[RexImperator]

I was just thinking about this and I realized it's technically true. I have a few close friends from high school and college, etc. but they've all moved far away or we've drifted apart. Yes they're still friends, but we haven't talked in years. As far as everyday life, I just have acquaintances, professional relationships, and family.

Anyone else feel this way?

[General Stalin]

This is likely most people who are in adulthood.

[The Beast1]

Didn't consider me a friend when we were close by?

As we age, the hardest lesson for me was accepting a loss of my close friends. The irony of it is, school both k12 and higher ed are really false realities where meeting people is easy. It's not helped by TV where it seems everyone has this tight circle of friends they never deviate from.

The worst part is a lot of my friends I thought were close to me were anything but. People change and someone I may have been friends with in my youth is completely unrecognizable to me as an adult today. I'm more suspect of people who have a lot of long term friends from childhood and college. Did they grow up or are they still in some weird fantasy high school/college mentality?

What helped me was staying active in my community. Suggestions i'd check out would be a community sports league, church, getting a dog and going to a dog park, etc things of those nature.

Good luck Rex! You have friends on the west coast!

[RexImperator]

Quote:

Didn't consider me a friend when we were close by?

Of course do (you would technically fall under the "etc." in my statement ), but you're not around here, and I haven't seen you in ages, that's the point...

[The Beast1]

Maybe it's time for a change of scenery Rex? You've been over in that part of the country for a while now.

[Cattle Rustler]

Some of my HS buddies are still in a tight knight group...but they all work retail jobs, live with their parents, drive sub-prime loan sports cars, end up with ham beasts, or kids.

They still go on weekend trips to Colorado/Padre Island, play soccer, and hang out together tho.

[zoom]

If you can afford it, I would suggest joining an MMA gym. It's a great way to make new friends.

[kaotic]

I've definitely reached a point in my life where they're married and have kids.

Me and my buddy were talking about that sunday afternoon over a beer, we're the last 2 that aren't locked down, still chasing pussy, and enjoy life in general.

Don't get me wrong, we still hangout with our close friends.....just not as much which is to be expected.

We go out for major events, sports, festivals, etc.

I've actually expanded my social circle as well, I have a music festival/punk rock crew I can always meet up with.

To be honest, most my free time is occupied banging plates and going on dates with new girls.

[Cobra]

Background: I'm an about 39 year old sales guy with a family including 3 kids and have to make time for many people. My priorities have definitely changed over the years and I find it very interesting how much time I have for those close to me.

My social circle (from the perspective of time spent and relevance):

-Immediate family and kids: ~40%
-Coworkers: ~25%
-Clients: ~15%
-Close friend: <5%
-Close forum friends: <5%
-Other Forum guys: <5%
-People I meet randomly that I grab a beer with: <5%
-Parents: <5%

I've recently done this analysis in my head so interesting that a thread popped up.

Here are some interesting facts from this introspection:
A. I spend less time than I should with my wife and kids.
B. I spend more time with my co-workers than I should.
C. I barely spend time with my parents.
D. I barely make time for my closest friends which are a mix of one personal and a few forum guys.
E. I forgot about myself. The 4 hours per week I spend working out are about it. I spent over 20% of my time on me (game, going out) over a year ago but that did not help me on the most important which was A. So this would have looked very different back then. As a guy that has responsibilities and those that depend on me, I have taken the road of re-prioritizing. Yet, I still keep working on it. See below.

Goals:
-Increase A by taking from B.
-Then: focus more on E, C and D in that order.
-Stop trying to be top friendly with co-workers (since they're the only ones around, I fall into the trap too often).

This will be tough but thanks to this thread I thought about it a whole lot more.

Sidebar: As a younger guy, I didn't give 2 shits about time management but now it's an important part of my day to day life. I wish I put this into place years ago.

[MikeInRealLife]

I’m learning as I grow older (I’m 45) how much more difficult it is to maintain strong male friendships. I thought it would become easier as I aged, but it hasn’t, especially since I swallowed the red pill several years ago. Unlike a lot of guys, I have plenty of time for friendships. I’m married, but my lone daughter is grown and recently married, and I’m far enough along in my career that I don’t have to hustle constantly.

In years past I didn’t have any problem keeping a pretty close-knit group of friends. Had good friends in school, had many good friends in my 20s and 30s, and made a lot of friends in two terms of military service (one active and one National Guard).

But since I got out of the Guard in 2009, and especially since swallowing the red pill in 2012, I’ve found myself with a dearth of close male friends. Some of them were blue pill men who mainly fell by the wayside when I started the red pill self-improvement journey of eating cleaner, losing fat, lifting, dressing better, etc. Some of them I had to excise from my life because they had the “crabs in the bucket” mentality. Others just couldn’t relate to me anymore and drifted away. Most of my war buddies have traditional family lives now and need to spend most of their time busting their asses at work and with their wives and young children. I have zero issue with that.

So I’ve tried to make new friends post-red-pill. Frankly, it’s gone poorly. Just a few examples out of many:

Omar – struck up a conversation with him in a little dive bar after work one day. Army vet, well dressed, late-30s, very successful black guy. Now of course as a white guy I’m not going to have 100% in common with him, but we had more than enough that we hit it off pretty well. We hung out, drank good whiskey, hit some ball games, shot pool, swapped Army stories, talked guns and jobs, normal guy shit. He was separated at the time, but was trying to make it work with his wife. Finally they ended up getting back together and he basically dropped off the face of the planet. Once in a while he’ll shoot me a text about how we need to get together, but of course it never actually happens. He’s too busy between work, volunteering, wife and kids.

Kevin – a friend I met through work, as we were both in the same industry at the time with somewhat similar jobs. Masculine man in some respects, who loves shooting, hunting, martial arts and building stuff. But he’s appallingly deferential to his unattractive and very unfeminine wife. He’s proud that she plays in a female tackle football league, and she looks every bit the dyke you’d imagine doing something like that. Not only that, literally every time I’d ask him if he wanted to grab drinks after work, or go to a game when I had free tickets, he’d have to ask his wife if it was okay (“congressional approval” he’d call it). I’d hear back from him maybe half the time, and we’d actually get together maybe 25% of the time. When we did get out, she’d blow up his phone until he left early. In the end, I just couldn’t respect a man who gave his wife veto power over every move he made, however insignificant.

Dave – a masculine guy who used to live 90 miles north of me, so I saw him infrequently, but we had a great time when we did get together. Saw ball games, drank and told hilarious stories, did some shooting, etc. He’s since relocated to Phoenix and now works for my company. Since he moved, he only wants to hang out with his dull and chubby wife, and consistently declines offers to grab drinks or catch a game, not just from me but from the other guys in the company.

Barry – a very cool guy I met in the local Irish pub when we each realized the other wanted to MAGA (very rare in downtown Phoenix). We hung out during the election, went to a Trump rally, went on a couple of tough hikes, he came to my Super Bowl party, etc. But with Trump in office six months now, he too has drifted away, mostly busy with work that takes him all over the state.

At one point I started hanging out in the local sports bar, since it’s 90% male patrons. As I got to know those guys, though, I realized that every last one of them was a full-on blue pill cuck. I was sitting there one day, looked up and down the bar, and realized I was smack in the middle of “loser row.” It was like the old TV show Cheers but without the humor. I paid my tab and left. I sure as hell don’t want to be like those guys. I still go back to that pub to watch games occasionally, and I'm friendly with everyone, but I don’t even try to make actual friends there anymore.

This probably comes across as bitching and whining, but mainly I want it to serve as a warning to the younger men on the forum. It gets more and more difficult to rebuild or replace friendships as you grow older, especially as you hit middle age and your contemporaries start to give up on life or develop priorities wholly different from your own.

[GreenHills]

I have few friends. My best friend just moved away to the East Coast, leaving me to two good friends, one of which is unfortunately infected by feminism. Most of the guys my age (mid-thirty) only talk about work, it's really not what I want from friendships, given that I already live in an area that's obsessed about work. But I'm also not super social and as people start to get families, there are less things that they call me for.

I recommend the book "The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century". It talks about American's desire to be alone and free, and once they are alone, realizing that it's a difficult condition to be in. It mentions that women have an easier time making friendships than men. I've definitely noticed it with girls that I'm dating - they always have their girlfriends that they talk with almost every day.

I also think that with so many gays, it ruins male friendships a bit. I don't go to bars much lately, but when I was going, I felt self-conscious about talking to guys. What if he's gay, what if he thinks I'm gay for talking to him? I usually say something about girls to figure out what's the deal, but why should I even have to do this!? I'm a man, he's a man and being gay should be some weird anomaly. Except that it's not.

[PuppetMaster]

I'm in this situation right now in life. I've spent the last few years isolated and only leaving the house when absolutely necessary. I've gone entire days without leaving my room. This isn't healthy so networking attempts have been made over the past several months; in both real and online life. No success thus far.

[Kid Twist]

Interesting posts on a not-so-frequently talked about topic. Good stuff.

[SiverFox]

Join a rugby team. Instant friends and instant social circle.

[Hypno]

had lunch today with a college fraternity brother. he is divorced, and I am going through one. I hadn't seen him for 3 years. We live in the same large metro area but on different sides of town and with traffic and other things I never see him. on the bright side, he's still slaying cougars. I'm glad he reached out and invited me to lunch today, I did really need a pick me up and us talking to each other we were able to appreciate a few things the other has but take for granted.

[Steve McQueen]

I have this problem atm. Its easier when you are living in a strange place to explain why you are alone but now that I have returned home a lot of my friendships have drifted due to marriage/kids mainly but also emigration.

I have started to look for ways to counteract this and am using a website called meetup.com. It caters to all kinds of group interests and gives you a ready made social circle for a night out.

I tried my first one on Saturday and I ended up with two make outs and 3 phone numbers in the club afterwards, is much easier to game when you look like you are with a group, those girls dunno I just met these ppl!

[Gmac]

A natural part of life, people change, get married, change their social habits. I just ended up creating my own social circle, and then joined another, then integrated a bit from both. No reason you can't use the RVF as a baseline... unless maybe you live in Bangladesh.

[All or Nothing]

In college, I busted my ass to build a social circle. It took me a lot of effort to build a solid group of friends. Almost immediately after college, I stopped talking to the vast majority of them. I have been chilling with my highschool friends because they are nearby, but otherwise most friends have drifted.

Personally, I have found that I like friends that I can accomplish a goal with. Have work friends to get better on completing projects or school friends to figure out homework or friends that you meet at social events for meeting girls or building a broader network.

If the friendship is not connected to a goal I am trying to accomplish, I am just not that interested beyond my small circle of highschool friends. Maybe I am crazy, but I think a lot of men are that way. Men like to get together to achieve things and less for social chit chat.

[Off The Reservation]

(06-13-2017 06:43 PM)Gmac Wrote:  

A natural part of life, people change, get married, change their social habits. I just ended up creating my own social circle, and then joined another, then integrated a bit from both. No reason you can't use the RVF as a baseline... unless maybe you live in Bangladesh.

could always hang out with BRT.

[Fortis]

Sheesh, go make some friends.


Growing up, I moved around a lot, so I never had a stable set of friends. It was just the nature of my life. I value this, though, because now I can move to a city and find a solid set of friends within 6 months. They might not be best friends forever, but we got each other's backs and that's really all you need.

I am also lucky to have had 2 very close friends for over 10 years each, though. Can't put a price on those connections.

[3extra]

(06-13-2017 05:27 PM)Steve McQueen Wrote:  

I have this problem atm. Its easier when you are living in a strange place to explain why you are alone but now that I have returned home a lot of my friendships have drifted due to marriage/kids mainly but also emigration.

I have started to look for ways to counteract this and am using a website called meetup.com. It caters to all kinds of group interests and gives you a ready made social circle for a night out.

I tried my first one on Saturday and I ended up with two make outs and 3 phone numbers in the club afterwards, is much easier to game when you look like you are with a group, those girls dunno I just met these ppl!

I second Meetup. Not just from a game perspective but I recently joined a weekly philosophical discussion group. People of all ages, and from all walks of life. It definitely gets harder as you get older but you just need to ensure that you throw enough paint at the wall. Some of it will stick.

[Agastya]

Is this really a bad thing though? I find that I personally don't connect with a lot of the people around me. I actually like focusing in on myself. It feels a lot more honest than stretching myself to connect with people I don't necessarily like or respect. My best friends will probably always be my buddies from home who I've known for thirteen years or more.

[Travel Museums]

Lack of male friends is an understated downside of modern society. A few hundred years ago it was rather different. But now populations have skyrocketed and density is insane. We also have feminism and coed everything.

It's much harder to be a man. Connecting with other men and being manly is largely left to playing/watching certain sports. When you grow up you stop sports. No more boys club.

That and the way everyone moves around now. You're forced to give up every social circle from elementary school until marriage. Even then you'll probably change jobs and maybe divorce. Even immediate family will move far away.

People used to live in small tight knit communities. For better or worse the social connections were strong. In some ways this was probably an inescapable torture. But without modern tech your only connection for socializing was to physically be with people.

Nowadays we fool ourselves into thinking we have large social networks. We don't. Guaranteed your Facebook is mostly old friends you never stopped being friends with right? But you haven't hung out or even chatted in years. It would be weird if you did.

For men it's even weirder. Brunch with your buddies at metrosexual cafe? Zumba? Ah no. But we're all college educated now. Far less muscle car clubs and poker parties. Look at the Latino community. Lots of bros. making less bank though.

I hung out with my only real male friend last month. The only reason we are still friends is his dogged persistence to keep in touch and meet up. If it were up to me we'd have lost touch. It's just too much effort for hanging out a few times a year.

For me personally it's a combination of modern society, my reaction to it, and personality. I did try to maintain relationships after high school, college, changing jobs... But I felt like it was too much work. At certain points I was moving every 6 months.

If your personality isn't like my one buddy, you'll eventually give up. And if you don't have a buddy like him to pull the group together you'll lose touch.

I read an article about how in 1970 2/3 of 27 year olds were married with kids. But now it's 1/3 or less. That's a huge issue too. Modern society isn't really set up for adults to have friends.

It's set up for you to have a family. It's like evolution doesn't give a fuck about you having buddies past age 25. Everything is geared towards family life. So without one there is this gaping hole of free time, money, emotional bonding.

Like others have said. A lot of our buddies pair off. You're left with a fragmented network or none at all. There's more bachelors than ever but they are strangers, gay, etc. It's weird to connect with them. Especially if you're just passing through.

Technology provides some relief. I've used meetup when I'm temporarily living in foreign cities. It can be a good way to run game and meet other guys.

Bars can be ok too. Though I've noticed a lot of people at bars aren't necessarily open to lone male strangers. Bars aren't seen as the main venue for social mixing as once was. Maybe because of tinder and such. For a lot of people they are a place to meet people you already know. Or just something to do and take selfies to post online.

[underboss]

I've never cared much for male affiliation, besides some of the capos I roll with.

[RatInTheWoods]

Friends come and go, enemies accumulate.