How To Lose A Male Friend

Oh, yo, there are many ways. This is just but one example.

I’ve lost male friendships in every conceivable way by this point, many of which in situations where I’d assign myself the majority of the blame, usually tied to day-drinking or anger or having unrealistic expectations. While I don’t think anyone wants to be classified as an expert in losing friends, it’s also true that people have been losing friends at a pretty nice clip since COVID, friendships end and re-contextualize every day, and America may very well be in a “friendship recession.”

I think the main thing you always need to remember about male-male friendships is that, most of the time but certainly not all, they are transactional in some ways. We all have “boys” from growing up or college, and those tend to be semi-stable or fade in and fade out with kids and other commitments, but a lot of week-over-week friendships in adulthood (even if you ended up as an adult where you were as a kid) are “similar life stage” friends. Also, cannot sugarcoat this: a lot of men, especially middle-aged fathers, have their entire social calendar tied to their wife. Don’t lie.

What underscores the male condition seems to be a desire for convenience. Most guys I’ve met don’t want friendships to be a big thing; they don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, or show…