words. Before the
| fourth, he broke down in tears.
|
| My wife has died.
|
| Such a simple sentence, but a sentence that had 60 years of
| unconditional love behind it. And an entire family. Their life.
| His wife was lovely. I miss her, and cannot even pretend to
| imagine what this was, and still is, like, for him.
|
| Behind him, at my door, was my other neighbor. He was the first
| to have been told. He just stood there, silently, while I gave
| the husband a long hug. He never said a word, his mere presence
| saying everything that needed to be said.
|
| You are not alone.
| watwut wrote:
| I think that this ideology is one of reasons why men get less
| emotional support and why many cant provide it. They cant
| provided because they don't want to, because they look down on
| people who want or need it. And consequently they cant really
| talk openly with other men, because they will look down at
| them.
|
| > Once you're an adult, do you even need one in the first
| place?
|
| Yes adults need it. Humans are animals like that.
| ajolly wrote:
| Yeah. Prob 90% of mine went away between 36-40 years old.
| Babairjfjf wrote:
| Men have ANY emotional support network? Even talking about brutal
| sexual assault, that happens to most baby boys is forbidden.
| Drinking with lads is not really an emotional support!
| kevwil wrote:
| Imagine having someone, anyone, that you felt comfortable sharing
| your feelings with. Amazing.
|
| I've known my best friend for 50 years now, literally since
| kindergarten. One person. I probably wouldn't talk about my top
| 5% of private feelings with him, not sure why. I've been married
| 28 years now. She doesn't understand me at all, and doesn't want
| to see or hear any "weakness" from me. So what the f@#$ is an
| emotional support network? Science fiction, I'd say.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| Your comment mirrors my experience with both close friends and
| a spouse. One time my now ex-wife asked why I don't share my
| feelings more. When I did she said she felt unsafe and we
| started talking about her instead. In my anecdotal experience
| men are routinely trained not to talk about their troubles and
| emotions. Even if I had some form of emotional support I am not
| sure I would know how to open up. And I am not sure I would
| want to.
| scoofy wrote:
| I will never stop being a regular at the local bar. I may switch
| to NA beers as I get older, but it is entirely important to me to
| engage in the rituals that predate history. Having a local
| bar/pub, generally walking distance away from a residence, where
| people gather and know each other (even if they are not friends)
| seems important to me.
|
| This line of thinking has also nearly convinced my to go to some
| kind of church, but growing up with zealots as parents has pretty
| much nullified that. I only wish that universities took on the
| roll of a third place community center, offering/advertising free
| lectures to locals.
| matrix87 wrote:
| I kind of wish coffee houses had more of this role like how
| they were in Vienna
| scoofy wrote:
| I think people attended those as sort of a nightly news
| service. Where intellectuals would talk about the days
| events. Now, with modern tech, people can do that from their
| own how with experts just by watching the news or youtube.
|
| I really think the automobile and television are more to
| blame for the loneliness epidemic than we give credit for.
| sawmurai wrote:
| Yes, I notice the benefit of having the same faces around
| regularly at the $sport I do few times per week. You don't say
| much more than hello and goodbye, but after a while you
| appreciate each other's company and really miss it when you
| can't go.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Useless.
|
| 'generalized responses, such as "family" or "friends,"..., were
| excluded from formal analyses.'
| thdhhghgbhy wrote:
| More like by 40. My relationship with even my best buds from
| school became empty or non existent after years of marriage and
| kids.
| asimpleusecase wrote:
| I attend a church and it's large enough that you would generally
| not get to know people very well. But they offer "small group"
| connection and about 3 years ago I connected with 3 other men. We
| meet every couple of weeks. We have different backgrounds but all
| of us have leadership responsibilities. We have step by step
| deepened the trust and confidence in each other. At some point
| over the past year each of us was in some type of ultra stressful
| situation - losing sleep -etc. But when we came to our group we
| could say as much or as little as we wished but the entire group
| was supportive. I could get into more detail but I know that many
| on HN don't care for church. What I wanted to share is that we
| all have found this to be the highlight of our week - when we get
| together. Personally, it has been the most connected I have been
| with men in 20 years. So it's not a law of nature that men won't
| or can't see their masculine support network grow. It takes time
| to build trust but it is worth the investment
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