“Americans, plugged in and on the move, are confiding in their pets, their computers, and their spouses. What they need is to rediscover the value of friendship.” -Daniel Akst, Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2010
This Summer, The Wilson Quarterly has an excellent article about the deterioration of friendship in America (unfortunately, that link is only an excerpt since it’s a paid subscription site). I thought the timing was interesting since I had just written in a post last week “I know most Americans leave the place they were born and wander eternally. They pitch tents wherever they find jobs. The new gypsy America. ‘Why don’t you just get out of there? It’s just a place’, I can hear my non-local friends claim. But I like the idea of community, and running into people I know, and having my history all around me.”
I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one who noticed America’s disregard for the old institution of friendship. Akst describes a sad world in the article, and cites science fiction’s predictions about such an environment.I think the situation is even more bleak for men, who once knew great friendships, but are now isolated due to the feminist destruction of any male-bonding activities. And if they dare defy it, they get insulted with terms like “bromance”. I better stop, as I feel a masculinist rant coming on. Anyway…
It’s a good read. I recommend. Here’s a few more quotes…
“Although Americans have been relocating less often lately, perhaps as a result of the recession, we still move around quite a bit – for work, sunshine, retirement, or to be near family – and this process of uprooting dissolves friendships and discourages those that haven’t yet formed. Few of us would turn down a tempting new job in a far-off city to stay near friends, possibly for the sensible reason that those friends might move away six months later anyway.”
“We’ve allowed our wildly inflated view of matrimony to subsume much of the territory once occupied by friendship. Your BFF nowadays – at least until divorce – is supposed to be your spouse, a plausible idea in this age of assortative mating, except that spouses and friends fill different needs, and cultivating some close extramarital friendships might even take some of the pressure off at home. Yet the married men I know seem overly dependent on their wives for emotional connection, even as their wives take pleasure in friends to whom they don’t happen to be wed.”
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I agree with Mr. Akst’s view, especially when it comes to male friendships. I know that although all of my truly close friends live far away, I still communicate with them regularly and visit as often as I can. I confide in my close friends and use them as sounding boards for all sorts of things, not all of which I discuss with my husband. I do wish I could make new close friends here, but so far all if the people I’ve met here have remained firmly in the acquaintance category, and it seems like as we get older close friendships become harder to form. My husband has two close friends, and both live in other states. The strange thing is that he never reaches out to call them, and instead I am both best friend and spouse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that he feels so close to me, but I’m sad that I’m all he has. My husband is extremely shy and though I’ve tried to encourage him to venture out with the husbands of some of our local acquaintances, he refuses. I don’t know if his reluctance is due to social ideas about male friendship or just his own discomfort around new people, but either way I do feel that he’s missing out.