How To Make Friends And Keep Them

A handy guide to acquiring and sustaining meaningful relationships over time, over distance and even over a gaming headset.

- Emily Shur

DO I HAVE ANY REAL FRIENDS?

A scientific-ish analysis of one man’s social circle.

BY RICHARD DORMENT

THERE IS SOMETHING a little sad about a 40-year-old man spending the better part of a summer trying to figure out if he has any friends. Fine: it’s a lot sad, but a few months ago, after my social-media feeds started filling up with posts on a crisis in men’s friendship – men have no friends; men are dying of loneliness; we can’t even do friendship right! – I looked in the mirror and asked some hard questions. Do I have any real friends? Would I be happier with more friends? And wait – is this really what I look like now?So I did what any rational person would do. I interviewed 12 sociologists, psychiatrists, linguists and anthropologists about what it actually means to have and be a friend today. I read hundreds of pages of studies on how guys build and maintain friendships. Then I conducted my very own survey about what kind of friend I am. I randomly selected about 70 people from my contact list, sent them ten multiple-choice questions (thanks, Survey Monkey!), and promised them total anonymity in exchange for some brutally honest feedback. I started with a simple question – “Do you consider me a friend?” – and went deeper from there. The results helped me understand not just the state of my own friendships but also what people get wrong (and right) about Male Friendship™. According to my own research and the work of others, turns out that most men do have friends – we’re just used to doing friendship in our own imperfect way. And as with everything else in our lives, we could probably benefit from getting better at it. Herewith, a few of my highly unscientific findings.

“Do you consider me a friend?”