Opinion: I’m a Case Study for Male Loneliness

Men are conditioned to keep each other at arm’s length, and it’s a very bad thing for members of our gender

Photo byAlvin B Decena on Pexels

ll of the friends I have as an adult are friends I made when I was 12 years old or younger. They were the kids in my neighborhood who happened to live nearby and that I also got along with. My best friend lived in the house directly across from my mom’s house. His family moved into that house when he was 3 years old. My family moved into ours when I was 3 months old. I don’t know when I met him; it’s as if we’ve just always known each other.

I’d go on to become good friends with my best friend’s cousin as well, as he was just a couple years younger than us and would spend the summers in our neighborhood. I’d meet my two other close friends around the same time. One of them, however, was something of a friend by association. We’d all hangout in the same group, but he and I never really hung out just the two of us. To be fair, he enjoyed alone time, and online gaming, and didn’t come to hangout with the group too frequently at all. While I have warm feelings of camaraderie for him as well, he won’t figure into the story going forward.

The other one — besides my best friend and his cousin — would sometimes go by “G.” G was my other best friend. Unlike the cousin, he lived in our neighborhood, so I’d get to see both him and my best friend every day. We’d hangout together, try to talk to groups of girls together, and get into trouble together. When I first got drunk, it was with all of them, at the young age of 15.

One day someone ran off with my cell phone, and G — an aspiring track star — ran him down and got it back. The kid, in turn, lied to his cousins and said we’d actually stolen his phone. This lead to me and G having to fight off 7 other guys for a brief stint, until their parents came and broke it up. It was a scary incident, but one that brings two friends closer together. G and I would later be stopped and searched by the police together. I’d be there another time when a group of about 15 guys was brought to jump him after he got into a fight with a neighborhood kid. Luckily, we already knew a number of the 15 so nothing happened.

My best friend signed up for the military at 17, with his parent’s signature, and I remember the hard hug he gave me and G when he got back from his deployment to Iraq and Kuwait. He seemed changed and angry for a time, but he settled more or less into his old self after a while. Years later, I’d rush over one morning to pick him up from a car accident at 6:30 AM, when he got t-boned by someone on the way back from the club. Part of his ear was dangling in a way ears aren’t supposed to dangle, but he didn’t want to get billed for an ambulance, so he called me, and I took him to a hospital.

My best friend’s cousin and I would always try to get into some nonsense. Once, after he lost his job, we took advantage of the opening in his schedule by spending a week going to Wynwood (an area of Miami famous for its graffiti, bars, and restaurants) and going up and down every street, into every bar, and having a drink or two at each. We also took shrooms and went to an event called “Night Garden” where they illuminate this huge park with all sorts of trippy light displays. As he tried to get his rap career off the ground, I’d drive him to some of the seediest strip clubs in the city to perform at their open-mic nights. I had to step into the middle of a would-be brawl more than once at those events.

Over the years I formed deep bonds with all of these men. Then, the events of November 21st, 2021 came around. I went out that evening for drinks with my best friend and the cousin. Me and my best friend got a bit drunk, and his cousin got exceedingly drunk. Known to take it over the top, we often told the story of how, at a rave we had gone to in our teens, the cousin once passed out laid over a trash can.

As we knocked back glasses, they started to make some jokes about me. It was nothing out of the usual; we often used making fun of each other as a way to pass the time. However, I was in a very odd state that night. My ex-girlfriend had literally gone insane that year, and I had spent 8 months taking care of her, as she went through one psychotic break after another — until eventually she returned home to her family in another country just a few weeks prior. I was emotionally raw after the experience. I had spent that whole month just lying in bed, from morning to night, only getting up to eat, and now to go out for the first time.

The jokes coming at me were relentless. They kept going, no exaggeration, for more than an hour. They could tell I was easy to antagonize that day, and it made me a target. And we didn’t frequently talk about what was going on in our lives, or our emotional state, so no one really knew the full extent of what I was going through. However, as I started to actually get angry, my best friend laid off — and tried to get his cousin to give it a break too. The cousin, however, was determined to continue. Finally, I got so mad I just walked out.

After regaining my composure, I returned. We hung out like normal for a little bit, until my best friend went to the bathroom. Then, his cousin started up again. Immediately, the flip was switched back, and I was absolutely furious. I told him, “Look, I need you to cut it out. I’m real pissed off today, and you’re either going to cut it out or I’m going to make you cut it out.” In response, he got in my face and started to put his hands on me. He pushed my shoulder and put a finger in my chest. He called me a “b*tch” before throwing his drink down and storming out of the bar.

My best friend came back around this time and went after his cousin. I took care of the bar tab, and I left to go to my car. That’s when I heard screaming: “You f*cking p*ssy. I oughta shoot your b*tch *ss.” It was the cousin shouting at me. I yelled back, “I’m right here.” He stormed over and put a finger in my chest. That was that; I snapped. A minute or so later, his jaw would be broken in three places — the night before his birthday and a few days before Thanksgiving.

My best friend took it personally that I had so injured his cousin. And my other best friend, G, and I had grown apart over the years, so we didn’t hangout much outside the group at that point. I went 20+ years with the same four friends, and after that day, almost three years ago, I haven’t seen any of them again. I have occasionally talked to my best friend and G on the phone, but that’s it.

I’ve sought to make new male friends since then, and it seems all but impossible. Guys all like having other guy friends, but that relationship has to come about very naturally, and usually at a young age, how my friendships did. It seems strange for one grown man to intentionally pursue friendship with another grown man, and at 32 years old, all my attempts to do so have been rebuffed. To be fair, I work alone and am not one for parties or other social gatherings, so things are a little contrived in that regard. I only see guys in passing, so we’ll never hangout organically without an actual move to do so.

I’ve tried “asking out” other heterosexual men, but it seems to always feel weird for both of us. It’s silly but a lot of straight guys treat homosexuality like something contagious that you’ll catch by accident, and they’re wary of doing anything that seems potentially suggestive of that with another man. I’ve tried casually suggesting to different guys, who I feel like I could be friends with, that we should “grab a beer when you’re in the neighborhood” or something, and it never goes anywhere. To be honest, I’m guilty of the same. I feel off when another man has shown too much interest in being friends with me. Society has conditioned us to feel odd about showing any interest in each other, even though there are perfectly normal, platonic reasons for doing so.

It’s left me in a weird place where I feel like I need to compensate with female friends, but I’ve only been able to make female friends because of dating apps, and in almost all cases, we’ve either transitioned from a sexual relationship, or there’s a strong undertone of sexuality to the relationship even if nothing has happened. It’s left me scared to commit to one woman because I feel that, if I’m to really do right by her, I’d have to cut off these women and leave myself completely friendless and stuck in some sort of weird co-dependence — wherein my romantic partner is my only friend.

Friends definitely play a crucial role in our lives. For example, there’s basically no one I can really vent to about my romantic life, since most of my so-called “friends” would probably get jealous or otherwise feel weird hearing about it. I also can’t really go anywhere when I want to talk about the things that most of my female friends have no interest in, such as anime, rap music, boxing, etc. It’s an odd situation to be in, and one that often leaves me feeling quite down.

There’s a lot of talk about the epidemic of “male loneliness” nowadays. With lifelong relationships I had worked so hard to cultivate and keep, I never thought I’d end up serving as a case study of male loneliness, but one bad day can change your life forever.