Saturn Returns with Caggie - 6.11 Lets talk about male friendships with Max Dickins

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Author of ‘Billy No-Mates: How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem’ Max Dickins joins Caggie on the podcast today to explore the story behind the book.  Max shares his own experience of realising his own loneliness before he dove into research about the ‘male friendship problem’; the difference between a friendship between two men, compared to other genders; and how men can work on themselves in order to face the fear of being vulnerable.  They also discuss how women often take on a lot of the support and social life on behalf of the men in their life; and how men can start being more vulnerable and open with their male friends.  --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. I think often men have their friendships with other men. They're built for comfort, not confession. We almost ring fence our male friendships for something else. And often what intimacy looks like between men is not what it looks like between two women or a man and a woman. Often intimacy for men is almost the empathy of not going there. On this week's episode of Saturn Returns,

I am joined by author, speaker, screenwriter and comedian Max Dickens. Max and I grew up together in the Isle of Wight and have been family friends for a really long time. And so I was so excited to have him on the podcast. In this conversation, we explore friendships because Max has recently written a book called Billy No Mates, which explores the dynamics of male friendships. This is something I know many of you struggle with, especially during your Saturn return as friendship dynamics shift. So I was really excited to have this conversation with Max to unpack the differences in gender and how we approach friendships. the differences in gender and how we approach friendships. For instance, I found it particularly interesting how he told me that when men get together and they gather, it tends to be more of an escapism from their real life and they tend to orchestrate it around activities, whereas women

tend to come together and dissect every aspect of their life. I know I do that with my female friends. As we've had many female guests on this show, I really enjoyed getting the male perspective on a really important subject. I hope you enjoy this episode and find it useful. Before we get into this episode, let's check in with our astrological guide, Nora. Saturn return and Saturn transits at times have the effect of confronting us with our life but also with the knowing that we will all pass on. So the inevitable melancholy that comes with this means that we start to look within us at first but then also around us. What are we connected to or more importantly whom are we connecting with. The best way to navigate these waters of melancholy, loneliness, is to first acknowledge that

yes we're born alone and we die alone regardless of who is around us and in knowing this there's a comfort ironically, a true comfort to be found for it's the only certitude we have after all and with that certitude something else emerges. Authenticity. And when we become our most authentic selves, we inevitably start to align with the kind of life we desire to live, but also the kinds of people we'd like to surround ourselves with.

Because even though life can feel long, it is incredibly short. And that's what Saturn reminds us of, of time and the gift of life we've been given. It teaches us to make sure that when we look back at our lives, that we've used our time and life force in the most sovereign manner, and that those we connected with, those that we loved and lost, those we cried with and laughed with, that they would have been chosen with intention. Saturn also teaches us that although loneliness might blur our vision at times, it never truly means that we are alone. For all we are to do is to step out there and find those whose hearts have been yearning for the very same thing we have, connection. Max, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. For the audience that doesn't

know, Max and I have known each other, I mean, we've known each other since babies. Pretty much babies, yeah. I was trying to think how old we were when we first met. Which was in the Isle of Wight. I was actually laughing when I was reading your book when you were talking about your dad and phone calls with him. I was like, well, I know him and I could imagine that. And too, that's kind of what my dad's like a little bit. But before we get too into it, because you've recently written an incredible book. How's the whole experience been? It's been good. It's really connected with people, which has been great. And it's about a subject that I think we don't talk about enough. And I've tried to write a book about men, the sort of bloke who would not engage in a conversation on this topic or on mental health more generally might lean in and go, do you know what?

Yeah, I'll try that because it's hopefully a funny look at the subject. Quite a serious subject. Yeah. Because our audience is quite heavily female. Hi, guys. But I think that this is such an important subject to talk about because it's giving it, you know, through a different lens. Yeah.

What made you decide to write about this? We keep on not mentioning the subject. What, about male friendship yeah yeah um so i wrote billy no mates because i had a personal experience which really surprised me so i was planning on proposing to my then girlfriend naomi and i went as far as going to hatton garden in london shopping for an engagement ring with Philippa and Hope, my former flatmates in tow. And we spent all day searching for this ring. And finally, we go and have a drink. And then Philippa says to me, so who are you going to have as best man? And my mind went blank. And I assumed,

well, that's the Pinot Grigio talking, or not, as it were. And I just can't think of anyone in the moment, but there must be someone right so I go home that night get some paper out and a pen and I make a list of all the people all the guys in my life I might consider as best man and when I look down the list I realized that I worked with half of them we had little contact outside of that and some of the other guys hadn't spoken to in one two three years and I just thought oh my god where have all my friends gone and I whenever we hit a personal crisis we leap into Google and like am I mad and I looked looked it up and actually this has been around for a long time male friendlessness and men's friendship problem

and I thought I want to try and solve this for myself and then along the way try and tell a story that can help men solve it for themselves in their life as well did you think it was a youth thing as opposed to a male thing or did you connect those two quite quickly it's interesting because loneliness doesn't look like me like if you're listening to this i'm what six seven not meant to laugh that hard at that uh i'm i'm 34 now i'm pretty outgoing quick to buy my round i'm not the archetypal person you think of when you think of someone who might go do you know what i'm struggling in the friendship department but increasingly it's true of a lot of people of my age and beyond. So I was very busy.

I was busy with my girlfriend's friends. I was busy doing family stuff, busy with work. So it wasn't like I felt completely isolated. It's only when I had to audit my social life and go, oh, who have I got who's meaningful and close to me? I realized that cupboard was quite bare. I guess, like you say, people rarely actually kind of take that inventory to kind of go actually who are my really close friends and especially if they're in a relationship with someone that kind of takes care of that side of things which I think is common but I don't

necessarily think that always becomes gender specific to the role of the woman I know that's kind of what you've uncovered but I related to a lot of what you talked about in the book from my experience. Really, that's interesting. I'd love to hear about that, and especially around who runs the social world in a romantic relationship, because I think that's a key part of the conversation. When I looked at the research and you asked me, did I think it was a me problem or a men problem? I mainly thought it was a me problem and I was quite embarrassed by it. But the research I found really interesting. So men have two main problems when it comes to friendship. The first one is that while men might have a few mates, so mates they play football with,

mates from the pub workmates they tend to lack intimacy in their friendships the properly close friends so as an example the movember foundation which is a men's mental health charity did some research recently which estimated that one in three men had no close friends at all and they asked that same group of blokes how many people could you talk to someone about something, a problem, whether it be a health problem, work problem, relationship problem. And half of those men asked,

couldn't think of anyone at all. So that's one thing. The second thing is what sociologists call shrinkage, which is quite a boring word for something quite simple. Our social life, men or women, peaks in our late teens, early 20s. We might recognise that. It's quite a depressing thought. But if you look at the research, that's when we have the biggest social group

and it gets worse and worse as we get older. But is that because life gets more and more serious and we have other priorities and then kids and blah, blah, blah. So suddenly they kind of take up yeah they don't have as much space anymore yeah absolutely so the biggest uh limiting factor in social relationships is time which is kind of quite obvious but the kind of how close that relationship is was maybe what surprised me but you're right like you hit 30 maybe you your job gets more serious perhaps you're in a serious romantic relationship,

some people have children, you have less time for friends. So all of us, our social world shrinks. But if you look at the sex difference there, it happens a lot worse for men than it does for women. So generally in our 20s, men have a bigger social network than women on average. By the time they've got into their 40s, that's flipped on its head. And when this gets serious, it's at the pinch points in life. So if you look at, for example, when men might get divorced, or might suffer a bereavement, or when they retire, they suffer worse mental and physical health outcomes than women because they are more isolated and you mentioned earlier about who who runs the social life in a couple generally and this is not true of everyone

but it's certainly true of me and if you look at the research it's true for a lot of men men treat the women in their relationship like the hr department they should have outsourced everything. Like, you handle that. I'll be over here watching sports. What did you say about if you were really honest and you introduced your girlfriend, you would say that? If you introduce your girlfriend at a wedding,

you'd say, this is Claudia, my wife, and the director of people operations at Jeff Limited. That's so good. But this is, I think we recognise this in beyond relationships. I thought about my parents and sociologists

who study this call it kin keeping. Essentially kin keeping is who does the work of keeping families together, right? So who organises Christmas? Who organises

the family holidays? Who makes sure that they check in with Aunty Sal who's just had a mole removed, right? It tends to be the women. It's not the man. It's not the man, ever. And then this extends into like the social world. And I realized I've

been going out with Naomi, my now wife, for a few years. And I just thought, wow, I've just essentially cuckolded her social group. And her mates are now my mates. And I've just essentially cuckolded her social group and her mates are now my mates and I've stopped making any effort with my friends. And this is not always terrible. A lot of her friends, not a lot of them, all her friends are, apart from Sal, you are a nightmare. Sal number two. Two Sals going on in this conversation. But it's not necessarily healthy that

because men often lean on women for all that support, whether it be socially or emotionally. And it's interesting, I think you say like a lot of the listeners to your podcast are women. And I think women invest a lot more in this stuff in terms of personal development. in terms of personal development. I feel like these conversations, and that's why I'm so glad you're here, are so important for men, if not more so at the moment than for women, because women are constantly having them with each other.

But I don't think it's that men don't want to, it's that they don't create the spaces for it. Because if we bring it back to what you were just talking about, when our social lives are much bigger, let's say, and we have more friends when we're in our teens to early twenties, it's because we're all also, I think, going out a lot more, going to parties,

so you're seeing a lot of people all the time. So I was thinking when you were saying that, I was like, it's changed a lot for me, not only because I've got other responsibilities, but my lifestyle choices have changed. So when I'm not like, if I'm not going out and drinking, it means that I'm more inclined to want to see people one-on-one

for a more proper conversation, rather than going to a party where I kind of feel a bit uncomfortable. And you spoke about sort of the discomfort of parties, but I don't, I feel that myself. And then the kin keeping piece which you know Max just explained was keeping you know relationships going and family and organizing things I was like I have kin keepers in my life and I can honestly name them I have like

two two probably three main kin keepers who are all female who are sort of my lifelines to society and if it wasn't for them i would just probably stay in on my own and watch netflix all the time so it's interesting because i related to a lot so i wonder like how much of it is you know the sex biology piece and we'll get into whether it's just so socialized and or how much it is biology or also come down to like personality traits yeah it definitely does so one of the world experts of this stuff who i have spoke to several times it's a guy called dr robin dunbar so he's a evolutionary anthropologist by training but he's regarded as the godfather of friendship research so he looked at personality type and how it affects this stuff. And introverts have a much smaller social group than extroverts. But what's interesting about the difference here as well is that if you think about the amount of social time and energy you have,

extroverts tend to spread it thinly around lots of people and that's what they want. Lots of relationships, not necessarily very deep, strong ones, but they like hanging out with lots of different people, changing it up all the time, which is fine. Introverts tend to apply that time and energy in a much more concentrated, intense way. So they'll have a few much closer relationships. So it's interesting you talk about, you don't attend so many parties anymore.

You sort of opted out of that a little bit. I completely understand why. Are you making a personal reference? I completely understand why are you making a personal reference i completely understand why you wouldn't be invited to this um that's why people start podcasts by the way they you know no one's invited to parties no one with a good social life's got a podcast guys come on it's a load of losers not really but then you mentioned you've got more one-on-one friends and you like having those conversations more in depth and so personality type is a big thing and i think a big thing connected here is you say party versus one-on-one is context so i notice a lot a lot of the way men

often socialize will be around the pub or around a sport or an activity yeah and that that you literally you're not going to have enough one-on-one moments or space to talk about something beyond what you're doing often but that's intentional so we're now kind of getting into like causes so men seem to have a friendship problem so like why is that on the one hand it's like well why are men not talking about not able to have these intense conversations and a lot of it's like well maybe it's something to do with masculinity so it's you know we will not be intimate with a another guy because we conflate it with maybe it being gay or it being feminine maybe we are ashamed of talking about things which make us look not strong or not competent and and then there's this theory psychologists I spoke to or therapists I spoke to said you know

if men can have better conversations and learn how to, inverted commas, do intimacy, then that will help them have much better friendships. I actually went to talk about investing in yourself. I'd never done therapy before in my life. And I was not cynical about it. I just thought it's not really for me. It's for someone with a very, you've got something serious going on. I thought, I'm fine. I've just got no friends, absolutely healthy. Completely normal. But it was in the lockdown, so I started doing these weekly therapy sessions.

And after about four months of having these sessions, and I thought slightly going in circles, the therapist said, the thing is with EMAX is you can talk about anything in an intellectual or a funny way, the therapist said, the thing is with you, Max, is you can talk about anything in an intellectual or a funny way, but your friends don't think you can ever go there with them. So they don't think, if they shared, that you could reciprocate.

Because you don't present yourself in that way. Absolutely. Then she said, so it's no wonder that you don't have any friends. And I was like, oh, that's a bit of a haymaker. Because after four months, I could hardly deny that there was sufficient evidence for that. And you sort of, I like it's being kicked down a staircase, sort of falling down the spiral staircase, going right back into your past going like, oh, yeah, maybe there is a lot of truth to this. So a lot of this is about vulnerability and being able to do that, going first with that and permissions. So in a conversation with another guy or a group of guys,

what is the permissions there? And often the permission is not there to talk about anything beyond the superficial because you're bantered back into shape. So I think a lot of the male way of relating is around humour and around quite aggressive humour. And that can be brilliant. It can be its own form of intimacy

one of the best things and which also you know can bring obviously in a healthy dose a lot of joy because it can be quite amusing and i've experienced it with male friends when like i've got i once ended up in a situation i went on holiday with just a group of guys did you and it was when i'd just gone sober as well and i knew they were all quite aggressive drinkers and i was like oh my god this is gonna be so and i didn't know half of them i thought it would be really challenging but we had so much fun but whenever i would like try and like engage in the things that i talk about they'd be like just just don't take life so seriously can i go right i just can't calm down. But actually, that's really what I needed. So it's kind of, you need a balance of the two,

but they also were just like, let's not talk about the serious stuff. But actually I needed the silliness, you know, because I didn't have enough of that in my life. So- Yeah, that's really, that's a brilliant story. And I think a really good illustration of how complex this thing is.

So when I spoke to loads of people when I was writing my book, and I spoke to men and women, and I said, what do you like about being friends with blokes? What do you like being friends with the opposite sex? And women would often say, the reasons I love being friends with men and how a lot of my best friends are male is all the things that the psychologists were saying is what is wrong with men. It's that, oh, men are obsessed with humour. All they do is play games all what is wrong with men. It's like, oh, men are obsessed with humour. All they do is play games all day. Everything's shallow.

It's simple. It's uncomplicated. And is there a real sort of tension there? Because I was being told on the one hand, this is what you're going to do. It's not going to be like that. Yeah. And then a lot of women are being like, ah, love it.

That's why I like you. You're like, I don't know what to do. But the way I liken it is is can you go through the gears hopefully now i've learned i can go to fourth and fifth gears if i need to in a conversation with a man a woman whatever so i can go there but you don't always want to be in fourth and fifth sometimes you want to idle in third i'm just getting very specific this analogy sometimes you want to you know also it's about knowing how to go there with someone else and i i know from guy friends that are kind of going through a similar thing that you're talking about and trying to test the water with their male friends that perhaps the the normal way of communicating is very much like banter just it's

like such a like an automatic thing because i've heard them on the phone i'm like that's it switches but then trying to develop a deeper sense of intimacy often gets i don't want to say rejected because i don't think it's that conscious, but there's a lot of resistance there because I think, you know, our ability to relate intimately with another is a correlation in a mirror to how we can relate intimately with ourselves. So if you want to go there and I don't have the capacity, I'm going to push that away. And I think that that can be quite stalling for men because then they think oh well that just got rejected or I tried to open up this conversation and I got it got shoved back so I don't I don't feel safe to kind of bring that to the table anymore so is that something that you found when you try to kind of exercise this yeah absolutely um I think you're absolutely

right it's got to start with yourself you've got at first you've got to do this sort of inner work what a phrase you've got to do that stuff so you're able to go there and you have the vocabulary of intimacy he said not being able to say the word vocabulary so you've got you've got to be able to do that but you're right if it's not going to be honored by the other person if you don't feel there's that thing between you where you have that permission and it starts i think with people turning towards your vulnerability and listening to it and not shaming it maybe responding to it with their own there's this idea it comes from aristotle who was like obviously ancient greek philosopher still regarded as one of the

major thinkers historically about friendship. He says one of the things about friends and why it's so important in terms of our development and so important in our life is friends are mirrors. So we get to know ourselves through what is reflected back in our friend. And we get a lot of self-knowledge through that, a lot of insight, whether it be on our problems or on who we are. But I think that analogy is slightly, it's not quite right. It's almost right.

Because if you think about what people are, is we can often only reflect back what we're capable of reflecting back. We tend to reflect back in our own image, in our own warped image. So often I think in male groups, if it's guys who haven't done that transformation to be able to do intimacy, change their relationship with themselves, like you've said, what will be reflected back about you will not show you in your multiple dimensions. And that's when I think you tend to have a relationship which is only based on one version of yourself.

So to kind of put it back to women again, obviously I knew you growing up and we grew up together through different summers. And my kind of memory of social groups then is that even in our teens, boys would seek out girls to have those conversations with because they wouldn't have them with blokes and they would lean on the women in the social group, which is fine. And it's kind of a nod to how much men see that emotional acuity in women. But actually that they need it. There is a part of them that needs that and to communicate that way. Absolutely. But the point is is it's then saved exclusively for often the relationship yes save for your romantic relationship or for your female

friends and that i think puts a lot of burden on on the women like i've got a friend called philippa who was the one you lived with i would live with yeah um but she's always like she texted me going like i think you should call tom i think tom needs to have a conversation or you should chat to clive clive's made up but but she's saying like because they'll confide in her rather than confide in me or she's like the the switchboard as in you're talking about each other to her yeah oh right Oh right, and she's just like, I've got shit to do, just fucking pick up the phone. Absolutely, pick up the phone and do it yourself. And why don't you?

Well, I'm doing it more and more, but I think often men have their friendships with other men, they're built for comfort, not confession. So it's a mixture of what we've kind of spoken about already, like, do I feel there's permission there? But also, we almost ring fence our male friendships for something else. And what it often what intimacy looks like between men is not what it looks like between two women or a man and a woman. Often intimacy for men is almost the empathy of not going there, keeping it simple. Like you said about the holiday, it's like this.

This is not that space. Exactly. And I think holidays are a great metaphor for actually, like when you go to the pub with mates, like we're on holiday here, guys. I don't want to talk about my marriage. I don't want to talk about my kids or work. I want to talk about crisps. Who remembers Golden Wonders crisps?

I want to talk about crisps. Who remembers Golden Wonders crisps? Because you say in the book how, you know, when you, and I've seen a famous comedian have a similar thing on stage about when he goes to the pub and comes back and the wife is like, so what's going on with Paul? What happened with Mike? Is he like having another baby? And the guy's like, I have no idea.

We haven't talked about that at all. But then what do you talk about crisps what do we talk about we talk about crisps this is this is the amazing thing is you can leave a conversation

with men or one your male friend and go like we filled three hours with stuff I can't remember any of it is there ever

a part of you in those moments that's like, I really wish I could talk about this, but I don't feel I can? Or is it more like you're on holiday? So this is the thing is often there is, yes. And I think I've started thinking about this a lot more since I turned into my thirties and beyond. And now when I'm with male friends,

it feels like we're playing with more stakes. So there's bigger stuff going on. and beyond. And now when I'm with male friends, it feels like we're playing with more stakes. So there's bigger stuff going on. A friend the other day, he had like a cancer scare, had to have something, you know, thankfully benign tumor carve his neck. Somebody lost a baby with his partner, you know, big stuff. So if you can't handle those conversations, then that's not great. And actually, while the male form of intimacy, I think is underlooked in conversations about this, I do think the other form of really feeling like you're known by the other person, they know you does require vulnerability and reciprocated vulnerability. So it's absolutely a key part of that.

And I don't think, and when I spoke to a developmental psychologist, how do we become like that? That's kind of the question. So any study going pretty much will say that men are less emotionally expressive than women. But it's not that they're less emotional. Well, no, I don't think it is.

So why are they more reluctant? Why have they not developed that vocabulary? He did that one on pub. We'll let you have that one. So drunk. Is it because we don't socialise them? And there's quite a lot of interesting research around this. Biology versus... Yeah. So then that quite a lot of interesting research around this. Biology versus...

Yeah. So then that's kind of, that's the second thing I looked at then. So if it was about culture and how we bring up boys and how we treat men and represent men in society, I think that's a big part of it. And certainly my therapist was sort of trying to work with me on that stuff and explore all of this.

And I kind of get into it in more depth in the book. Then the second thing is, is kind of came to me like the second cause that I thought we needed to look at it was the research on men and friendship. They started measuring all this stuff. So social networks, kind of early 70s, social scientists start looking into it.

And since then, men have had less friends than women, especially less close friends, as we've kind of covered already. But it's not got better. And in fact, a lot of people recently, and it's not just the pandemic, have talked about a friendship recession for men. So it may even be getting worse. But if it was about masculinity, it was about culture, we can see it all around us. men have got a way to go on that journey but men are very different now i think about even when we were teenagers that kind of male role models were like very like laddy it was like the lads mag generation i remember like fhm maxim maybe you weren't reading those but But yeah, that's a good... Nuts and Zoo.

You're a fan of that genre, weren't you? How many do you want? Do you feel that feminism feels like it keeps men out or it brings men in? I mean, just within the name, it obviously feels, could feel exclusive to one sex sex but obviously that's not what it's supposed to be and it kind of brings me into you know you spoke a little bit a second ago about the archetypes of masculinity we speak a lot on this about the archetypes of the feminine but what we're talking about right now is like how do we have a balance of both of those things and allow them to coexist within all of us and it just seems like the balance is a little bit off.

And that just doesn't go down to the individual or the culture. It's like a universal thing, I believe. Yeah, absolutely. And why is that? Firstly, I think it's semantics. There isn't an equivalent of feminism. Meminism. What's that?

Meminism. That should have been the title of the book. Meminism. Yeah. Meminism. So we don't have a thing but also I think because feminism has been about

rightfully well I guess the thing is the patriarchy exactly so you've got that old thing to burn the patriarchy down

with feminism so obviously we're going to create a bit of friction along the way yeah and a lot of men are a bit pissed off about it um so but the point of feminism largely was to about the patriarchy

to try and make things more equal to change how women are seen so they can be seen as people who don't only have relationships and families and babies but they have careers and do whatever they want and that's been really important we're now coming out into a new phase, I think, which I think you've articulated is a bit confusing, where we need to maybe shout a bit more about some male archetypes and celebrate those. And that's what I mean by changing the tone and being a bit more inclusive.

And that's not the same as saying feminism is bad and wrong and we should stop talking about that. We just need to broaden it out and understand that equality, gender equality, is also about areas where men aren't so equal. So Andrew Tate's audience have had all the legs of their life pulled out from under them and have just been left behind. So they're listening to Andrew Tate on TikTok or they're going on voting for Donald Trump. So that's a big thing. And I think connected to this is, I think it's also become untrendy to think about sex differences that are more innate. So it's become not conventional to talk about some sex differences.

And some of these do exist in the social world. And I think they're quite important to talk about. So it's related back to men and friendship. If we don't honour these, we can't solve the problem as men and also as society. So it can't just be culture because men's friendships have been problematic for decades and it's not getting better. So it must be something else as well and these things interlink. I mentioned Robin Dunbar earlier.

He's looked at the differences between the male and female social world and there are some quite profound differences. One, for example, is in best friendships. And this is kind of a microcosm of the broader pattern. That's why I'm going to kind of introduce it. So if you ask women to name a best friend, they'll often be able to name a person who they're like, oh, that is my best friend.

And often they'll know that person more intimately than they know their romantic partner. If you ask a guy who's your best friend, they'll probably go and name four or five people that are quite interchangeable, more like a team, and they certainly won't know them better than they know their romantic partner. So the model of male friendship in the male social world is the club. It's much more casual. And female friendships tend to be face-to-face, based around sharing talk and emotional disclosure.

These are all averages, by the way. It's not to say that there aren't other friendships as well. sharing talk and emotional disclosure. These are all averages, by the way. It's not to say that there aren't other friendships as well. Male friendships tend to be side by side based around sharing space and especially activities, so doing stuff together. And they've looked at studies on men versus women in terms of what makes a relationship last.

For women, talk is crucial. And that can be on the phone, it can be face to face, whatever. For men, talk is almost futile almost futile and you think that's a cliche but it's actually borne out by these longitudinal studies but is that because they can't have proper conversations so their conversations on the phone would be like talking about crisps i didn't gain anything from that if you ring up a bloke if a friend rings me now i'm'm like, okay, who's died?

What's up? I'm like baffled. Also, men don't send each other voice notes. I get voice notes from my female friends. It's like podcasts. Freddie does. Freddie sends voice notes. He does, yeah.

He loves a voice note. This is my brother. He loves a voice note. Yeah. I sit down with a cup of tea when Fred sends me a voice note. A donut. Really get in for the long haul. Have to make notes to come back to it or else I forget how it started. But he's an outlier. That's a good example. men if you want your relationships to to last and if you want to get them back on track a key thing then is building these activities back together these um structures and i realized that for me i had to do intimacy on the first time the second thing i had to do was it was like a rewilding

project all these activities and shared spaces i'd lost with the men in my life i had to try and rebuild do you think about when is our social life the best? School, university. When we're all going to the same places and doing the same things. These like closed loops, these repeated unplanned interactions, these to an extent shared vulnerabilities. Those are when it thrives. And we often lose that when we become adults.

So this is true for everyone. It's especially true for men is to get those activities back. And that then is the balance between the culture and the more innate factors. But you're right. How do we know men couldn't have better conversations if they were better at them? So that's what we, the balance between these two things is what's controversial and what we don't agree on. But they're both relevant. what's controversial and what we don't agree on but they're both relevant you you mentioned earlier about how for male friendships it's comfort not confession which i think is so such a great line

and also you know i've noticed from my female friendships like it is confession most of the time but the value in that because it holds me accountable in so much because also it's friendships that are able to call me out on stuff and that I can share my most intimate things with and they'll be like, you know what, actually, you should have done that differently. And it's from such a loving place. But I often reflect off those conversations and just thinking, wow, having some friends that can hold you accountable for your own sort of personal development is such an amazing thing do you think that men also have that desire to have that with each other because i mean i'm gonna i want to say something that's a little bit controversial probably not true but in terms of if a man is in a relationship like let's say a long-term relationship but there's a lack of intimacy there because they're not able to have the hard conversations and then he doesn't have space for that in his male friendships he often then goes and seeks something externally from the relationship and just like

having an affair or something like that which you know thinking about that is that a reaction to the fact that there isn't actually anyone to speak to about whatever might be troubling them? That's almost certainly a factor. What's quite interesting is the differences in patterns of male and female mental health, which I think is also connected here. Generally, female mental ill health is internalising, it's depression, it's anxiety disorders, generally. Male mental ill health is internalizing. It's depression. It's anxiety disorders generally. Male mental ill health is shown by acting out. And it's often shown by drugs, booze, sex.

So you talk about an affair. An escapism. Escapism. And that's how they're showing they're in trouble. If they could talk about it, I think they absolutely would not get to that point. So you talk about a relationship, a man seeking sex outside the relationship, I mean, that could have a number of causes, obviously, but a big one would be it's almost a cry for help.

It's like... And also, I think this is something that came up a lot when I spoke to psychologists, is because men... For intimacy, men is so conflated with sex. If we're not experiencing intimacy emotionally we'll think i'll tell you what i'll do i'll go and have sex because that will get sexual intimacy yeah and and that will fill that void enough absolutely and so one psychologist i spoke to said he spoke

a lot with male clients in his therapy practice who were who'd had problems with for one of the better phrase sexually abusive behavior so it's like at work, misreading signals from women because maybe women were like being emotionally vulnerable and it's like, oh, all forms of intimacy equal sexual intimacy and then would misread that. And I think there's a lot of reason why men find physical affection or even emotional intimacy with other men difficult.

It's because we go, ooh, but that's a bit sexual, isn't it? Because it's all in one big pot of intimacy. But it's not to say that there isn't a desire for that. And that's the problem. So I talk about this a lot in the book. So when you ask men about their close friends, they'll often say, I don't see him very often. We don't talk about stuff.

But I tell you what, when things go wrong, I know for a fact he'll be on my doorstep in an instant to help me out. He'll drive me in the middle of the night to an airport. I don't know, this guy's got to leave for a flight. This guy's James Bond. Or, you know, if you need eight pints of blood, this guy will show up and give you the blood, right? And they talk about their friends in almost very moral terms, as loyalty, as in, you know,

I know they'll be there when the shit hits the fan. But I don't think friendship should only be the fourth emergency service. You know what's interesting about that? When I was reading your book and you were saying how the importance of what women do in nurturing friendships and relationships constantly with little gestures that say i value you're important to me i'm actually really bad at doing that and i'm probably I relate more to the sort of, I guess, male view on it that for me, I'm like friendship to me is like, if you need me to bury a body, I'll be there. Otherwise, we don't have to speak for a few months. But some of my female friends

have actually called me out on it. And they've said, you know, you're not showing up enough or I need more from you. And I found that really confronting because I've internalized it firstly as a criticism, but then afterwards I'm like, you know, it goes back to what you were saying about how things can slip away if then, like, no one says anything. Or maybe you said it in the book. But how, you know, I would probably be inclined to let that happen because I wouldn't

be making those little gestures and that effort because i'm like but if you know if you needed body buried i'd be there but they're like that's not enough they could use an undertaker you know what i'm saying i didn't know what you're saying and so I've had to actually adjust my behavior. It's about affection. And what does it feel like to be in the friendship? Not just what is the friendship instrumentally for? And I think a lot of the times you've got no idea. I don't know if I mentioned in the book, but I knew a guy called Ollie.

I met him when I was 13 at school. And I realized I'd known him for 20 years. And I was like, I've got no idea if this guy even likes me. What do you mean? When I'm with him, he shows no kind of like, no sign he likes me, no interest. We see each other fairly regularly and I sort of realised I've not

done the same to him either, but I definitely like him and he definitely likes me. It's just we can't articulate it. And I started being more front-footed with being affectionate and literally saying I like you and he was like uh mate you've got the wrong idea yeah yeah whoa whoa whoa I'm not looking for that now can you bury this body hit and run it's disaster wait so what happened when you started being a bit more I noticed that he started doing it a bit more in return and when I really noticed it was he asked me to do the best man role for him oh wow and I mean he did it in a very male way. Like he was like, he left it literally a week before. And his fiance was like, you've got to ask this guy. It's like a week before.

He's like, yeah, so I'm wondering if you do a speech at my wedding? I was like, right, like the best man. Yeah, like the best man. so I'm am I the am I the best man yeah yeah you had me a spade no but it's like

you know why does that have to be so uncomfortable yeah that's really sweet though yeah a lot this comes up a lot

somebody said to me the other day a guy said I've never felt like my best friend's best friend I think it's true for a lot of male male relationships a lot. Somebody said to me the other day, a guy said, I've never felt like my best friend's best friend. I think it's true for a lot of male-male relationships. Another one. Because it's not said.

It's unsaid. And it's not demonstrated in those little things. What are those little things for men? Or what could they be? Yeah, that's a really good question. I spoke to a psychologist called Dr. Marissa Franco the other day, and she said affection is really important, but it's also got to be calibrated to how the other person wants to receive it. So men are probably not going to want to be

sent little cards, little chocolates. That's not what we do. Yes, you do. I think it's little things like going, compliments that are specific and direct with a bit of eye contact. Checking in regularly and being the one who is proactive in that, I think, shows a lot of affection. Doing the work of organising things and inviting someone along is important. That's one of the things that I thought was quite moving about giving that speech, was it's very rare that I would have the chance to talk in an affectionate,

sincere way about another man. I mean, it did start with five minutes of like, you know, banter. So when he was in tears and I'd been asked to leave the stage several times, I didn't say that. And also, what a good bloke. Anyway, a toast to Dr. Bantz. I don't say that and also he's a nice guy what a good bloke anyway a toast to Dr. Bantz

but enough about me I feel like we can't have this conversation without touching on you know the very sad statistic about male suicide

because that must have been something that has come up a lot in this research yeah so the stats are pretty well known by now three out of four suicides are by men and i think suicide is remains the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 certainly in the uk but i think it's pretty common across the western world that suicide kills way more men than women. So the Samaritan Suicide Report cites male isolation as one of the biggest risk factors in male suicide.

So men have less forms of, all forms of social support. So whether it be family, friends, community, and it's a big issue. They often talk about it as that's why there's often a big build effect in male suicide, and that because you don't have that place to talk about stuff, you maybe will let things get to a point where you do something quite extreme. Now, suicide, I should say, is really complex, and I don't want to generalise about it, but I think also if you look at the links between loneliness and depression and anxiety they're pretty well established now so this is very much connected

to the mental health conversation interestingly as well it's connected to physical health so if you look at what kills people smoking 15 cigarettes a day is less bad for you than being lonely being morbidly obese is less bad for you than being lonely drinking excessively is less bad for you than being lonely so i mean the upside is you get some mates go nuts but that you know we are wired for connection and obviously the pandemic was such a struggle for people in that sense because we were all so chronically lonely and actually I mean I don't want to go into all of that but the way that we dealt with it and not recognizing the consequences of isolating people and and then becoming so lonely I find very strange to just overlook. Yeah. So this was like the third thing I looked into.

We could talk about this for hours, is that increasingly the world is unfriendly to friendship and to other forms of social connection. There's lots of factors here. We're spending essentially more and more time with a smaller and smaller band of people. So families, for example, used to be extended families and the old saying that you take a village to raise a child.

Now there's a nuclear family, so it might be a husband and wife and a baby, and they are very much closeted in their home. We tend to live quite far away from where we work and socialize quite far away from where we live. There's also a thing called a decline in third spaces. So sociologists call a third space something that's not home or work, but in between. A church would be a third space. A gym might be a third space or a park. There's less and less of these spaces. And we're more and more choosing not to hang out in them as well, whether it be because we're delving into content on Netflix, we're online all the time, we're in our phones, we're withdrawing from the social world

and the social world is being taken apart bit by bit in ways we're choosing to design cities and design... As a consequence of what we're developing through technology and design, but it's not an intentional one, obviously. I don't think it's intentional, but... We're just not valuing the importance of community. I don't think it's priced into how we think about this stuff.

So you might find this quite dull. I think it's quite an important point though. I spoke to a well-known sociologist called Eric Klinenberg who is experts in this and he started reframing third spaces as social infrastructure. Why is he doing that? It's because when we talk about infrastructure and it's the government spending money,

we're like, oh, well, obviously, we need to build hospitals. Obviously, we need to build schools. That's what they mean by infrastructure. But if you think about social spaces, they are as important for our mental health, physical health, our social health. But we don't really think about that.

We're like, well, why would we spend money on this stuff? But it's really important because all the scaffolding of friendship is coming down and it used to be that we didn't have to be intentional about it so this was my biggest learning on the whole thing is we have to be intentional now deliberate in in running our social lives men as we've explored are not very good at that so their problems with friendship are exaggerated by the modern world where this scaffolding which used to help us operate social lives that worked and replenished is coming down

and i think we are quite short-sighted in how ambivalent we are towards that the last thing i wanted to ask you about because i've noticed when i've done live shows and stuff and you know my audience is mainly female when in the room um a few men scattered around but i've noticed that some of them have said that they've struggled to talk with their partners about these kind of subjects and found they've almost said like oh i don't know whether this is the right partnership for me because i can't bring these things to the table. My partner doesn't know how to have these conversations and kind of dismisses them in the question, if that makes sense.

And so I wanted to ask you about like, for our audience that's listening, how can they go about bringing this into their relationship, whether it's with their romantic partner or their male friends? That's a great question. Yeah, I think the first thing people can do is reassure their, if they've got male partners, reassure them that they want them to have a social life outside of their romantic relationship. And often it can feel like a betrayal to kind of develop that and spend

time outside of it. I think it's really important for both people that happens, but sometimes men need permission. I think they also need a bit of a kick up the ass and saying like, hey, it'd be really great if you, well, you should text Clive. He's back. You know, and I think chibi men along a bit. I mean, you shouldn't have to coach men, but increasingly, I mean, men do need that kick up the backside. I think to help men understand why it's so important to you, this work and this journey, is to filter it through the relationship. So without being too indiscreet, I didn't realise how important it was for me to explore and learn some of these tools until I got to a point in my romantic relationship where the feedback

I was getting was, you're not giving me what I need or we're having unhealthy conflicts or I'm not entirely happy because of how you're having these conversations or because you're stonewalling and you're not investing. And I think this person you're with, they probably love you. And if they knew that you weren't feeling love because they weren't able

to give it because of how they had these conversations and could process it i think they invest in it because they would be terrified of losing you with your partner was she able to communicate that in like a gentle and kind way that allowed you to be like okay actually maybe this because i think often what i've noticed is it can be met with so much criticism and you know behind every criticism there is a desire but so i think yeah that's an important piece isn't it because i think we think we're communicating this stuff but actually by saying you can't do that you're not doing this it's not actually communicating lovingly it's just criticizing yeah i mean it's a real thin it's a real delicate balance isn't it because it can

easily get into the language of blame i think the fact that my partner had done quite a lot of therapy before i'd engaged made me curious about it and made me more open to the idea and i kind of learned this stuff myself. I kind of learned my limitations through the process, but it was having her encourage me and making it safe to engage in the process and say, I think you'll get a lot out of this. I'd really love you to try it. Or almost if you could gift it. Well, it's like giving the tools.

It's like we essentially have a lot of the tools because we've been socialized and we cultivate that in our lives. the tools yeah it's like we essentially have a lot of the tools because we've been you know socialized and we cultivate that in our lives so we kind of need to hand the tools over to the men in our lives to be like hey this is yeah absolutely i think it's also important to say though that there's been enough of women talked about king keepers talked about doing the emotional labor being the hr department it's not on women to do it it might be very sad in a relationship to feel like oh is this never going to change maybe you know sometimes men need to work that out for themselves and it's not they it's not on

you to make them go to carry that burden and it's actually often through relational breakdown that men go actually yeah i did a lot of stuff with men's groups which is kind of a therapy practice but with men often in men's image in that it's about helping one another it's not about inverted commas therapy your shoulders are shoulder side by side so it's not one-on-one intense therapy experience and men get a lot of value out of that they get a lot of feedback and for the men listening how do they find those circles or that sort of brotherhood because it's like if you haven't experienced it where do you begin so if you i mean google the phrase men's group you'll find some locally there's quite a lot of

them um i can name a couple now men speak in london is very good so i talk about them in the book and explore that um andy's man club in the north of england uh do great ones um so they're out there there's quite a few of them and they often do very low investment starts that by the way they're generally free or you know not very inexpensive so therapy can be expensive i appreciate that but you can go to a taster and it's quite straightforward it generally starts with a two minutes of silent reflection some people call it meditation but you basically sit in silence and then you do a check-in and you have to start with you know kind of an update on how you are i statement so you own how you feel it's a no banter zone which is quite transformative in itself

you get used to starting sentences with i feel rather than i think or you know pushing things into the abstract which i'm still quite wary i do myself and then there might be a topic so you might talk about friendships one week or you might talk about how you deal with aggression or you might talk about body image or whatever it is and then you often afterwards some people go and have a drink. And it lasts an hour. It's not full on. But a lot of men find that absolutely transformative. Podcast is a great way of starting off and just role modeling some of it in your friendships. There are some good books as well out there.

Well, Max, thank you so much for joining me and the audience on Saturn Returns. I really loved this conversation thank you, just one more thing I've got a I've got a body in my boot Alison was like I don't know what you're going

to say so can you do me a solid and get rid thank you so much for listening to this episode of saturn returns and hearing this conversation between myself and max i love how he can inject a lot of joy and humor into something that can be quite a heavy and complex subject. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could share it with a friend you think

might find it useful, or write us a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us get discovered by more like-minded people. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.