by Liz Plank
FRIENDSHIPS AREN’T JUST FUN: THEY MAKE MEN LIVE LONGER
An increasing volume of research shows that people who sustain a higher number of close friendships enjoy a greater life expectancy. Heck, there’s even research showing that having more friends makes you less likely to catch a cold. Friendship even has a larger impact on longevity than family ties. Just like smoking or subsisting on nothing but Oreos and margaritas, having no close friends is bad for your health. Loneliness is one of the greatest threats to a person’s health. Similar to cardiovascular diseases, it is associated with weaker immune systems and can cause early death. One analysis on 2,320 male survivors of a heart attack found that men with a lot of close friends were less likely to die than those who lacked social connections three years later. What friendships can accomplish for health is unparalleled and can’t even be replaced by a romantic partner. One study on Swedish men showed that having one close relationship (usually with a romantic partner) didn’t do much to lower the risk of getting a heart attack or fatal coronary heart disease—having a strong social network did. In fact, social isolation was as significant as smoking in the leading causes of coronary heart disease. So although marriage is good for men’s health, research is almost unanimous that homosocial relationships between men contribute more to emotional well-being than any romantic relationships can. In fact, study after study has shown that the more socially isolated you are, the more likely you are to die early. TL;DR: seeing your friends might be more important than taking your vitamins.
In fact, the longest-standing research on happiness from Harvard shows that the health of one’s relationships is a better predictor of longevity than one’s cholesterol levels. Researchers monitored the happiness of 724 men for seventy-eight years, bringing them in every two years for blood tests, brain scans, in-depth interviews and filling out detailed questionnaires about their work, family, marriage and relationships. The first cohort was chosen from Harvard’s classes of 1939–1944 and originally included John F. Kennedy. (The only downfall from the study is that it only featured white men, but apart from the stark lack of diversity, it is still an interesting sample for the purpose of understanding male happiness.) The biggest lesson from the study is what has been found with more diverse sample groups: that loneliness literally kills men. Although the number of friends mattered, the quality of friendships contributed the most to well-being. Those with the most meaningful relationships had the longest life expectancies. A strong relationship with a spouse also acted as a protective force against loneliness, especially in old age. Subjects who were the best at dealing with their emotions in a healthy way (without resorting to denial, avoidance or projection) had the strongest support system, which was also correlated with longer life expectancy.
Other research concurs with the fact that having good friends protects you from early death. Emerging meta-analyses performed on 49,000 subjects even conclude that friendships and social connectedness are the highest predictors of life expectancy, above all other behaviors like smoking, heavy drinking and being overweight. Psychologist Susan Pinker calls it the “village effect” and wrote a book about the “social contract that we need to survive and thrive.” She argues that women’s friendships make them live longer almost everywhere. She notes women outlive men across the world by six to eight years, except on the small, remote Italian island of Sardinia. She explains that this island contains six times more centenarians, in equal parts male and female. She expected to find a difference in their positive attitude or approach to life, but what she found was a difference in the way they organized as a community. In fact, she explained that it was hard to interview subjects because they kept getting interrupted by friends, family, the priest or a shopkeeper. After conducting in-depth research on the island, she concluded that it was the strength of their social ties that explained why the men lived as long as women. She argues “social isolation is the public risk of our time” and posits that this can explain the gap in life expectancy for men and women.
This tendency to rely on a support network rather than simply on oneself gives women an edge across the entire animal kingdom. Research on female baboons in Kenya shows that those with more friends live longer—up to two or three years longer. Separate data shows that the offspring of female baboons with lots of social connections have a higher survival rate. Separate research on female cancer patients finds that friends can mean the difference between life and death. According to data collected by the American Journal of Epidemiology, women with breast cancer have a higher rate of survival when they have many close friends. In fact, women who were isolated were 64 percent more likely to die from cancer and 69 percent more likely to die from any other cause. The research is clear: friendships are indispensable, and the fact that women are more skilled at building and sustaining friendships gives them a comparative advantage over men in society.
TO UNDERSTAND THE POWER OF MALE INTIMACY, LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THE AIDS CRISIS
Striking research on gay men who lived through the 1980s AIDS epidemic uncovers just how dramatic the impacts of loneliness on men’s health can be. In the late 1980s, men who weren’t aware of their HIV status joined a study. Many of them were infected, and about a third of them developed AIDS and one-quarter died. Researchers tried to tease out what explained how long one lived after being infected by HIV. What they found was that one factor made them more likely to die: being in the closet. The conclusion was that closeted gay men were more sensitive to rejection and this biologically made them more vulnerable to disease. The conclusion of the study was that an “unwillingness to disclose emotional experiences” was associated with weakened immune responses. Lead researcher Steve Cole, who was just a postdoctoral student at the time, is now a professor of medicine and psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Social Genomics Core Laboratory. He has become an expert on distinguishing the link between health and social identity, advocating for more attention to the impact of social isolation on human health. He argues that humans are more social than any other species and that social ties and community are essential to survival. When speaking about his research, Cole described being in the closet as “walking around with a time bomb” for these men because it required constant policing of their identity and prevented deep connections and friendship, which are essential to well-being. You don’t need to be gay to feel the pressure to perform straight stoic masculinity. The toxicity that forces gay men to act like straight men is the same toxicity straight and queer men feel having to act like straight men all the time. This type of policing sometimes is a means to survival or sometimes merely a path to acceptance, but it is always harmful.
Men’s health isn’t the only part of their lives that is impacted by a lack of intimate friendships; it also has repercussions on their romantic relationships. When men are missing something from their male friendships, they often go looking for it in a romantic partner, but this can set up a tricky dynamic.
If men can only access true intimacy with their significant other, it puts an awful lot of pressure on that person to provide support and makes that relationship more challenging if there are no other confidants when it comes time to talk through challenges of the relationship. Sure, your partner should be a source of support, but if they are your exclusive source of assistance it can be problematic. I know that if I’m having problems with my partner, I immediately can talk through it with my friends, but so often when I’ve dated men, I’ve asked, “Have you talked about this with anyone?” and the answer would be a shrug. The lack of male affection might explain why some men become angry and violent when they do not get the intimacy they feel they’re owed from women. It’s also partly why breakups and divorces can take a much larger hit on men than on women in heterosexual relationships. While the woman may have other relationships she can rely on for support, her partner has often lost the sole source of support he had. Although the stereotype is that men take breaku
ps much more lightly, men are more likely to suffer both physical and mental health issues and have suicidal thoughts than women after a breakup.
When I spoke to men about this, it became clear that heterosexual men had been implicitly discouraged from being intimate with other men and instructed to prioritize romantic relationships with women. In fact, sexual conquests make a man rise in the male hierarchy. When I brought up the topic with Tristan Garcia, he confided that he had never gone out to dinner in a public place with a male friend. Ever. Tristan described an unspoken rule with his peer group that money for dining out is to spend on dates with women, not other men. He said going out to dinner felt too intimate. He even confided that he purposely dressed down when he met up with men, and described being fascinated by the fact that straight women get glammed up to go to brunch or have dinner together. Tristan explained subscribing to a certain casual dress code when he met up with other men because if he were to show up with a clean button-down shirt or with cologne on he was afraid he would be mocked for having given so much thought to his appearance. He explained that a straight man could show up with such attention to clothing only if he was meeting with a woman afterwards.
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So, given how vital friendships are to well-being, how do men, and frankly all of us, go about making more lasting friendships? Everyone struggles with friendship, especially as we get older, when schedules and obligations can get in the way. Although it can be tricky to prioritize friends when there is so much competing for our time and attention, I wanted to leave you with a few rules you can try out to improve your own friendships. Regardless of gender, everybody needs a bit of help navigating making and keeping friends as an adult.
MY FIRST TIP: REMEMBER THAT FRIENDSHIP ISN’T A THING YOU HAVE; IT’S A THING YOU DO
Close friends who know you inside out aren’t something you get; they’re something you earn. Friendship is like your Uber rating: you can’t expect it to be good unless you really pay attention to it. If you’re rude, careless or late, it will suffer. As Emily Dickinson put it, “My friends are my estate.” Your friends become the house you live in, so make sure you maintain it properly. Missing a birthday or an important event in their life isn’t the be-all and end-all, but be careful how many times you let that happen. Friendship is a garden you must tend to. You can’t just go in there when you need something, because if you only show up to harvest, not sow, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
MAKE YOUR PARTNER YOUR FAVORITE FRIEND, NOT YOUR BEST FRIEND
When I asked Esther Perel why married people didn’t used to call their partner their best friend as is so common today, she paused and said, “Because they had best friends.” Although both men and women are taught to view their partner as their everything, the consequences can be more dire for men than women. If you had a best friend before you got in a relationship, that person should keep that slot and you should tend to that relationship just as much as you used to tend to it. Of course as we grow older, our lives change, we have kids, we travel, we move away, but it’s important to maintain the bond. We all struggle with schedules and obligations, but making a point of calling at least one friend every week is a good way to ensure that friendship is ritualized. It could be unscheduled Face Time or a weekly text-in where you see how a friend is doing. Put important dates for your friends in your calendar, so you can check in on them when they are taking off for a trip, or going in for surgery or going through a rough time at work.
OBEY THE PRIMARY RULE OF STOICISM: DO MORE LISTENING THAN TALKING
When I asked my friend Daryl why he felt unsatisfied with some of his male friendships, he said: “Men don’t listen to each other; they just take turns talking.” It stuck with me because that goes against all the rules of communication but also all the rules of the stoic man, the traditional masculine ideal I kept hearing about. Although stoicism is associated with being immune to feelings, its true origin comes from the ancient Greek school of thought that is based on the idea that the highest virtue is knowledge. Epictetus said it best: “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” This isn’t just good advice for life; it’s also great for building friendship. Even if you’re the most interesting human being on earth, if you’re doing most of the talking, someone else is bored.
FINALLY, PICK THE BEST TEAM
As Tim Ferriss says, “You are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or toxic friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.” Be deliberate about who you spend time with. Don’t be competitive with your friends’ successes, because after all we are all connected, quite literally. Research from Harvard has shown that your friends’ happiness and success is literally contagious. Their misery is, too. So don’t secretly wish for them to fail at their new job or new workout plan. Misery likes company, but so does happiness.
Remaining silent doesn’t make anyone a good man.
—GLEN CANNING
AMUSE-BOUCHE:
Glen’s Story
“I didn’t do anything about sexual violence. I never did anything,” Glen Canning said. “And here I am sitting here without my child and I hate myself because that’s what it took.” Glenn is a former veteran, photographer and writer, and he’s also the father of Rehtaeh Parsons, a Canadian teenage girl who tragically lost her life in 2013. She hanged herself in her home in Nova Scotia after, her parents say, she was gang-raped by teenage boys at a party. She was tormented by classmates after a photo of the assault went viral online. In the photo, she was seen bent over a window naked from the waist down vomiting while being penetrated by behind by a teenage boy giving a thumbs-up to the camera. One of the two boys involved who was charged for child pornography told a judge in court that he cried when he heard that Rehtaeh had killed herself. “You should have been crying when she was alive,” the judge responded.
Since the passing of his daughter, Glen has become one of the most outspoken advocates for victims of sexual assault in Canada and beyond. What gets him out of bed every morning is knowing that his daughter’s story can inspire others to act, especially when it comes to young men. “The most important thing to ever be done with Rehtaeh’s story is having young guys listen to it and say, ‘I have to do something,’” Glen said. He believes too many men remain comfortably ignorant about the prevalence of men’s violence against women. “Men have to understand that if they don’t know someone in their life who has been assaulted it’s because they haven’t made it safe enough for them to say they were. The chances are overwhelming that someone that is close to you has had their lives destroyed from sexual violence or abuse.”
Although the majority of men don’t end up committing sexual assault, Glen wants to target the men who are complicit in that violence. “Men know their silence is part of the problem,” he said. “Every man has a voice and every man has a responsibility to use it. I wish I had done that before my daughter started high school. I’m the most guilty man out there for not using my voice and now it’s too late.”
As a father, Glen believes the key to ending violence lies in the way men raise their sons:
I wish parents raising young men right now would let them know that it is okay to cry. Okay to hurt. Okay to be angry if it’s a healthy thing. Violence is never an option, never a resort. Fathers have to be setting examples for their sons. Take your son to a women’s march, to an anti-racism event, engaging them in social issues; it was never even thought about when I was growing up. Where did that get us? I’m fifty-five years old; only in the last five years have I started to use my voice.
Today he speaks at different schools spreading the message that sexual assault is a man’s issue. He is using his pain to encourage other men to heal:
A lot of young men have been assaulted. I was molested myself as a child and I didn’t address it until my daughter died. A lot of men have been affected by sexual assault and h
arassment. Men aren’t used to saying stuff like that. There’s a blockage in the male psyche that we need to address. This is men doing it. Overwhelmingly it is men doing it; how are we not a part of changing it? It’s sad and infuriating.
When I asked Glen what the biggest mistake a man could make was, he said remain silent about injustice. “I can never forgive myself for that. This issue killed my child. Now I know. Silence is the worst weapon in the world.”
I’m not gonna be doing the diapers; I’m not gonna be making the food; I may never even see the kids … I’ll be a good father.
—DONALD TRUMP SPEAKING TO LARRY KING IN 2005
9 Waffles Are His Love Language
I don’t know what I did to deserve such a devoted dad, but I became keenly aware that I won the dad lottery pretty early.
Some families go to church on Sundays; my family ate waffles. Every waking Sunday of my life growing up, my father made my entire family a tall stack of waffles—from scratch. If you ask my father any sort of question about the recipe, he will launch into an explanation of the various modifications he’s made over the last thirty-five years with a degree of seriousness akin to an expert lecturing the United Nations about the ingredients of a lifesaving drug. When I was in elementary school, waffles were consistently served with fresh-made whipped cream and local maple syrup. One Sunday around 1993, suddenly the whipped cream was replaced by plain yogurt without acknowledgment or explanation. I assumed we were having serious financial problems, a recurring fear I had as a child that was primarily prompted by changes in food rituals. To this day, my dad remains convinced that waffles are a healthy breakfast food. He meticulously altered the recipe mostly to accommodate the women in his life. When my mother became very concerned with the calories we were all ingesting, he replaced butter with canola oil, but just half the oil because it made the waffles “too droopy,” he would explain in the same way a scientist would explain how he created the cure for cancer. Every Sunday my father would get up before my sister, my mom and me and start fluffing his egg whites, never asking for any help (mostly because we were lazy and reckless with measuring cups but also because I think he secretly loved doing this for us). The alarm clock I grew up with was the melody of rapid whisk banging that my dad would do to ensure not a single drop of the batter was wasted. As he was the son of two Hungarian refugees who immigrated to Canada with very little, nothing offended him more than wasting resources.