Garrie Coleman joined the army at the age of 16 and left when he was 40. He spent his 24 years as an infantry soldier in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, serving in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Iraq and Cyprus, doing army things – including forming close friendships. “There is such camaraderie, you build these bonds,” he says. “It’s like a club, everyone going though the same kind of constraints and challenges.”
After the army, he settled in Darlington, County Durham, because his wife has family there. But his friends were dispersed around the country and abroad. They’re connected on social media, but that’s not the same. Coleman missed the friendship.
The issues of adjusting to civvy street are much discussed and documented (Coleman still dreams about the army most nights). But this isn’t about that; it’s about men, middle age and mates. Or a lack of mates. And making new ones, hopefully.
A recent survey in the US found that men have fewer social ties than they used to, with just 27% saying they have at least six close friends. In 1990, this figure was 55%. During that period, the number of men reporting no close friendships has risen from 3% to 15%. In the UK, research by the November Foundation in 2018 found 27% of men said they had no close friends at all. They also found that friendships become less strong as men get older, with 22% of men aged 55 and over saying they never see their friends. It would seem there is, for men at least, a friendship recession.
Dr Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist, and a top researcher into friends and friendship, says that, though some might not want to believe it, men’s and women’s friendships are different. Women’s friendships tend to be more personalised and dyadic: who you are is the most important thing. “Men’s friendships are more clubby, and in some sense anonymous – it matters more what you are than who you are,” he says. “In other words, do you belong to my club? If you do, that qualifies you to be a friend, and anybody who ticks that box can be substituted in if you don’t turn up or go off to Thailand for ever, or whatever. A lot of men’s friendships seem to be built around activities, so conversation is quite unimportant, and is largely designed to trigger laughter as much as anything else. Men don’t do deep emotional discussions about friendships.”
Chaps, I’m afraid we are simple, shallow creatures. It doesn’t really matter who we make friends with, but it’s easier to do so if they also like golf/football/canoeing or whatever it is. And there’s more bad news from Dunbar. “Because men are inherently socially lazy, when they start to lose friendships, they find it more difficult to recreate them.”
In our late teens and 20s, no problem: we just go out and make new friends; the social world is built around our demands. In our 30s, into our 40s, we might make friends at the school gate, with the parents of our children’s pals. After that, it gets harder, especially if you get divorced and immediately lose at least half your friends. “At that stage, you’re running out of energy and motivation; it’s an effort to get up and go out, to places you don’t know people and don’t know what people talk about any more. If you’re not a complete extrovert, there’s a resistance to putting yourself in that awkward situation, so networks contract,” says Dunbar.
This matters because, he says, and studies have shown, the single biggest predictor of our psychological health and wellbeing, our physical health and wellbeing, and even how much longer we’re going to live, is the number of close friendships and family relationships we have.
Don’t despair. It might get harder, but it’s not impossible. We asked readers – men in middle age – to tell us about making new friends. Sean MacBride-Stewart first met his bestie, Luis, at the school gate 10 years ago when they were both in their mid-40s – but it was during the pandemic that things picked up. They started exercising together, throwing medicine balls at each other in the park. “Lockdown was hard; this was a nice thing to come out of it,” MacBride-Stewart tells me.
He says it helped that they are both extroverts, because they did talk, and they bonded over common ground, like being raised Catholic, doing PhDs in middle age, and being immigrants in Edinburgh: Sean is from New Zealand, Luis from Cape Verde via Portugal.
In some ways, being somewhere you didn’t grow up makes it easier. “If you come here as an adult, it might not be so easy to make friends with the people already here,” says MacBride-Stewart. “But you would with people who have made the same life choice as you have, which is to move to a city and fall in love with it.”
He says he has learned a lot from his friend, about Portuguese colonial history, about Cape Verde, and “about what it’s like for him being black and living in Portugal and here, all the microaggressions that happen to him”.
They don’t see each other as often as they did at the height of the pandemic, but they still throw medicine balls at each other in the park, and there’s talk of a triathlon. “My friend is very important to me now,” says MacBride-Stewart. “It’s been a joy to get to know him.”
Lots of the respondents to the reader callout confirm what Dunbar says about the clubbiness of male friendships and that they are often built around activities. Steve in Herefordshire found new friends through rediscovering role-playing games, the best known of which is Dungeons & Dragons (D&D): “There’s a wide community of people out there who were teenagers during the first flowering of Dungeons & Dragons in the UK,” he says. “The pattern seems to be: an early obsession as a teenager, going into a ‘deep freeze’ as career and family take over, followed by a rediscovery in middle age that there is still fun to be had in creative gaming experiences. I’ve made strong friendships with other like-minded people that I would never have done without this shared fascination. During the pandemic, the ability to game online was a life-saver.”
I’m starting to think D&D is taking over, because it’s the same story for Mark in east London. “I don’t maintain work friendships and have always felt socially awkward,” he says. “Playing D&D has meant I can disengage from work, family and financial worries and find a way to express my creative impulses. I am probably the oldest member of the group but, during a game night, I feel less old and generationally remote and have been able to reconnect with an activity that helped keep me sane during my adolescence.”
There are alternatives. For Roland in Vienna, it’s badminton. Nick in south London plays in a walking football club, the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. Wayne in Norfolk skateboards. “There’s a whole crew of old dudes,” he says. “Everyone is super-friendly and we have many laughs.” For Peter in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, it’s simple: “I’m a musician; making friends is easy. I just join a band or three.”
And for someone in West Sussex who wishes to remain anonymous, the club is a swingers’ one. “I found the sex I was looking for, but more importantly I found swinger socials – get-togethers in pubs where like-minded people just mingle. On my first visit I was scared, but found everyone to be friendly and welcoming. I now have a wide circle of acquaintances and a small circle of very good friends. We socialise, we go to gigs, we eat out; I’ve never been more content. Oh, and my sex life is pretty good, too!” Lovely.
Back in Darlington, Coleman was into the mod scene before joining the army, and listened to the Jam when he was a young man. So he got back into it, bought a scooter and joined a scooter club at a nearby seaside resort. “I soon found I was in a group that was into the whole music scene – from 60s soul to Britpop, as well as all things scooter. There are a few other veterans and it’s a great outlet to spin anecdotes. I’ve made a good few close friends: Darren, Mark, Marc with a C and Ralph.”