‘Societal norms about what it means to be a man can stop men from building relationships,’ he says. It’s precisely these thoughts that are keeping us lonely, according to Robin Hemmings, campaign director at the charity Campaign to End Loneliness. Neither of us wanted to go any deeper, for fear of compromising our manliness. Last month I tried a different approach – I joined a local meet-up group for people looking to make friends, and arranged to meet a man of my age for a drink.īut I was plagued with worries – what do we talk about?Ĭan I mention feeling lonely? How honest is too honest? In the end, we chatted about the weather for 20 minutes, then went our separate ways. It’s particularly odd given that I’m not particularly shy and can deliver a presentation to 100 board directors without flinching. The thought of going alone to my local pub, filled with families and groups of tipsy thirtysomethings, makes me feel sick with fear. We men find the prospect of making friends quite, well, scary. What I would give to call up a mate to ask if he fancied a pie and a pint (stock image)īut at the heart of it lay a much deeper problem. After the children were born, I’d make excuses: I didn’t need friends, I was too busy with work, or picking up the children from school.Ĭome Sunday night, I am miserable as sin and sick to death of the sound of my own thoughts. I never went to university and then moved far from my home in Surrey to be near my wife’s family in Kent. I know it’s partly due to a lack of opportunity. I’ve often wondered if there was something wrong with me – why can’t I do something that seems to come so easily to my wife? I shrugged it off but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. ‘Dad’s got no friends,’ they’d jibe over the dinner table, falling about in fits of laughter. I’ve been the butt of my children’s jokes for as long as I can remember. THE STEREOTYPES THAT ARE KEEPING ME LONELY So what is it about us men that makes us such loners? Meanwhile, our wives are protected by gaggles of close-knit pals with whom they share their inner-most secrets. One recent Danish study found that lonely men are twice as likely to die from a heart attack within a year than non-lonely equivalents. Middle-aged men are three times more likely to kill themselves than are women of the same age. But even more concerning is the potential impact on our health.Ī lack of close relationships perhaps explains the shocking rate of male suicide in Britain. One in five of us has no close friends – twice as many as the percentage for women, according to a September 2019 YouGov poll.Ĭharity Age UK says the problem has got considerably worse in the past decade, with 50 per cent more men admitting to feelings of loneliness. But, apparently, it’s not that easy for us middle-aged men. What I would give to call up a mate to ask if he fancied a pie and a pint. I take the dogs for a walk and go to the gym, maybe tidy up the garden – all solitary activities.Ĭome Sunday night, I am miserable as sin and sick to death of the sound of my own thoughts. My wife spends weekends working away and my children have long moved out. But when the clock hits 5pm on a Friday and the twentysomethings disappear off to the pub, I – their boss – slink off home alone. I’m perhaps the most outgoing on the team, and I like to see myself as the joker of the bunch. I speak to acquaintances every day at work about spreadsheets, numbers and targets in my job as CEO of a recruitment business.
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