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The Epidemic Of Male Loneliness, And How We Men Can Solve It

As I careen toward the back half of my thirties, I find myself struggling constantly with the fear of falling short as a man. Am I man enough? Will I be able to provide for my family? If a mugger tries to stab us on the walk home from the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: the Musical, have I watched enough krav maga compilations to correctly gain wrist control and redirect his knife towards the kidney, stabbing repeatedly, until he is justifiably bleeding out in the street? If I fail and we die, will my son become Batman? 

Being a man used to be fun. Now, it's mostly a burden. I'd welcome a gender reassignment if it didn't immediately disqualify me from appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience. I am consumed with the worry that I won't measure up as a man, that I won't be able to do what it takes as a father, that I won't make enough money, etc. One major challenge is that my friends and I now see each other so infrequently that I don't feel great asking for their advice. My assumption is that they're all navigating these issues in stride, tackling the challenges as though born to face them down: stoic, resolute, calm under pressure, masculine.

For me to ask their advice feels like an admission of my inadequacy. Telling a buddy "I'm scared I'll fail, lose my job, and force us to move in with our parents" is today's version of yesterday's  "I'm struggling to achieve erections and typically I hold the base of my penis in a vice created by my right fist, effectively squeezing what little juice I've got in there towards the front like it's the end of a toothpaste tube, hoping that eventually it will inflate enough that I can let go and 'make love' like a Viking warlord for six-seven thrusts." 

The older my guy friends and I get, the more we seem siloed into our families and professional lives. I'm sure that's the way it should be—family first, job second, friends if you miraculously find a free afternoon. But as more and more of my friends move out to the suburbs (or across the country), seeking space, having second kids, dealing with elite kindergarten admissions processes… the less I find that I have any dudes around to whom I can vent, make jokes, get drunk for the sake of getting drunk, and shed our civility in favor of some long lost male barbarism. 

I mean, I'm not going to call them. Are you out of your mind? They'll think I'm trying to bang. 

So, I bottle it, let the fears pickle in a jar on the shelf until they're unrecognizable, unmanageable. Then comes crisis control, emergency therapy sessions, and a fourteenth attempt at downloading some meditation app. Cold showers and a return to deadlifting until the inevitable back injury. Transform the body, heal the mind. Break the body, watch the mind slide back into a roiling sea of doubt. The cycle of man. 

As I woke up today to another morning of doom, I saw an interesting article on how pickleball (and playtime in general) might solve this epidemic of male loneliness. The columnist, Michelle Cottle, suggests that men should lean in to playing more as a way of bonding. Pickup basketball, poker nights, bourbon tastings, golf, pickleball—we need time together, and we need to frame it as an activity, in order to stomach the real reason we're planning these things: friendship, bonding, company. 

I don't disagree. Golf would be the place for this if I weren't playing so badly these days that the joy of being with friends wasn't completely poisoned by the despondency of shanking wedges. What's more, whenever I'm away for the four hours needed for a full 18 holes, the guilt of being the absent husband seeps in. I don't know where that comes from. I've got the green light to go. She made her own plans. But I'll be damned if this slow four-ball in front of us isn't going to have me walk through my front door some hours hence to a set of questioning eyebrows that say, without saying, "it never takes just five hours." 

And with that thought in mind, another drive sails right, over the trees, off the property, and into oncoming traffic. 

Maybe I'm no man at all. But these days, I've got Andrew Tate in one ear, telling me to reach down, grab my goddamn nutsack, and man the fuck up. In the other ear, I've got reality, obligation, and conscience blending into one voice that tells me I don't deserve to check the box marked "Male" when renewing my passport. 

If only there were a couple guys who could walk me through it over a game of pickleball. 

PS- enjoy Frankie's new golf series. We had a time. 

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