Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
11. Sam Graham-Felsen on the Fading Male Friendship
60 Plays18 days ago
Sam Graham-Felsen is the historian at the Philip Roth Personal Library in Newark, New Jersey, and he’s the author of the acclaimed coming-of-age novel Green. We discuss…
Subscribe now
- Sam’s article with New York Times Magazine, “Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?”
- Sam’s favorite boyhood comedy, Weird Al’s, UHF.
- When did American men stop being physically close? And do we need to go back to this:
- Should we take our best friends to our honeymoons?
- Was Albert Kinsey’s studies of sexuality, which popularized the prevalence of homosexuality, responsible for causing homohysteria?
- Is Dan Campbell making it okay for guys to display emotion, or is his “high masculinity” the only thing that gives him license to be vulnerable?
- Examples of healthy masculinity:
- David Goggins on JRE:
- Does the manosphere need to adopt friendship, community, and rootedness as its next message of wellness?
- Sam and I discuss our mid-life career pivots into typically female-dominated career fields.
- Sam explores the question, What makes a man?
- Sam recommends:
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast & Guest Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken Ilgunis.
00:00:19
Speaker
Sam Graham Felsen is the historian at the Philip Roth Personal Library in Newark, New Jersey, and he's the author of the acclaimed coming-of-age novel, Green.
Male Friendships & Resonance of Sam's Essay
00:00:31
Speaker
ah Sam, I asked you to come on to talk about your latest piece in the New York Times Magazine titled, Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?,
00:00:42
Speaker
I loved your essay. I moved to Scotland from the US six years ago, so you could say had to completely start over with my friendship. So your article resonated with me and it seems like it resonated with hundreds based on all the comments you had. So i mean let me begin our conversation by asking when was peak friendship for you in your life?
00:01:09
Speaker
I would say College and right after college. I mean, there's nothing like college because, you know, frankly, you don't have that much work to do.
00:01:22
Speaker
You know, I mean, unless you're a really serious student, which I was not, you know, you're in class for a couple hours a day. Uh, you live with your best friends. You stay up till four in the morning. Every night you wake up at, you know, 11 or 12 o'clock the next day.
00:01:37
Speaker
and basically all you're doing all the time is hanging out. Um, so nothing was ever really quite like
Nature & Depth of Friendships
00:01:44
Speaker
college. Um, But right after college, when I was in my early 20s, moved to New York you know with big dreams to make it as a writer.
00:01:53
Speaker
i was like waiting tables. I was doing you know tutoring wealthy kids at night. I had tons of free time and I would hang out. Every day, every day, really no exceptions. I mean, I had, I had good friends all over the city and every night of the week I was hanging out.
00:02:12
Speaker
Um, so that was, I would say the peak was, was college in my early, early to mid twenties. Yeah. And were these deep friendships as you have it titled in your piece? Yes. um So interestingly enough, a lot of my closest friends um were people that I went to high school with who I also went to college with. um And they I mean, there were a lot of kids from my high school who went to the same college. I grew up in Boston. And so, you know, there were there were a few Boston area colleges that many of us went to.
00:02:44
Speaker
So i I stayed friends with these kids in college. And then many of them moved to New York after college because that's what a lot of people from the Boston area who went to college do. You know, I think people on the West Coast maybe moved to l LA. People in the Midwest moved to Chicago. Like people in the Northeast, we we kind of all make a little...
00:03:03
Speaker
at least one effort at trying to make it big in New York. Uh, not all of us, but a lot of us do. So, you know, i I, had the good fortune of like sort of being with this group of friends from, you know, eight my high school started actually started and seventh grade. So, you know, many of my friends were people that I'd been hanging out with since I was 12 years old.
00:03:25
Speaker
Um, so though they were deep friendships and, and, And then, you know, not just old friendships. I mean, you know, i made close friends with people that I met through work stuff in the city. And, um you know, again, these were people that I would see multiple days a week and have, you know, pretty extensive, deep conversations with um and see all the time and, you know, physically see and hang out with all the time.
00:03:53
Speaker
And what was the nature of these friendships and the sort of things you were talking about? Was it intellectual stuff? Was it pop culture? Was it talking about your romantic life? How would you describe the nature of these friendships?
00:04:07
Speaker
I would say, you know, the the the people I gravitated towards often were, you know, more intellectually engaged people, people who like books, people who are interested in philosophy. You know, Rob, who I mentioned in the article, is a professional philosopher.
00:04:25
Speaker
He teaches at Harvard now. So, you know, like, it's not like all we talked about was Plato and, you know, John Rawls or whatever, but we did talk about those things in addition to talking about the Boston Celtics, in addition to talking about our
Fading Depth & Childhood Memories
00:04:41
Speaker
relationships. um you know it's not like i think I think if I'm honest, you know the bulk of what we talked about was ideas. um ah you know We talked about politics. We talked about
00:04:57
Speaker
you know, diagnosing the ills of our society. We talked about books, you know, we would, we would, and there wasn't a lot of surface level just talking about pop culture stuff. We talked about sports. Um, but I got less and less interested in sports the older I got. And, um,
00:05:14
Speaker
Uh, and so, yeah, a lot of what we talked about was politics, ideas, um, things like that. You know, I mentioned over email that I'm into Thoreau, you know, I've talked to Rob about Thoreau, you know, um, uh, you know, we also talked about stupid things like, you know, gossiping about friends that we had in common, you know, of course.
00:05:34
Speaker
Um, but, uh, but, you know, we had, we had substantive conversations. Um, and, um, And then little by little, that stuff faded out.
00:05:47
Speaker
And that's why I decided to write this essay. You know, I started hanging, I realized one day that I was like barely hanging out with my friends anymore. And not only that, I barely ever talked to them on the phone. And you write in your piece about your intensity of your friendship with with Rob, and this was nothing unusual to me, and it's probably not unusual to most most men when they think about their boyhood, teenagehood, friendships.
00:06:14
Speaker
You say, um I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that could only be described as love. I thought about him all the time and cared deeply about what he thought of me. And it reminded me of like a Friday night when I was, say, 11 years old and my friend Dave or Steve was going to come and and sleep over.
00:06:41
Speaker
And I remember just feeling such excitement about them kind of walking up to the door, almost to the point where i was like putting my arms in the air and jumping around, imagining all the pizza we were going to eat and all the video games we're going to play and all the horror movies we were going to watch. It was an elation.
00:07:01
Speaker
that i I don't think I've felt for person like that in a long, long time. Yeah. ah For me, it was it was comedy movies rather than horror movies, but you know I can't tell you how much I enjoyed I had another friend named Brian.
00:07:22
Speaker
We watched... Weird Al Yankovic's UHF probably a hundred times together and just could not get enough of that movie. ah and what What is UHF?
00:07:34
Speaker
it's it's it's It's a very funny, in my opinion, very funny movie in which Weird Al Yankovic plays a ah basically a version of himself that has a ah local broadcast, you know, cable TV show, you know, remember those old like local cable shows from like the eighties where, you know, in the middle of the night, there'd just be some guy, you know, sitting at a table talking that that's what it's about, but it's a great movie. And, you know, we would, we would just watch it over and over and over and over again.
00:08:04
Speaker
um But yeah, that kind of unbridled, joy of being around your boyhood friends. um I remember the feeling of a sleepover party too. And just, you know, i remember like the way sleepovers would go with my best friends.
00:08:22
Speaker
You know, we would we would get in bed around, i don't know, midnight or something. After watching a movie and playing a bunch of video games. And then we would talk and, you know, at first it's kind of like, you know, surface level, silly conversations, you know, joking around.
00:08:40
Speaker
And then, but then neither of us would want to go to sleep, you know, and I'm sleeping on like the little cot on the floor next to my friend's bed. And, ah you know, just kind of like as one of us is dozing off, the other one says, hey, have you ever thought about this thing? And then we would go for another round.
00:08:55
Speaker
And by the end of the night, you know, we usually end up staying up, you know, very, very, very late. But by the end of the night, there was almost always some kind of breakthrough where we talked about something different.
00:09:07
Speaker
really deep. And it took us like the whole night to get to that place. But once we got to that place, you know, talk about the fear of death, you know, talk about, ah what do we think will happens when we die? You know, talk about like, uh, you know, our, you know, insecurities about all kinds of things, but that stuff would, you know, generally happen in, in those, you know, we, wee we Yeah.
00:09:33
Speaker
For me, it was, who do you like? you know yeah's the Who's the girl you have a crush on? Which you normally wouldn't talk about in and daylight hours. And yeah you were just terrified of news getting out. But in those moments of of intimacy and and trust, you could finally rely on a friend to to hold your your secret.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. So you kept this relationship with Rob going and you describe um having an email correspondence with him in your 20s, which was kind of remarkable because I thought I was the only guy who had like a close email correspondence with his as other male buddy. but um And when I think of email, I think email is the kind of technology that can open up a friendship rather than a technology
00:10:28
Speaker
that closes it down. And yup like, I've had an email correspondence with my friend Josh since we were 17, 18. So it's pretty much 25 years now.
00:10:40
Speaker
We're probably we say more things in email than we actually would face to face. yeah i I gave a talk at a high school recently and I was telling them about this this friendship and this email correspondence and I asked them, you know, who emails? And none of them email and they all text.
00:11:00
Speaker
And i'm sure they can I'm sure there's moments of intimacy when they when they text, but it just can't be as good.
Impact of Technology on Friendships
00:11:07
Speaker
It just can't be as good than email. Yeah. I mean, so...
00:11:11
Speaker
so um Rob is sort of the ringleader of this group of friends from high school and college. um And we get together once a year and, you know, we've been doing this for 17 years, I think.
00:11:25
Speaker
And, um, in, you know, other than that once a year, basically it's about this email list, you know, this email, this Google group that we have. Um, but I had to say like five years ago, we created maybe longer than five years ago, like seven years ago, we created a WhatsApp group.
00:11:46
Speaker
And the WhatsApp group has totally eaten into the email ah conversation. so now there's just like okay a lot more WhatsAppping and just sending a quick link and, you know, crying laughter emoji or whatever.
00:11:59
Speaker
We used to, you know, send, you know, massive multi-thousand word treatises and, you know, have a hundred thoughtful responses over email. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's fading. And, you know, Rob and i um are much more likely now to shoot a quick text to one another than, than to write a long email. You know, that is a casualty of, you know, it's cool that you're still writing these emails because I'm now, I'm trying to consciously make an effort to go back to email because I agree. I think email is,
00:12:31
Speaker
Um, you know, it's funny, like back in the day, everyone was like, oh, email is terrible. It's like destroying like the art of the letter, but it's like, compared to what we have now, email was like incredible, you know?
00:12:43
Speaker
And, um, and I do think that the, the, the rise of like, you know, texting and social media culture, is like a big factor in why so many people are struggling with friendship. I think it's, it's so easy to text somebody that you kind of like convince yourself, well, that's, that's enough friendship. You know, as long as I text them while there's a baseball game going on and, you know, say, yay, when someone hits a home run, like, you know, maybe that's enough connecting and we don't actually have to like, you know,
00:13:15
Speaker
God forbid, pick up the phone or or hang out in person because at least we're connecting, you know, and I'm not judging others. I do i do that myself. and But it just, it doesn't feel nearly as good as doing the real connecting, talking on the phone or, you know, sending those deep, thoughtful
Cultural Norms & Emotional Openness
00:13:32
Speaker
emails. I mean, I know you're a travel writer. Like I i used to be a travel writer.
00:13:36
Speaker
writer. And i remember like traveling around sending, like, I look back at some of the emails I sent when, you know, I was, I was writing for a travel guide called let's go, which I don't think it even exists anymore. do you remember let's go? No, I don't. Sorry. And it's okay.
00:13:54
Speaker
And, um, you know, I went to the Philippines and, and I went back and like looked, I was like 19 or something, but went back and looked at the, the letters that I sent back to people, the emails that I sent back, and they were like really well written and like really, you know, long, you know? And nowadays it's like, if I travel somewhere, it's like, usually it's like text someone a photo and like, look at this nice sunset or whatever. There's not the, there's not that kind of effort being put into, to, to relating. And why is that? Is it just because of the ease of the technology now, the availability of everyone to receive an instantaneous WhatsApp?
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think it's that ease. And I think it's also the addiction to like getting the immediate feedback of a heart on a WhatsApp message. you know ah you know And and and the the addiction of just like you know the buzz of your phone and picking it up and seeing that there's another message and, you know oh, they didn't like that photo that much, but maybe they'll like this one even better. you know And again, I'm, I'm actually like a hugely rebellious against social media culture.
00:15:01
Speaker
I deleted my, um, my Twitter and, and, and Facebook. I recently went back on Twitter just to promote my writing a little bit, but I i never use it. Uh, I'm not on Instagram. I'm not on Facebook.
00:15:14
Speaker
Uh, and, um, and even WhatsApp, like I don't have it on my phone because I know that I'm, the kind of person that like would just take out my phone, you know, when I'm having a cool travel experience and take a picture and send it to someone, um, and then get distracted and lost, uh, you know, lost in thought instead of being in the moment in that cool place. And so I just don't even have that stuff on my phone anymore. I don't even have email on my phone.
00:15:45
Speaker
I do have a smartphone, um but it's pretty dumbed down smartphone. I don't have internet on it. I use it for maps and for texting you know and for photos. um but ah But that's because I don't have the self-control. I don't judge people who are who are you know falling prey to this stuff.
00:16:03
Speaker
who Who has the self-control to not get sucked into it? you know Not many people. So there's the technology aspect, but there seems to be something sometimes deeper in the male to male dynamic. It's said that women bond face to face and men bond side to side, whether they're playing a sport or a video game or or watching something.
00:16:27
Speaker
on the tv and you talk about this in your essay and you're very open about how inadequate this feels you're in search of something deeper you know i had an an older friend he's in his 70s i'm in my 40s and i lived off and on with him for seven years and um we would sit across from each other every breakfast and every dinner and have a really nice chat and i think i recognized then how special and And rare it is.
00:16:58
Speaker
um yeah and And you write, you know, maybe we'll playfully smack talk a fellow friend or commiserate about some schleppy aspect of parenthood. Rarely as in never do we turn to each other and ask, how are you doing?
00:17:14
Speaker
why do you Why do you think that is, Sam? Yeah.
00:17:18
Speaker
So first of all, I will admit writer to writer that, uh, you know, there's, there's a slight exaggeration going on there. I think I probably have occasionally asked, how are you doing to my friends, but it's not that often.
00:17:33
Speaker
Um, I think, I think it's because there is a discomfort around approaching heavy topics and specifically heavy emotional topics. I think, I think it's just easier um,
00:17:48
Speaker
you know i really don't want to be like the spokesperson for men because there are 10 million exceptions to this. you know And like your friendship with that with that you know older guy, which by the way is really cool, like one one thing I'm becoming much more interested in is having friends of different ages because I think you know like i think younger men are often just discriminated against being being friends with older guys, but there's so much you can get out of that kind of relationship.
00:18:14
Speaker
Um, but anyway, I think, I think basically many men feel comfortable discussing topics, you know, like I said, ideas, uh, sports, politics, food, fitness, whatever, you know, um, and less comfortable talking about, uh, you know,
00:18:35
Speaker
struggles with mental health, struggles with ah anxiety, struggles with depression, you know, struggles with relationships. I just think, i just think there's like a fear of like,
00:18:46
Speaker
not only talking about it yourself, but of prying and asking someone else about it. Cause you don't want to make them feel uncomfortable by like edging into this territory that, uh, you know, is too personal or whatever.
00:18:57
Speaker
and that comes, you know, I, I, I think that, look, I'm a, I'm a literary writer, pretty enlightened liberal progressive guy. And even I struggle with that, you know, and and it comes from, i think a culture of where there are these gender norms around like, you know, men,
00:19:15
Speaker
you know, being expected to, you know, be sort of self-reliant and, um, and tough. And I think there's a place for that. You know, as I said, I, I revere Ralph Walder Emerson and Henry, Henry David Thoreau. I revere the self-reliance movement in a lot of ways, but I think the, you know, the, the, the downside to taking that stuff too far is, is, is obvious, you know, which is like,
00:19:41
Speaker
A kind of self, you know, numbing, like a distancing from other people, ah kind of denial, a tamping down of, you know, the real emotions that are swirling inside of us.
00:19:54
Speaker
And I think that's, you know, a reason why, you know, at least in my experience, Women have all kinds of you know difficulties in in the sexist world that we live in, but I think on the whole, women are kind of happier than than men are on average because I just think that they're more comfortable ah being human and you know being expressing the full range of that humanity, whether they're happy or sad.
00:20:18
Speaker
Whereas guys are kind of much more comfortable just being like, oh yeah, it's fine. It's fine. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. You know, everything's fine. You know, and that's, that, that prevents us from being fully, fully human, you know, and me and you, we're writers and I can be fully human in my writing.
00:20:35
Speaker
Right. But it doesn't mean I can be fully human in my day to day, every regular life off the page, you know? ah So even writers who like, you know Our job is to like plumb the depths of emotion and stuff. you know Even for people like us, it can be hard to do this, at least for me.
00:20:52
Speaker
do you Are you able to kind of pinpoint moments in your life where this stoicism or... closed-downedness, I don't even know what words to put to it, has been kind of enforced upon you or you where you know it's been cultivated in you? Because you know i ah I experience the same things. I see the guys all around me.
00:21:14
Speaker
I just can't kind of pinpoint those moments when these things became difficult for me. difficult for me You're saying that you yeah you do struggle with this stuff, but you can't figure out when exactly exactly it started or how how you got like this.
00:21:31
Speaker
I relate to that a lot. like i think I think it was kind of like one day I just like... realized, I'm like, holy crap, like I am lonely. like I never thought about being lonely before. Like I said, I used to travel around the world solo and I never felt lonely. I felt great. you know um and um you know I used to actually love being alone and romanticize solitude um you know in a kind of writerly way.
00:21:59
Speaker
ah but but um But yeah, what at a certain point, I'm just like, wow, you know I'm alone way too much. And, um, and I'm not just physically alone.
00:22:10
Speaker
I'm alone with my thoughts and I'm alone with, you know, emotions that I'm not really sharing with other people other than my wife. And when you're only sharing your emotions with your wife, that's not a good scene because your wife doesn't want to be the only sounding board for you. and That's not fair to her.
00:22:28
Speaker
um so, um, but yeah, it was this, it was this funny thing. it was like, It was like, obviously it had been happening for a while and I just wasn't aware of just like how deep the isolation and loneliness had gotten.
00:22:44
Speaker
um It just seemed like, oh yeah, this is my normal life, you know? And, oh, it's, and again, i was brushing it off. Oh, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. You know, like, whatever. So I'm in a bad mood. Like I just have to work harder and, you know, I'll go for a run or I'll, you know, force myself to go do some project, you know, on my house or whatever, you know?
00:23:04
Speaker
ah But, but it wasn't until, i mean you know how sometimes, you don't really know what you think about something until you actually sit down to write about it. It was, you know, that's part of why I wrote this essay. I genuinely was wondering what the hell was going on.
00:23:18
Speaker
and it, and it, and it forced me to think pretty deeply about it.
Life Changes Affecting Friendships
00:23:22
Speaker
Um, Joan Didion said like, I don't really know what I think until I, until I try to write about it. So that's kind of what it was like for me. it was like, I didn't, it wasn't like some, some, you know, specific moment,
00:23:34
Speaker
that i remembered, oh, like this is when my friendships fell off. But as I did, as I did the work of writing this article, I realized like definitely getting married is, you know, partnering, you know, in a, in a serious committed monogamous relationship.
00:23:49
Speaker
that That was a big factor for me. Having kids obviously was a big factor for me. um And um you know those are the those are the two two obvious things. But look, something I didn't write that much about in my piece, which I'll say to you because I know you're a fellow writer, is like,
00:24:06
Speaker
when I decided that I really wanted to be a good writer, like I kind of made the decision. I'm like, you know what? My writing is more important than my friends. Like, uh, like somebody invites me off to a bar tonight.
00:24:22
Speaker
It's like, no, my plan was to wake up at 6 AM and start working on my novel. I'm not going, you know? And, um, you know, look, I was able to write a novel, but like,
00:24:34
Speaker
I said no to a million social opportunities in service of my ambition and my career. And it's like, you know, maybe I could have actually done both and didn't need to be so extreme about it. Like, or maybe my book could have taken like a few extra months, you know, yeah but I was very, very rigid of like, oh, you know, like I, I don't have room for, for all of it, but, but the uniting thing in common is just like this kind of deprioritization of one's friends. Like this idea that for men, for women, you know, I think for a lot of women, it's like,
00:25:04
Speaker
their friends are a huge vital part of their life. And for a lot of men, as they get older, it's like, ah, like I love my friends. I'll get around to them when I can, but they're not like the most important thing in my life. They can always take a little bit of a backseat.
00:25:17
Speaker
Yeah. It reminds me of a friend I have here in Scotland. His name's Andrew and Andrew, if if you're listening, I miss you. I miss you, bud. I haven't seen Andrew since November. He only lives a 30 minute drive away. And we had this nice thing going for a little while where We would go to a movie, and grab a burger, and just talk about anything. It was you know it it was becoming a deep friendship.
00:25:42
Speaker
yeah I haven't seen Andrew since November, and that's partly because I'm really busy. i have a kid. I'm in a master's program. I was doing another evening course on top of that. I'm...
00:25:54
Speaker
um on a floor hockey team and then just suddenly like I just feel like I don't have have the time um I'm overworked I'm tired but the but at the bottom it's like I'm also self-sufficient you know I feel like I don't really need it that much. I feel like I literally don't need the company of ah anyone else. And that sounds terrible to say out loud, but i think most times that's true. So sometimes I think, like how should I think of friendship? Should I think of it as like kind of a social hygiene, you know like a mental health hygiene?
00:26:33
Speaker
Because it's not that deep longing that I had for my friends Steve and Dave when we were 12 years old, you know? Yeah, yeah. I actually really relate to that. I have to say, like, you know, I've had all kinds of fantasies of, like, I would like to move to the country, you know, live on a farm, you know, i don't care if I...
00:26:56
Speaker
would move super far away from my friends. Like I'd be okay. Cause I am self-sufficient. um you know, or I would love to live in another country like, like you're doing, you know, even if it means most of my friends are across an ocean, you know, I'd be okay with that.
00:27:10
Speaker
And I think, um, i think I think I agree with you. Like on a conscious level, I'm not um'm not often like deeply, deeply pining for my friends. Sometimes I am. And I you know i wrote about the times that that i that I was deeply pining for my friends. But on a day-to-day level, I'm not deeply pining for my friends.
00:27:30
Speaker
I think, but I do think, and and writing this article forced me to confront this, I do think my mental health suffered a lot. as a result of being isolated and and having this you know solitude mentality.
00:27:46
Speaker
ah And I'll give you an example. When you are a writer and you spend, you know, all day basically in a room by yourself, right?
00:27:57
Speaker
You have an infinite amount of time to think. And, um, and if you're, you know, let's say you're in a bad mood or let's say you're going through like a, a, you know, ah a funk or a depression or whatever,
00:28:10
Speaker
And you start getting a negative thought in your head like, oh, my my book sucks. I'll never finish this book. i'm I'm not a good writer. i should have become a doctor.
00:28:22
Speaker
Like, why did I do this to myself? I'm a failure. Whatever. you you you know You know what i'm talking about. A thought spiral, right? Right. When you're with, when you're by yourself, there is nothing to interrupt that thought spiral unless you're really good at meditating or something. And, you know, you can just snap out of it. And I actually do meditate a lot.
00:28:39
Speaker
And ironically, meditation something that take pretty seriously. i can't tell you in the number of times that I've opted to go on like a meditation retreat instead of a you know, bike ride with my friends, you know, a big bike trip with my friends. Like I went on a meditation retreat instead.
00:28:55
Speaker
You know, do I regret it? No, I've got a lot out of those meditation retreats, but like it was a big trade off. You know, I missed. You went from being alone to being alone. Exactly. So so so basically but basically what I realized is, you know, when when you're alone all the time.
00:29:14
Speaker
there's no one to interrupt your thoughts. And it's really important to have your thoughts interrupted because a lot of your thoughts are stupid. You know, a lot of your thoughts, ah you know, I consider myself a regular, relatively smart guy.
00:29:29
Speaker
Most of my thoughts are moronic thoughts. Right. And, um, and when you're with your friend, like if I set out, if I had said out loud to my friend, Oh, I'll never get out of this writer's block. I'm such a bad writer. Like I have no ideas.
00:29:44
Speaker
that friend would be like, dude, what are you talking about? Like, you always come out of it. You always have good ideas. You know, it takes you a little while sometimes, but there are and there are ups and downs in life, but you know, you'll come back or whatever.
00:29:55
Speaker
And then that's all I need. And then like, it's like the bubble pops and I'm like back to being a, you know, a normal guy, you know, who's thinking like productive thoughts rather than the negative thoughts. But it's like, if you're not with other people, it's very easy to just,
00:30:09
Speaker
kind of believe the the bull crap that, you know, filters through, you know, that, that, that, that that fills your mind. And, you know, that's just one small example of why I think it's just like so mentally important, you know, to, to be around other people. And, and by the way, it goes the other, goes in the other direction too. It's like when I'm hanging out with somebody,
00:30:31
Speaker
I can be the guy to puncture that bubble that my friend is in. If my friend is feeling bad about them themselves and thinking all kinds of, you know, negative grandiose thoughts about, you know, how their life is all downhill from here. I can be the guy to be like, come on, man. Like you're, you're, you're awesome. Like, what are you talking about? Like,
00:30:50
Speaker
I love your writing, you know, and then they can snap out of it. So it's, it's important for yourself and it's also important to do it for your friends. Um, you know and that, that's just like one small example, but I think, I also just think it's like, it's like, even if you don't feel like you need to socialize,
00:31:07
Speaker
um it's, it's like, what else is life for?
Writing & Loneliness
00:31:13
Speaker
You know, like when you really, when you really think about it, it's like, um,
00:31:18
Speaker
It's like, why do i okay, writing is a solitary pursuit. No doubt. You know, you have to spend a lot of time in a room by yourself if you want to be a writer. But it's like, it's like ultimately at the end of the day, why are we writing? We're writing because we want to say something that connects to other people, right? We are kind of writing as a bid for connection.
00:31:37
Speaker
And, um, you know, and it's like, so, so it's like even, even writers, um, we need to connect that, that is like at the, at the end of our lives, like, you know, we're not, we don't have to wait till the end of our lives. When we went, at least when I really reflect on my life, even though I tell myself all the time, I don't, Oh, I don't need friends. I don't need to socialize.
00:32:00
Speaker
Like, you know, what's really important to me is, you know, my writing or this duty or that duty. It's like when I actually think about what made me feel really good,
00:32:12
Speaker
um Sometimes it's my writing. There's no doubt. Sometimes my writing, but like probably more often than not, it's like, what a great time I had when, you know, i went on that bike ride with the friend, you know, i mean, the memories that I have, by the way, of doing these group bike rides with friends and, you know, we've,
00:32:30
Speaker
wrote you know taking rides all over Vermont and Western Mass and like you know many hundred mile rides. The memories I have from that are a lot stronger than whatever memories I have of my meditation retreats. Or being hunched over your computer frustrated. Yeah, yeah exactly. So we've we've we've talked we've used terms like self-sufficiency, solitude, you're a fan of Thoreau,
00:32:56
Speaker
um And even if most people in America haven't read Thoreau, I just think some of these concepts are just kind of embedded in and the psyche. you know where and By the way, can I just interrupt for one second to say something about Thoreau that most people don't know? I bet you know this.
00:33:12
Speaker
thoreau It's a myth that Thoreau was in total isolation. He in fact had visitors to his cabin all the time. The cabin was a performance art. It was a piece of public performance art that lots of people knew about. And so he had a constant stream of visitors. Thoreau loved being around other people. He did like solitude too, but he he also got a great amount of sustenance from these conversations with other people.
00:33:39
Speaker
And he even had a runaway slave stay with him um one night in the cabin. So you know it's just I just wanted to add that as an aside. He probably had a really nice mix, like, oh, I can just sleep alone in my bed and nobody's going to you know squeak the mattress and wake me up and then and then have you know some nice companionship total with his visitors.
00:33:58
Speaker
But you know these these are, i don't know if these are uniquely American things or or Western things, but you get a sense that... Part of the problem is cultural and can we maybe look to other cultures? I'm imagining maybe a more of a Italian or Mediterranean culture. I don't know where companionship is valued a bit higher.
00:34:23
Speaker
don't know for sure because I'm not a sociologist or haven't run any data analysis of this kind of thing. But like my vibe when I visit other countries is that, um, in, in other countries, particularly in, yeah, like, you know, in Southern Europe or in, um, you know, in, in in countries in Africa and countries in, in,
00:34:47
Speaker
Southeast Asia, like men are not only like hanging out a lot more, but they're much more physically comfortable with each other. Like there's a lot, you know, men hold hands in a lot of countries publicly, you know, that's a normal thing to do. You know, I traveled to Pakistan and I remember thinking like, oh, this is like a society where it's like literally illegal to be gay, but like men all over the place are are holding hands and, and, you know, hugging each other because they just feel close to their friends, you know, and it, and it doesn't feel, there isn't like a stigma against it.
00:35:22
Speaker
um So yeah, I think, look, I think American culture is, um, is you know without generalizing too much, i think I think we have a deeply embedded sense of um individual striving.
00:35:39
Speaker
And that that goes beyond Henry David Thoreau and and and Ralph Waldo Emerson and
Cultural History & Male Intimacy
00:35:44
Speaker
self-reliance. It goes all the way back ah you know to the Puritans you know who who believed in you know, proving to God that they were chosen and the way they proved it was by working their asses off. You know, if you worked your butt off constantly, it was a sign that you were selected to, you know, to, to, to go to heaven in the afterlife.
00:36:05
Speaker
I think, I think that, you know, that this boot bootstraps culture, really reaches all the way back to to the to the origin of this country. And, you know, and it's particularly a bootstrap culture that has afflicted men because, you know, it is um it is expected, you know, in our culture that once you reach a certain age, yeah, it's fine when you're young and you're a boy or you're in college or you're a young man to goof off with your friends. But once you reach a certain age,
00:36:35
Speaker
you are expected as a man to like do your duty and, you know, to, you know, get really rich or get really powerful or get really successful. And, um, and if you're still hanging out, well, maybe there's something wrong with you. Maybe you're, you're, you have sort of an arrested development. Like there are comedies like, um,
00:36:53
Speaker
you know old school, you know i love that comedy, you know sort of like making fun of the idea of like men still acting like they're in college by hanging out all the time. you know it's just i do think it's i do think it's and and an American, um you know a pretty uniquely American phenomenon. But I will say, like I've gotten letters from people in Europe, you know um men in Europe who struggle with the same thing. yeah How does it feel in Scotland compared to in America with this kind of stuff?
00:37:20
Speaker
I mean, there's there's many different classes and cultures within the UK. And I think if you're from kind of upper crust, buttoned up, there is that same kind of leeriness with physical touch and over intimacy. don't know the cultures that well here, so I could be wrong about that. But what I do observe is there is a lot more physicality. You see in Edinburgh, just like guys kind of just hanging all over each other, you know, are heterosexual guys. Yeah.
00:37:50
Speaker
yeah And yeah, and that that's healthy. And like um when you look at like Civil War biographies and hear about like Abraham Lincoln sleeping with other men in his bed and stuff, it's almost like a different world. Do you have any sense of when this kind of deep intimacy, deep kind of like heterosexual friendship that converge in the physical, you have any sense when this went away?
00:38:19
Speaker
and why it went away? a little bit. um you know There are two kind of factors that the academics I talked to and the books I read on the history of male friendship pointed to.
00:38:33
Speaker
ah One is shifting norms around marriage. um you know It used to be that Most people got married basically through an arranged marriage or they got married to someone because they had money or they got married to someone because they lived in the same town and it was just convenient to do it. you know they weren't They weren't trying to marry...
00:38:56
Speaker
their soulmate. They weren't looking for the quote unquote, the one, you know, um in the same way we do now. um And the the way you found your soulmate or the one was through your friendships in many cases. So I learned that men used to bring their spouses with them, sorry, their friends with them on their honeymoons, you know, and That's a real, that's a real thing that happened, which is pretty funny to think about. Um, but, uh, you know, men used to get buried next to their friends, uh, you know, and, and, and again, these were probably some of them were gay, but, so but I think many of these men were straight men who just considered their friend to be their blood brother and, you know, they're the deepest relationship in their life. Um,
00:39:40
Speaker
Now we get married to you know most of us, at least in the Western world, we get married not through arranged marriages. We get married to the person that you know we think is the one you know that we consider not just you know our ah you know romantic partner, but in many cases, like our best friend and the person that we're going to share everything with. and um And so that that shift, which is relatively recent, like we're talking like the last hundred years,
00:40:08
Speaker
uh, sort of led to a devaluation of, of a friendship for a lot of men. I think the other big factor is, um, there's a word that I came across, a British sociologist, now blanking on his name, coined this word, but it's called homo hysteria.
00:40:28
Speaker
And the idea behind it is, um you know it's related to homophobia, but it's not the same thing. um The idea behind homo hysteria is it's the fear of being perceived as gay by other men.
00:40:39
Speaker
um And and and and this this phenomenon kind of coincided with actually with a lot of you know progress in gay rights, right?
00:40:51
Speaker
um But certainly with ah an increasing awareness of the you know ubiquity of you know queer and homosexual people, um you know it used to be in the old days, you know everyone, obviously, since time immemorial, people knew that there were gay people out there.
00:41:09
Speaker
you know, um but it was kind of seen as like, oh, it's very rare. You know, there just aren't that many gay people out there. And then Albert Kinsey comes along and does these reports, you know, these, these studies of sexuality and in the, you know, 19, early 1950s, late And he, you know, puts out these,
00:41:28
Speaker
in america and he you know puts out these really startling statistics such as, you know, one out of every 10 men is gay. That kind of thing led to a sort of panic around a lot of men saying, oh my God, there's that many gay people out there.
00:41:43
Speaker
Uh-oh, is one of my friends gay? does that Is that guy who I just gave a hug to? Was he holding on a little bit too long? And it led to this kind of distancing where a lot of men just felt like, well, I don't want them to think I'm gay. So I'm, ah you know, I'm not going to instead of, you know, even giving a handshake, I'll give a fist bump. And instead of giving a hug, I'll give a handshake. And, you know, if I'm in the locker room, I'll make sure that I don't like continue having a,
00:42:09
Speaker
conversation with this guy as he's getting changed. Cause I don't want him to think I'm looking at him the wrong way. You know? So I would say those are the two, those are the two kind of big factors that a lot of you know, people have studied this kind of look at.
00:42:21
Speaker
And um and, and it's ironic, right? Because right now we have more gay rights, you know, well, they're going backwards a little bit now, but you know, we have gay marriage that's legal in the United States. We have, you know, there's, there's much more gay equality than there was when I was a kid.
00:42:36
Speaker
And yet, you know, the, the, that the fear of, you know, you know, physical intimacy among other men, I would say is like stronger than it's, or as strong as it's ever been. You, you reference a bill and Ted thing in your piece where they call each other the F word after a moment of, of fraternal intimacy. um And I remember even though I was,
00:43:04
Speaker
pretty open with my friend Josh and our email correspondence. Like if we were too open, I'd have to say something like, oh, I need to go get my lady shick and shave my pussy now or something, you know, kind of like, yeah you had to kind of call out like, oh, this this went a little too far. i need to kind of make fun of myself a little bit, make light of it.
00:43:25
Speaker
yeah um So how do we kind of reverse engineer this? How do we how do we get, this is probably a question way too big for us, but how do we reverse engineer this and um get get past the homophobia, homo hysteria?
00:43:43
Speaker
You know, it's, it's, it's tough because I'm a big fan of humor and, um, and edginess. And I like to joke around with my friends and, you know, and my gay friends included, like I will, I will, I will occasionally make jokes, you know,
00:44:02
Speaker
I mean, I'm not saying things like no homo, which was like, that was like a big term that was, you know, being batted around, you know, 10 years ago or so, where anytime a man said something emotional, they would follow it up with no homo.
00:44:13
Speaker
You know, I'm not gay, but, you know, just, just so you know. um But, you know, I'll i'll say things like, um you know, you know, ah you know I don't mean to be a little bitch, but you know, dada yeah you know, and, and, you know, or, you know, things like that. And, and, and I know that those are inappropriate and wrong and, you know, in theory, like set us back as a culture, but I also like, it's, it's sort of like, this is how men often talk to each other. Like we,
00:44:42
Speaker
we joke about these kinds of things because, because we are uncomfortable with it. And so I think like, I don't want to like be some guy standing on a soapbox all high and mighty and be like, well, we all need to just be more enlightened and, you know, just, just, just say what we feel in our, in our heart of hearts and, and do it unapologetically and hug each other more. and Because I just think that that's not realistic, you know, for most men, including myself, like I have, I would have a hard time doing that, um, you know, at the drop of a hat.
00:45:13
Speaker
But I think like as a longer term proposition, it's like, I think it's okay to joke about this stuff, but we have to balance it with also being braver about talking about things that make us uncomfortable.
00:45:30
Speaker
And like, so my, one of my ways of doing that was writing this damn essay. You know what i mean? I didn't really want to write this essay. And honestly, my main fear was that people would think I was a soft little bitch if I wrote this essay or whatever, you know?
00:45:44
Speaker
And, um, but like, of course, no one said that to me. Of course, everyone who responded is like, thank you so much for saying this stuff that, uh, you know, I feel too.
00:45:56
Speaker
And, you know, a lot of the guys that wrote to me are like tough guys, you know, like military guys, uh, you know, jacked dudes, you know, who, who would be considered bros or whatever.
00:46:06
Speaker
Even those guys wrote to me. It wasn't like the people writing to me were all like, you know, ballet, you know, dancers and stuff like that. Although, you know, some of them probably were, you know are that too. And that's great too. So my, my point is just that like, I think, I think, you know, we, we need to just realize that it's fine uh,
00:46:27
Speaker
ah to talk about real things. Like we don't have to keep it surface level. Uh, we, we're we're ironically like, you know, in all this discussion of like, who's man enough and who's this and that, it's like, you know, if we want to be like quote unquote manly, wouldn't it be manly to not be scared?
00:46:47
Speaker
to have free speech and just talk about like our emotions. Like, isn't that a form of manliness to, to, you know, be, or just of courage, you know? And like, you know, like, so I don't know, that's, that's my rambling way of saying how we can make baby steps here. But I, I just want to be real about the fact that like,
00:47:05
Speaker
you know this stuff is so culturally embedded in all of us. you know No matter how enlightened we think we are, you know we're we all we all fall victim to to a lot of this gendered stuff. And like and frankly, you know if you try to rebel too much against it, you run the risk of being like a self-righteous, annoying person.
Influence of Media on Masculinity
00:47:25
Speaker
And you don't want to lose your friends by being like, hey, man, don't use the word bitch. like even though you're i know you're using it ironically, but like really makes me mad when you use that word because it sets us backwards.
00:47:36
Speaker
i don't you know I don't think that that would work out too well for for most men. You can say whatever you want on this podcast. As you were as you were speaking, ah just a little side note, I was thinking of like Dan Campbell, the Detroit Lions head coach, who's like the manliest of men. and It's interesting how when you reach a certain level of kind of high masculinity, it almost gives you a license to be...
00:48:01
Speaker
um vulnerable and weak because someone who cries all the time in press conferences and stuff like that. And he's loved, everybody loves him. Women love him. Men love him.
00:48:13
Speaker
Ted Lasso is another example of that, right? He's he's this you know soccer coach who used to be a football coach. It's hard to get more manly than ah you know a coach of you know a professional sports team.
00:48:25
Speaker
And i think the reason why so many people related to that show is because he was someone who was like unquestionably a quote unquote manly guy, but he was also ah gentle, you know compassionate, empathic, emotional guy who wasn't afraid to cry in front of people or tell people that he loved them.
00:48:44
Speaker
And frankly, um I don't think there's enough of those representations of, I don't know what you could call it, a positive masculinity or normal masculinity or what in pop culture. I mean, if you go down the list, it's like Homer Simpson, Tony Soprano, Don Draper. Walter White. or Walter White.
00:49:03
Speaker
These are all like... anti-heroes or sloths they're all men and the dads are all idiots you know family guy dad um but like someone like ted lasso or the dad in bluey there's just a couple rare exceptions of a guy who's still masculine and and manly but whole and integrated Yeah. The Bluey dad is the best.
00:49:29
Speaker
I mean, I think everyone wants to be the Bluey dad, you know, but it's just, it's such a well-written character because he's, he is somebody who, you know, I know a million dads who are really good at playing with their kids, but, you know, they don't want to do the annoying, you know, schleppy aspects of, of, of parenthood, you know, and ah what I love about that, that character in Bluey is that he's,
00:49:55
Speaker
Hey folks, thanks for listening. There's still 20, 30 minutes left in this podcast available to paid subscribers. If you'd like to become a paid subscriber, go to my Substack page, Out of the Wild with Ken Ilgunis, and you'll have access to all my essays, movie lists, movie reviews, all that stuff.
00:50:15
Speaker
Thanks again for listening.
00:50:32
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken Ilgunis. Original music by Duncan Barrett.