Do men struggle with friendships because we're too competitive?

It is well documented how lonely and miserable middle-aged men in the UK are. The most recent stats suggest that 15% of men aged between 45 and 64 have no close friends. Making new mates becomes harder as soon as you leave full-time education, but if you’re an excitable, people-pleasing over-sharer with loudmouth tendencies like me, you will keep trying. Only this morning, I was at the drive-through car wash when I tried to strike up a chat with the Albanian chap who’d just finished my wax dry. 

“Lovely job, pal,” I said. “You know they’re charging double for the same service round at the Pig and Whistle car park? Outrageous innit? Anyway, doing anything nice this weekend?”

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Before I could ask him if he fancied a drink, he shoved out his little card reader device and said, “20 pounds”, in a manner so cold and transactional, I immediately deduced that he wasn’t looking for friendship. Oh well.

I have old mates I try to stay in touch with. But many of them are so rooted in the past. I had a drink with a bloke I went to university with the other day. He couldn’t stop ranting about his failure to make the first 11 of the uni football team in the mid-90s. He seemed irked that another mate of ours had managed to get in, despite what he saw as his lesser abilities. “He only got picked because he spread a rumour he’d had trials for Spurs,” he grumbled into his rum and coke. 

“Just leave it mate, it’s all in the past,” I said. But I don’t think my words helped. Like me, he has just turned 50. He has a nice family and a successful career. Yet I feel as if he may never be truly happy as long as the injustices of University of Sussex FC’s selection committee during the John Major era live rent free in his mind.

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People talk about men being too busy or stressed to maintain friendships. But the real problem is that men are raised to be competitive and never show vulnerability. From boyhood, we are conditioned to frame every peer interaction as a contest. It might be subtle and unspoken, but we engage in a never ending game of one-upmanship about strength, athleticism and success with girls. We apply the same attitudes to career and money as we age. It can be exhausting. Tiny perceived losses become a source of overwhelming regret.

I have friends who are so riddled with this stuff that I avoid talking about anything that might be construed as personal success. Sometimes, I even lie about how things are going in my life, for fear that any hint of bragging will trigger ill-feeling. I stick to talking bollocks: the sort of beautiful, silly nonsense that male friends are so good at passing the time with. It’s easier to try to make each other laugh than dig down into any of the deeper elements of our lives. 

As I get older, I’m increasingly willing to be vulnerable. Dignity is a slightly overrated quality: often it manifests as bravado, or an unwillingness to display one’s true self, with all the human flaws and failures we carry around. I’ve got no problem with sharing mine any more. Being a bit rubbish at football helped me a great deal. I loved to play though I was not very good. Most of my mates were better than I was – some brilliant. When they got picked in teams or won trophies, I felt so proud of them.  

The fact that I was so far off their level allowed me to enjoy playing at my own speed without getting all sharp-elbowed about it. I now apply a similar attitude to all elements of life: I focus on taking pleasure and little wins in everything I do, on my terms. I try not to measure my successes against other people’s. And I take pride in the successes of the people I love.

Life isn’t a competition. Remember that, and keeping friendships becomes easier. As for making new friends, as the lads at my local car wash will testify, I need to keep working on it.

Read more from Sam Delaney on his Substack.

His new book Stop Sh**ting Yourself: 15 Life Lessons That Might Help You Calm the F*ck Down is out now (Little, Brown, £22) and is available from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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