Men have no friends and rely on women to do the emotional labor

If you are hanging out daily (regardless of the medium), laughing or doing whatever, who cares?

There's more than one kind of friendship. I have a certain friend - we've often joked that our friendship revolved around baseball and Seinfeld references. We both decided that was okay.

 

I'm all for male friendships. And I do think boys really struggle to make human connections because of technology.

I just read the piece as having very little to do with male friendships, other than those friendships being a vehicle to reduce the perceived emotional labor burden on women. That's why, late in the story, we're told about the right way to do friendships. Never mind that men get beers and do their whiny posturing on the way to deeper things, much like boys shove each other and sometimes say mean things on the way to reveal their heart needs. It's that social engineering on the front end: Deal with your stuff, man, but do it the right way and as efficiently so women can be their best selves. And I don't begrudge women that. Men have generally treated women poorly to beyond poorly for a long time - since the beginning. I just don't think the engineering leads anywhere good in the long term.

 

I know plenty of women, including my ex-wife, who have no close female friends. They have people they hang out with occasionally, usually through connections to their kids, but who have not maintained long-term friendships. That's not good, either. Your significant other should in my opinion be your best friend. But you have to have a balance. If your partner has no good friends, that's a red flag to me. I understand that some people are loners or are very into their work and careers. But it's not all men; plenty of women are like that, too. In my experience, alpha-type guys like to be around guys who make them shine by association. Alpha women are the polar opposite.

 

I found that article to be completely insane.

 

99% of my wife's friends - I wouldn't trust them to brew a cup of coffee, let alone lean on them for emotional support. Batshit crazy, with no interests besides their kids, grandkids or future grandkids. And wine.

Maybe younger women are great as emotional support conduits. But once they hit menopause, the crazy meter starts blaring.

 

I may treat a partner with menopause like a Chevy hitting 70,000 miles from here on out.

 

Don’t trust it, or trade it in on a newer model?

Or both?

 

I love my wife, and we've been together almost 29 years, married for 26 years.

We went away for the weekend with some other couples, 2 hours away. We had a cooler with drinks, and a flank steak for friday night grilling.

As we got close, she wanted me to pull over to get more ice for the cooler. She heard water rustling in the cooler. I am like "what?!? We've been in an air conditioned car for 2 hours. There is no ice melting. And even so, who cares!!!"

I refused to stop. We got to our destination. I pulled out the cooler, undid the bottom plug and tilted the cooler. Not a drop came out.

I told her she's got to stop this crazy shit.

 

People are weird with the ice. I would say that, in my life, it has been mostly women who are weird about it.

 

Until friday, I had never heard of an issue with ice.

 

This is like reading a scrapped rough draft of the opening to One Hundred Years of Solitude. It got better.

 

Can't say I've read One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I've never lived in a world, either at age 24, or age 54 that I am now, that I look to women for emotional consistency and support. This article may as well have discussed how people can jump straight to the moon. I'd give it the same believability.