Good Lifestyle

Note: This story was originally published in the May 2007 issue ofBetter life.

Something feels bad.

You work between 50 and 60 hours. The weekend, you shut up the children to their sports practices and their reading tables. Saturday night, if you are lucky, you get a sitter for you and your other significant can engage in this ritual destined to keep things zest - "Date Night" -But sometimes, you aspire to another type of dated. Perhaps, during these few moments you have to think, when your fingers do not work your iPhone when sitting in the suburban traffic, you think about how your social life has changed (or evaporated) since You were a post-collegiate college, sharing a loft, say, with three close friends.

If this is the case, you are like millions of other men with enough mileage behind them to watch nostalgia on life, the unique life in which you were surrounded by men and dedicated, it seemed almost entirely of A sworn allegiance to the pursuit of adventure and debauchery. Maybe you're like a rich price, a Chicago player, who has writtenBetter life on the phenomenon of men and their endangered friendships. He mentioned ego days when a group of his male friends seemed to have a "coherent investment in the lives of each other" and about the many times he wanted to reach the phone to call one of His old roommates to say hello or "hey I want to get tickets for the game next month?" But the friends seemed to have fallen on the face of the earth. "The guys moved, married - one of us crosses a disorder divorce," wrote the price. "It looks like we are all captivating in our own futures contracts."

Like many guys soliciting through their lives, filling the adulthood, rich obligations awakened at the loneliness of the American male at mid-thirties in the early fifties.

We? Alone? With the woman and children and parents and jokesters in the office and never have a moment to think? Well yes. That's what experts who study these questions say. In June 2006, the sociologists of Duke University and the University of Arizona, for example, provided the most recent statistical analysis of the problem. Their report, "social isolation in America: changes in basic discussion networks over two decades", has announced that the number of friends with whom Americans discuss important issues decreased up to 33% over a period about 20 years old. . This problem is particularly serious for young and educated men who have lost a higher number than "discussion partners" by 3.5 in 1985 to 2.0 in 2004 - according to the study. Friendship, the report suggests, has taken a serious dive through culture and guys as we especially are in particular the company faster than anyone.

The men who have been managing their career for years but who find themselves in Midstream, feeling without reservation the type of friendship that they seemed to have made four critical life errors, according to experts. The first and the biggest problem involves time constraints, according to Sociologist Theodore F. Cohen, Professor of Sociology of the University of Ohio Wesleyan, who studied men's friendship networks. "Friendship", writes Cohen in the discussion of a study, "still seemed to be classifying behind marriage and parenthood in terms of the salvage and legitimacy of their demands in his time." Add to the mixture the temporal pressures of his career and you can see how masculine friendships can start slowly to disappear. A study, "the overlooked American family", led by Michael Hout, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at the University of California in Berkeley and Caroline Hanley, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology visiting the College of William and Mary Examined the data from 1968 to 2001. They felt that "families added 10 to 29 hours a week at their working hours outside the house."

This increase, written Miller McPherson, a sociologist from the University of Arizona and a co-author of the "Social Insulation in America" ​​study, was "the most dramatic of the middle-aged, better educated and higher families" " . "According to the University of Pennsylvania Sociologist Jerry A. Jacobs, author ofDivided time: work, family and gender inequality. "Professional and managers are most likely hours longer than their fathers," says Jacobs. "If you take the proportion of men working more than 50 to 60 hours a week and add travel time to that, these numbers are significantly higher for this generation than for the previous generation." As a result, men who succeed with families have less time spending on themselves or their friends - a tiny 1.3 hour a day, according to the latest "national study of changing labor" families and the work institute.

The second problem is a little more insidious and involves the way men tend to abandon their male friends and elect their wives or girlfriends like their new and primary friends of their social worlds. Call it the Yoko Ono effect. You have already heard it, tell yourself, during a toast of a husband to his new wife. "And the most important [emotional break], she is my best friend." [Applause.] One of the strongest conclusions of the "Social Isolation of America" ​​study concerns friendship networks: "Core Confident surrounding the typical American", say the authors, "have become smaller and more centered on the close links of the spouse / partner. " In a different survey who asked men to answer the question "which is the best friend of a man?" 90% of American respondents answered "women". But the Yoko Ono effect "places a huge pressure on women, according to John Guarnaschelli, a therapist of the city of New York specialized in the problems of men. "It's not something that single women should be called upon." And, as a sociologist Walter L. Williams, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California, explains that the model of woman-like-best friend is a cultural anomaly, a foreign idea and Even absurd to a great many crops around the world and a considerable burden on the conjugal relationship. "In modern America, the other of a person has become virtually the only person alone with whom he can be intimate", writes Williams.

"For many couples, it's too much to ask for the relationship, because the other significant is expected simultaneously to be a sex game game, economic partner, kinship, best friend and everything else."

Following this problem, the number three problem: the tendency to men to entrust their social life with their girlfriends or women. "Women have always been the" Kinskeepers "of Western society," writes Sociologist Barry Wellman, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. (For a quick test of the Litmus, ask yourself: who makes the holiday cards every year, you or your wife?) With the growth of the suburbs, explains Wellman and the progressive evaporation of urban meetings, where men gathered And form friendships the planning of a man's social calendar gradually started taking place at home, the field of women. In addition, friends gatherings started to occur more frequently at home with cocktails and a dinner territory - again stung from the woman. (The suburban man has moved outside, be alone with barbecue.) At a certain level, we have never got the diet. In his study of married couples in Toronto, Wellman found that women "took the burden of keeping friendships for their husbands as well as themselves", a conclusion that extends almost without saying, well beyond Toronto . The result? Dinner and other gatherings, we spend a lot of time with the guys chosen not by you, but indirectly, by your wife or girlfriend. Of course, these men smile and laugh like other guys do it, but are they hearts in, or are they more like replacement players, stand-ins for your true brother, who have been left stuck somewhere in the past?

The fourth error takes us to the problem of male friendship to its greatest circumference. It has to do with the meaning of the manhood that we inherit our fathers and films, a sense of manhood that is the standard question, as well as we were, when we were boys, and it is symbolized by the cyclist. , brave, independent and autonomous-the effect Crint Eastwood. This guy has so much shit to do that he does not need friends. But dozens of studies in psychology, epidemiology and the relatively new field of (Brace yourself) psychonuroimmunology-or NPC, which investigates the links between the spirit and the immune system - made it clear clearly that it There are some measurable risks involved in isolation you like yourself the high plains or the reduction of your life to the same moral combination of work, at home, Starbucks (repeat until the grave). "People who have mediocre social ties are more dangerous with malmes and premature death than those with good social relations," begins such a study. Indeed, friendship can, among other things, reduce coronary life morbidity and mortality; It can protect against the appearance of Alzheimer's disease; This can help you quickly rebound from the disease; It can reduce the absenteeism of employees; It can prolong your life.

Wordsworth and Colreidge teamed up to produce lyrical ballads; Lewis and Clark opened the west; Crazy horse and his dog almost closed. The friendship between Mark Twain and Ulysse S. Grant (TWAIN loved to do Crack General Hard a smile) led to the publication of Grant's memories, a bestseller. Eisenhower and Patton won the Second World War. Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo were the best friends and teammates on the Chicago Bears, and the death of Cancer Piccolo became a book, then a 70-year-old TV film,The song of Brian, who gave an entire generation of young men his first brush with a level of emotion that did not dare to talk about his name. The relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, recorded in tablets of the first half of the second millennium B.C., speaks of this desire for selfsame men to seek a unique form of unique emotional connection that seems as old as the species.

Ancient, yet, as it looks like, stifled. And for that you can blame Freud. After Freud - who argued that all friendships are supported by a sublimated sexual expression of love and admiration between men, so current in the 18th and 19th centuries, all but disappeared. The men always wanted to tighten with their companions from Boon, but after-Freud, the language and vocabulary they had used over the previous centuries to express it had been driven out of them. This is a problem that is with us so far. "As a guy, you meet an emotional range with three remarks," says author Norah Vincent, who, after a complete transformation and a change of wardrobe, spent 18 months as a man, in the leagues Bowling and other men's only hangouts, in an attempt to place the hearts of men. The result,Self-made man: a year of woman disguised as a man, is a friendly portrait of men and friendship that suggests what we have experienced throughout: the inner lives of men are responsible for emotional content and their desire to connect remains strong, but they are blocked on all fronts . "It's probably the party I have hate it", reminds Vincent of his adventure to Guydom. In terms of what is expressly authorized, "women get octaves, chromatic scales, but guys are little more than bravado and rage."

But more and more today, men seem to reach something more. Call it boomance, whose meaning, as in several internet slang dictionaries, is entirely chaste, referring almost exclusively to the powerful emotional connection that can happen between rights. It is a phenomenon that has recently emerged from the fringes of society, anarchist urban bicycle gangs scattered throughout the country, where I heard for the first time the term used. But this can now be consulted in each weekly episode ofLegal boston.

I speak, of course, the relationship between Alan Shore, the navrostructive and self-destructive lawyer played by James Spader and Denny Crane, the Cannon Archconservative loose and the founding partner of CP & S [Crane Poole & Schmidt] played by William Shatner. Although the show has not used the term yet, it is impregnated with bromantic excess - especially in the balcony scenes now very awaited, where, at the end of each show, the coast and the crane tote the bar of the Mesadés of the day and commit themselves in what an observer called "male binding porn", a prolonged and intimate conversation about life, politics, love and their own appeal emotions. 'offers for each other.

"Basically, they have sex with women, but they are married to each other," saysLegal boston Writer Chef Janet Leahy of the relationship of the crane on the ground. More than two seasons, Leahy took the characters of the coast and crane, originally created by David E. Kelley, and made their relationship dances on the outskirts of laughing atan involved, inevitable, after-Freud, post-Failed Homoerryism with which Boston's writers had a day of land. In an episode closing balcony scene, after the coast and the crane renew their friendship wishes, the credits roll that Tammy Wynette sings "stand by your man". Which is so attractive about their relationship, says Leahy, "is that they are men actually being men, without having to find excuses for that."

Men being men? I asked Joseph Epstein, former 70-year-old chief editor of 70 years ofThe American scholarif he was ready for bromance. "The answer is no," says Epstein, with a laugh. Epstein's approach - "Take a little pressure on the ideal of friendship as a seamless and disinterested register of two souls, each for the other" - a gay and fun school. "The first rule of the art of friendship" He writes: "Do not all friendships have to be deepened." In fact, what men may want and miss - more than anything else, Epstein says - is not a depth but a kind of liberation of depth in the wonderful spiritual surfaces of male discussion. It's a kind of grandcoming in which everyone's aims the greatest laugh, a "place in the beast", the phrase Epstein uses to describe the riot friendship between the novelist Sir Kingsley Friends, the poet Philip Larkin and Soviet Scholar Robert Conquest. "Only with men can be displayed complete frontal vulgarity," says Epstein, quoting the British novelist Frederic Raphael.

However, you can feel it, one thing seems clear: the friendship - it is bromantic or old school - has so often built trust and has paved the way for relationships with a variety more improvement of the career and Accelerating the career, which it seems almost stupid to relegate friendship to a brigadoon foremost distant in the mist, something to do in its feet. "The friendship between Warren E. Buffett and Bill Gates", for example, asThe New York Times Reported, which resulted in the unique wealth transfer to $ 31 billion, a charity foundation in history, was "forged on a shared passion for such American treats at home to Cherry Cola, hamburgers and University football ". The agreement that surprised the business world was not the end of the mercenary and the purpose of their friendship, of course, but it appeared naturally from this prior friendship in friendship.

Friendship as wealth? "I think it's a good point," Roger Horchow said, who built a mail order empire, the Horchow collection and is profiled as the prototypical Malcom Gladwell's Best-Selling ConnectorThe rocking point. Horchow recognizes that the sorry state of male friendship as a widespread phenomenon (he calls it - in the soft Texas with which he sent me to the phone - "the loneliness of men") and at 78, he Past all life as a masculine-friendship, make and feed friendships. He distilled the lessons of these friendships in a book,The art of friendship: 70 simple rules to make significant connectionsCoated by his daughter, Sally.

Why do men seem to have problems serving friendships? "Because we are lazy," Jokes Horchow. "But think about how you accumulate wealth," he adds. "We would all like to be rich, but you have to work there." Epstein emphasizes an important involvement of all this: "To know each other is the first and best stage of the formation of friendship," he said. If you know you do not need a lot of friends - like Napoleon or Churchill or Picasso, for example, there is little point in the concern of yourself. If, however, you decide that you are on the market, most of what Epstein, the horches and others have to say about the improvement of your situation will not come a new one. But the art of friendship does not have many things about what you know how it is what you do. Here are some practical tips to counter the trend towards isolation, to build a wealth of friendships and enjoy the benefits of larger connections.

Concentrate on friends you already have. With so little time, the basic idea, especially for guys, is to lower the anters and choose unissured fruits. E-mail The people you already know but that you have not seen for a while. What to say? "It's better to make it easy on yourself - and on other guys around you - rather than being too ambitious," says Sally Horchow. "Organize a lunch," explains Roger Horchow, lunch being a connection tool to which he strongly subscribed. Use the Internet search engines to reconnect with long-standing friends. Be guided by your impetus to reunite, declares Roger, but above all, that the action is your principle of guidance.

Change the background of an existing relationship. You always see a work knowledge in the room and you stop and talk with him for a few moments because you tend to love the conversation. He's funny. He loves hockey. No matter. This relationship, which calls Sally calls a "passive contact", will tend to stay at the same level if you still leave it in the room. So try to change the bottom. Suggest a lunch, a drink after work or other activity arising from your occasional conversation, such as a hockey game. "By creating a reason to do something," says Sally, "You can borrow your friendship in a different field."

Follow-up, followed, follow-up. The tracking card or note is not only for the well-treated and socially adroit wuss. You can also use it. A kind of tracking, whether by email, telephone or note, is in any case the standard operating procedure for most business meetings. Just, the tracking message, according to the horches, is "the most important thing you can do to build friendships." It can be as simple as an e-mail or phone call or a text message, and it should suggest a future action plan.

Get out of your own head. Friendship involves repeated acts of alteration - the decision that someone else is, for the moment, more important than anything you think you have to do or say. Listening is a way to practice this precept. To illustrate, Roger proposes a wonderful counter-example, a anecdote told by his friend Dick Bass, who spent a whole race at the plane sitting next to a stranger and to feast the man with stories on climbing of the mountain, one of the respectful passions of the bass. "Just before the landing plane, Bass turned to the man sitting next to him and said," After all this, I do not think I presented myself. My name is Dick Bass. "The man shook his hand and replied," Hi, I'm Neil Armstrong. Nice to meet you. "" Spectacular missed opportunities of this type are rare, of course. But the daily lesson is clear. "People are like living, breathe", say the horches "and every turn, they can offer gifts from their own knowledge."

Take the road. John Partilla, President of Time Warner Global Media Group, will ski every year with his old high school friends. Every year, a different person depends on the responsibility of choosing the ski resort and reserve housing. "This is one of the strengths of the year," says Partilla. "When we climb the chairlift, each of us has a different partner to whom to speak. Our conversation lasts a little time. We catch up, temporarily at first, then we are skiing again again." For this group of old friends, the ski seems to combine one thing that men are really good at (parallel activity) with one thing that men are not very good to (speak in depth). The old reinforces the latter. "Soon," said Parilla, "we have these really deep discussions up the elevator. Then, the deep discussion is over and it's back to ski."

The men with whom I spoke, who maintained strong and deepened friendships, seem also to manage these same friendships actively and deliberately. The sorry state of male friendship does not have to look like a kind of facts accepted and disturbing around the world, as, to say, decline the oil reserves. It takes work, but the rewards, say that the Horchowes, will surprise you continually.

"All the good things that happened to me", Roger Horchow, the big connector, reminds us ", I really come to be friendships."

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