How should we think about male friendships?

I’ve written a literal metric ton on male friendships over the years; back around Christmas season 2013, I sat in a coffee shop in Minneapolis and wrote this about male friendships in response to a Salon article. Years later — June 2019 — I also sat in a coffee shop, this time in Fort Worth, and wrote about male friendships and depression, and along the way (June 2017, a few months after getting divorced), I wrote about whether male friendships or female friendships are harder. I’ve also written a couple of different things on the expectations of friendship.

That intro is not super long, but definitely self-indulgent, in a way to say that I care about these issues and think about them a lot. So, yesterday, also drinking coffee — although this time in a WeWork — I came across this Washington Post article on male friendships. This stuff is clearly catnip to me, so I read through it a couple of times and tweeted parts from it too. Now I decided to sit down and write my own post regarding it. Let’s see where that nets out.

Some good quotes/sections from that article

I’ll run a few for you:

• On a rare night he spent catching up with an old friend in October, a mixture of vulnerability and intoxication led him to pour out his frustrations. “I bet you still have no idea why…