Asklemmy

43899 readers

1483 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Men, how well do you know your best male friends? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I keep seeing men online (Reddit, Instagram, TikTok) saying how they don't know personal details about their male friends of several years. It is mostly said in a proud context, or in disbelief when a woman talks about it.

I'm talking about knowing someone for years and not knowing what they do for work specifically, their relationship status/major issues, their life goals, their family situation, birthdays, and stuff like that.

For context, I am a man in my 20s. I have a close friend group of around 10 people. We all know each other very well. We have a group chat, and meet at least once a week (obviously some people can't always make it). We know a lot of details about each other, so this idea of being close friends with someone and not knowing personal stuff about each other seems foreign and weird to me.

Does it actually happen, or just internet hyperbole?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is an outsider perspective allowed? I have 2 older brothers close in age. My oldest brother has very superficial relationships with his "friends". In German, he would call these types of people "Bekannte" or "Leute mit denen ich rausgehe" (people I hang out with).

He is in general quite closed up and I can remember that he had a sharp change of heart when he was about 16. For a reason that he won't disclose. When you ask him about anything that would need any type of reflection on his part it's typically "I don't know" and "Why do you ask?". His friends are similar and when someone tries to talk about something more personal you can feel the awkwardness and it's usually shortly discussed then brushed aside with a joke to change topics.

My other brother has actual friends. They buy each other gifts for their birthdays, call each other when something happened and they need advice or vent. Just "normal" stuff from my perspective.

Interesting things I've seen over the decades I studied them: In oldest brothers people-group the wives and girlfriends don't really mix with their husbands/boyfriends. They mostly meet separately.

My older brother is much more irritated when my other brother asks him about personal stuff than when I do it.

I don't think he talks with anyone about how he's feeling, apart from his nervous breakdown each year on Christmas.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

That's a lot going on.