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I’m a Case Study for Male Loneliness
Men are conditioned to keep each other at arm’s length, and it’s a very bad thing for members of our gender
All of the friends I have as an adult are friends I made when I was 12 years old or younger. They were the kids in my neighborhood who happened to live nearby and that I also got along with. My best friend lived in the house directly across from my mom’s house. His family moved into that house when he was 3 years old. My family moved into ours when I was 3 months old. I don’t know when I met him; it’s as if we’ve just always known each other.
I’d go on to become good friends with my best friend’s cousin as well, as he was just a couple years younger than us and would spend the summers in our neighborhood. I’d meet my two other close friends around the same time. One of them, however, was something of a friend by association. We’d all hangout in the same group, but he and I never really hung out just the two of us. To be fair, he enjoyed alone time, and online gaming, and didn’t come to hangout with the group too frequently at all. While I have warm feelings of camaraderie for him as well, he won’t figure into the story going forward.
The other one — besides my best friend and his cousin — would sometimes go by “G.” G was my other best friend. Unlike the…
