"I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them..."

"... maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function."

So I said, in the previous post. And one reason I said it was because I'd already opened a tab for a second article on the home page of the NYT today: "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone? I have many guy friends. Why don’t we hang out more?"

This is a long piece in the NYT Magazine, by Sam Graham-Felsen, and like the article discussed in the previous post, it assures us that there's nothing gay going on here: "I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time, and cared, deeply, about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other, and often argued like a bitter married couple — but eventually, like a successful married couple, we’d always find a way to talk things out."

Graham-Felsen has had many other close male friends — "nearly a dozen other dudes — dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me...." 

But he doesn't have dudes like that anymore. Is that because he's older, and his contemporaries are absorbed in family and work, or is it because American men in general "are getting significantly worse at friendship"? Graham-Felsen goes on to complain about the "byzantine bylaws to male friendship." He's "become less and less willing to tell my friends when I’m sad and suffering, because I don’t want them to see me as soft and needy." He asks "a buddy" — a man who goes hiking with "guy friends" — if, during these hikes, the guys "talk about personal stuff, like your marriages." Now this man, quite sensibly, says, "No. No talking about wives." See? That's one of the "byzantine bylaws" that Graham-Felsen thinks is hampering deep friendship. But the bylaw preserves the men's deepest relationship, their relationship with their wife.

Graham-Felsen confronts the conflict between present-day marriage and old-time male camaraderie:

Part of what changed, says Rhaina Cohen, the author of “The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center,” is that norms around marriage shifted. For most of human history, marriages were arranged by family, or motivated by economic convenience, not driven by romantic love. Your spouse was the person you built a home with, raised kids with, went out into society with — not necessarily someone you shared your deepest fears, insecurities, desires and dreams with. That’s what your friends were for. They were your soul mates. 

“There was a norm around sentimentality being a core part of masculinity in the 18th and 19th centuries,” says Cohen. “In letter-writing manuals at the time, men were encouraged to be expressive about their feelings for their friends.” Think about that: The ability to openly express affection was once a key indicator of masculinity. Nowadays, of course, manhood is measured by the opposite capacity — strong, silent repression.

*** 

That makes me want to take the off-ramp into this other NYT article I have open in a tab: "These Founding Fathers Were Frenemies. Maybe We Can Learn Something. Can the fraught relationship between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams help heal our own hyper-polarized politics? Monticello is betting yes." Kind of a travel article, really. Like all travel articles in the NYT, it's for women. Frenemies. Do men talk like that? But this is interesting:

Monticello’s research shows it draws a broad mix of visitors from across the political spectrum, including more conservatives than other historic houses and museums, whose visitors skew more liberal than American adults as a whole. For some here, that reality was driven home on Jan. 7, 2021, when people stopped by for tours on their way home from Washington, wearing shirts and hats from the “Stop the Steal” rally the day before.

Oh! The crazy insurrections! Interested in Thomas Jefferson! Who could have imagined? 

Sam Saunders, a retired civil engineer who has been a guide for nine years, said that was a challenging day at Monticello, though there were no incidents, and it was impossible to know if any of those visitors were among those who had gone on to storm the Capitol after the rally.

“Maybe some of the fuss was in our own emotions,” he said. And even on normal days, he added, it was important not to pass judgment on visitors based on hats, clothing or other cues. “You can’t assume people feel a certain way,” he said.

***

Back to the "Deep Male Friendships" article:

In the buddy comedies I watched growing up, there was sometimes a moment, played for humor and pathos, when the two friends finally shed their masculine armor.... Take “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”... Ted... nestles his head in the crook of Bill’s neck — but then they quickly pull back. They eye each other suspiciously, and then simultaneously, disgustedly, say: “Fag.” And then they carry on, happily bantering again, as if nothing happened..... I must have watched [that scene] a hundred times, and the message I absorbed must have been something along the lines of: If you’re a dude, you can get close — but not too close — to your friends.

The NYT is emitting just a soupçon of homophobia this morning. So onto the details of Graham-Felsen's heterosexuality:

In my late 20s, I moved in with my longtime girlfriend, whom I married soon after. Being married meant I could no longer go gallivanting around with my boys whenever I wanted to — but by then, I had largely lost the taste for gallivanting around. It was easier to stay in my warm, cozy apartment and watch prestige TV with my wife than brave the cold, filthy subways and blow money at stinky bars. I was becoming more committed to writing and wanted to wake up early, without a hangover, and get to work on a novel. My friends were still important to me, but not that important. My empathic wife (who is an editor at this magazine) was fulfilling pretty much all my emotional needs.

Including the emotional need to get this piece published? But let's carry on, happily blogging again, as if no unkindly suspicions had suddenly burgeoned.

Then we had our first child.... My wife suggested that I find some friends at the playground, but almost all the caretakers there were moms....

LOL. That's the plot of my ex-husband's third novel. Published in 1988. 

Eventually my loneliness started to eat into my confidence as a writer, and this made me even more reluctant to see my friends.... I was seriously struggling, and my writing came to a standstill. I started to see myself as an unemployed washout, living off my wife, contributing squat to the world, increasingly unpresent for my son.

Well, that's your novel right there, but the problem is only women read novels about that sort of thing, and your perspective is male. Who will read this? 

These were just the sorts of anxieties I once would have shared with a good friend.... [I]nstead of picking up the phone and calling someone, I picked up the phone and clicked on podcasts. I listened to so many episodes of so many podcasts....

The new male friendship is your friendship with the podcaster. And you know his name:

In late 2018, I found something that finally resonated. And I found it on — alas — “The Joe Rogan Experience.”... And while many of his ideas made me wince, I found myself spellbound by his voracious curiosity.... The weave of these yap fests reminded me of what it was like when I had hours of open-ended time with my own friends....

Blah blah blah and he "ended up working out for over 1,000 straight days," but he was still lonely. He found another podcast, “Man of the Year,” which stressed "social fitness" and gave advice like "be the friend," which got him doing the obvious, calling up friends and arranging to get together. The article ends with a description of one get-together with an old-friend guy: "we had no problem talking honestly. We didn’t empty our souls, the way my wife and her friends might do with one another. That was OK; we related on our own terms. I felt free and easy the whole night, afloat in the presence of an old friend’s unjudgmental love."

So your wife and her friends "empty [their] souls"? Did you and your friend follow the "byzantine bylaw"  "No talking about wives"? But does she talk about you? What is this difference? What are these varying depths? When is it too shallow and what are your wives doing out there? Emptying?