curing the disease of male loneliness

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.
Proverbs 17:17

Confession: 
I have felt lonely a lot of my life. 

For me, true friends have been few and far between. 
Maybe it’s because I am an introvert, or maybe it’s because as a pastor people know the details of my story but rarely the depths of my heart. Either way, I often feel seen but not known. It’s a surreal thing to be surrounded by masses in New York but to feel alone. 

Post Covid has been especially hard. Many of the people I thought I would do life with left the city. Others left the church. Others left our lives for good. Transience takes a toll on love.

Rolheiser writes, "All of us experience, to a greater or lesser extent, a loneliness that results from not having enough anchors, enough absolutes, and enough permanent roots to make us feel secure and stable in a world characterized by transience." 

Anchors, absolutes, and permanent roots? Try as I may, it’s hard to hold these in my life. 
Secure and stable? Things often feel vulnerable and precarious. I often feel one rent increase or job transfer away from another loss of friendship; one bad sermon away from others leaving the church.

More and more these days, I meet men without anchors. In relationships without roots. Men with relational deficits. Men afflicted by the social disease of loneliness. 

Do you ever feel this kind of isolation as a man?

THE "MALE FRIENDSHIP RECESSION"

I recently read an article on Vox about a male friendship recession.

I knew most of it intuitively and in my work as a pastor, but seeing the stats laid out was a painful and brutal confrontation with what is happening in the hearts of men around us. Think about the typical bloke you sit near at church, smile at in small group, or grab a drink with after work. 

Are you aware of this kind of inner sadness shaping their lives?

According to AEI’s Survey Center on American Life and Gallup, the percentage of men with at least 6 close friends fell by half between 1990 and 2021.

One in five single men say they have no close friendships.

Research shows that social isolation can weaken the immune system and make someone more likely to suffer from a variety of ailments including Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Men are less likely than women to share their personal feelings and receive emotional support from friends (41% in women, 21% in men).

Men are less likely to tell their friends that they love them (49% in women to 25% in men).

Men stuck in restrictive gender roles are 7 times more likely to use physical violence and twice as likely to have had suicidal thoughts.

US clinical psychologist Ronald F. Levant suggests the term "normative male alexithymia" (NMA) to describe the inability of men to put words to their feelings.

This email has been hard to write. I may have a mild case of NMA :) 

BUILDING A CIRCLE OF RESILIENCE

As men, we need brothers. We need people to weep with, laugh with, celebrate with and confess to. We need to carry burdens and have ours lifted, speak the truth in love, and be rebuked with kindness. Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy, says Proverbs. 

But it’s so hard in our transient world to find brothers with whom you can grow deep. 

It’s hard to share without feeling ashamed of your failures and mistakes, especially when you feel you should be further along.
It’s hard to reveal our longings and hopes for fear of rejection or ridicule.
It’s hard to create space for people when they share things you don’t feel equipped to handle.
It’s hard to meet new friends and not come across as weird when you suggest you want to move beyond the trivial. 

To be honest, outside of work acquaintances and friends from college, it’s hard to even know what to look for in a friend. How can you even begin to build relational equity in a male relational recession?

DISCERNING FRIENDSHIPS

Aristotle had a lot to say about friendship in his book The Nicomachean Ethics. In his view, friendship is the bedrock of a good society. Family has its obvious value and sexuality is an appetite to be measured, but friendship is a gift worth devoted pursuit.

He lists the three kinds of friendships we encounter in life.

Friendships of utility. 
These are friendships built on extracting value, in which others are primarily seen as a commodity. This is using people for ourselves. This is being in relationships with others because of the way they alleviate our boredom or because of the credibility we get out of associating with them. These are not the kinds of people who will ever see our tears. 

Friendships of pleasure. 
These are friendships built on enjoyment. Fantasy football leagues, rooting for the same teams, the hobbies of men. These can be filled with joy, but lack the depth of vulnerability we all need. It would be weird in the middle of a fantasy league draft night to call a halt to the preceding and confess your attraction to another woman at work or a painful sense of God’s absence in your devotional life. It’s simply not the time, place, or framing of what you do in these spaces. 

The third kind of friendships is true friendship. 
These are relationships built on mutual love, genuine concern, and a desire for the good of the other.

It is this kind of friendship that our hearts ache for and that we must pursue to have our soul healed from the disease of loneliness. 

THE TRAITS OF TRUE FRIENDSHIPS

When you read the Scriptures, you see that the kingdom of God moves along relational lines. On the pages of scripture, we see depth, sacrifice, joy and loyalty all modeled for us to behold. These give us clues to the kind of men we need in our lives today. Here are a couple I have noticed and seek to pursue in my life:

FRIENDS WHO WILL RISK FOR YOU (PRISCILLA AND AQUILLA) 
Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house.
Romans 16:3-5

Paul traveled as an apostolic leader and was often forced to move and flee due to persecution. Being his friend came at a cost. But Priscilla and Aquilla were willing to risk themselves for Paul. They risked their resources to support his calling; they risked their time to help plant churches with him; they risked their hearts by uniting themselves to a call.

Pay attention to the folks who say yes. Who will believe in the crazy idea, join you for the last-minute road trip, invest in your latest vision, and stand by you when it costs them status, reputation or resources. Build your life with people like this. Be a friend like this.

FRIENDS WHO REFRESH YOU (ONESIPHORUS)
May the Lord show mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. 
2 Timothy 1:16-18

Certain people give you life simply by their presence. They have the ability to lift you out of whatever sorrow or pain you are in and bring you back to joy. They irrigate your heart in times of relational drought.  

Henri Nouwen commented about friends like this. He said, "When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand."

FRIENDS WHO ENCOURAGE YOU (BARNABAS)
We live in critical and cynical time. People feel entitled to lash out and criticize like it’s a societal right. Sniping post on social media, subtle jabs in the lobby, passive aggressive emails, brutal confrontations. It is soul destroying and demoralizing. A steady diet of criticism and complaint will bleed a man’s heart dry. 

But there are also people who build you up. Those who come alongside you to stir your faith and build your spirit. Barnabas was a man like this. 

He gave generously to the fledgling Christian movement (Acts 4:36-37).

He assured the believers of the genuine conversion of a persecutor-turned-Christian named Saul, later known as Paul (Acts 9:26-27).

He brought Saul to teach believers at Syrian Antioch, releasing him into ministry (Acts 11:25-26).

He joined Saul in bringing famine relief to the Christians in Judea (Acts 11:30).

FRIENDS WHO FIGHT FOR YOU. (EPAPHRODITUS)
But I think it is necessary to send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you sent to take care of my needs.
Philippians 2:25

There are people who support your vision, and then there are people who support you. These are the ones you can count on when the warfare gets real. They cover you in prayer. They fight for your heart. They join you in your cause. They rescue you when you get stuck. They refuse to quit on you when things get hard. And they are loyal when others turn away. 

These people remind us of the faithfulness of Jesus. They are another incarnation of the stubborn love of God. When crap gets hard, they dig in. They have your back, stand beside you, and clear a path in front of you. They ensure you never go to war alone.

FRIENDS WHO WILL TELL YOU THE COSTLY TRUTH (NATHAN)
Rebuking a king can be hard. Rebuking him for murder and adultery is harder still. Yet Nathan had the courage to do this to king David for his relationship with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. "You are the man!" Nathan told David. (2 Samuel 12:5-7)

Yet, this rebuke was done in love, and Nathan remained loyal, even to the ends of his days. Proverbs 27:5 says, "Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted."

You don’t need people hyping you up, overlooking your weaknesses, ignoring your faults. You need friends like Nathan who will call you out, then stand beside you to help you walk out the consequences.

BECOMING THE FRIEND YOU LONG FOR

Jesus calls us to lay down our lives for our friends. He calls us to love one another as he has loved us. The best way to find true friendship is to become one yourself. I know it can feel forced and even strained to begin to move toward other men in these ways, but you never know how God will move when you obey his commands of love. You never know how even the smallest acts of relational courage could mature into oaks of belonging in your life.

You never know when the holy place in your heart will open.

Rolheiser writes, "We all have this place, a place in the heart, where we hold all that is most precious and sacred to us. From that place, our own kisses issue forth, as do our tears. It is the place we most guard from others, but the place where we would most want others to come into; the place where we are the most deeply alone and the place of intimacy; the place of innocence and the place where we are violated; the place of our compassion and the place of our rage. In that place, we are holy." 

My prayer for you is that God would grant you loyal brothers. That you would be known, loved, accepted, held accountable and encouraged. That you would have men who would meet you in that place in your heart called holy. Christ himself is waiting there.

Cheers.

Jon.