The male loneliness epidemic has nothing to do with this, and everything to do with male friendships (i.e two guys) not being as close as female friendships (i.e two girls). Guys rely on romantic relationships to have all their needs met when friendship alone can meet a lot of them. So when they don't have a romantic relationship, none of their needs are met, which is detrimental for their mental health.
And before the clown car shows up with people crawling out of it to claim otherwise, I'm speaking in general terms and am not saying all men or all women. Your personal experience claiming otherwise is just that, and not indicative of the collective experience that defines the "male loneliness epidemic".
I was just shooting the shit before, but if you're actually looking for open discussion not an argument, I'll post some thoughts. For one I think the male loneliness epidemic can't just be due to their friendships. This is how male friendships have been for a long time, you might not know what your bud's favorite color is or how their marriage is going, but you would take a bullet for them. By your logic, loneliness should have peaked in the 50s/60s when male machismo was at its peak and their emotion but a myth. Instead, what we're seeing now comes from other key factors, social media and the rising cost of living. Daily feeds have taught us that everyone else's life is better than ours and dating apps have taught us that there's always a better match on the horizon. We are taught to never be satisfied, because that drives engagement. And when say "we", it's really because I believe that what we're experiencing is not a male loneliness epidemic, but a wholesale loneliness epidemic, with social media often driving a wedge between genders. This is where I do think your point has merit, in that which less happy partnerships mean males are getting lonelier, but I argue that so are women, they are just handling it better. So really, we are still not solving the core issue that men and women will probably be lonelier as a whole without partnering because it's ultimately something men-men or women-women cannot satisfy (unless you are LGBTQ of course, I am heavily generalizing to be brief). Also note that this does not mean I think women should be lowering their standards or something and we should be going back to the 50s where an unmarried women was just worse off in life. Women having more options in life is obviously good, but which everyone more focused on careers, this does lead to the next issue. Even with everyone working, cost of living is higher than ever relative to wages and time is the most precious commodity. Less money means less quality time with loved ones and prospective partners which means everyone will look to easier and quicker ways to fill loneliness. A great case study is Japan, where host clubs and escort services are rampant for all genders. It's worth noting that their case is probably accelerated due to the way Japanese culture is and the way they form relationships of all kinds, but it's still not hard to see that we are definitely heading in that direction. Our happiness is being sapped away to meet some corpo's bottom line and it's probably only going to get worse as we continually lose any sense of reality on the internet with the advent of AI too.
I'm saying the reason it's male loneliness epidemic and not just a loneliness epidemic is because of the type of friendship. Regarding the 50s/60s people put a mask on. Boomer humor is about hating their wives, but they had one because women didn't have many alternatives. Social media and the modern age lets people be a bit more open without it being a social faux pas, as it was before.
And yes, they do get to learn and see what they missing out on, and form parasocial relationships out of desperation, whether it be watching and donating to streamers or paying to "talk" to Onlyfans women who hire randos to pretend to be them.
Do you think its a coincidence that the market of selling comfort, companionship and parasocial relationships is almost fully driven by demand from men?
The issues you're talking about isn't the same as the male loneliness epidemic. In a nutshell, this one stems from male relationships being unfullfilling/less fulfilling, and failure to find a romantic relationship resulting in unmet needs and loneliness. The failure itself is related to the things you're talking about, but is overall a tangent. Addressing that is just a bandaid to this particular "phenomenon", if you will, because it will only help the people who have healthy friendships, who legit have zero overlap with male loneliness epidemic.
What it really comes down to is that there currently aren’t sellers markets for women loneliness in the west but in the east the markets are massive and have become socially normalized. We aren’t there yet, but we are rapidly approaching it, you can already see how big say gacha gaming is swinging in terms of women player bases. Also, it’s a well known phenomenon that males will flock around the prettiest girls and buy her bathwater. No matter what, this will cause ripple effects among women, especially amongst below average looking women as potential prospects will be stolen into a life of perpetual simpdom. All of this will continue to come to a head as male behavior becomes more awful and sexist. The reactionary misandry movement can already be seen in places like Korea where many females have been radicalized too, see the 4B movement. What I’m trying to get at is even if it looks like a male loneliness epidemic now, it absolutely will be a societal issue for everyone in the future.
Both issues exist, I'm saying the male loneliness epidemic also exists. Both need to be solved, but just addressing people dating doesn't solve the male loneliness epidemic, it only acts as a bandage because people will still continue to rely on romantic partners for needs that friends can meet if they're close, and open with each other. For example, men need a shoulder to cry on at times. A friend can offer that shoulder, but friendships between men aren't often that close or that type. So they think they need to date and a partner will be that shoulder to cry on. It also results in women kinda drawing back from men that overshare/dump all their bottled up feelings because people have limited empathy. Women drawing back from this is seen as an expectation that they want men to be stoic, which furthers more issues.
I think what we're really approaching is the very common sense answer that men and women should have healthy platonic and romantic relationships, which I will heartily agree with.
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u/derpkoikoi May 29 '25
guys will complain about “male loneliness epidemic” then turn around and buy this shit. I say this as a dude