{"id":28462,"date":"2025-05-25T09:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-25T09:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28462"},"modified":"2025-05-25T09:27:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T09:27:43","slug":"where-have-all-my-deep-male-friendships-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=28462","title":{"rendered":"Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The last problem I ever thought I would have was loneliness. From grade school through my late 20s, I had a wide circle of friends, and many of them were guys I\u2019d hang with on a near-daily basis. One of these friends was Rob. We met at a sleepover birthday party when we were 10 or 11. I was nervous about going; the last sleepover party I\u2019d been to featured \u201cChild\u2019s Play 2,\u201d a film about a sociopathic, knife-wielding doll. Within five minutes of watching it, I called my mom and got a ride home, humiliated yet totally relieved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen to this article, read by James Patrick Cronin<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption>
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And so, when the boys at the party gathered in the TV room for movie time, long after the pizza and sundaes were downed, I panicked. I remember being ready to call home when Rob announced he\u2019d rather play Nintendo than watch a movie, and walked into the birthday boy\u2019s bedroom. I followed him and sat there, watching him play a relaxing, G-rated game featuring wandering elves until the sun came up. I don\u2019t remember anything we talked about, but I vividly recall the sense of having been saved by Rob, the feeling that he must have intuited how afraid I was and did this for me.<\/p>\n

It turned out that Rob \u2014 whom I didn\u2019t actually befriend until we enrolled as seventh graders at the same big public exam school \u2014 was an exceptionally sensitive person. While almost everyone else I knew admired the elite and powerful, Rob always seemed to be scanning the room for an underdog to get behind. He was also genius-level smart and witheringly funny, especially when it came to outing liars and charlatans. He carried a fortune-cookie message in his wallet, which he loved both for its simple, solemn truth and its diabolical double meaning: \u201cIf you promise someone something, keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For years, Rob and I were inseparable, bonding over our love of the then-hapless Boston Celtics, our disdain for posers who engaged in underage drinking, our lust for (and paralyzing fear of) girls. One summer night, after playing hours of basketball in his backyard, we climbed out of his bedroom window and onto his roof, where, under a purple and orange sky, we reflected on the physical perfection of one particular classmate, a girl neither of us would ever have a chance with, and pounded the shingles beneath us in sheer anguish.<\/p>\n

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The notion that men in this country suck at friendship is so widespread that it has become a truism, a punchline.<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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The last problem I ever thought I would have was loneliness. From grade school through my late 20s, I had a wide circle of friends, and many of them were guys I\u2019d hang with on a near-daily basis. One of these friends was Rob. We met at a sleepover birthday party when we were 10 or 11. I was nervous about going; the last sleepover party I\u2019d been to featured \u201cChild\u2019s Play 2,\u201d a film about a sociopathic, knife-wielding doll. Within five minutes of watching it, I called my mom and got a ride home, humiliated yet totally relieved.Listen to this article, read by James Patrick CroninAnd so, when the boys at the party gathered in the TV room for movie time, long after the pizza and sundaes were downed, I panicked. I remember being ready to call home when Rob announced he\u2019d rather play Nintendo than watch a movie, and walked into the birthday boy\u2019s bedroom. I followed him and sat there, watching him play a relaxing, G-rated game featuring wandering elves until the sun came up. I don\u2019t remember anything we talked about, but I vividly recall the sense of having been saved by Rob, the feeling that he must have intuited how afraid I was and did this for me.It turned out that Rob \u2014 whom I didn\u2019t actually befriend until we enrolled as seventh graders at the same big public exam school \u2014 was an exceptionally sensitive person. While almost everyone else I knew admired the elite and powerful, Rob always seemed to be scanning the room for an underdog to get behind. He was also genius-level smart and witheringly funny, especially when it came to outing liars and charlatans. He carried a fortune-cookie message in his wallet, which he loved both for its simple, solemn truth and its diabolical double meaning: \u201cIf you promise someone something, keep it.\u201dFor years, Rob and I were inseparable, bonding over our love of the then-hapless Boston Celtics, our disdain for posers who engaged in underage drinking, our lust for (and paralyzing fear of) girls. One summer night, after playing hours of basketball in his backyard, we climbed out of his bedroom window and onto his roof, where, under a purple and orange sky, we reflected on the physical perfection of one particular classmate, a girl neither of us would ever have a chance with, and pounded the shingles beneath us in sheer anguish.The notion that men in this country suck at friendship is so widespread that it has become a truism, a punchline.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28464,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28465,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28462\/revisions\/28465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}