The masculinity-intimacy question

Musings on the ‘recession of intimacy’, personal reflections on loneliness, and a deep dive into the ‘Andrew Tate effect’

1

Driving along the Nevada 157 on our way up to Mount Charleston, bearing against snow-sloped corniches of the Eowyn Ivey persuasion, my twelve-year-old gaze shifted to my dad.

“Doesn’t it ever get lonely? You know, traveling so often for work.”

“That’s the cost of having a decent job. The cost of being a man.”

My dad is an exceedingly quiet person, and for the vast majority of my life, we’ve lived apart. Much like how thirsty Bedouins hold on to sparse drops of water, I’ve held on to every word his low Korean rumble produces.

So for years, those were words I lived by — a dogmatic optimism in masculine solitude. Head down, chin up, eyes forward. Get shit done.

And that worked, until it didn’t.

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In that spirit, this word vomit is about masculine intimacy (more specifically, the lack thereof) and loneliness. Yes, the corny-as-fuck-yet-extremely-dangerous-if-left-as-is social ailment. And there is but one reason I am spending my Saturday afternoon in an Armenian coffee shop, sitting with a half-finished iced Americano that tastes like ass, typing my day away instead of doing literally anything else. Because this is a ticking time bomb that mossbacks deny the existence of (until the shrapnel hits their fucking faces), and that leftists miscalculate the blast radius of (until the shrapnel also hits their fucking faces).

As banal and paranoiac and overzealous as this all sounds, there are four large trains of thought chugging around in my head that I’ll cover:

1. How and why the status quo entrenches a lack of male intimacy

2. Why the narrative of ‘deconstructing toxic masculinity’ is great in the long term but doesn’t work in the short term, as the currently-dominant proposed solution

3. Why society’s failure to address this problem is so harmful (c.f. the rise of Andrew Tate, the Proud Boys, the Alternative für Deutschland, etc.)

4. Reframing our expectations, and what healthier first steps might look like

That said, I also have four prefaces on my own prejudices, before I jump into this:

1. This post is likely to be extremely male-centric. I am, in fact, a straight guy with only one lived perspective. I am a milquetoast Clintonist that played high school football. Intuitively, this ought not to discount anyone else’s lived perspectives, and I am always open to hearing your counter-perspective.

2. This post does not excuse men of accountability; rather, it deals with the structural reasons why men have failed to hold ourselves emotionally accountable.

3. This is not a polemic against feminism whatsoever. At this point in my life, I am probably a feminist in the ‘young Caroline Norma’ vein. Rather, certain references in this post critique certain feminist solutions while also commending them for being the only movement that’s brought the issue to light.

4. Perhaps I am just lonely and want to be held.

3

I do not cry often. Actually, I never cry, and can’t remember the last time I did. Not because I don’t want to, but because I physically can’t. Years of conditioning in a Catholic household, I guess.

Yet sitting in front of that Singaporean hostel lobby in the pitch dark, with nothing but the red-neon signage of a hawker food stall illuminating my face, I came fairly close.

Instead of crying, I think my grievance takes a more drunken form (without the alcohol). I get jittery in the legs, feel horrendously shitty in the head, and my face turns Asian flush-levels of red — as if the genetic force of my ancestors compels my frustration. This was one of those instances.

Why, though? Why, in the most materially-rewarding period of my life — having received early acceptance to Stanford just a few weeks prior, and on an all-expenses-paid trip to Singapore I earned vis-à-vis winning the national debate championship — was I at the nadir of my emotions? There was no major life event provoking my resentment, nor was there a particular catalyst for my anger.

But all I could think about was how alone I was.

Admittedly, I was in a polycrisis of minor stressors: the responsibility of captaining one United States National Debate Team on the world stage, a relationship turned sour while I was 8,800 miles away from home, and a retrospectively-useless argument with my dear mom. Plus, Southeast Asia is humid as fuck and I don’t like that. But it wasn’t the issues themselves that were grating my nerves, especially given how great that moment was supposed to be.

Rather, the sum of a few small things paired with the stochastic nature of feeling (a man-period of sorts) made me irritable. And what drove me to such a trough in my psyche at one of the highest peaks in my life is simple — I had a profound sense of loneliness, one where I was drinking both successes and irritants alone.

This was five-ish years after that formative conversation with my dad. I’d taken his advice to its fullest extent for a half-decade, with a revered acceptance of my manhood; a contributory, Romans 12:1-esque sacrifice of emotional relationships in favor of professional success. After all, in the thumos of Socrates, a man is what he provides to those around him.

But ultimately, that advice — a resignation to being okay with solitude, as a man — fucked me over; driving me away from building the bonds I so desperately needed. This is getting tangential, but I really only have two close friends that I can vent to. Two is really not that many people, and when those two people are going through their own struggles / fifteen hours behind your current time zone, two becomes zero.

So here I was. Feeling shitty. Okay. Let me bring this back to the social commentary.

4

When I examine my life right now and look at the greatest source of insecurity / instability / misery, I chalk it up to an overwhelming sense of loneliness. And let’s be clear — I don’t think I’m an antisocial human. I’m not some hermit-recluse social reject. I’m active in social circles and on social media. My high school’s graduating class voted me ‘most likely to be president’! (I am not even eligible.)

But at any given point in time, there still exists an ennui driven by just not having as many emotionally-fulfilling relationships as I’d like. I have exciting news, or something that pisses me off? I think about getting it off my chest to someone, and I realize there just aren’t that many people to do that with. Even at the purportedly highest periods of my life, like being in Singapore, I’d find myself breaking down from this. On Sunday nights (one of my two best friends is Mormon), I feel excessively sad and douse my mouth with melatonin to go to bed earlier — I’d rather be unconscious than alone.I don’t think this is an isolated incident, and there are some concerning trendlines that back this up. Here are a few:

• There has been a 400%+ increase in men’s loneliness since 1990

• 79% of American men have not received emotional support in the past month

• 78% of young men do not feel that they can depend on their friends to get through tough times, while the majority of young men have two or fewer close friends

• Nearly 20% of men have no friends, period

• In a meta-analysis of 20,000+ men, over 1,000 were found to have formed clinical depression from loneliness

Reflecting on the data, I think I’m representative of the average, so I feel somewhat empowered to speak about this. As a curtail, most studies show that women have been more resilient to this trend of increased isolation — at risk of making assumptions rooted in sex, likely to do with that women are encouraged more in society to be emotionally connected.

Anyhow, I think it begs the question of why. Why does the status quo entrench a lack of male intimacy? Where does this ‘recession of emotions’ stem from? Only by answering these questions and fixing them can men feel emotional sustenance and fulfillment; only then can I feel less shitty.

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I want to note here that the following is all pure conjecture, but I have three clusterfucked theories that begin to answer those questions.

The first is on how hyper-corporatization has shifted platonic priorities. For the sake of simplicity, I am going to outline the prongs upon which that claim is made below.

• Blue-collar jobs are dying out, and with that, so are unions / guilds / American Legion units / Elks or Freemason lodges / VFW stations. Traditional spaces that served as natural outlets for male bonding are dissipating, and with that, so are fulfilling friendships. Note that midway through the 20th century, this is how most men made friends (and now it’s gone).

• White-collar jobs are more competitive, lucrative, and globalized than before. Long gone are the days of working a nine-to-five office job — can you believe that in the 80s, a man could be a salesman, buy a house, send his kids to college, and go on vacation twice a year? Real wages have stagnated over the past few decades, but the real buying power of consumers has declined simultaneously. For lower-skilled white-collar workers, this means more hours worked and less time to make friends. For higher-skilled white-collar workers, this means more competition (adding a lowered ability to make friendships without having conflicts of business interest) and exponentially more relocating (and losing support systems upon moving).

• In a very real manner, this is what my dad was telling me about, and the life he leads. It may seem far-fetched, but in a society where you live to work, this is a huge barrier to interpersonal connection. Men like my dad have accepted this as reality; I refuse to do so.

I think this likely explains the rise of loneliness for two groups of men: working-age men in general, and high-achieving male teenagers who understand the gravitas of the 21st-century labor market. I lowkey hate like 80% of the people I’ve met in a competitive academic setting for this reason — because of our conflicting interests in this zero-sum game. I wish I didn’t have to. A lot of them seem like really cool people.

Wow! That sucks! #corporatism

But the second is on how hyper-sexualization of women has shifted romantic priorities. As I write this, I realize how many directions this post is coming from, but fuck it. Platonic relationships + romantic relationships = total emotional sustenance, so it’s worth covering. Again, a few prongs to this.

• I was talking to my Macro teacher the other day about how dangerous pornography has been to young men in society. The average 13-year-old has more access to tits than King Solomon, who had 700 wives. On a serious note, the advent of internet porn has increased precocity / sexual violence, and has fried the dopamine receptors of countless men in our generation. As a result, our generation’s men value sex appeal more than qualitative indicators of successful relationships, like shared values or personality.

• Dating apps are responsible for the majority of dates, interactions, and marriages in the modern day. This has shifted male incentive structures in a more superficial direction; again, instead of using nuanced measures of compatibility, it’s all about how horny you are after looking at 3 pictures on Tinder.

• Dating apps p. 2 — surprisingly, Generation Z is having less sex. But it’s no surprise when you examine the logical extension of the aforementioned trend. Data from these dating apps show that because people pick off looks other than more redeeming factors, people on dating apps only select people ~25% more attractive than them. This means average-looking people get very few matches, concentrating sexual intimacy solely among the most attractive people.

• Even for those of us who refuse to download dating apps (I will never fucking bend on this stance), the shift in social narrative is powerful enough. If the trend on the macro is the majority of society increasingly valuing looks, even those of us in la résistance subconsciously shift our values.

All of that is to say — hypersexualization and overvaluation of sex appeal have led to both less compatible romantic relationships and less relationships in general. And with recognizance that humans need meaningful sex, this furthers anti-social, lonely sentiment.

If you’re a younger dude reading this, please stop watching porn.

On a side note, I’m at a coffee shop writing this at 8:32 PM. There is one other dude in the store, and I think the barista is his girlfriend. They seem very in love, and he’s been here for at least four hours waiting for her. Not all hope is lost!!

The final theory is on hyper-connectivity driving lower-quality interpersonal interactions. Admittedly, this argument is based in my own predilection and is based less in logic / literature than the other two.

• Our mode of interpersonal exchange has inconvertibly shifted towards a more virtual scene, especially post-pandemic.

• That being said, four words: more interactions, lower quality. This is the trend that online interactions take, which means on an overarch, interactions have just gotten worse over time. And given they trade off with in-person interactions — even when we’re engaged with others, we feel less fulfilled.

The reason I cover this is simple. The former two disaffect older men; this one disaffects the average high school male.

6

The TL:DR; is simple — I think we’re in a ‘recession of male intimacy’ because our work lives impede genuine friendships, our sex culture impedes genuine romances, and our technology impedes our interactions; across all male demographics.

This isn’t something that should be glossed over. It’s what validates all the statistics at the top of this about male disillusionment. It’s what leads men to live unfulfilling lives in the status quo. And maybe this is all a huge cope, but it’s something I think a lot of my own issues stem from.

Let me start this section off with a shoutout to feminists. I am the ultimate women lover, and I have to give credit to women for being the only people talking about the ills of masculinity. In fact, look up ‘male loneliness’, and the first 20 results are all by women.

However — and with all due respect — the vast supermajority of those articles are off the mark. It’s as if a white dude tried writing about the ‘POC experience’ in America. If you haven’t lived it, you don’t know it.

And while the good-faith attempt at reconciling the emotional damage I outlined in the last section is hugely commendable, the dominant media narrative / solution that’s currently spearheaded is misguided. That narrative? The feminist narrative of ‘deconstructing toxic masculinity’ — an amorphous push for men to be more open with their emotions, thus making the structural issues I just outlined easier to deal with.

A few examples below, from that same search query:

• “Practice vulnerability!” — Catherine Pearson for the New York Times, “Why Is It So Hard for Men to Make Close Friends?”, 11/28/22

• “Prioritize [your] emotional and mental health…” — Shanita Hubbard for Vox, “Why I will only date men who go to therapy”, 01/28/20

• “All boys should talk about their feelings.” — June Gruber, Jessica Borelli for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good, “Why We Should Help Boys Embrace All Their Feelings”, 02/22/18

• “It is necessary for men to cry!” — Shreya Kumar for the India Times, “Why It Is Okay And Necessary For Men To Cry!”, 03/01/17

One critical aside here. Deconstructing toxic masculinity, in the long term, is necessary and an incredibly good idea. The patriarchy hurts everybody, and I know that firsthand; encouraging young men to adhere to a narrower range of emotions is definitively harmful. That said, it’s an implausible solution in the short term to actually remap male emotional problems and this ‘deficit of intimacy’.

Why, you ask?

Because it doesn’t meet men where we’re at.

I’ll draw an analogy to harm reduction in the context of drug addiction. Because yes — gender dynamics that isolate people to the point of depression are probably in the realm of similar harm.

The concept of harm reduction, for those of you who might not know, is a strategy that meets drug users ‘where they’re at’, and utilizes strategies like supervised consumption (when you go to a medical professional who weans you off the substance in smaller and smaller doses). Obviously, drug usage isn’t optimal in general, but the concept is that asking people to ‘just say no’ to drugs doesn’t really solve anything.

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The smarter strategy, then, is to provide the strongest possible support system, while reducing dependency on these substances. To some degree, it is a strategy where users have their ‘hands held every step of the way’. I think men’s failure to process emotions is much in the same, especially in the context of this ‘intimacy recession’.

On more serious footing, the social conditioning of masculinity is extremely overbearing. Thus, asking men to ‘talk about their feelings’ or ‘practice vulnerability’ is about as effective as asking a drug user to ‘stop using’.

It’s really not that easy.

I think the counterfactual makes a lot more sense, although it is not necessarily a socially popular narrative. It is an approach of harm reduction to men currently struggling with loneliness, and meeting men where they are. It is being conscientious that social conditioning for most men makes it so urging us to ‘cry more’ or ‘prioritize emotional health’ doesn’t translate to action. It is recognizing that social androgyny is not a reality.

Again, these are incredibly effective coping mechanisms. They are good for you. Some of them, like vulnerability, even help to build the emotionally-sustainable relationships men like me so desperately desire.

But for most men, they are not accessible. Because it is not possible to simply ‘unlearn’ decades of social conditioning.

I’ll explain this by spitballing a bunch of factors I think make up male social conditioning in the modern day.

• Males are taught to live in service of others; the ‘doing for others’ mentality

• Males are told to bond with each other around commonalities of such service, exemplified through military service or team sports

• Males are taught to fight for pride; i.e. egoism is a fundamental part of the modern male identity

• Males are incentivized to be emotional bedrocks of stability, both in the dating market and within family units

See where the disconnect is? A society that conditions men to put others first (while being simultaneously prideful, synergistic, and callous) might sound good on surface, but it leads to generations of emotionally-damaged men whose internal conflict is more powerful than their altruism. A subset of activists telling those emotionally-damaged men that they should be more vulnerable (to check back against structural issues of loneliness), in a position where they have never adequately learned to do so, is thus not a constructive narrative.

Guys, again, I shit you not. I literally cannot cry. Telling me to do so really doesn’t help me.

8

I will get back into the optimal, ‘harm reduction’ approach of resolving this issue in just a bit. But before I do, I want to briefly highlight why that actually matters. And by matters, I mean matters to everyone, and not just men.

This is very straightforward. There is a reason that Proud Boys recruiters specifically target communities of lonely men. There is a reason that neo-Nazis stem up from incel forums on the internet (see: MGTOW and its ties to white nationalism). There is a reason why far-right movements like the Alternative für Deutschland draw demographically from unmarried millennials. There is a reason that lonely young boys, as social outcasts, turn to horrible misogynists like Andrew Tate.

The list goes on, but the principle remains.

A boy who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. — African proverb

It is dangerous to view male loneliness in a vacuum. Because loneliness is the lighter fluid to the fire that is extremism — an extremism that particularly targets marginalized people.

And even in the absolute best case, where a lonely young man grows up in enough of a ‘granola, NPR-listening’ liberal family (and doesn’t get sucked into the alt-right)? He’s still emotionally confused, and grows up to be an unfulfilling partner in relationships with women. Liberal men are actually just as likely to cheat than any other ideology, and get divorced at similar rates as well.

This issue is not an issue of isolated concern. It is an issue that threatens structural violence and decay in all of society.

9

With that in mind, we’re approaching the end. At risk of being overly prescriptive, I’d just like to throw one solution into the void.

The cultural nexus that I’ve argued throughout this post was this: men are aggressively lonely > the currently proposed solution of ‘men ditching toxic masculinity’ lacks actionable nuance > that’s dangerous.

What if we instead embraced, as a harm reduction strategy to male loneliness, bits and pieces of traditional masculinity?

Not all of it, but rather, a small portion. A portion to serve as a meeting ground.

I think this is rather intelligent. There is a very insightful quote from the book Fuck Feelings by Michael Bennett that I’ll plug here.

“When my in-laws show up, the first thing my mother-in-law does is hug and kiss everybody and tell them how much she loves them and missed them, and the first thing my father-in-law does is change all the lightbulbs and make sure we have enough batteries.”

I also want to plug a story from an anonymous Reddit user that I found judicious. For context, she found her retiree husband in depressive loneliness and found some solutions.

Find something he is skilled in that he can offer his help with in the community. It gives a built in topic, boosts the ego, and puts him in an altruistic position of doing for others, all of which men are culturally conditioned for. My husband found being a volunteer handyman rewarding, and got out of his shell with others in the same boat.

I think this is a profoundly interesting idea — to build a society around opportunities for men to interact naturally. Nurturing institutions, spaces, opportunities, and narratives that don’t drag men out of their conditioning forcibly. Things as simple as volunteer handyman opportunities — even at the age of 18, that’s something I would fucking cherish.

I recognize this is a rather underdeveloped solution, if I can even call it that. But I think it is a very good first step in the short term if similar models could be implemented en masse, at least to create some risk management against extremism and male depression. To maybe shift the narrative perspective a tad bit.

And if this were to happen? I think most men would even be healthier in their romantic interactions with women; not driven by desperation or dragged down by a lack of a support system.

10

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’ll end with this.

I have plenty of intimate desires. I want to hear my dad tell me that he loves me. I want to get love letters from a girl again. I want to not feel lonely on Sunday nights. But I live in a society where that’s just all fucking awkward and hard and messy to figure out.

And until that’s possible, being a volunteer handyman is just fine. It’s probably all I have.

— SJY, 04.16.23