Male Connections Evolve Differently, Women's Relationships Another. Is It Time to Cease Attempting to Push Men More Like Women?
It's good to talk. Or so men are constantly told, by everyone from mental health advocates to the women they live with. These women are bemused by the typical male habit to spend an entire evening in the pub with decades-old friends, yet return utterly clueless about the personal struggles in each other's lives. What could they possibly be doing, all that time? Why haven't they inquired how X is coping with his breakup, or how Y is managing the loss of his father?
For women, whose personal friendships often revolve around an intimate and encyclopaedic understanding of each other's innermost feelings, this style of male intimacy—built on apparently sidestepping meaningful conversation—can look strangely hollow and unfulfilling. No wonder, one might think, that more than 25% of UK men state having zero close friends; that male loneliness is endemic; that many refuse to visit a doctor until seriously ill; that male suicide rates repeatedly outstrip female ones; and that countless middle-aged men, in particular, seem permanently frustrated for unspoken reasons. Bottling everything up benefits no one.
Rethinking the Value of Silent Friendship
However, as per anthropologist Thomas Yarrow, this view may sell short the strengths of the strong and quiet friendship. Professor Yarrow, based at Durham University, was researching volunteers at a historic steam railway in the north of England when he was impressed with the bond forged among these mostly older men. His lengthy observation has been distilled into a paper contending that, especially for men brought up in an era of the stiff upper lip, the value of friendships built around shared hobbies—"doing things together, often in companionable silence"—may be underappreciated.
This muted form of friendship "is not deficient or outdated, it's just different," Yarrow states.
Granted, this can seem oddly similar to how toddlers interact—next to each other rather than engaging with each other. But Yarrow's point is clear: just because it's not your preferred version of friendship doesn't mean it lacks value. Perhaps we should let these men in peace with their trains, golf, or vintage auto projects—whatever activity allows them to spend time in the company of others who likewise value less talk.
Past Verbal Expression: A Tacit Dialect of Care
Fortunately, Yarrow is clearly not arguing that expressing emotion is weak, nor calling for a reversion to the past. Instead, he highlights that emotionally expressive talk is not for everyone, and that more may be occurring beneath the surface of apparently reticent friendships. Is he right?
From a female perspective, I'm obviously no expert on male-to-male dialogue. But professional experience suggests that while men may be more reluctant initially to open up personal matters, once they begin, they can be astonishingly candid. A lack of visible emotion should not be confused with a absence of feeling entirely.
Furthermore, while younger men brought up in a more expressive culture may be better at voicing feelings, older men are far from incapable of it. Rebrand vulnerable emotions as masculine "sports loyalty" or "club allegiance," and many men will happily express frustration, hope, discontent, or satisfaction for hours.
The most striking about Yarrow's railway volunteers is that, for all their horror of discussing feelings, they still managed to communicate what looks remarkably like care and solidarity. When an older volunteer didn't appear and then returned clearly unwell, his friends noticed and were worried. But, as the professor records, they deliberately didn't probe what was wrong. Rather, they offered tea, told jokes, and tried to be subtly supportive while keeping normality. They were looking out for each other pretty much as female friends would, but without ever naming the obvious issue.
The Core Issue: Does Bonding Require Words?
It's not the ideal method of connecting, and it may not be yours. But if the true therapeutic value of friendship—the thing that combats loneliness and low mood—is fundamentally the awareness that another person is there enough to be present in life's difficulties with you, does that invariably be put into words?
The debate persists. Maybe the healthiest approach is to recognize that different styles of friendship carry comparable value, each satisfying the psychological needs of different individuals in unique powerful way.
