The Male Loneliness Epidemic Is a Sexist Myth
Male Entitlement Epidemic is a more appropriate name
My father has no friends. Neither does his brother, or his neighbor to the right. In fact, if you look at that whole street, not one man has one friend. Their fathers didn’t have any friends either.
If I look at men my age or younger, I notice the same phenomenon: they’re walking their dogs alone, they’re drinking their coffees alone. I’ve never once heard one of them say the words ‘My friend and I went bowling.’
Not once they get married, anyway.
Mark, who sits across from me at work, has never mentioned one friend. He’s in his late 30s, has a wife and toddler, and talks about them all the time. He also mentioned his mother and father visiting, or going skiing with ‘friends of the family,’ but never his personal friends.
Whenever my friend Dina meets me for a relaxing afternoon of chit-chatting together, she either brings her boyfriend with her, or he wanders the streets of our city, and he sits down somewhere and has a coffee on his own.
And I still have the audacity to claim there is no male loneliness epidemic?
Yes, absolutely. Because loneliness is not about having people around you. It’s about connecting with them, feeling seen, valuable, equal, cherished, and safe.
Women are just as lonely as men. It’s not a male loneliness epidemic. It’s a people loneliness epidemic. Men, as well as women, are lonely. So then why do we focus on men, when women need just as much help?
Just look at the numbers:
57% of men and 59% of women reported being lonely. Loneliness levels were close to equal in 2018 as well, with 53% of men and 54% of women reporting feelings of loneliness. (Cigna)
If we need a poster child for loneliness, it certainly wouldn’t be men. We’d be calling it the Hispanic-Black Loneliness Epidemic, or the Poor People Loneliness Epidemic, because people from underrepresented racial groups and people with lower incomes are more likely to be lonely.
75% of Hispanic adults and 68% of Black/African American adults are classified as lonely — at least 10 points higher than what is seen among the total adult population (58%). Nearly two-thirds of adults (63%) earning less than $50,000 per year are classified as lonely. This is 10 points higher than those earning $50,000 or more. (Cigna)
Other studies confirmed the same thing: men and women are equally lonely. Yet there’s a common consensus that men are lonelier.
Just like there’s a common consensus that men are more prone to suicide, although data clearly shows that three times more women than men attempt suicide, but more men die from suicide.
The sexist myth that never dies
There is one major reason why we continue to focus on the male loneliness epidemic, despite it not being male at all.
It’s because men are more vocal about it. Men are used to asking for what they want, while women are used to giving others what they want.
And isn’t it natural to ask for what you need? Isn’t this something we should learn from men rather than punish them because they opened their mouths and cried about it?
The problem is not that they asked for what they needed, but that they made it all about themselves when clearly it’s about all of us.
And what’s worse, they blamed it on women.
That’s what turned it from ‘male loneliness epidemic’ to ‘male entitlement epidemic.’
Let’s face it — for a while, women have been doing better and better, while men have been stagnating. Women became more educated and financially secure, to the point where they no longer needed men to survive.
That created a huge gap in emotional support that women used to provide for men, and it stirred up a lot of resentment, and that resentment turned to hateful action.
So much so that this hatred towards independent women manifested through massive political movements at a global level. If they couldn’t convince women to turn back to our traditional support roles, they’re going to try to force us to do it.
Because, again, they know how to ask for what they want.
Best friends?
Once they got married, my father and his peers received all their emotional support from their wives.
It’s not like they’ve never had friends before. They had plenty of friends in their childhood, when there was no social media, and kids actually met face to face, outside, in nature, ran with their bare feet on fresh grass, and learned how to swim in some dirty pond across the street.
But they gave them all up once they got married. They were no longer necessary because they had their wives.
For all my past partners, I was their best friend, their only source of emotional support, and the person who was always there for them, emotionally and physically. Yes, they wanted me to be physically present at whatever it was they were doing.
All the while, I had other friends that I could rely on and share my joys and sorrows with, and when I felt lonely it was because my partner wasn’t offering emotional support, not because my friends weren’t.
I wouldn’t blame that on men as a whole, though.
I would blame it on my poor life decisions — the men I chose were unable and unwilling to provide me (or any other woman, from what I’ve seen) with the needed emotional support so that one’s on me.
How many women can relate to this story though?
How many women can say that although their partner is a great person and they love him dearly, he’s not necessarily a great friend and they need to get their emotional needs met elsewhere, while they feel lonely in their own home?
Most women I know.
A return to oppression won’t solve men’s problems
I have no idea how women will react to what’s happening in the world today and the bitter return to having their rights and bodily autonomy stripped away, but I’m not optimistic.
What I do know is that for the time being modern women are seeking men with emotional intelligence, because we already pay our own bills. Emotional intelligence is a learnable trait, but only if you have the interest to learn it.
On the other hand, the men who are most vocal about their loneliness don’t have any interest in learning emotional intelligence and are looking for women who will support them emotionally despite them not doing the same.
Women want something men are not, and men want something women no longer want to be.
Men need to be needed because they have no idea how to make themselves wanted. Indispensability is not a male trait, and neither is loneliness.
Consequently, it’s natural that we don’t fit together, and that’s going to lead to loneliness for both sides. This disparity influences everybody, it’s not something women created to diss men.
It’s a natural consequence of societal evolution.
Excellent piece. I recently saw a Gallup poll, I think, showing that men and women have similar loneliness, and it made me go hmmm. Your insight hits the nail on the head.
The fundamental problem with modern phones and tech: it’s designed by smart men, like men are smart. But we’re not. Most of us are dumb and impulsive and immature. Especially around emotions, self-knowledge and sex. Phones, dating apps, porno, this live camera thing. It prays on dumb, regular men. The guys we used to call bachelors.
Even if they’re not boys anymore, they’re groomed as boys. These legions of dumb men are helpless prey and they treat the women they meet like shit because they’re all in their addictions and act like addicts do. The addiction is to sexual stimulation. These poor guys are your sons. And we blame them. This technology is anti-civilization and poison for most dumb straight men.
They’re not the problem. Human nature is not a problem. We recklessly let men (and boys!) become techno-porn addicts by the millions, all around the world, men (and boys!) at all levels of intelligence and maturity and malice. And we all want to insist (see: all media channels, psychology today, academia) insist the mainstreaming of porn doesn’t have consequences, or that they are unclear, when they are evident all around us.
The sex trafficking boom, rising domestic violence and public disorder, and negative sexual experiences and attitudes, the pornifying of the language and ideas of young men, people minimizing non-consenting AI “porn”, cartoon porn and fetishes are excused and normalized, sex-work” (ie. 50% trafficking and addiction) being work. As if honest, honourable men look at porn and pay for sex. Bullshit. As if ordinary women and men aren’t terrorized that any future partner has seen every porno on the internet. As if it’s fine for the blase perverts and stand-up comics and pundits to make a joke out of it. This cyber-sex and porno lure terrorizes parents and half the population, (especially young people) while empowering our worst impulses.
No media or journalistic outlet wants to touch this. That’s the problem. You cant be horrified at Gisele Picolt and child grooming and sextortion and also praise the people who sell porn to teens as a career. Like, half the women on Substack think making pornos on the internet is defensible. The technology used makes it predatory on teen boys going through puberty. Its insane. We are driving boys insane. They dont need this “entertainment”. Gross.
Where has the media been for 20 years? They are ideologically captured. By who? Not the patriarchy thats for sure, those old white guys want “porn” banned, even though they might have used it themselves. Its still evil. So who is pushing this being normal and blocking every attempt at device based age gating? There is no “porn” on Youtube. So google could block it with the touch of a button if they wanted to. Just like they do on Youtube. They just dgaf. Gross. Google and Apple and Pornhub and OF are literally evil.