I want to be painfully honest here. Most men don’t have many friends! If, you don’t have many friends or any, don’t worry about it. You’re definitely not alone with this. Here are five main reasons why guys don’t have many friends:
5 REASONS WHY GUYS DON’T HAVE MANY FRIENDS
1. THEY ARE CHASING SUCCESS
There are more ways to be rich than just having a lot of money. Having an excess of cash is certainly great. But how rich are you if you are sick or lonely all the time? In the area that I live in, there is a fair amount of wealth. It’s common to see a lot of guys who are so into making money that they neglect everything else.
Most of the time when I see a guy driving an expensive sports car, he is by himself. My feeling is that most of those Ferrari owners aren’t out driving alone because they want to be by themselves. They just don’t have any friends that they can enjoy that car they worked so hard to get.
Same goes for many boat owners. The majority of boats just sit because the owners don’t have the kind of friendships to be able to use them. And boating alone isn’t that fun. It is, in fact pretty lonely and depressing.
The job of a medical doctor or researcher can be intense and super time-consuming. Having a badass job that requires all of your time and focus is a great excuse for not having friends.
2. THEY HAVE A FAMILY
Nothing will void you of your personal time and money more than a demanding wife and a couple of overstimulated kids. The amount that dad has to work just to pay for everything alone is staggeringly consuming.
Being a responsible father and husband is a noble and fulfilling role. Not having time or energy to have a couple of real guy friends is understood.
3. THEY HAVE TECH JOBS
When I was a kid, most jobs required a degree of interaction with other men. Construction jobs, factory jobs, and sales of all kinds were done without computers because there weren’t any. And nobody had a phone in their pockets.
Many of today’s jobs only require electronic correspondences with co-workers. Conference calls, e-mails, and texting replace face to face interactions. The environment for making friends has been reduced to almost nothing. And as we all know, Facebook friends aren’t the same thing as real-world friends. Also, Instagram girls aren’t nearly as hot in person. Jus’ sayin’.
4. THEY ARE ANTI-SOCIAL
Some guys just don’t do much. They work, come home, watch porn, jerk off, watch ESPN, jerk off again, go to sleep, repeat. The society that we live in is super conducive for this. A big-screen TV, Youtube, Uber Eats, and an out of control social media is all some guys need to fill in their off-work downtime.
Many men don’t go anywhere where there are other guys. They aren’t in a sports league or an interest group of any kind. The best they do is maybe go to a bar where their heads are buried in a phone looking at shit that happened or is actually happening somewhere else.
THEY RELY TOO MUCH ON SOCIAL MEDIA
I would love to say that only women use social media too much but just as many dudes are using it to have a pseudo-social life. Sure, females may use Instagram more, but guys make up for it with Facebook and Youtube.
It makes sense. With social media, you don’t have to do much to actually look like you are doing something. Why go through all the trouble of taking a shower, getting dressed, and going out into the real world? Right?
THE VALUE OF HAVING FRIENDS
It’s hard to consider that our society has changed so much that it may no longer be a “given” that it’s good to have friends. I may be old school about this but absolutely believe that it’s important to have real-life friends.
REASONS GUYS SHOULD HAVE REAL WORLD FRIENDS
Friends keep you in check
If you have ever lived by yourself and not had anyone close to you for a while, then you know how fucking out there you can get. I remember well when I was newly divorced and living alone for the first time in my life. I was quite used to having my wife keep my thoughts of conspiracy theories, both locally and globally, in check. After not having her as a sounding board, I was coming up with a lot of weird shit.
You don’t necessarily need a girlfriend or wife to keep your weird side in check, but you do need someone. Friends are great for this. As friends, we are constantly bouncing ideas and theories off of each other. How other humans in our lives respond to things help us to maintain a more normal social range of ideals. I’m not at all recommending that you should think and do only like everyone else. But, if you don’t want to appear to be a creep, you have to at least know which thoughts you can share and which you can’t.
Friends can help you pick up or meet women
The biggest values of having friends are social ones. Friends help you be more connected to society which always helps with being more attractive. Also, fellow single guys can help each other by going out together and bouncing ideas and stories about dating off each other.
We use friends as a tool for learning to be a man
Every guy knows that we don’t just become men. It’s a learning process. We learn how to be men by hanging or working with other men. It’s like when Peter asked his construction worker neighbor if anyone at his work had ever said that they “had a case of the Mondays” in the movie “Office Space”.
“Hell no”, the construction worker Lawrence said. “I believe you’d get your ass kicked for saying something like that, man”. This is a great example of learning what you can and can’t say as a man.
Guys learn to be men in a lot of ways just by observing other dudes. There may be some ridicule or the threat of a fistfight here and there, but in the end, we learn.
We have fun with friends
I’ve known a couple of guys who try to brake hard and say they don’t need anybody. The truth is though, that’s bullshit. We are social animals. Period. No man is an island and we need companionship in order to survive in a mentally healthy manner.
If you disagree on this, consider the prison system. Prison is full of mostly guys that are having such big issues with society that they have to be removed from it. You have angry and violent men who don’t fear anything or anyone all living together trying to survive their time. You would think that this type of guy, who has major issues with being social, would welcome being solitary. The reality though is that solitary confinement is their worst punishment. It’s the thing they avoid more than anything else.
Life is better with friends. Sure, alone time is really important for some of us. But having friends to do shit with is the best life available.
SO, HOW DO YOU MAKE FRIENDS?
Have you ever noticed some people who can easily make friends with almost anyone anywhere? It can seem like they have some kind of aura or smell that attracts people to them and lets them in immediately. This, of course, is not the case. People who can easily talk to anyone and make friends with everyone all have some things in common.
7 THINGS PEOPLE WHO MAKE FRIENDS EASY HAVE IN COMMON
They aren’t afraid of people
We all know that people can suck. Since we were kids, we’ve been judging each other and at times can be mean with ridicule. It stands to reason that many choose to keep their guard up around others as it hurts when you are treated negatively.
Guys who make friends easily aren’t afraid to get hurt by others. Sure, they have gotten stung by humans in the past but they don’t give it a thought during times of meeting new people. How they have learned to cope with the potential of getting rejected or ridiculed is unique to them. What’s important here is that they are not afraid of people. That allows them to approach people.
They make eye contact
Eye to eye contact is maybe the single most important thing to do with connecting with people and making friends. We all kind of know this as everyone knows and speaks “body language”. This is why eye contact is so important because we know what it says when people don’t make it.
Real-life social superstars all make great eye contact initially. The first lock of eyes is super important as this is when we make our initial assessment. This is that first impression that everyone says is so important. Even when that first contact is less than a half-second, the brain goes to work making 100 decisions on this other human. Is he a threat, smart, cool, interesting, mean, dirty, etc.?
Making eye contact may reveal some of the negative things in your personality, but not making eye contact almost always is a tell for something negative. Not making eye contact can suggest that you are hiding something, feel superior, lack confidence, or are anti-social. This is a killer when trying to make friends.
They have something interesting to say
When meeting new people and making friends, it’s great to be able to listen and be open and engaging. But if you don’t have much to contribute to the convo, then you may only be a nice guy to some but not worthy of friendship.
Friend makers always have something interesting to say. It’s during that lull in the conversation or when a segue is needed that the socially strong will have something to say. In my case, I always have a current event or a new joke in the back of my head just in case I need to have something to say to keep the talk going well. And it’s not something stupid or boring like “I took my dog for a walk this morning and he barked at a squirrel”.
Instead, I might say “Hey, did you hear that they found a humpback whale like a mile inland in Costa Rica? They don’t know how it got there. Some are saying it was aliens”. Friend makers have interesting, thought-provoking, and engaging things to add and people love that shit.
They are open
What I mean by this is that these people are mentally and physically available which makes them highly approachable and comfortable to be around. They have created this environment around them because they aren’t hiding behind some attitude or closed off by their body language.
Friend makers are open in that they will welcome and accept anything you say, are, or do around them with little judgment. Being open is highly vulnerable so it requires a great amount of confidence with some don’t give a fuck attitude, which most respect and feel comfortable around. This often breeds openness with others making them feel good about who they are.
They listen
Many people just don’t fucking listen. They may know that they should but just don’t. At best, they sit there waiting for the other person to finish talking so they can continue with their points.
Guys who attract and make friends easily all know how to listen. And listening is not the same as hearing. Listening means you are absorbing what someone is telling you so you can then discuss what is being said further. This sounds so elementary but listening is at least half of any conversation. For me, listening is easy and something I like to and want to do because I am genuinely interested in people. And in order to learn about who someone is, you absolutely have to listen to them.
I always say that everyone’s favorite topic is themselves. Letting people talk about their lives and who they are, allows you to get to know them. And when you get to know someone, guess what? You can become friends.
They are non-toxic
Have you ever been around someone and the encounter made you feel strange? You can put a finger on it but you just don’t feel right. Some people are just toxic. They say or do some things that make you feel bad or negative. It may be subtle to the point that you don’t notice, but that thing he said about war, women, or the color blue just didn’t sit right.
Toxic people are in a lot of pain so they are always attempting to broadcast this pain outward. They feel poorly about themselves so making you feel bad about yourself brings you into their frame. Toxic people can be very social and engaging but in the end, won’t have many friends because friendships are used for support and positive reinforcement. Toxic people rarely are positively supportive.
Friend makers are not toxic. Engaging with them may be thought-provoking or even spark some heated opinion, but you always walk away feeling good about who you are and what you said. People who are non-toxic are so because they create an atmosphere of non-judgment and acceptance. They are striving to allow you to be yourself around them and won’t use anything that you say about yourself against you negatively.
They are unoffensive
Don’t you hate it when someone is always saying something that offends you or others around you? It’s OK to take a position on something opposite of someone else, but if it’s taken harshly with no regard of the other side, that’s off-putting and offensive and people don’t like that shit.
Friend makers make sure they are not offensive. Sure, it’s impossible to not offend someone or something these days but what I mean is to not offend the person standing in front of you. There are ways to express your views on things and not offend the person you are talking to who might feel the opposite. Friend makers accomplish this by respecting the other person’s opinions while not wording their own stances in any black and white, “my way or the highway” attitude.
Also, guys who can make friends easily are physically non-offensive. They make sure and not have horrible breath or body odor. They are cleanly dressed and don’t over do it with harsh language or offensive topics of sex, religion, or politics.
TYPES OF FRIENDS
I think we can all agree that there is a difference between Facebook friends and real-world friends. In reality, we have friends in many different degrees. A friend of mine once said, “if you need more than one hand to count your friends, you don’t really have any”. Ironically, I haven’t talked to him in years and he wasn’t a very social guy but I get what he meant. The number of true and close friends can only be a small one as we just don’t have enough time and energy to be close to a lot of people.
Many people have like 10,000 followers, 2000 Facebook friends, a couple of hundred work-related acquaintances, a 100 other lifestyle acquaintances, a half dozen family-related friends, and maybe one true close friend other than who they are sleeping with. In truth, that’s not too bad if you have at least one good trusting close bestie.
Social media friends and semi-close acquaintances are nice to have. However, the real holy grail of friendships are the ones that you talk to many times a week and get together with often and travel with. These are the friends that matter and are so impactful that there can only be a few of them.
HOW TO KEEP YOUR CLOSE FRIENDS
During that dark age known as “before the internet”, it was easier to keep friends. The options then were talking to them on the phone, going and doing shit with them in the real world, or maybe writing them a letter. There would be no communication that wasn’t one on one so it was a lot harder to take what your friend said wrong.
Two things make it harder for us to keep our close friends in today’s over communicative society. One is that we can see each other’s lives (or at least a false presentation of it) without being present. This offers a constant opportunity to find something about them offensive to you. And, if you don’t see each other often, the potential for feeling negative about who your friend is based only on his social statuses. becomes more likely.
The other thing that makes it harder to keep close friends during this time in society is that we all have an incredible amount of options with how we can spend our time. And a lot of time now is spent alone with our heads looking into the phone instead of doing actual physical things. This makes it where we can see our closest friends much less frequently.
It’s my opinion that close friendships need to have a certain degree of one on one interaction. Making sure and talking to a friend one on one only by phone talks or at least texts or private messages that involve no one else is crucial. Privately communicating with your closest friends ensures that you stay close and connected with each other. And that there are less or no misunderstandings that can be sparked by long periods not connecting.
It’s also my opinion that close, meaningful friends do actual shit in the actual physical world together. And they do it on a regular basis. We are all busy with our lives. In order to maintain and keep quality friendships, time needs to be made for an occasional breakfast meeting, grabbing a beer at a pub once in a while, going fishing, or watching a game together.
By definition, friends are a one on one experience. Continuing to connect one on one is how you keep good people in your life.
