I am an Old Guy and I Don’t Have Friends
But I have something better
Decades ago, my gerontology class was pondering why old men do not develop same-sex support systems the way old women do. When a woman is left a widow, she turns to her women friends for support and thrives. Old men are known for having few if any friends, so if their spouses die and they can’t remarry, according to conventional graduate-school wisdom, they wither and die.
My fellow gerontologists, mostly female, thought that a sad state of affairs and needed fixing. Steps needed to be taken so that men develop the kind of same-sex social supports that women enjoy. These unfortunate men could then escape the pain, loneliness, and depression they are prone to when their self-sufficient, well-balanced wives die before they do.
I was having none of this estrogen-driven attack on manly ways. The observation about old men lacking a network of same-aged buddies was, as far as I could tell, accurate, but it was not a problem to be solved — particularly if the solution was that men be encouraged to behave more like women.
I watch nature shows. Males establish a territory. Once the territory is established, the male’s job is to keep other males out of the territory and away from the female(s) within it. This applies to strange males and even male offspring, who, within a…
