Why Men Have No “REAL” Friends… | Richard Reeves

I I've made zero new friends in London in 5 years mhm my friends are my colleagues and my friends that I've had for 10 years that is it I don't make new friends um and and this is something that I have echoed to me a lot when I meet men out and about when I could do talks and stuff and they come up to me after I've had men whisper to me how do how do I make friends where I'm lonely and when they do it they come really really close so that the person behind them in the queue can't hear them say it I had exactly the same experience and they whisper it about how do I make friends or I'm feeling lonely or something like that and I've heard in your work the work that was in your book I think on page 45 you say that there is a male friendship recession what did you mean when you said that the we're seeing a decline in in friendships generally but it's much more acute for men so in the US 15% of men under the age of 30 say they don't have a single close friend that's up from 3% in 1990 and so almost one in seven men um you're seeing declining number of men saying how much time they spend with friends uh shrinking social networks everything you just described which is like the process of making and sustaining friends is just something that men are really struggling with right now much more so than women and I think there's a couple of things going on here one is we're revealing the extent to which a lot of that work was actually outsourced to women before right so if you're in a couple how often are the social arrangements made by the women um they do a lot of the that mainten the relationship maintenance and the men free ride on the women right every like weekend plan that's outside of my comfort zone pretty much most of them come from my partner all right she's organized something she's an organizer she wants to go try this thing right and you're like let's go do vegan Sushi rooll I just want to play Far Cry 5 or I just want to lie on my back and watch Manchester United all right fine Sor I chose the wrong I chose the wrong thing yeah I know um so I think like and women have been better at it and Men haven't had to do as much of it so in some ways like I think we're being exposed a bit more in the sense that like women aren't doing as much of that work for us anymore they're saying look I'm like it's not my job to create your friendship Network for you so we're having to do it and we're not very good at it and we're certain not very good at it yet and I've had the same experience I mean I wrote a bit I wrote a bit about loneliness and I spoke at an event not that long afterwards and I had a couple of young men exactly the same as you just come clo and just say I'm incredibly lonely and thank you for talking about this and you end up hugging them and like and actually for me I was talking to some about this the other day there's something about loneliness that just breaks my heart in a way that other forms of suffering don't and I don't know why but if I hear about someone that's really lonely it just my mom was talking about this guy that who she ran into him and he was going to this supermarket and you know he was in front of her you in the queue and she's like no after you he's like no no no you go first and he says I'm on my own and actually the hours after dinner especially in in the summer they're the hardest so I always come down here to the supermarket and I buy a couple of things and then come back and have a chat and and you know it fills my time and my mom because she's like a massive like she's like a social worker to the world she ends up chatting to him and get taking his phone number um but actually that just pierced my heart it just and so when you hear about these men young old women as like who are lonely I think it's huge and and so I and back to our earlier bit of the conversation too is like those institutions that maybe used to kind of connect you to other people right where do you where do you make friends and you just said at work right and so I think our colleagues in some ways become our friends and that's not necessarily a bad thing saying it is a bad thing but but it's it's different to the Friends you've made at church or through your sports or through do you know what I mean or wherever and and so the other thing I'll say about this is have you heard of the men's sheds movement I don't know what AM men's sheds is but I've heard of male groups and stuff emerging yes there's male groups emerging there's one which is the Australian government just funded this in Australia it's called the the men men's sheds and there are places where men go and fix stuff like you'll bring a lawn M where I do stuff right um and it's one of the things that I found I've really learned from this and I wish I'd known more about it before it's like have you heard of this thing about men communicating more easily shoulder toh shoulder than face to face have you come across this yeah I've heard about this it's really interesting so when my uh my wife would sometimes when my boys came home from school she'd sit down directly opposite them like across the breakfast bar type thing right and she'd sit directly opposite and give them protein and then she'd be like how's your day yeah she like right and then later on we'd be driving somewhere or watching soccer or playing a video game like shoulder Tosh shoulder and they'd be like yeah this weird thing happened today with her or with me right So eventually I said you've got to stop staring them in the face that's not how that's not how men open up right and so the men's sheds movement is actually I think based on a profound it which is that men have to be doing something in order to be being with their friend going to any coffee shop and count how many people are sitting there staring at each other for hours on end mostly women not saying right and then go to fishing road trips it's the only explanation for golf do you play golf no thank god um but like like when a guy is saying do you think I should use the five iron yeah I don't play golf either right but what he's really saying is I love you yeah or I'm lonely or need help and so there is something to be said for like men and even super have studied actually how men stand in relation to each other or like a party or something when I've told you this you won't be able to stop looking is that men actually always at a bit of an angle right we just don't stand face to face it's it spikes our threat cortisol or whatever so we always stand a little bit of an angle um but also like doing something together um requires us to be more shoulder-to-shoulder which is why some psychotherapists now they do walking talking therap they realized that with men especially like sitting them down and staring at them is less effective quite often than going for a walk you said that you think one of the biggest issues facing men today is the issue of suicide um and you talked about some of the stats at the top of this conversation that um relate to men the most startling of all as being someone that lives most of the time in the UK is that it's now the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 um have you been exposed to those stories especially as you you published this book but in in your own personal have youve been exposed to those stories of the the impact of suicide directly yeah yeah people rarely talk about it in an open Forum but they will very often afterwards talk about it and I had this moment recently someone I'm actually working with and I've been working with for some time I did a I did a little piece on Morning Joe which is a daytime thing in the US and I talked about this crisis of kind of male suicide and she told me afterwards that they put up a just a stat the four times higher among men it was just a a graphic and she said she burst into tears and she said I'm so grateful you're doing this work I lost my son to suicide when he was 16 and started telling me kind of why and I I had worked with this woman for years on this issue and she'd never raised it with me before I had no idea and I Now understand why particularly given her situation she's been so supportive of my work it wasn't n just an intellectual thing this is very rarely just an intellectual thing it's usually visceral as well there's usually something going on there and I've had countless stories like that people sharing their stories it's heartbreaking and and you've had you know people on this show who talk quite a lot about this Jordan Peterson was asked in a in an event once by this guy who said I'm thinking I I delayed my Suicide to come and hear you talk why should I not take my own life no I haven't had anything like that but it's there this crisis is there in our communities playing out is there a I'm just thinking about that woman who's been working with you supporting your work but hadn't said anything and I'm wondering why people don't say something about about it when it happens in their family with with other deaths with with a cancer death you'll see a Facebook post you'll see a a whatever you'll see you know but it seems I'm wondering here if there's a different level of I don't know public sharing as it relates to suicide because it's a different type of death isn't it it's one that creates a lot of guilt and feelings and shame and like so you're in her situation and I have to tell you having raised boys one of whom in particular really struggled with his mental health through teen years there are days where you just hope as a parent that they're still around and you think what it was and actually the 16 and we've seen a huge dries in and young young men's suicides in the US especially and just think if you're a parent and you lose a child to Suicide the idea that you can cannot Free Yourself of the burden of what could I have done what did I miss was it me right being a parent is already a lifelong trip in rethinking your decisions right and you add that to the mix I I I can't imagine it I mean my my parents lost a daughter very young to a heart defect and they have an amazing marriage and they've been amazing parents but I do think that the loss to this illness this terrible tragedy thing it's just different cycle not it's hugely grief but you but it doesn't turn them like it turns the mirror on you it's like was this you was this your fault are you the reason your son is dead just think about that for a moment that kind of does to people um and so because of that people don't talk about it so you'll get died unexpectedly yeah we're not willing to talk about it in the same way as we are others because we think it might reflect on us in some way perhaps or on the memory of that person or them yeah I mean it's still a crime technically oh is it now people say it's a really interesting thing I've really learned not to say commit suicide yeah died by suicide died by Suicide I just wanted to I've got some crazy Unthinkable stats here that I wanted to just add on top of what you were saying which come from The Institute of boys and men report that really was staggering to me is that um a man dies by Suicide approximately every 13 minutes in the US yes in the United States alone so that's not including other countries and the UK just the US okay if men's suicide rates had matched those of women's approximately 545,000 fewer men would have died since 1999 and that's again just in the US just us half a million men yeah suicide rates amongst younger men have grown the fastest the growth of male suicides has occurred almost entirely since the beginning of 2010s mhm and interestingly as well rural countries in the USA have higher rates of suicide than those in urban Metro so it highlights again that suicidality is geographically distributed in in certain ways why what's going on here what's going on with this full picture why why why is this the state of suicide among men in some ways the decision to end your own life obviously it's complex and it varies but in some ways it's like the ultimate signal that you don't feel as if the world is better off with you than without you like so many people who take their own lives lose their lives to Suicide will say something like you'll be better off without me I've been a burden to you I know I've been difficult they convince themselves that they're not wanted they not needed in some that goes back to like Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman Willie lman takes his own life because he thinks that the life insurance his family will get will be will be a better bread winner than he can be because he's so badly failed in his primary responsibility as a as a bread winner so it's not a new idea but there's a really nice piece of work by Fiona Shand she's an Australian researcher and the the work was done primarily in Australia where they looked at the words that men who did take their own lives used to describe themselves before doing so or in some cases attempting to but usually when men attempt suicide they do lose their lives and the two most commonly used words by those men who took their own lives were about themselves were useless and worthless now of course this is a sample of people who then went on to take their own lives but it's nonetheless I think very powerful statement that to get to that stage you you don't think you have worth you don't think you have use you don't think you're needed and I believe that the most fatal place to end up in as a human being is to feel unneeded I think to be need needed is arguably the most important and constant human requirement and so if you end up feeling like I'm not need I my family don't need me my employer doesn't need me my community doesn't need me I am Surplus to requirements if anything I'm a drag on my parents or my community I'm not adding value over defin value to the people around me I'm taking away from it that's I that's the psychological trajectory that seems to put a lot of men towards this path and well short of suicide I think many of the other mental health problems we see among men addiction checking out in one way or another coming out of the labor market Etc they're not the most extreme form of course of of checking out by literally taking your own life but they are a different form of that there are a different way of kind of benching yourself taking yourself out of the equation because of a sense of like well who needs me any way right and so I just think in a way that the suicide statistics are in some ways the kind of tip of the iceberg of this sense that many men have a feeling unneeded unwanted if you love the dver CEO brand and you watch this Channel please give me a huge favor become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the Subscribe button it helps us tremendously and the bigger the channel gets the bigger the guests e

Channel: The Diary Of A CEO Clips

Views: 73,491

Keywords: the diary of a ceo, podcast, the diary of a ceo podcast, life lessons, ceo, Steven Bartlett, Steve Bartlett, life advice, doac, diary of a ceo, diary of a ceo clips, Steve Bartlett Podcast

Id: fIdcn7o06ns

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2024