Some is valid. Men aren’t taught how to make and maintain emotionally open friendships, with men or women. It’s seen as weak or weird to cry on front of your bros when you’re sad. This leads to loneliness. This is real.

Some is not valid. Men claiming that they’re not getting laid and it’s women’s fault is bullshit. Or that women have impossibly high standards and are gold diggers. It’s nonsense.

The problem is that the “women hating incels” have coopted the term, and their garbage deserves to be mocked.

I’ve seen three sides to it.

Side 1: “boo hoo nobody will fuck me because I don’t think other people should have rights”

Side 2: not having strong friendships/relationships because our society is built around capitalism, cars, and social media (this obviously applies across genders, this side therefore is a generalized loneliness epidemic, not a male gendered one)

Side 3: men get socially punished for being vulnerable

In my mind only the second & third side is worth listening to.

I have no idea but thought I’d throw out that, as a 58yr old cis white guy I’ve never been lonely in my life, i have literally no idea what that’s like and don’t get involved in hypotheses about it all because I have nothing to bring to the debate. I do find human behaviour interesting (and mostly bizzare) though.

The more time I spend with people the more I crave being alone but that’s a different thing.

I now live on the edge of a tiny village in the middle of no where Australia and lived in a small cottage off grid in the bush for 10 years previously bit alos loved in an apartment in the sky in a largish city.

One thing I noticed, I found the car free existence ina city bought me into contact with people all the time, even walking you’d see people people and say hello. Stop at a crossing and have a small conversation occasionally etc. i even said hello to women and was never called a pervert ;)

As a cis het man, the “male loneliness epidemic” is more a collection of symptoms of multiple problems without one source.

Those who claim a single source usually point to women because they’re a misogynist grifter looking chasing clout or to sell a scam course / supplement.

So without further ado, here’s my non-academic (and probably ill-informed) reckon based on conversations from online and IRL, lived experiences, and perceived societal norms. Have your large pinch of salt on standby.

1. Both men and women have been socialised that the only emotions men show is anger or laughter. Men have been socialised that the only emotion they can express in front of other men is anger and laughter. This means the amount of emotional support men can use from their support network is limited, they’re not practiced on how to deal with them, and either have to figure it out by themselves, be lucky enough to have a friend or partner whom they feel emotionally safe to express these feelings, can afford to seek professional help, laugh the problem off with self-depricating humour to repress the emotion, or turn it into anger usually as a result of succumbing to one of the aforementioned grifters.

Understandably, women have been socialised that if a man is showing emotion then that could turn into frustration and anger and so then they either have to risk taking on unpaid emotional labour or remove themselves from the situation. So sometimes you get this scenario where women want men to be more emotionally open but then recoil when they do because subconscious alarm bells start ringing that “you’re in danger” because there’s a decent chance that they could be.

Thankfully this is changing with younger generations, but it will take a generation or two.

2. Male support socialisation is centred around problem solving, not listening. Even if a guy has friends he can lean on emotionally, the conversations are usually focused around fixing the problem rather than providing a listening space and reassurance that those emotions are valid.

This is the main reason I pass off an “I’m fine” to friends and family because they’d try and suggest solutions to the problem rather than just listen.

Again, this is changing in society but these kinds of changes are slow.

3. Loss of third spaces. This affects everyone, not just men. But these third spaces where people can socialise without being forced to spend money are key for building communities. When people had disposable income or access to lines of credit it didn’t matter that there was an expectation that you had to pay for parking, food, drink, ticket(s) for the activity. Now, that’s less of an option for many people.

This hasn’t improved and will likely only get worse as late stage capitalism squeezes out anything that is unable or refuses to make more and more profit per quarter.

4. The lack of third spaces has moved friendships, courtship, and dating online. Whilst this has meant many people have made connections (platonic and romantic) that would have gone missed, the big tech companies have realised that anger and loneliness are good for business.

The social networks get far more engagement from posts that make people angry and therefore their advertising revenues increase.

Similarly, the dating monopoly Match Group, has realised that having more men than women on the platform means these men will spend money on these platforms for a chance at matches. So they purposely profile men who are likely to pay for things like “super likes” etc. and do nothing to make the experience more pleasant for women.

This isn’t anything new by the way, it’s the same reason some clubs make guys pay on the door and women get in for free, and it’s the same reason why there’s more female sex workers than male sex workers.

Men are willing to pay many and women don’t have to, but women have to put up with a lot of entitlement from the men who have paid for matches / to get into the club and be constantly fending off attention from men they don’t wish to reciprocate the attention to.

Without third spaces for general socialising, the only place to interact with potential partners is paid and will therefore skew financially in favour of women at the cost of their peace-of-mind.

5. This is more of a personal sentiment but others might empathise: I don’t want to feel like I’m harassing women.

I’m not cold approaching anyone when I go out because I don’t want to interrupt their precious free time they get in between the grind of life. I don’t want to interrupt them socialising with their friends or be creepy on the dancefloor by getting in their personal space, or even glancing over too much.

So I stay at arms length, avoid eye contact, and only approach or get close if I’m getting multiple very strong signals large enough to land an Airbus A380.

6. This is definitely just applies to me, but I have exceedingly low self-confidence, self-esteem, and low opinion of myself from a deep rooted depression. That’s a straight-up non-starter for trying to be with anyone else because nobody, man or woman, likes an emotional anchor dragging their mood down. I’m working on it but without paying a lot of money for therapy (the NHS waiting list is a joke), I’m stuck trying to work it out myself (see points 1 & 2).

So until I’m fit for socialising in that way, I’m purposely isolating myself in that regard.

Oh and for added flavour, I don’t want to be around watching society collapse as the world continues to burn not can I distract myself (or be ignorant enough) to not pay attention to it.

To be honest, right now my mind is telling just to wait for my mother to pass away then withdraw all my money, disappear abroad, burn through it in pure hedonism then off myself once the cash has run out. At least this way I can enjoy a shorter life rather than suffer a longer one.

Can we please leave gender war slop back at the old site please?

I’m a very fluid person. So I think I have great inside in the differences between genders and sexualities in loneliness.

A lot of it have to do with “be approached”.

As a woman presenting person a get approached a lot, a lot of people I don’t know want to talk with me. It’s ridiculously easy to make new acquaintances and friends. Everyone wants to talk and be around you.

As a male presenting person I also get approached a lot when I’m in “gay spaces”. Again it’s impossible to be alone unless I voluntarily would want to.

Yes, these two have the handicap that a lot of approaches are “sex related” of by people wanting sex. But not all of them, among so much approaches there’s always some that doesn’t just want sex.

Then, as a male presenting person in not gay spaces and even more so in straight spaces. I don’t get approached, never, at all. Zero people talk to me just because they want to be near me. If I want to meet somebody I always have to be the one initiating the approach.

In my experience this is the root of the issue. And the experience that most people complaining about “male loneliness” are talking about.

There are other type of loneliness. As a Queer I’m quite familiar with loneliness related to being different, and people literally hating you for what you are, or not accepting you. But that’s a different thing. The male loneliness is that feeling of having the burden of all your relationships in your shoulders, knowing that if you don’t go after people people won’t ever go after you. And that can be devastating with time. Because your self worth get tanked, specially if you are introvert and have a hard time approaching people.

I suppose it won’t end until it get normalized to approach cis men the same way it’s normalized in the other situations I talked about. The reason of why people don’t approach cis men as easy can be discussed, I get that there’s a fear/danger factor in approaching a cis male, specially after being approached by so many menacing people in your life. But still, I do think the root of the issue is that. And there’s also de commodity of knowing that you don’t need to approach a cis man because some will approach to you regardless, so you don’t even need to try. I’m the first guilty of it. I don’t approach men either, I always wait for them to approach me, because I know they will, so why bother approaching? I suppose there’s a great imbalance. Maybe if men would go into strike and refuse to approach people the balance would be restored, who knows.

I can only suggest reading some of “The Way We Never Were”. It’s a look at society and how it actually was vs the manufactured versions people today use to weaponize the whitewashed past as some sort of ideal. It’s not a psychological book or a deep analysis of society at all, but one of the things that struck me about it that relate to social circles and how it applies to men in particular is the loss of “the village” and the damage “self reliance” - the isolation of the American Family Unit by making it the Family Vs The World - has done to society and the ability of people to form steady social groups outside of work. This, and the need to constantly change jobs to move ahead financially also keeps people on unsteady ground with relationships.

I think it has to do with the death of 3rd spaces which used to be an outlet for socialization. But as a man, I’m also not lonely. I have friends and acquaintances and I get to go outside sometimes.

I think there is definitely a male loneliness epidemic but I think there is also an equally bad female loneliness epidemic that nobody talks about enough

Cis man here.

It’s an issue. It comes in lots of different colors and flavors but it all stems from social issues.

There’s lots of reasons, some men were never taught about social relationships, men tend to generally be less interested in social interaction thus giving them less experience, some men are ostracized when talking about their social struggles, and these are on top of preexisting environmental factors and preexisting mental conditions.

At this point it’s important to say: it’s not a contest for genders. Trans people have it hard, nb people have it hard women have it hard. It’s just that this is one of the rare times men’s struggles are not addressed properly.

I can tell you I probably have about 50 men in my life that I ko and wo are nice but if I had to talk to a man about my struggles socially, there are 2 men.

Now couple this with the fact 90% of men I had deeper conversations with told me they are struggling with depression and some of them having suicidal ideations, it is fair to assume we have a problem.

For me, the depression is always exacerbated by social isolation. It makes sense - not getting some feedback from other people can get you into crazy headspaces and there are thinking patterms that literally make you hurt yourself just to make it stop.

There’s another aspect: we are social creatures and as soon as you don’t get enough “social exposure” it’s harder to learn social cues and “get the vibe”, and other people notice. So the more you isolate, the harder preceding social interaction become and the harder it is, which in turn incentivizes isolating. A vicious cycle.

Now not everyone has these issues and I would never say that it’s the most important issue in our current society but every time I hear suicide statistics by gender it really puts into perspective that we should get to know those people who we have failed.

One thing I also wanna address is the idea that “men are never taught how to socialize”, because I think it implies a lot of things. First, I’m sure a lot of men are not, but a good number of men are. I was for example. It didn’t help, but that was never the issue for me. Second, it implies men want to be taught. I spoke to a group of 2 men and 2 women with mental disabilities about if they ever considered complete social isolation. The men said yes and the women said no. I think this is really significant and can give insight into why this is affecting men more than other genders. I would infer from this that women always see the benefit in social interaction, and men pursue social interactions rather as a means to an end. This might be a stretch but this supported by other observations of friends and family.

This topic is really important and I hope it gets talked about more - for the benefit of everyone who wants to see people become happier. The men affected by loneliness, as well as the people who deal with them.

Who says this? I am not a cis-het man and have not heard the criticism. I thought it was a known thing? Are you literally hearing it doesn’t exist, or is it more like they need to suck it up and/or that they are losers that need to go outside?

If it’s the second, that’s sexism. That’s where it comes from. Illogical ideas about men. Believe it or not, we have not overcome that yet. People have very twisted ideas about how men and women should behave and feel.

On a related note, I wish we would acknowledge that men socialize different and that guys doing stuff together is therapeutic. Ruminating on emotions can have a negative effect in men, while work therapy can be much effective that talk therapy.

I think part of it also depends on were you live. Just as a personal experience I live in a very rural part of northern Nevada, I’m born a raised here. The population is about 4k and honestly I would say 90% of the population are hardcore conservatives. Even as a kid I knew that I didn’t fit in with anyone else. I would usually just keep to myself all throughout school and even now as a 42 year old man I barely speak to anyone. It is lonely but the alternative is a no go for me especially now with politics being such a big part of peoples identity.

Most of the criticism of it I’ve seen is about how the concept’s been warped to mean women aren’t putting out enough for specific men. Other people will also point out that modern society is isolating in general. People who aren’t men who are experiencing loneliness might have some skepticism about the idea it’s a man specific issue.

There’s also some wariness because topics about issues men face can translate for some men into a violent rage towards women. As seen with the involuntarily celibate movement.

People of all types can take genuine grievances and find a target to take it out on. Like income inequality translating to hatred of immigrants. And violence towards them. When you’re the mistaken target of those grievances, it can be simplest to want to get away from the conversation unless the person starting it is clear they aren’t targeting you.

Those are my guesses as to why people are skeptical.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1263527043 Some discussion in here about the topic, but also criticisms of the topic.

https://trinitonian.com/2025/02/14/unpacking-the-myth-of-the-male-loneliness-epidemic/ This opinion article criticizes how influencers drive the conversation, to its detriment.

https://www.fridaythings.com/recent-posts/male-lonliness-crisis-incel-men-friendship-mental-health This person brings up the idea that women are wary of the idea because it seems like they’ll be expected to individually solve it regardless of their own wants and needs.

When people have created a narrative that “white x y z men” are responsible for all the evil in the world (I’m exagerating, but you get my drift), it creates a very difficult situation when those people are facing some serious difficulties. The intellectually lazy thing to do in that case is to brush it off or minimize it, like in the ways you’ve described. And unfortunately, that’s the route those same people will take, since identity politics are intellectually lazy (and lacking compassion, but that’s another story).

The unfortunate part of it is that the right has taken advantage of that wide open flank, which is one main reasons we’re in this current clusterfuck.