Why is it harder for men to have intimate friendships into adulthood?
We're doing something a little different over the next two weeks. We'll still give you the latest news. But at the top, we'll be sharing some of our favorite reads of the year or giving you some cool end-of-2025 stuff. We hope you enjoy the chance to slow down a bit.
I can tell my girlfriends everything. And I do. At every stage of my life, I've met amazing women whom I've come to confide in, listen to, laugh with, cry with and play netball with.
My husband has friends. But ... it's not quite the same. They meet less, talk less and never cry. He, like many men, and the author of today's long read, craves more. What I love about today's story is that it examines what it might take for men to go beyond these arms-length friendships. (It's not that much!)
Where have all the deep male friendships gone?
By Sam Graham-Felsen
The last problem I ever thought I would have was loneliness. From grade school through my late 20s, I had a wide circle of friends, and many of them were guys I'd hang with on a near-daily basis. One of these friends was Rob.
I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time and cared deeply about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other and often argued like a bitter married couple -- but eventually, like a successful married couple, we'd always find a way to talk things out.
I've been going through emails Rob and I exchanged in our early 20s, and I've been amazed at how seriously we took our friendship. Even in the heat of acrimony, we found the space to not only acknowledge the other's pain and point of view but also to openly affirm our admiration for each other.
This was how close I used to be with my male friends. Not just with Rob but with nearly a dozen other dudes -- dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me -- and whom, now, I almost never talk to.
I know I'm not the only guy with this problem. The notion that men in this country suck at friendship is so widespread that it has become a truism, a punchline. "Your dad has no friends," John Mulaney said during an opening monologue on "Saturday Night Live." "If you think your dad has friends, you're wrong. Your mom has friends, and they have husbands. Those are not your dad's friends."
What I didn't know is that American men are becoming significantly worse at friendship. A study in 2024 by the Survey Center on American Life found that only 26 percent of men reported having six or more close friends. Polling a similar question in 1990, Gallup had put this figure at 55 percent. The same Survey Center study found that 17 percent of men have zero close friends, more than a fivefold increase since 1990.