It is a myth that the females of our species are the more social gender. This appears to be largely based on the way women have “besties” and “gal-pals” and “her girlfriends,” people she can’t seem to exist without. If she doesn’t have these people in her life, she pays a price.
You do too , for as she suffers your life becomes complicated. Though women in general tend to have more empathy, men are more social.
According to social scientist Roy Baumeister, typically, women have at least one, sometimes up to five, women pals whom they guard jealously from each other and use for emotional regulation. It’s how most gals are made.
I remember telling my divorce lawyer about this. His wife was complaining that very morning about a new woman who moved in a few doors down and was now visiting his wife’s bestie across the street, causing her stress.
Sometimes, a woman can’t make it in the egalitarian sisterhood. I have coached many women of all ages who were stung by “mean girls” in high school or on the job.
Hell, my woman worked for a time in a nursing home among the sisters and talked about this every day.
But a woman adrift from the sisterhood is left with an emotional void in the form of unregulated emotion.
Mankind is a belonging species, and she is the source of belonging.
I’ve known pretty girls socially excluded from the sisterhood who suffered as a result. Some pretty girls will tend to find one tough girl whom they pair up with for protection.
One of my first girlfriends as a teen was a stunning blonde, a Jean Harlow look-a-like so despised by the other girls she found refuge in just one loyal friend who was probably 300 lbs.
Her other alternative is to find men as protectors and remain unregulated emotionally at some cost to her psychology.
Missus was headed to the beach with kids in tow and I made a comment about her pink bikini (though it’s long gone) She smiled and said, “I could go to the beach with my tits hanging out and a tiny bathing suit, and no one would talk to me.”
I got it. Sisterhood.
Missus tells me her strategy has always been to befriend girls who could look out for her. She’s the baby of her family, with two big sisters and an older brother, so she recreates the family dynamic in her friendships.
If a kid in grade one or two tries to join two other girls who have been playing together, chances are they will move away and go do something else. Besties is a closed system. Boys don’t tend to do this.
If you give word puzzles to primary-school-aged groups of eight boys and eight girls, the boys will fuck around… a lot. But come crunch time, with the clock running down, all the boys will contribute answers to solve the puzzles on time.
Girls will spend their time interviewing each other and then pair up so that the group ends up as four pairs of girls instead of one whole team. They contribute in pairs to the whole.
Both systems work. One is egalitarian, one is competitive.
Men tend to have many far more superficial or shallow relationships within many groups of men.
This is probably why men build cultures (women stress-test them).
Men compete to find the experts among them and then, defer to that expertise.
Operating in bigger groups is also why we suppress emotion more readily: expressing your feelings in a group is riskier and can be used against you.
If a man does not see his friends for a time, generally his suffering isn’t as obvious as it would be when a woman is deprived of hers
Geoffrey Greif’s book Buddy Systems put male friendships into four groups:
Must friend: if you have them, your best pals; you include them in most parts of your life.
Trust friend: comfortable with and trust & would be closer buddies if conditions allowed.
Rust friend: good buddies you don’t see regularly but will always be counted as friends.
Just friend: context friends from work, community, or club and fine to keep it that way.
Whereas she will share life’s challenges among her close circle of friends, he might not at all, choosing instead to “soldier on.”
Men suppress emotions for good reasons, to get things done. It’s repression that costs us. Denying we even feel something.
We are often called upon to do a culture’s “dirty work.”
Whether that be pumping sewage, working high steel, putting out fires or fighting enemies on the other side of the world, it is men who mop up when the going gets tough.
It is men who suffer 95% of workplace fatalities, for example.
We cannot entertain the same emotional frameworks women do lest it hamper our effectiveness.
In cultures across the world, men are found to experience much less fear compared women. We can also take more pain (another debunked myth).
Making men more feminine to suit new cultural norms is problematic social engineering. Weaken western men over a few generations and we risk being overrun by stronger masculine populations.
Think it can’t happen? It is happening now. That’s how nature works.
Western population growth is abysmal compared with the Third World. Don’t worry, the elites will use their resources to stick around while your line of descendants die out.
Humans are designed to exist in small, relatively homogenous groups.
All of nature is like this with few exceptions. You and I both definitely need a tribe, a group we call our own.
The answer to problems of masculinity is more masculinity.
Not less. It’s your birthright. You are what the heavens decreed.
It’s the universe of infinite wisdom which decided your gender, green-lighting your potentials and possibilities… as a man.
I encourage you all to be men.
That includes male friendships you keep in your orbit.
For example, when I moved here five or so years ago, I found out one of my best pals from my early teenage years lives up the street on a farm. Turns out he’s still hanging with one of our crew, my old friend from across the street from my parents. Hadn’t seen them in decades.
We get together every month or two or three over breakfast to talk politics. Because EVERYBODY needs straightening out on that one. Lol I even gave one of them a book by our former conservative Prime Minister.
Otherwise, if I see these men, I find an excuse to drop in. I’m out picking up feed nearby, or I want to know something, or whatever.
But to meet up we generally contrive a reason.
There are some big differences between men and women, and we should not use women’s friendships as a measure of a man’s connections to others. That’s just weird.
We are not the same, we are unabashedly, unapologetically, men.
One thing I think more and more men are doing is belonging to a group of men dedicated to personal or professional self-improvement.
Masterminds membership is a commitment you make to yourself and a group of men who get to know you.
The internet could save men, says my friend Kevin. Advisor to Men runs the Board of Directors every Friday and Saturday. For an hour or so, every man checks in and gives feedback to the other men. They say it’s the best deal on the internet.
It’s what the world needs is more powerful men. Men who can use power and love to find meaning and freedom.
Family and work life tends to isolate a man. Don’t let that happen.
Let me know what you think…
Powerful, true and free…
cw
