REINVENTING FRIENDSHIP: MIDLIFE GUYS

Try reinventing friendship when your main guys move away.

It happens, and it will happen more than once.

You might move away, they might move away, then what?

How do you break in new friends?

I read a post called, “Why men lose all their friends in midlife.”

It covered the basics of friendship and how it fades.

To truly like a person, you need trust, and that requires emotional investment – an increasingly rare commodity as you age – so as old friends fade away, they cannot simply be replaced. The space to build trust with newcomers is just not there.

Most often your partner becomes your best friend by default, which is no bad thing, while an imperceptible drift from sociability takes place over the years – sometimes it’s because of children, sometimes physical distance, sometimes lifestyle choices, like religion or polyamory.

Someone needs practice reinventing friendship.

What’s Left Out Of Midlife Friendship 2023

Say you meet someone in your local watering hole and they sound normal.

There is friendship potential.

You share comments on the game showing on the big screen; you both like the dog someone brought in.

If you’re looking for friends stay off the Covid conversation, the Jan. 6th conversation, and Me Too opinions.

Why?

Friendship is tough with anti-vaxxers and anti-mask.

It’s hard to understand the foundation shift of a Trump man, or someone who shames women for stepping up with their history.

But what if you’re the anti-vaxxer Trump man with no respect for women? And they’re not?

Your new buddy might tell you to fuck off. And that hurts a lonely man?

Anita-vax Trump men with no respect for women are never lonely as long as Fox News is around.

Why would they need friends or women with Trump sucking up all of their emotional availability?

So just enjoy the brief moments of male friendship without a load of qualifications.

In other words, don’t ask too many questions.

But What If . . .

Imagine yourself as an enthusiastic musician.

You meet someone with a similar problem.

What’s the problem when you go to open mics together, practice songs together.

No problems when you like them and they like you and you sound good together.

Extra points if the wives like each other enough to spare their husbands male bonding time.

But they move away and leave a gap so you get a loop machine and name it Jerry.

Is it the same? No.

Back in the tap house you talk guitars with a new guy and he whips out his phone to show his guitar collection.

So far so good. He’s a guitar player, or at least he has interesting guitars like a twelve string Strat.

Do you invite him to your place to play without ever hearing him? Does he invite you to his place?

Not after you talk about bands and he’s a big fan of Genesis and says he’s working on the middle eight of That’s All.

You like to trade eights on an endless blues shuffle and they like Prog Rock?

Then another regular chimes in about playing bass and the two of them take it from there while you go home to practice Eagle songs mixed in with Beatles and John Prine and Emmy Lou Harris.

I won’t have to cut no wood
I can be bad or I can good
I can be anyway that I feel
One of these days

Some Midlife Guys Get Better Reinventing Friendship?

It doesn’t help that three of my oldest friends are currently unavailable. Of the men I spent most of my youth and young manhood with, one is in Los Angeles, another lives an alternative lifestyle in Devon and the third joined me in a spectacular falling out that killed our 30-year relationship overnight (mostly my fault, naturally).

That sounds right to me.

Who among us doesn’t wish we knew how to shut up better?

Which is one of the reasons for this blog. If you write, if you’re a writer on a mission, then that takes the edge off proving yourself to everyone you meet.

“Good to meet you. What do you do?”

“Read my blog.”

“What?”

“I’m a contemporary blogger. If you say anything interesting I might write about it. No pressure.”

This is how to avoid becoming a problem on social media spewing endlessly fascinating tidbits of every waking moment along with dream analysis.

If you have feelings about not doing enough, about doing more, about being a contributor, write a blog and post links.

Having lost interest in football I’ve destroyed 50 per cent of my conversation options – and I wasn’t exactly Bantersaurus Rex to begin with. Male bonding is sometimes little more than a home-cooked version of a radio phone-in on an infinite loop.

True male friendship is paradoxical, in that it is intimate without intimacy. Men neither touch each other physically nor discuss anything directly – what is said out loud is trivial and everything important is unspoken. If a subtext is identified, it’s quickly ignored before moving on, since no man wants to turn a subtext into an actual text over a few beers.

Like a lot of things about getting older, acceptance is the only meaningful response. 

Emmy Lou Nails The Meaningful Response

But I won’t have trouble on my back
Cuttin’ like the devil with a choppin’ axe
Got to shake it off of my back
One of these days

Last night the wife and I watched a TV show together and one of the characters said, “There’s people like that, then there’s us at home at night watching the History Channel alone.”

“Sounds like me after you go to bed.”

“Except you’re not alone.”

Try reinventing friendship if you feel lonely.

Then, once you perk up, take Emmy Lou for a spin.

I’m sixteen hundred miles from the people I know 
I’ve been doin’ all I can but opportunity sure come slow 
Well I’d be in the sun all day 
But I’m sweepin’ out a warehouse in west L.A. 
But it’s all right ’cause it’s midnight 
And I got two more bottles of wine

Are you feeling better? Me too.

Here’s 820 posts tagged with ‘friend’ for a boost.