Friendship and Masculinity
Photo by Luigi Ritchie on Unsplash
Some people treat friendships like a trifle, but a true friend sticks closer than one’s own brother (Prov 18:24, my translation)
I grew up in one of the most picturesque corners of the southwest—northern Arizona, only a few hours from places like the Grand Canyon, Sedona, and Tucson. These vast and unforgiving landscapes imprinted their harsh aesthetic on my soul in ways I am still trying to understand.
Etched onto that iconic landscape is another enduring image: the lone cowboy. He is a man apart, riding the untamed wilderness, and standing ready to impose justice and order wherever fortune takes him. John Wayne often played these roles, whether as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969) or Thomas Dunson in Red River (1948).
The cowboy is stoic, solitary, and courageous (1).
This research demonstrates that American male loneliness is far from simply a COVID-era phenomenon. It’s been decades in the making, and the consequences impact men’s mental and physical health, the wellbeing of their families, and the broader social circles they inhabit.
Or so we’ve been told.
But in truth, a man disconnected from others is more vulnerable than strong—and more dangerous than heroic. His high walls may look like strength but in truth they are purpose-built for hiding, not protection. In his isolation, he becomes a threat to himself, to others—and especially to the women around him.
The evidence for this is conclusive, widespread, and disturbing (2).
For example, the American Perspectives Survey (2021) highlights a 30-year decline in male friendships, losses far steeper than women: “Thirty years ago, a majority of men (55 percent) reported having at least six close friends. Today, that number has been cut in half. Slightly more than one in four (27 percent) men have six or more close friends today. Fifteen percent of men have no close friendships at all, a fivefold increase since 1990 (3).
This research demonstrates that American male loneliness is far from simply a COVID-era phenomenon. It’s been decades in the making, and the consequences impact men’s mental and physical health, the wellbeing of their families, and the broader social circles they inhabit.
Men find themselves in this situation both by choice and by default. The decisions we have made and the templates we have inherited lead us to become precisely what we idolized: lone(ly) cowboys. But that icon of the Old West—once a symbol of rugged independence and strength—actually represents something entirely different: a man defined not by freedom and power, but by isolation and emotional fragility.
Friendships do not build themselves. They are not the product of luck, serendipity, or chance. True friendships require intention, patience, vulnerability, and courage. We have to decide that we need this, be patient with others and with our own efforts, and have the courage to risk rejection.
For far too long, men’s social isolation has been the responsibility of women to solve—not because women asked for this role but because men refused to take it on themselves. Women stepped into a gap that men both create and choose to ignore.
In a groundbreaking article, Angelica Ferrara and Dylan Vergara describe this labor as “mankeeping.” It is “labor that women take on to shore up losses in men’s social networks and reduce the burden of men’s isolation on families, the heterosexual bond, and on men” (4). Men’s isolation is a hardship—for society, for families, for the workplace, for women, and of course for men themselves. Everybody suffers when men are alone.
There’s no easy solution to the challenges facing men today—they are complex, compounding, and woven into our social fabric (5).
But there is one step each man can take to improve his own life and the lives of those around them: commit to building rich, authentic friendships. Doing this is a precondition for the health of our bodies, our minds, and our communities (6).
If we choose to heed this call, we will face obstacles—but none more daunting than the ones we fashion with our own hands. Our fears, insecurities, and defense mechanisms are often the hardest to recognize and to navigate. Intensifying these difficulties is a culture that shames men for exhibiting the very traits that make deep friendship possible—vulnerability, compassion, and empathy. The battle lies within and without.
But with friendship comes a promise. In the words of Ecclesiastes:
“Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other, but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. (Ecco 4:9-12, NRSVUE)”
So where do we begin? Friendships do not build themselves. They are not the product of luck, serendipity, or chance. True friendships require intention, patience, vulnerability, and courage. We have to decide that we need this, be patient with others and with our own efforts, and have the courage to risk rejection.
And this is precisely where true courage lies—not in riding alone into the sunset, but in turning back toward the wagon train—where dust, dialogue, and shared burdens await us. It is a brave thing to depend on others and to let others depend on us. It’s a quieter kind of bravery, but one worth reclaiming. Here, the cowboy sheds the mythic mirage and becomes something truer: a man among others, shaped not by solitude, but by the messy grace found only in relationship.
This essay is part of an emerging project, Dead Reckoning, which seeks to highlight voices that challenge the American blueprint for manhood—a script built on the paradox that to be a “real man” means to silence our own heart's needs for connection, freedom, and vulnerability. This old script is failing us and needs to be reimagined. Dead Reckoning exists to craft a new set of stories for men—stories that hold space for both the wounds we carry and the wounds we’ve inflicted. It is a place for honesty, reckoning, and the pursuit of a deeper, kinder, stronger and more humane masculinity—one that embraces complexity, confronts pain, refuses to settle for isolation and hatred.
Stoicism—or what Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò calls “emotional compression”—can play a potentially pro-social role, regardless of who embodies it (men, women, or otherwise). Healthy emotional expression can take many forms. The real danger arises when stoicism stands in the way of vulnerability and emotional interdependence, or when it becomes entangled with violence, abuse, and other forms of domination. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, “Stoicism (as Emotional Compression) Is Emotional Labor,” Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 6, no. 2 (June 15, 2020): Article 4.
The data on this are clear and alarming. See, e.g., Niobe Way, Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011); Daniel A. Cox, “The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss,” American Survey Center (June 8, 2021), accessed June 11, 2025, https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/; K. D. Vierra, D. R. Beltran, and R. D. Robnett, “A Metasynthesis Exploring the Role of Masculinities in Close Male Friendships,” Psychology of Men & Masculinities 24, no. 4 (2023): 311–24; Angelica P. Ferrara and Dylan P. Vergara, “Theorizing Mankeeping: The Male Friendship Recession and Women’s Associated Labor as a Structural Component of Gender Inequality,” Psychology of Men & Masculinities 25, no. 4 (2024): 391–401; Movember Foundation, The Global Research Report of Male Social Connection, 2018, https://cdn.movember.com/uploads/images/News/UK/Movember%20Fathers%20&%20Social%20Connections%20Report.pdf.
Daniel A. Cox, “Men’s Social Circles Are Shrinking,” American Survey Center (blog), June 29, 2021, https://www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-social-circles-are-shrinking/; citing that “fifteen percent of men have no close friendships at all, a fivefold increase since 1990” and “slightly more than one in four (27 percent) men have six or more close friends today”.
Ferrara and Vergara (2024): 391.
For a recent argument about why men are struggling, see Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2022).
For a guide on how to build human relationships, see David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (New York: Random House, 2023).
