Ken Solin

A recent poll found that women have on average, six close friends. Men have one or none. There are many reasons for this, but the one reason that has come up frequently in my years of working with men, is lack of trust. Boys are taught to compete from the time they are very young which doesn’t encourage friendship. They compete for girls, and later on, women. They compete in sports and for jobs. There is simply nothing in their histories that encourages men to become close with other men.

That’s incredibly sad since most men have no one they feel comfortable confiding in. Men end up living their solo lives in emotional vacuums, relegated to second-guessing themselves every time they face important decisions. Some men think a friend is the guy next door they go to a ball game with once a year, or play ball with on Saturday mornings. Others consider men they work with to be friends. These are acquaintances, not friends.

A true friend is someone you can confide in with absolute trust, someone you can talk with about anything you are facing in your life. A friend will stand by you steadfastly when you are in need and offer his unconditional support. That’s the difference between friends and acquaintances.

Where can men who are all alone in the world go to make friends? What I know from nearly twenty years’ working with men is that men’s groups offer the kind of absolute, unconditional friendship most men seek. The men in your men’s group are friends for life.

Think about leaving your lonely planet and making the kinds of friends you always imagined you’d have, but don’t. Join a men’s group, and if you can’t find one, start your own. Make real friends and you won’t have to make believe the men you know casually are going to be there for you when you need someone to be. Stop lone-wolfing it. Move beyond your fear and mistrust and enrich your life with men who truly care about you.

A man who lives his life without other men exists in an emotional vacuum. Since he has no back-up, he is forced to second guess every important decision he makes. He fears and mistrusts other men. His relationships with women fail because his solitary status automatically forces a woman to be his entire universe, a burden no woman can carry for long.

I was a lone wolf until forty, until the pain of that isolation forced me to dig deep into my psyche and figure out my problem. I managed to work through this painful issue by working with other like minded men in a men’s group I began eighteen years ago.

I wasn’t the only lone wolf in that group, and I’ve learned from talking with hundreds of men that this condition is pervasive and common. When asked why they have no friends, nearly all respond that they don’t know why, and wish they knew how to connect with other men as friends.

In my group, the lone wolves had nearly universal bad relationships with their fathers. Since a boy learns trust from his father at an early age, he can also learn not to trust men at an early age.

The issue of being a loner is fairly simple to work through with the help of other men who are willing to listen and share their own experiences. No man has to spend his life alone. He can leave his island anytime he chooses to. His lifeline is other like minded men who have learned the value of what I term collective male wisdom. Eight, forty year old men have over 300 years of collective male wisdom to share with each other.

Stop standing on the sidelines and get into the game.