There is a lot of solid scholarship questioning the label “male loneliness epidemic,” but not because scholars are stupid enough to equate having sex with an absence of loneliness.
Why are we conflating emotional intimacy and sex? They aren’t the same thing. The fact that men are often taught that they are the same thing is part of why there is a loneliness epidemic.
EXACTLY.
what these statistics hide is that they dont examine QUALITY OF LIFE , NUMBERR OF RELATIONSHIPS, TYPES OOF RELATIONSHIPS, and THE INSANE RATES OF DEATHS OF DESPAIR AMONGSTT MIDDLE AGED AND SENIOR MEN
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10721027/ for this study of Korean middle aged men and women it was found thatt those who met more often wiith theiir friends had higher reported levels of life satisfation . YES for men AND women (and ya ya those who reported being married ALSO had higher reportrd levels of life satisfaction too BUT it sshould be noted that wifdowed people reported even higher levels of life satisfaction than all other adults who were included in the study and currently lived alone)
About 70-80% of all deaths worldwide from ‘Deaths Of Despair’ (so that includes deatha from eatting a terrible diet without exercising and dying from a cardiovascular disease, deaths from drunk driving, deaths from deliberate suicide , deaths frrom accidental drug overdoses, deaths from alcohol poisoning, deaths from fatty liver diseases ) were deaths of men per a year since we’ve started measurinng it. And very much middle aged men.
Also havent some studies come out showing that people have reported having less friends or rsther less people that they talk to and confide in per a weeek or even per a month than ever before?
Your spouse is supposed to be one of your friends , ya I gett that. But if you rely on only your spouse as your only friend ? Youre gonna get into A LOOOT of trouble if they eventually divorce from you.
what these statistics hide is that they dont examine QUALITY OF LIFE , NUMBERR OF RELATIONSHIPS, TYPES OOF RELATIONSHIPS, and THE INSANE RATES OF DEATHS OF DESPAIR AMONGSTT MIDDLE AGED AND SENIOR MEN
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10721027/ for this study of Korean middle aged men and women it was found thatt those who met more often wiith theiir friends had higher reported levels of life satisfation . YES for men AND women (and ya ya those who reported being married ALSO had higher reportrd levels of life satisfaction too BUT it sshould be noted that wifdowed people reported even higher levels of life satisfaction than all other adults who were included in the study and currently lived alone)
About 70-80% of all deaths worldwide from ‘Deaths Of Despair’ (so that includes deatha from eatting a terrible diet without exercising and dying from a cardiovascular disease, deaths from drunk driving, deaths from deliberate suicide , deaths frrom accidental drug overdoses, deaths from alcohol poisoning, deaths from fatty liver diseases ) were deaths of men per a year since we’ve started measurinng it. And very much middle aged men.
Also havent some studies come out showing that people have reported having less friends or rsther less people that they talk to and confide in per a weeek or even per a month than ever before?
Your spouse is supposed to be one of your friends , ya I gett that. But if you rely on only your spouse as your only friend ? Youre gonna get into A LOOOT of trouble if they eventually divorce from you.
thx for the reply but i think your kkeyboard might be shaking. mignt want tc get it checked byy a mechanic?
You also gotta pre-emptively accept the possibility that youll NEVER meet friends or a partner who wants to be associated with you despite your best efforts. It is a possibility and there is nothing wrong with you if that happens to you and youre a kind, quiet , peaceful person. It is what it is
Human-Human relationships are sort of an ‘It Is Whatt It Is Type Of Affair’ these days. You can do everything kindly and to your best efforts to meet other like-minded people …and everyone can still not want to be your friend or lover. You can be worst than Adolph Shiter or Suharto and be surrounded with a million admirers and fake friends. It is what it is.
'Sadly it is what it is BUT At least you tried ’ is how I see it nowadays. 🤷🏿♂️
Best of wishes to you and everyone else who is lonely out here. Best of wishes on the journey comrade.🫂🫡
Be 2025
…years old?! Not happenin bud
You can have sex and be a totally toxic bastard that people don’t want to be around once they get to know you. You could have sex frequently but still be deeply lonely.
Agreed. It’s dangerous to conflate emotional intimacy and sex - they aren’t the same thing and pretending they are is part of what got us into this mess imo.
The phasing is as a sudden historically unique crisis, not the generic sense of ennui common to adulthood throughout history.
I can show you black and white French films from the 1960s complaining about the same Male Loneliness
Those statistics seem to be AI hallucination.
Also, if you have one sexual intercourse encounter per year, you’re not lonely? AND you could be pounding every week and still be lonely because the chemistry is not there, the love is vapid. People can just wank or pound for sexual release, but it doesn’t solve loneliness. Hell, people are lonely in a household of 6 people. Why? Because everybody is doing their own thing, ambivalent of each other. Thus, they can be lonely.
The feeling of loneliness is likely the basis for “I missed you.” Forlorning. And it’s noticed during reflection, alone.
We grow up in schools, where we’ve known 60%+ (of our class) since 1st grade (or earlier), and now – in adulthood, we’re thrown into a world full of strangers, everyday strangers. Friends help, but it doesn’t mend that community we had in our day-to-day school work.
The movie “Shame” is a pretty good example of lonliness despite having sex constantly. I think it was with Michael Fassbender and from 2012, but it’s been awhile so I don’t remember. Good movie, though. Real feel bad film.
There is a capitalist alienation epidemic.
‘Everything circles back to capitalism’ is really a meme because it’s true.
I do think people living under capitalism sometimes forget the human condition exists beyond the economic condition.
More free time, less economic precarity, better health, better education, a place to call home. All of that is great. But you still need to go out and meet people.
Socialism won’t make you touch grass.
Socialism will make it WAAAAY easier rto touch grass and to ‘touch’ o ther people (to deal with your touch starvation) and even to touch people’s hearts cause youll work less than half of the hours you do right now. The 40 hour work week is to kept to keep you tired ,unimaginative, disconnected from your neighbours, yoyr community, and even disconnected from your family. We have no need to work 40 hoirs a week to keep society running. We have a lot oof things that can take care of most o f the labour we do nowadays OR a lot of the 40 hour work week jobs are just bullshit jobs like stockbrokimg or being trappped in an office wasting time.
And also in a socialistic society, the human condition is placed at the centre of everythinng that is planned or done. If the people in a socialistic society collectively agree and their research and researchers also collectively agree through theor data that there is a ‘loneliness epidemic AND that the loneliness epidemiic is worsening the human condition of the people’? The poeple of that socialistic society will collectively put in the work to permanently change society so that there will probably never be another loneliness epidemic whilst fixing the current loneliness epidemic.
THATS how socialism will work for problems like these.
As if married men or men who have had sex at least once can’t be lonely. “You got your dick wet 20 years ago, what’s the problem?!”
Dudes don’t have friends. That’s the epidemic.
Dudes don’t have friends.
I’ve got plenty of dude friends. And they’ve got friends of their own.
Clubs are full of dudes. Rec leagues are full of dudes. Schools are full of dudes. Bunch of dudes on my street hang out regularly We’re all hanging out and making friends with one another.
It’s real, it’s happening.
But theres still a sizeable pprtion of men dying from deaths of despair ESPECIALLY in middle age. Why is that?
Have you ever stopped to ask these specific men why they have such shit quality of life that theyd rather kill themselves with food and substances? It probanly has somethjng to do with the fact that they havve so few friends and now that their spouse is divorcored from them or dead they have NOBODY to conmect with cause making friends as a middle aged man or a middle aged single dad is excruciatingly hard.
What you see in clubs and school or on the street isnt super relevant if the data that we are observing shows us something else!
They might not have friends. And even if they have friends, where’s the love? Everybody is doing their own thing. Even a married man can feel loneliness, and if they do, it’s good to start a conversation.
Yeah, can you imagine living in a house 24/7/365 with a glass wall full of strangers? And you feel like the last member of your species? Perhaps, we solved “what would you do if you were marooned on an island, alone (or with a strange female/male)?”
Dudes make friends with each other so damn easy it’s a meme for a reason.
Like women have to simultaneously live in a world where you call us all catty bitches who compete with each order but also you all have no fucking friends and can’t make any and boohoo. Pick a fucking lane!
You’re being very reductive. I don’t know who called you a catty bitch but chances are it wasn’t every man who’s ever complained about being lonely.
So when you throw it in men’s faces and say pick a lane, you’re kinda doing the same thing that some men do when after encountering one or two golddiggers they make sweeping generalizations like “women only want men for their money.”
Men can be lonely. Men can also be assholes. But when you try to invalidate some men’s loneliness because some men are assholes, that’s a problem. And that tendency to generalize is one of the big contributing factors to male loneliness today.
Also, I’ve heard women call each other catty bitches, so don’t pretend that’s something only men do. The men you’ve heard say it might even have been repeating what they heard from other women.
It’s a fool who believes that the circumstantial “friends” you make because you happen to be in the same place at the same time are true, ride or die, listen to your problems, give good advice friends.
The former you can make practically anywhere you go, like you said, it’s a meme. The latter are tough, maybe a couple in your whole life kind of encounters. The former will fill a room and you won’t be alone, the latter will take up one seat and you won’t feel lonely. Quantity vs quality.
Exactly.
The problem is quality not quantity.
If you meet and bang a trillion people off of tinder (and ya I get it there are not 1 trillion humans) but you never emotionally connect with ANY of them there is NO WAY IN HELLLLL you have a better quality of life than a random person who met one person on tinder, completely connectef with that one person from tinder emotionally, and spent the rest of their life with that one tinder partner.
Any human who isnt a deranged megalomaniac would trade an infinite number of acquaintances, associates, and fake friends for one random stranger they met in a public washroom who is way older than them but who understannds and connects with their beliefs and their liifestyle completely.
This is why billionaires and politically connected jerks tend to have so many ‘associates’ , they know a gal that knows a couple guys that can ‘take care of business’ or ‘take out a target’ for you or them, and rarely do they ever have that small , quiet group of true friends.
trump is probably the most powerful man on the planet thanks to his nuclear arsenal…how many true friends do you think he has based on the people youve seen him meet over the years?..
Cause friendship is surface level. Try talking about your feelings to one of them and see how quickly you feel alienated.
And it’s not sunshine on other side either in their defense. I’ve been in kind of an all women group once, it was genuinely a suffocating experience. Like there are just so many mannerisms and subtle etiquettes you need to pick up, it’s almost harder to talk your mind in all women setting than in all men.
And who’s you? I don’t think either OP or the commenter is the person calling women catty bitches. Everyone’s experience is different, and its better if you give it back to those who called you a catty bitch rather than a random dude on the internet.
TIL that the opposite of loneliness is having had sex
We could learn a lot from anon
having sex (perhaps just once?) doesn’t equal not lonely, though.
In fact sex being used as the indicator is actually a clue to one of the largest contributors. There’s a very wide reaching assumption that men should get most of their emotional support from their female partner. This is often very stressful to the female partner and is a fragile way to meet a basic need; if she gets sick or dies he’s probably not far behind her. Men need to learn how to compliment and hug each other platonically. It’s 2026 and it’s for their own good ffs. I keep giving my male patients brochures for men’s support groups and I really hope at least some of them are actually going.
It seems so surreal to me that other men don’t hug each other, or tell their friends that they love them
because that’s gay.
but for real, for every person that says men need to talk about their feelings and hug it out… you realize that there are 10 other people who would regard you as being gay/not a man for doing that, right? and that includes men and women.
real world is more complex than internet nerds want to believe.
Furry here, we do that stuff. It’s pretty good, can recommend.
Also men used to do that a lot more, before the world wars.
We do it a lot more but it does exist in other places just less hug centric more a hand on a shoulder. Normally social groups and clubs. it requires older men that are not entirely Jaded to set the example. Unfortunately those guys mostly have passed at this point and most boomers don’t have the cognitive bandwidth.
Sometimes I lightly punch my friends in the balls to thank them for being vulnerable around me.
As a men with almost a bromance with his best friend… Frrrrrr.
Like, let’s not even go as far as a hug (for many it’s simply uncomfortable, whether it’s with a man or a woman; I only hug my mother and my sister, for example xd), but there are other forms of intimacy and emotional support that shouldn’t be tied to gender.
I mean, words of affirmation, the simple act of crying openly or expressing fears, anxieties, feelings or emotions, or expressing love or affection (platonically, as many mistakenly associate an “I love you” with something exclusive to romantic relationships); even just staying near to each other or hanging out with each other is a huge help.
Romanticism is something overrated and the same goes for sex, and I say this as someone who is alloromantic and allosexual.
And of course, they’re for sure a genuine and legitimate, and overall valid way of social and emotional interaction and intimacy, but not the only one or the best one for everyone.
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No, I’m pretty sure that every man who has had sex at least once in their life turned out to be a top bloke
Or bottom bloke
But can’t top blokes be lonely?
They say it’s lonely at the top, bloke.
So… more men as bottoms?
That is why most men actually prefer to be on the bottom. Less lonely.
Its best when she’s on top is all Im sayn 🤷🏿♂️
(I wouldnt know though as Im a virgin)
Having a ton of sex doesn’t equal not lonely either.
Like Barney from HIMYM, or Charlie Sheen in 2.5 men.
There is no male loneliness epidemic; there is a loneliness epidemic. They have been talking about it since at least 2020 and it predates the pandemic. Anyone calling it a male loneliness epidemic is absolutely engagement farming. The entire manosphere is a rage-bait-engagement-farming scam.
it is particularly male though because studies show older men don’t have friends
no men have friends.
and women have friends, but hate all of them and talk about how awful they are.
which once is better off?
i mean the multiple studies concluded women and that men need t o allowed to share emotions in American society
Not just engagement. Back when it was just a loneliness epidemic, there were talks of maybe bringing back third places, or changing society to help. Then it became a male epidemic, and suddenly it was someone else’s problem, it’s an individual issue, no need to make a cause of it.
who would want to help men? that’s gay.
There’s a general loneliness epidemic, but there’s a difference between men and women.
If only I knew earlier that the males are all suffering with virginity. I could be out there solving this thing one by one (I’m gay).
i don’t think the virgins are on grindr
I know. They’re on 4chan.
They were talking about it way before the epidemic. I remember at least as far back as middle Obama presidency that there was a show talking with one of his campaigners and they brought up the statistics on the number of people that would claim to have X amount of “close friends” declining.
There is a definite difference in the man/woman divide though on those numbers.
It’s useful to talk about how the loneliness epidemic affects men and women differently. But when someone talks about the “male” loneliness epidemic and all it’s statistics about virginity, you know their bigger problem is how they spend their time online.
Oh, agreed. Anyone who brings virginity into the context of adults having fewer and fewer relationships that matter is either an incel or a troll.
First of all: that is not how it works
Second of all: the loneliness epidemic is not just happening to men, it is happening to everybody.
Third of all: loneliness can happen to anyone, even people who appear to have it all. It is not just the extreme stereotype of the hermit who barely speaks to a living soul for two years, that is valid in feeling lonely. Sometimes it’s the people who seem to have a big network of friends who are the loneliest because all their friendships are superficial and the person may struggle to commit to others and be vulnerable. Other people become distractions from a deep hurt and selfloathing, they don’t know how to address. No one is ever let in because it’s too scary and risky to show weakness. But you have 50 friends and is everybody’s pal, so you can’t be lonely, right?
And then there’s the more mundane type of loneliness, that happens to a lot of people in the first world when they enter the workforce and/or start a family. It can become terribly lonely when you don’t have the time and energy to nurture friendships and community because you work all the time and in the current day and age, social activity takes place on screens. People hang out on social media where they share pics and political views instead of meeting up for a beer or a lemonade to chat like our parents’ generations did.
I have seen countless posts from 30somethings over the past decade, who ask about how to make friends at their age because they feel so lonely and all their old friends live far away. These are men and women. Some of them are parents of newborns others are single career people who have been grinding and suddenly realized they have neglected their social life.
Everybody is lonely in this day and age. I have felt lonely for years because i had to grind at work and didnt have time for recrrational activities. I have plenty of friends, good family and a lovely boyfriend and I was still lonely because I had to work all the time. Doesn’t help that all my friends and family live far away so most of our interactions are on screens and not in the flesh. And if there is anything I think the modern first world human being is undervaluing and neglecting, it’s physical closeness and irl community. The screens have replaced that despite being the shittiest substitute for physical touch imaginable.
To me, there is nothing that can calm every cell in my body like a hug from someone i love and whom I know loves me back. It is irreplacable.
Women are about as lonely as men.
The problem is that they’re human and exist in an anti-human environment.
You know who else are lonely? Animals in zoos.
We have created an almost perfect anti-human environment.
The Human Condition is discredited in almost everythimg we plan and do nowadays. The people of the Global South will probably go extinct in the next 200 years because of global warming and we have planned and created car-ceentric, anti-green energy societies all over the planet .
Most people are sad about this but most people have little say in the politics of their country.
Most people are sad about this? Most decent people are sad about it. Many people are not decent people, or are being told that being decent people is bad, weak, and probably woke.
Sex, relationships, and loneliness are all distinct domains. There’s important overlap to be sure. But they are not the same things. You can be a casanova and still be lonely. You can be stuck in a bad marriage and feel very lonely indeed.
I think a lot of modern people (regardless of gender identity) have problems making and keeping friends, too. Long-term friendships take work, sacrifice, and compromise. It’s not just compatible interests and personalities.
or people have expectations that are unrealistic and making them miserable by expecting shit that we dindt’ expect 10 or 20 years ago from every kind of relationship.
I agree entirely. Anecdotally, dating has always been easier for me than building platonic relationships.
I think for dating the ‘rules’ are a lot more clear, so it’s easier to figure out what works and what does not. I can be fairly straightforward when dating, whereas budding friendships from my perspective and experience require a very different approach.
