The men trying to do friendship, better – podcast

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:06Today, the men trying to do friendship better.

0:17I am in my mid-30s, 37 actually, and my friendship group historically has been booze, banter, football, taking the mick out of each other. This is Josh Halliday. If you're a regular listener, you'll know his voice. He's the Guardian's North of England editor. But today, we're not talking about anything relating to his job. Until very recently, I think the last year or two, my relationship with my two closest friends, who I've been friends with now for 15, 16 years, has been fairly surface level, to be honest. 90 % of our chat is probably football related, always with a drink in our hand. If you asked me, name their immediate family, I wouldn't be able to do it.

0:56And I think that's quite shocking, really. As well as his two best friends, Josh has a big group of ladmates who tend to meet up once a year for a big booze-up. And this means, you know, flying out to a city or getting a train somewhere, drinking all weekend. Over time, he began to realise they all followed the same pattern. Pints, banter, more pints, shots. And then, tears. I sort of realised that towards the end of the night there would almost always be one of us who either ends up in tears or completely unburdens themselves and opens their heart completely unexpectedly. Sometimes it was me who was in tears at the end of the night because, you know, you bottle these things up and it might take 10 pints of Guinness or whatever it is to get these feelings out, bring them to the surface.

1:45Gradually, Josh started to question what was going on. I think it dawned on me over the last couple of years that I do want a lot more from friendships. I'm completely tired of these surface level interactions. You know, I wouldn't even call them friendships. You know, I want proper connection with my friends. And so I decided to make a change. Josh is not the only man wanting to do friendships differently this year. Go on social media and you'll see a sea of men encouraging others to open up in 2026. You know, to speak out as a man was always very much considered a taboo. I had to tell myself, you cannot show pain, because I don't know how to feel sad.

2:22We don't have to struggle in silence. Please, let's get rid of this stigma and men start talking.

2:33But do all men really need to spill their guts? New academic research suggests that some men don't need to share their deepest fears in order to have meaningful friendships. I think more of a nuanced look at this, that instead, actually, the stiff upper lip that everyone says is a bad thing, serves many men just fine. Let's bring in Thomas Yarra, Professor of Anthropology. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. Do men have to open up to their friends to have a sincere connection? Or is there another way?

3:09So, Josh, welcome back to Today in Focus. Nice to see you again. So last year you were on the show talking about something very personal, which was your dad's diagnosis with Huntington's disease, which is an incredibly cruel hereditary disease. And it was an episode that really touched a lot of our listeners. And it really touched me as well. I was almost in tears at the end. And I really remember that you said in that interview that for well over 10 years after your dad was diagnosed, you didn't tell any of your mates that you had a 50-50 chance of developing this horrible disease. Tell me, why didn't you tell anybody?

3:47Well, it's so big, so heavy, so serious that it felt too big to touch, too scary to broach with my friends. and I'm not looking back on that with any regret really I'm looking back with the kind of understanding that it's important to have a place where you can go of friends that you can speak to that's free of a lot of the seriousness the heavy stuff in life that can stay fun they can stay light-hearted you know you can park all the heavy things when you're sort of confronting your own mortality privately my thought always was they'll ask questions and I thought it would change those relationships forever but part of me wishes I could have been a bit more open maybe that would have made those 10 years a lot easier it probably would have done a bit less lonely maybe very much less lonely it was very very lonely but I do at the same time think having those fun weekends away with the lads where you can just put it to one side for a bit is really important whether it's equally important I don't know but it is valuable and I hope you won't be offended when I say this but I've always thought of you as one of the few actual lads at The Guardian.

4:56When you were talking about your mates, it was sort of implicit. They're all boys. Do you have any female friends? Did you have any female friends? I think I said to you probably eight, nine years ago, I don't have any female friends. I do now. Me? Yeah, absolutely. You are chief among them. My friendships have been, you know, 98 % male, I think. 98 % gosh. Yeah, I think so. I just wonder if you ever looked at female friendships with any sense of envy. I do look at female friendships with a bit of envy because there doesn't seem to be that fear of being judged by each other. What, for being honest?

5:32Yeah, for being honest. No, we prize it. And being vulnerable. That's the biggest thing. You know, you can completely open your heart to another woman and you'll get empathy back a lot of the time. The danger with this whole thing is stereotypes and generalisations. Yeah. But generally, and in my experience, my other half, Helen, my wife, she and her friends will send each other long voice notes, podcasts about what's going on in their life, their friends, their family. My experience is that lads don't really do that. And I think we're missing something. I think men are kind of searching for a bit of that deeper, more meaningful connection with their friends.

6:07And also, I feel like women kind of have the best of both worlds because you can also just go out and have fun. And I guess there's been an acknowledgement in recent years that something really sad, which is that the main cause of death for young men is suicide. I mean, suicide is complex and there's always multiple reasons why people take their own lives. But do you think that the sort of struggle to open up is part of that? Yeah, absolutely. I do. I think it comes back to not wanting to be judged by, you know, your friends, not wanting to make things too serious. The male identity is about bravado.

6:42And if you go on WhatsApp groups, I've taken myself off the WhatsApp group where my friends from back home, Bradford, it was all hundreds of messages a day, taking the mick out of each other, insults, bans, outrageous things. And there was never any space there for talking about what people actually probably had going on. One of them had PTSD. Another one was undergoing talking therapy. A third now has an issue with blood pressure. Lad in his early 30s. We've all got stuff going on. And I worry that the WhatsApp group culture is not conducive to like talking about these big things. I left the group because I felt a kind of pressure to conform, pressure to perform, pressure to contribute in the same way that everyone else was, feeding into this quite toxic bans.

7:31And did you quietly quit this group or did you say chaps have had enough? Yeah, I left it. It was over Christmas one year. I was all back home surrounded by family and there were hundreds of messages on Christmas Day in this lads group. I was like, what on earth are we doing? It's taken us away from the relationships that actually matter.

7:58And a couple of years ago, I was quite staggered that you volunteered to go on a men's retreat for the travel pages. This is when I still thought of you as like uber lad. And you returned and I was kind of taking the mick out of you a bit for going on this retreat. And you were quite evangelical about it. Tell us about what that retreat was and how it changed how you felt about yourself and your friendships. But yeah, no, I went on this men's retreat for a travel piece. It was led by this absolute colossus called Anthony Mullally, a former rugby league player. Someone who I've always looked up to.

8:33I mean, literally, because he's six foot six. And I went into it with a completely open mind, slightly sceptical that it would be hippies who do retreats every single year or do them a few times a year. But actually, you know, I wanted to properly embrace it. And I did. And it was absolutely amazing. It was a group of about a dozen fellas, all from different walks of life, different experiences, different ages, who, for one reason or another, wanted to go and sort of surround themselves by other men, strangers, for like a week in this eco camp down near the Cotswolds, and talk about what it means to be a man and get things off their chest to people that they don't know.

9:17We were doing all sorts of different activities. It started with something called yin yoga, basically lying down in different positions while someone says really soothing things over your head, like leave the baggage at the door, leave the narratives. We did wood carving. I made a little spoon. Cold water swimming, which is fun, exhilarating. I think the most significant part of that retreat was the campfire. Every night we'd sit round in this circle, one by one, go around and talk about what's going on in our lives, how we feel, and we'd just share experiences. And it was so humbling and so powerful to hear just regular fellas getting things off their chest.

9:59I mean, one of the striking things that one of the lads said to me was, you know, my best mates I've known for 25 years, but I've never spoken to them without having a beer first. Lots of times the conversation will come back to their relationships with their own dad and regrets they have over that and kind of a real desire to not repeat the shortcomings in those relationships and be a better man by being more emotionally available. and I think it's not just men who seek out men only retreats who feel that I think there is a bit of a swell at the minute of men who are kind of done with this kind of toxic masculine culture bans the bravado and are opening up about struggles like difficult things but also trying to learn how to have those conversations you clearly took a lot away from that men's retreat but obviously not everybody can afford to go on something like that or would want to ago what are those of small things maybe that you learned from that that you think other people might benefit from well I took a lot away from that retreat but the strength that comes from being vulnerable was the big kind of epiphany for me really you know it's not weak it's not soft it's not effeminate there's real bravery and strength in opening up and telling people how you feel and I think people will be surprised by what you get back like men would be surprised if they start opening up what they then get back because I don't think it would be the judgment or the rejection that they fear

11:46we decided to make this episode after hearing about some research which challenged the prevailing wisdom about male friendships. The idea, like Josh explained, that men should be more open, more honest with their mates. And the study, which was from Durham University, caused quite a big splash and it prompted lots of column inches, suggesting it was proof that men don't need to be emotionally vulnerable with their mates in order to have a meaningful connection. I decided to call the author, Thomas Yarrow, an anthropology professor, and asked how he ended up studying men and the way they interact with their friends.

12:18And he began by saying that the research was prompted almost by accident by a difficult moment in his own life. Yeah so I mean a lot of my own friendships revolve around you know deep meaningful discussions personal disclosure there's that kind of expectation that I guess that that's what intimacy is about I value that but I was going through various kind of issues in my own life particularly during the lockdowns that was the time that my son had a cancer diagnosis actually and it was more or less coincided with the time that I split up with my wife of 20 years so it was a really difficult time for me and for whatever reason I just found that actually talking wasn't really the thing I wanted to do and it didn't sort of somehow scratch the itch but my background is in heritage studies I'm interested in the social significance of the past and so I was doing this research with heritage railway volunteers and through this I found this real community of of people who were you know in many ways very unlike myself most of them are in later life many of them come from post-industrial towns in northeast england they're a really diverse group of people but many from quite stereotypically working-class backgrounds i mean i've been doing this research for now started in 2019 and on and off it ended about a year ago and became very personal for me really and it it was through doing that that i really found value myself i'd go about once a week or so and I'd really look forward to those times because they were a sort of chance to get outside of the problems that I had.

13:48And set the scene for us. Where is this heritage railway? What happens there and who goes there?

13:57In a way, it's a kind of micro-utopia. It's this little place that for a lot of the people who go there, they talk of it as being perfect and of having all the qualities that the modern world lacks. so the relationships and the friendships are part of that but in terms of the practical things that happen steam engines go along a line that was once a mainline railway which is now preserved essentially as a museum so you have all the sights and the sounds and the smells of that which are often very evocative for the people who go there and they're doing very everyday routine kinds of work which is what also what i got involved with So painting old carriages and wagons through to running steam trains, sanding benches, painting walls, tinkering around with old bits of machinery, all that kind of stuff.

14:46And I'm a social anthropologist and we call it ethnography, but really that's just a long word for hanging around with people and trying to work out what's going on. I think of it as not really writing about them, but trying to write with them and give their experiences and voice and validity, I suppose. And how did they feel about being studied? Yeah, initially there was probably quite a lot of scepticism because I was quite different to a lot of them. They would refer to me as a young lad, which someone already then in my early 40s was kind of nice but surprising. So there was a kind of generational difference there.

15:21And I think a kind of difference in terms of expectation of what a friendship might look like. So some of the bantering, I was unused to it, I'd say. What, you found it a bit bracing or what? A bit bracing, yeah, for sure. Well, they'd take the mickey out of you, essentially. They would definitely take the mickey out of me. I mean, I remember there was one occasion when the universities were on strike and, you know, a lot of them were saying, I see you're on strike as opposed to what exactly. It was a lot of taking the piss of my soft hands, my general inability to do the kind of practical tasks that a lot of them were very good at.

15:54It took me a while to realise that actually the harshness of the banter wasn't the opposite of intimacy. It was a form of intimacy. So actually initially, I think a lot of the responses were more sort of indifference. And actually at the point at which I started having the piss taken out of me, I felt like that was the point at which maybe I'd come to belong a little bit more. And was there a moment at the railway that sort of crystallised for you, your theory of male friendships that challenged the conventional wisdom of what it means to have a good and meaningful friendship with somebody. I mean, there were lots of moments, but one in particular that's been smart was when one of the volunteers who'd been going there for, I think, about 15 years, and he became ill and in fact subsequently died of a form of cancer.

16:43And initially I found it sort of puzzling that nobody much spoke directly of that. In fact, really not at all. And he himself didn't mention it, But it was really clear to me that that wasn't a sort of coldness or an indifference. It was about respecting his own desire for space. It was also about giving him the normality that he wanted in his later stages of life and recognising that for him support was about just being there, being together. He didn't want to talk about his feelings. He didn't want to talk about his emotions. for me the silence represented a sensitivity to that it wasn't uncaring and it wasn't about disconnection and actually often when he wasn't around they would talk about him and about the best ways to care for him so you know care can be shown through asking about how you are but it can also just be shown through giving somebody a cup of tea or carrying on as normal or bantering in just the way that you normally do because that's what somebody wants and did you ever ask that particular man why he wasn't talking about something that for many people and presumably himself as well was also very scary i didn't ask him directly but i asked those around him and in fact talked to a very close friend of his after he died a little bit about his experiences what they said was that he kept on going to the railway because that was the thing that gave his life meaning and purpose that was a real source of support for him like a lot of people who go there They're in later life and often dealing with bereavement, thinking about their own mortality, struggling with illness.

18:17As to why he didn't want to talk what she said when she saw it as a generational thing, men of that age don't do that. That's not the way that they tend to express themselves. These tend to be people who are brought up in that kind of old-fashioned, stiff upper lip set of values. but that doesn't mean that they never talk about their families or their relationships or those things that are going much more common i would say those are kind of in the background the focus is on the kind of activity that's involved in fixing a piston that's where the sort of focus lies and that's i think fundamentally where the sort of support is drawn from is that sense of camaraderie of being together

19:09i think that's probably also another side to it is that you can value yourself by feeling valued so that's also a lot of what is happening in these friendships is people are finding ways to validate themselves not in an egotistical way most of them are very self-deprecating they don't you know desire or want to be personally sort of acknowledged or even thanked but just in the sense that you're part of a collective endeavour and that gives you a kind of value so it's more about being together doing stuff together those kinds of connection that come out of activities really rather than primarily about talking and I think through that feelings of various kinds are expressed and heard without explicitly needing to be named and Josh has told us about how he did something that I was really surprised about knowing him that he went on a male retreat a couple of years ago, which involved men kind of sitting around a campfire and really opening up about things that they've never dared to share, maybe with their partners, with their best friends.

20:07And I wonder if the railway and the people who are coming together to tinker around and fix this, is this sort of compromise for men who would run a mile before going to a male retreat, let alone talking about how they actually feel about things? One of the points I'd like to highlight really is that it's horses for courses. That doesn't have to be one sort of route to better mental health and for those people who want to talk so it sounds like Josh is an example of that that's maybe what he's missing is that sort of connection it is true that through these kinds of work people often do end up talking about other things you know they might end up talking about their wife who's died or an addiction problem or something like that there's a movement called men's sheds which is very much about encouraging this kind of mental health approach and i think it's in that sort of ethos that informs it it's shoulder to shoulder it's not face to face men opening up is a really good thing for lots of men but i think there's also a lot of people who end up feeling stigmatized or even like personal failures because they're not able to or not willing to the men that i came to know mostly really objected to the term mental health not because they think it's a bad thing for men to be well, but because of the way that, I guess they see it as a zeitgeisty thing, a lot of them, and ignores the ways in which actually, for those men, it's completely fine that this is the way that they find most support, and we should be celebrating and valuing that on its own terms.

21:39Coming up, exactly what Josh plans to do to make his male friendships count.

21:59Josh, you know, you've had some big life changes in the past few years since COVID that you've already alluded to. You found out that you aren't a carrier for Huntingdon, so you're not going to develop that horrible disease. You've had two children, you've become a dad. I wonder how all of that fed into how you felt about your friendships and how you wanted them to be different. I think there comes a point where like in your late 20s 30s where your career might be getting more serious you might have moved away from home you might be settling down with a partner whatever else it is that you've got going on parents getting ill dying these are big life events that start to confront you and when that happens you do want someone to talk to about it a friend having children has massively changed my kind of outlook on a lot of things but friendships have been one of the main ones because I sort of looked at myself and asked you know how do I want to be seen as a role model like a male role model for my two young girls and I want them to see a strong man who is not emotionally constipated who can talk about emotions and isn't afraid to cry I mean I don't think I've ever cried in front of them still but like but it's not a red line it's not a red line absolutely not no because what they see from me is so important for their future relationships and also I don't have time for surface level stuff anymore I want to devote my energy to maybe the one or two like actual close friendships that I have and start to kind of nurture them because it doesn't matter how many Facebook friends you've got how many Instagram friends actually if you've got two or three really close friends that you can share and shoulders to cry on that's what counts it's sometimes not the right time to talk about things you're not ready but clearly you are now ready to be more open and vulnerable and tell me how else are you going to do things differently with your mates now one of the best conversations i had all last year was with one of my oldest mates one of my closest mates in the pub just before christmas being really good mates for like 15, 16 years.

24:06And he'd listened to that podcast about Huntington's that we did. And he was like, I had no idea. You know, it was a bit like, yeah, well. And then he started telling me about how he's been struggling. And, you know, I couldn't believe it. I was really upset actually by it that I consider myself one of his best friends, but he hadn't been able to tell me about it. But it's got to work both ways, hasn't it? So it's kind of spurred me on into this different direction and and actually we all met up because we all live like hundreds of miles from each other me and my closest friends so we just don't spend time with each other at all last year we went on a bit of a boozy trip to belfast and we were talking about redoing it again this year but i said actually can we just go for a walk i wanted to do something that was less booze orientated do a hike or somewhere stay over because i think you can have better conversations you remember more of it you can still have a laugh and yeah they've gone for it we're doing it I mean I think I'm at that point in life where I've completed stag do culture I've completed the bants and I just you know want something different but I'm gonna try do more phone calls because text messages just don't cut it do they really you're not getting much whenever I speak to my best friend on the phone we're on the phone for like an hour and it's great it's just like a real weight off my shoulders.

25:28Do you know what I was about to say? Oh, like girls. It's so gendered, isn't it? This idea that a natter is a female thing. God, shame on me. But it is just nattering though. But you know, actually the topics can range from nattering, football, gossip to the big stuff. Like how's your dad? How are you about that? That kind of proper probing connection, which I think is really important. So that's one of the things that I want to do this year. and also go to big social events you don't have to have a drink maybe like to have better conversations with people and i've had lots of enjoyable boozy nights out with you how are you feeling about approaching these things without a drink in your hand i feel good actually i've come into this year with a bit of determination to be a change like i'm actually quite proud of the man that i am now it's taken me a while to get there but like i'm a good dad and that's the biggest thing that matters to me so I kind of want to start be a good role model like outside the family home as well I think there's a lot of power and strength in being true to yourself and projecting that to other people and then I think they will do the same back thank you very much Josh thank you that was Josh Halliday the Guardians North of England editor thanks to him and to Tom Yarrow from the University of Durham there's a really interesting column that my colleague Gabby Hinsliff wrote about Tom's research, which you can find at theguardian.com.

26:50And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Ivor Manley and Tom Glasser and presented by me, Helen Pitt. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Courtney Youssef. We'll be back in your feeds later this afternoon with the latest.

27:19This is The Guardian.