Grief makes it worse. One guy loses his wife, another loses his job, and suddenly all the scaffolding falls away. Who catches you then? Not always family. Often it’s friends. The ones who show up, not to “fix” things (God, no, that doesn’t work), but just to sit. To sit and not leave. Like driving to a park and waiting in silence, or calling just to talk about anything but the heavy stuff. That’s friendship too. Presence. Consistency. It’s underrated.

Funny thing, though most men aren’t trained to make those kinds of friendships. Childhood? Easy. Soccer teams, school, neighbors. Then adulthood happens. Work takes over. Pride kicks in. Vulnerability gets locked up tight. Before you know it, you’ve got plenty of acquaintances but no one you can call at 2 a.m. And when the activity ends job done, team dissolves, gym fades the friendships vanish too. Poof. Just gone.

The stats are brutal. Back in 1990, more than half of men had six or more close friends. Now? Barely a quarter. And the number with no close friends none at all jumped fivefold. It’s not just sad, it’s dangerous. Men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women. Four. That’s not a coincidence. That’s loneliness playing out in real time.

So how do you fix it? Honestly, you don’t “fix” it like a broken chair. You build it. Slowly. Shared challenges help. Run a race together, take on something hard, sweat, curse, laugh it breaks walls down. Brotherhood forged in exhaustion. Or maybe it’s just sending a dumb text: “thinking of you.” Tiny things matter. Vulnerability matters too (hardest part, always). But if you let people in, the payoff? Massive.

Friendship won’t cure everything. But sometimes it’s enough. Enough to keep you standing when the grief hits, enough to stop the spiral, enough to make life feel less empty. And maybe maybe that’s the point. Not perfection. Not constant happiness. Just not being alone in the mess of it all.