Can talking about their problems help men forge closer relationships – or is there another way? Josh Halliday reports
Josh Halliday is 37, and not short of friends. There are his two closest mates, and then the big group who meet up for weekends away. But recently the Guardian’s north of England editor has noticed something.
“My relationship with my two closest friends, who I’ve been friends with now for 15-16 years, has been fairly surface level, to be honest – 90% of our chat is probably football-related, always with a drink in hand. If you asked me to name their immediate family, I wouldn’t be able to do it. And I think that’s quite shocking really.”
But do men have to open up to enjoy each other’s company or feel close to each other? Not necessarily, the anthropology professor Thomas Yarrow tells Helen Pidd. In the past few years he has become friends with an intergenerational group of men.
“It took me a while to realise that actually, the harshness of the banter was a form of intimacy,” he says. “Men opening up is a really good thing for lots of men. But I think there’s also a lot of people who end up feeling stigmatised or even like personal failures because they’re not able to or not willing to.”
