Men, Loneliness, and Social Isolation

All right, and welcome back. In this episode, I want to talk once again about loneliness and men.

This is a subject that's come up many times on this podcast before, and once again, I just want to start with a little of the kind of sobering and scary research. So first off, research shows that lacking meaningful deep connections can basically be the equivalent in terms of health risks to regularly smoking and being obese. In fact, the American Medical association found that it can increase the risk of heart disease by 29% and stroke by 32%, particularly among men.

And it's US men that are the most susceptible to these damaging effects of loneliness and to even being lonely. In one YouGov poll, 35% of men reported feeling lonely at least once a week. The Campaign to End Loneliness. They found that over two thirds of men feel uncomfortable even admitting to experiencing feelings of loneliness. And another research study from the University of Zurich found that 72% of 30 year old men expressed regret over losing contact with their friends.

This is a huge deal for us men. There is an epidemic of men feeling lonely. Now, what's really important that I want to talk about today is, which is a bit more nuanced on this subject than I've mentioned before, is that there's actually a huge difference between loneliness and social isolation. So loneliness is an emotional, subjective state, right?

It reflects a dissatisfaction with the quality of our life and our social interactions. Social, social isolation is really more of an objective state, right? It's about how much time am I actually spending alone, not by anyone else, and not having any social interactions. These two terms are very close to each other and sometimes are used interchangeably, but they are very different. And we can think about this, right, with the image of someone standing in the middle of the city surrounded by people and yet feeling lonely.

And that's an experience that people sometimes do share about. I'm around others, but I feel lonely. Whereas you can also be socially isolated but not feel lonely. And this is a really important distinction because the masculine men, we often need some social isolation. It's actually really important for the masculine to be able to spend time alone.

It can be a very powerful and centering practice to spend time alone like that as a man. And in my opinion, it's A necessary capacity because for a lot of men, because they're afraid of spending time alone, they will stay in or dive into relationships or friendships or connections that actually aren't good for them. But there's such a fear of being alone, they'll take anything rather than nothing.

And for men, so for us men having this capacity to be okay, spending time alone actually empowers us to. To make better choices in relationship. But so back to loneliness and the feeling of loneliness. There was one research study that just came out in the Journal of Research and Personality, and it was kind of exploring this idea of loneliness and social isolation and really tracking what was happening for people.

And here's one of the key insights that might seem obvious, but I think is really important for us to highlight. And what they found was it was more about the quality and depth of connection, more than how much connection. So in short, the type of interactions and relating someone has is far more important than the quantity those interactions or relationships.

And this is so key. And for me, I can share a personal story around this. Right when the COVID pandemic started, I was actually a just new, fresh father and the world shut down. And so I had two layers of shutdown. One was just being a newborn dad. We didn't have much time or space to get out of the house and have social interactions. And then there was this whole societal and cultural layer of the world literally shut down for six months to a year.

There was very little going on. Newborn child who we discovered had some special needs. We found out she was deaf. Pandemic couple years into a marriage and relationship, growing my own business, really intense stresses. But I did quite well in a lot of ways during that time. And one of the reasons for that, which I kind of knew intuitively, had a sense of.

But now this latest research study really kind of gives me the evidence for was I had my men's groups in particular, I had one men's group that met twice a month here in la. There were a few times we met virtually, but generally we just met outdoors. Right Even in the heart of the pandemic, we met outdoors, spaced. It was totally fine. And then I had another group that we had already been meeting over Zoom. And we just continued meeting over Zoom.

And these were probably my two deepest groups at the time. And that was it. That was basically my social connection for about a year, a year and a half was through those groups. But what's really important was the rhythm of those groups were uninterrupted for me. We kept meeting. I was getting my necessary dosage of connection from other men. And I'm not talking about a ton of men here.

These groups are just seven guys each. And I'm pretty sure the impact of them would have been the same even if I had just had one of them. Point being, these were men that I got to go really deep with, and we had very high quality interactions. We weren't just talking about sports or movies, we were digging in and being present with each other around what's going on in, in our lives.

And this is so important and why, once again, I'm here to talk about the deep power of men's groups. Right? For a lot of men, as we age, life gets busier. We might have a family, we might have kids, we might have a really intense job. And it gets harder and harder as we exit kind of our youthful stage of being in school and having jobs that come with lots of social connection to being adults, where generally what happens is people go to work and then they go home.

And it can be really hard for men to build friendships and relationships, particularly after college, in my experience. And then the relationships a lot of men do have are shallow. Like I've said, their relationships of triangulation, meaning me and you have our attention on this third thing. A TV screen, a sport, a film, a game.

It's not that those things aren't without value, but they don't necessarily create the depth of connection because we could actually both be watching a sports game, be in a ton of emotional pain, be feeling lonely, and not be sharing it with each other. Why loneliness is so damaging to the masculine in us men in particular, is because of all these ideas of the man box and what's acceptable for men to feel and share emotionally.

A lot of men, like I said at the beginning of the episode, don't even feel comfortable sharing that they're feeling lonely. So they might be going to social interactions or engagements, but feel lonely and not even be able to talk about it with the people they're there with. This has such huge consequences for us men. And it's why I'm such a passionate advocate of men's groups, because it's a very functional, efficient way to get a lot of deep connection with just a few men.

You don't have to have an army of friends. I actually don't have a tremendously huge social network in the sense of regular amount of people I spend time with. I have handfuls of friends that I just go deep with, some of whom I don't see for months or years. But when we do interact, we go deep. The quality of our connection is very high, high. So I have a lot of quality connections with men in my life, but I don't necessarily spend a huge quantity of time with other people outside of my family.

Just where we're at in this moment in our lives. Men's group, like I say, particularly being someone who's been living here in LA for a while, it's just efficient. If I wanted to see my seven brothers here in a town as big as la, see them each twice a month, it would take a lot of work, driving far across town, scheduling, etc. Men's group is awesome because it's two anchored points in my particular constellation every month where we all meet up together.

And so in those four hours a month, I'm able to maintain and continually deepen seven of the most important relationships in my life with these other guys. So it's really important here because, you know, sometimes when we talk about connection is the antidote to loneliness, it's really easy to think connection means I have to be out socializing a lot, and hell, I'm an introvert. I don't like socializing a lot.

In particular, I actually prefer going slow, going deep with fewer people, which is why things like men's group and authentic relating have been particularly well suited for me. But now we actually have the research that shows it is the quality of your connections. The depth of connections matter more than the number of connections. That's how Brene Brown puts it. The famous author and researcher that spent a lot of time looking at what works for people when it comes to vulnerability, authenticity, and strong relationships in their lives.

So if you're a man that's feeling lonely, which means you don't feel satisfied with the quality of relationships in your life, you don't have to go out there and meet tons of friends or create tons of connections, but you do need to have a few connections that you can go really deep with where you feel seen and feel safe to reveal the truth of your heart and your being in the moment, and where you feel safe to reveal the truth of your wants and needs and the things you want to create in your life, and where other people can see and reflect and share that back with you, and then you can do the same with them.

When that capacity is online, we become unstoppable as men. And we need that. We really need that. Men's groups are one of the most powerful answers to this loneliness epidemic. We have just a few guys who you can get to know over time and go deep with can quite literally save your life, change your health physiologically, mentally, emotionally, and I would even argue spiritually.

So if you're feeling lonely, even if you have friendships in your life, even if you have connection in your life, the question you gotta ask yourself is, are they as deep as I'm yearning for? Do I feel met? Do I feel known? Do I feel connected at a heart level? Do we have the capacity to put our attention on each other when we're sharing time together? That is what creates often this depth of connection when we put our attention on each other in the moment and share what's going on.

So don't wait. It's time to find a group if you don't have one already. So I strongly recommend you find a group of some kind if you don't already have one. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary men Apply.