How can men build better friendships?

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0:30Kimberley Wilson:up at Whole Foods Market. Do challenging weeds cloud your view of clean corn rows? It's time to shift your focus to residual weed control that won't quit. Introducing Storin Corn Herbicide, an innovative formulation of four residual active ingredients that provide consistently clean rows and maximum weed control, up to three weeks longer than leading corn herbicides. For a focused weed management strategy that works, talk to your Syngenta retailer about Storin. Always read and follow label instructions. Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a counselling psychologist and this is Complex.

1:11Kimberley Wilson:The psychology podcast that helps you navigate your way through all the information and misinformation that's out there about our mental health. In today's episode, I'm exploring loneliness and friendship for men. loneliness is something most of us experience at some point in our lives but recent studies show that it's on the rise especially for gen z and young men in particular now in the u.s a recent poll revealed a quarter of men aged between 15 and 34 felt lonely a lot of the previous day and last year a poll in the uk identified something it called the loneliness limbo where people feel socially connected on screen, but actually still feel lonely.

2:02Kimberley Wilson:And we also know that loneliness leads to mental health issues.

2:10Kimberley Wilson:So this really feels like an incredibly important topic to shine our complex spotlight on. And I'm delighted to be joined by an expert guest and to share a listener's story so that we can dig into what's being called a male loneliness epidemic and to think about how and whether men could make more solid, meaningful connections. So let me be your guide from the rickety tricycle of misinformation to the bullet train of understanding.

2:46Kimberley Wilson:And back with me in the complex studio is clinical psychologist Dr Anton Barnwell. thank you for coming back and joining us Anton Thanks for having me Last time you were here Anton we talked about how to help ourselves to feel good enough and listeners can find that in the complex feed on BBC Sounds but please do remind us about your work I work as a clinical psychologist and that is somebody who is interested in promoting wellbeing whether that be helping people with mental health conditions or maybe it's just helping people live a life that's more in line with what they think is meaningful and valuable to them I've mostly worked with young adults and children and in particular I have a kind of specialism within university students and the mental health of universities as a whole And if you don't mind me asking what is your kind of personal relationship with loneliness?

3:37I think loneliness is something that we all experience at various points in our life it's a very human experience we all have times where we feel less supported by people in our networks for me I have felt incredibly lonely at times in my past particularly when I was very young also when I was at university hence my interest in helping students now it's something that is really closely aligned with not feeling good enough or at least it was for me in that I didn't feel like I was worthy enough of being around other people which led to me then not going outside not seeking kind of connections and not really trusting that I deserved close friendships so I think my personal relationship with loneliness is luckily something that I feel a lot less often now but it still pops up from time to time.

4:23Kimberley Wilson:And just as an observation because I had something similar there's that contradiction when everybody's telling you I think particularly at university that you're going to be having the time of your life and you're going to make all of these friends and then you feel kind of lonely or out of place and that can sometimes feel difficult to reconcile. Yeah it's something that can be very confusing in that you're thinking you know I've got all these people around me in my life but yeah I still feel like there's parts of myself that are not maybe being witnessed or seen and parts of my existence is not going the kind of the way I want it to so yeah it can be really really devastating so this feels like a really kind of important and timely topic for us to be thinking about absolutely yeah

5:07Kimberley Wilson:and as we go through this episode what we're going to do is to kind of look beyond loneliness to what male friendship can mean. And of course, there are many ways to be a man and there are many shapes to friendship. But we're going to be looking at what typically happens and what the research tells us. So regular listeners will be well aware that I do love to start with a definition. So Anton, what do we actually mean by loneliness? Yeah, so loneliness is a negative embodied emotional experience that happens when somebody kind of evaluates that their own relationships or social network is not meeting their needs.

5:50So it could be that they've maybe not got enough friends or enough connection. Or it could be that the connections that they've got are maybe surface level and they don't cover the depth that someone is wanting in their relationship. So it's not something that someone else can say to you. It's something that you very much have to recognise in yourself. There's no clinical test for loneliness.

6:09Kimberley Wilson:And we know that about 6 % to 7 % of the population experience what we would call chronic loneliness. Can you define that? Yeah, I think when you have a chronic loneliness, it's that long-standing, it's caused an issue in someone's life for such a long time. And it can kind of blend into what we might think of as clinical depression. It might exhibit itself as particular forms of anxiety, but it's that very much that long term impact on someone's life rather than loneliness that, say, may occur and move on and be transitional. OK, thank you. And if we're thinking about male loneliness in particular, does it need a separate definition?

6:49Kimberley Wilson:What do you think? So in terms of the research that I looked at, the numbers of loneliness between genders is very, very similar. in fact the gender with the highest proportion of loneliness is actually non-binary so people who don't ascribe to either male or or female gender identities so it's a really interesting question about is there a male loneliness epidemic and that's something that i think it's really important to unpack if we're going to understand and support men who are feeling lonely and so what we're seeing is kind of perhaps in the stats and the research is that there seems to be actually more of a parity in how people describe loneliness is that what you're saying?

7:30Yeah so there was an NHS study that I think was published this year 2026 that asked for people with experiences of loneliness and also well-being it's quite an interesting report and yeah a lot of parity across male and females things that were more transitional were to do with areas of deprivation so whether that's social deprivation area of where you're living has an impact on loneliness as well and there were other kind of factors as well.

7:59Kimberley Wilson:Now, I just want to say at this point, a huge, huge thank you to everyone who sends us stories and suggestions for what we should explore on Complex. We're really grateful to you all for sharing your experiences. And Anton, I'm going to read out one email that we have received. And to protect this person's identity, I'm going to call our listener, Caleb, and I'd love to hear what you think. So Caleb says, Dear Kimberly and team, my situation is that I worked hard at school and got into a good university, but I was always uncomfortable with drinking culture. And as a closeted queer man, I struggled to engage with my straight peers as they started dating.

8:42Kimberley Wilson:Alongside this, I was relentlessly bullied at school, leading to depression and anxiety attacks. This history has meant I struggled to make friends as I was constantly afraid I would be bullied once more, particularly by other men. Fast forward five years and I'm doing well. I've got a career I love and a supportive relationship. But even now, I struggle to make friends with men. I currently have three close friends who are all women. While I treasure these friendships, I find myself longing for even just one good platonic male friendship Despite this, the men I've tried to befriend always seem somehow detached or standoffish If there genuinely is an epidemic of male loneliness, why is it so hard for me to make friends and where is the reciprocity?

9:33Kimberley Wilson:I'd love it if you could dive into this topic okay so thank you very very much Caleb for sharing that Anton what are your thoughts there's a lot in there yeah thank you so much Caleb for sharing your story I think it's one that many people will relate to I'm really firstly I'm really sorry to hear that you've had such negative experiences in the past often in mental health we think about you know not what's wrong with you but what's happened to you and I think with that lens it kind of makes a bit of sense to me at least why some of these connections may be a little bit more tricky than others.

10:08Your question at the end around if there genuinely is an epidemic of male loneliness, why is it so hard for me to make friends? It's something that I've been thinking a lot about as a man as well, been reflecting on my own friendships. There seems to be a lot of kind of social pressure and expectations on what being manly is, what being masculine is. And often when I've been in female spaces, which I often am as a therapist, there's lots of females in the therapy spaces and relatively fewer men, is a very different way of connecting and a very different way of being compared to when I'm in mostly male spaces, like when I'm doing sports.

10:44I've spent probably decades playing football and sometimes I reflect on the people that I've played with and I don't really know much about them. And that can be quite challenging to have those deep and meaningful connections when we don't actually know as men how to connect.

10:57Kimberley Wilson:Thank you. In your response to Caleb, you touched on some of nuance about okay so how are men socialized and what do friendships mean for men and should they mean the same thing for men as they mean for women and that's the kind of thing that we really want to be thinking about in this episode so let's get into the complexity

11:21Kimberley Wilson:so Anton we know from a lot of the research that men are much less likely to describe themselves as lonely, even if they're experiencing the same isolating circumstances as women. And so I think that raises the question of stigma. Is there a stigma for men in using the L word? Yeah, yeah, very much so. And that's partly where the actual term male loneliness epidemic kind of sprung from was wanting there to be a kind of public health response to the quite well-known phenomenon of men finding it quite difficult to ask for help. There's lots of pressure on what being a man is. And part of that is being stoic.

12:05So the ability to be quite resolute and just keep going, that kind of energy of progression.

12:10Kimberley Wilson:Not complaining. Not complaining, yeah. Everything's fine. That is kind of baked into the Western idea of what a man is. And it can keep them really, really stuck. Because in order to access help, you need to be able to ask for help. which starts with being able to acknowledge that you are suffering yes and i've often now i find myself thinking about the kind of circularity within this argument where men are not able to ask for help because it might show weakness and yet asking for help is so difficult so surely doing so is a show of strength so i think there is a bit of a movement with this now it's a slow movement but i'm seeing a little bit more certainly in younger men able to articulate their emotions which is the kind of the first step you need to do to understand your emotions and then ask for help but we still have a lot more work to do there's a kind of counter narrative about men and it's kind of it comes a lot out of the misuse of evolutionary biology but this kind of sense of men demonstrating that they are the alpha so at the same time that the research is saying actually be really good for men to be able to come to terms with, accept, acknowledge their vulnerability and their emotional needs.

13:25Kimberley Wilson:We have a counter-narrative that says, actually, men need to be this very traditional, almost patriarchal standard of masculinity. It feels very hard for a man to decide which one is the right way forwards. I came across this idea of men doing social scanning or sort of monitoring when they interact with other men in terms of figuring out you know what would a masculine way of being be in this space which is something that I think can really get in the way particularly when masculinity is something that is thought of as being stoic it's not really having emotions you know maybe having a banter conversation that's about as deep as it goes not really having a deep connection and yeah it's a really interesting idea where men will just be trying to figure out how can I maintain my manhood in this space there's some examples where men are on kind of TV shows where they are dating but they can't interact with their partner.

14:21Visually they are more open but when they are in more kind of same-sex spaces they seem different and it's that idea of scanning an environment and deciding how can I be masculine in this space.

14:32Kimberley Wilson:And maybe that touches on why there is this discrepancy between the men who say they have lots of friends and the data that says actually it seems that these connections don't have that much emotional depth and what we certainly see is and i think this is in older men really relying in heterosexual relationships on their partners for a lot of that emotional depth and holding and connection the research that i've seen shows that that's consistent across age as well So also for younger men, we'll be wanting kind of a heterosexual partner, a female partner to kind of carry that emotional load for them in the sense of a man might only feel able to be authentic and say how they're feeling with their romantic partner.

15:24Now, that is something that is obviously really limiting the amount of support that men can have.

15:29Kimberley Wilson:And the reason that this is such a pertinent question for us as psychologists, for this podcast, is because there is this established link between loneliness and poor mental health, isn't there? Yeah, it's a well-established link. And something that also expands into physical health as well, which can surprise quite a lot of people. One of the most famous bits of literature out there is around loneliness taking years off your life in terms of people dying earlier when they're feeling lonely. Early immortality and certainly isolation and loneliness is linked with increased risk of dementia as well.

16:02Kimberley Wilson:So just we understand physiologically the stress of being alone because we're social beings, because we're meant to be in these networks and these groups, we're supposed to belong. That when we're alone, that's perceived by the body, by the nervous system as a threat. And that threat is expressed as stress and it's that chronic stress of loneliness that can lead to all these physical and mental health risks. There was an Ipsos survey with Joe Media last year that found that 40 % of young men said that video games were one of their main ways of socializing. And the survey called this side-by-side friendships.

16:47Kimberley Wilson:and I guess that could also apply to sports whether that's participation or watching sports but what do we think about this notion of side-by-side friendships? Yeah it's again something in my personal experience as a man that's something that I've seen I've been part of those conversations where it's just been easier to talk to my friends while yeah out on the golf course or playing a game watching the sport that kind of thing and I feel a bit mixed about it if I'm being honest I feel on the one hand great it's a medium that can help men to be more open about how they're feeling and try and access some support from their friends on the other hand I wonder about how does that help men over a long-term period to build a stamina and the skill set of being able to sit down with someone and, you know, talk to them about how they're feeling.

17:41Kimberley Wilson:Maybe we're making the distinction between friends and acquaintances, you know, so that if we're thinking about concentric circles and there's you in the middle, outside of that, the next layer out are your close friends. And then the next layer out might be kind of general friends and people you know. And then after that, it's acquaintances, people that you're not at the gym, people that you do play sports with, but who don't really know you at depth and that we those are valuable psychologically in terms of our mental health but those closer relationships perhaps that's what we're thinking about is is not quite there for some of the men that we're talking about in this research yeah i think so because loneliness it is that subjective feeling there are people out there who have got kind of two friends and don't feel lonely because the depth of those friendships is it kind of meets their needs and there are people out there who have got you know 50 or 60 friends or acquaintances and often online how many friends you have online when you're gaming you have so many friends they're literally called friends and yet while you're gaming you rarely talk about anything and i suppose i want to be mindful not just to apply a feminine or even a psychological framework onto how men and male friendships should be but i am looking at the contradiction in this research which is on one hand I've got lots of friends on the other hand that I feel lonely.

19:07Kimberley Wilson:Do we need to be reframing how we think about male friendships or do men need to connect in a more meaningful way? That's a really interesting question. So I think men can do the kind of open authentic connections often they just put a lot of that energy towards doing that with their romantic partner. So men are capable of having those deep and open connections with people, because, you know, that is what we can see. But there's something around male to male friendships, but there's maybe some more barriers in the way. Is there something else around creating an environment where men can learn that it's safe?

19:48It's safe to be authentic. It's safe to reveal your emotions in those spaces. Yeah, I wonder whether the barrier is the threat to

19:57Kimberley Wilson:masculinity, you know, so either by showing my feelings and seeking more depth in my male-to-male friendships, I end up looking feminine, which is a threat to masculinity in our society, or by doing that I might look gay, which in our society is a threat to masculinity. And therefore there's this constant anxious negotiation about how much of myself I can reveal to another man and still maintain that sense of my status as a masculine man. Yeah, yeah, very much so. And that touches on the idea of something called masculine capital, which is the idea that if you have certain masculine traits, they kind of stack up.

20:49So if you've got that capital stacked up in masculinity, you can maybe afford to reveal so-called effeminate traits like being open or maybe being physically kind of intimate, hugs, things like that.

21:00Kimberley Wilson:That's a really interesting idea because it makes me think about Dwayne The Rock Johnson. And, you know, he was a former wrestler. He's absolutely huge. He's an actor now. But he shares clips of his daughters painting his nails. and perhaps he's able to do that because his masculinity is so solid and so unquestionable that to have painted nails is not a threat to it. Yeah, I think we need to maybe be a bit more open in discussing this kind of idea of masculine capital because if someone hasn't got all those masculine features and does that, that's equally valid to do as a man, as a parent but it's seen in different ways depending on what else you've got and this is something else that can be picked up by people who want to kind of maintain gender roles the way that they are, which can also be harmful for men feeling lonely in the future because that's part of the issue why men don't talk, is that they are worried about their masculinity being threatened.

21:59Kimberley Wilson:Okay, so in this part of the show, I like to put our topic onto a scale. In the case of loneliness, the tipping point I'm thinking about in terms of where we as psychologists might become concerned about someone's loneliness and I want to say that because I know that loneliness and being alone are very different things so Anton where does enjoying your own company start to tip into to something problematic? I think that the idea around enjoyment is key. They may be on their own for a long period of time and be perfectly happy with that. They equally may be on their own for a long period of time and be telling themselves that they're happy with that.

22:49And that's where I think it's really important to build up your own understanding of just what you're feeling. So I guess really encourage people to just be really honest with themselves.

22:59Kimberley Wilson:And so if we're thinking about the quality of that subjectivity, do you know how someone can tell whether they are enjoying that alone time or they're telling themselves that they enjoy their alone time? Can we help listeners to make that distinction? this is making me think of my own experience with video games and i guess you could parallel that with other kind of unhelpful coping styles whether that be substances or anything else is how much are you doing the thing to avoid the feeling of loneliness so for me i would spend sort of six seven hours when i was a lot younger playing video games and you know i'm having a great time i love that game and they're good games there's some good games out there and you were really good i was enjoying my time so yeah and it was from really recognizing that actually i am i'm doing this to avoid feeling lonely so i wasn't feeling lonely but i was covering it up by doing lots of video games i wasn't eating very well wasn't looking after myself very well and it was kind of spiraling but for me the core was i just didn't feel like i had any sense of connection with anyone meaningful yes everyday activities but are they a distraction or a numbing or a form of avoidance of a painful feeling yeah

24:19Kimberley Wilson:so and i know we'll be talking in broad strokes but what does healthy male friendship look like i think a healthy male friendship is similar to other healthy friendships where it's really important to have the ability to be your authentic self so to be however you are in that space to be able to show vulnerability i think is really really key to have a connection with enough depth rather than just you know you can talk about the weather or the sport and all the kind of surface safe topics but there needs to be a degree of vulnerability in order to connect on those deeper levels. Yes, and there's something really important about being seen and accepted as the whole of you.

25:06Kimberley Wilson:You don't have to put on a performance, you don't have to pretend to like things that you don't like, and that you can sometimes be a bit petty, or childish, or whatever it is, and that other person is still going to accept and respect you yeah yeah so it's it's the whole thing that we're looking for that authentic male friendship where those connections and the ability to just be yourself is kind of consistently there as well and hopefully with a lot of fun built into the relationship as well yeah that as well yeah yeah