Many men struggle to understand how to relate to other men in their adult lives. A lot of this comes down to the fact that it is, in many ways, a strange time to be a man, with many social changes that are causing men to be a little confused about various aspects of normal living. Add to that the awkwardness that many men feel when it comes to expressing their emotions and you can see why this is such a problem for so many people. In this post, we are going to look at how you can bond with other men and build strong friendships which will stand the test of time.
Finding New Friends As An Adult
Many people get to various points in their adulthood where they start to realize that they don’t have many friends, and that they would like to have a few more. This can happen as a result of a breakup, through which you end up ‘losing’ the friends to the other person, or it can be something like moving away to a new city or changing jobs. Whatever the reason, if you find yourself as an adult man with no or few friends, how do you go about finding new ones?
The answer is to simply spend time doing the kind of things you enjoy, in a public space. That means that even if your hobbies are particularly insular or indoorsy, you still want to try and find somewhere that people are engaging with it publicly. That could mean finding a club that plays your favorite sport or game, or seeking out people who like the same stuff as you online. The point is that spending time doing what you enjoy means you are opening yourself up to the possibility of meeting other like-minded people.
You have to develop a certain amount of patience with this. It can often take time to find new friends, and then it can be difficult to know whether you want to keep in touch with them or not. But if you keep it up, you will one day get to the point where you suddenly realize you have surrounded yourself with friends again, and you are probably going to enjoy that considerably. So keep at it, have patience, and just keep on doing what matters to you. That should be sufficient in drawing in new friends over time.
Conversations Topics
Once you start meeting new people, you are going to need to know what to talk about. This can be a challenge for many men, and you might find that you struggle to really know what to say. The important point here is that you don’t simply try to talk about things you think you should talk about, or try too hard to please the other person’s idea of what you should talk about. If you genuinely talk about what you care about, that is going to be sufficient in most cases for making the conversation flow, and you will look more genuine and trustworthy as a result too.
Of course, there are some topics that often go down particularly well, and if you happen to be interested in them then they can help. This might include some of the more traditionally masculine subjects, such as taking a deep dive into the NHL Power Rankings For The 2020 or discussing your favorite new cars. If you are happy to talk about that stuff, it can be good as a form of ice breaking. But you should always also feel able to talk about what other stuff really interests you, especially once the ice is broken.
Pursuing Common Goals
Some of the best friends you will ever make are those who are on the same or similar path to you. If you have a particular goal in mind and you are working day and night to pursue it, you are eventually going to find yourself in the company of other men who are working towards the same. There is something primally very exciting about spending time with other men who are pursuing the same goals, and you will find that you are going to encourage each other along too, which can make those goals more likely to come to fruition.
These goals can be anything, from trying to achieve victory in sports to wanting to get ahead in a certain industry or line or work. The point is that spending time together both pursuing that goal is one of the most basic and essential ways that men bond with each other. It is worth either replicating this by playing sports or going hunting, or actually making it a reality and pursuing the same career or world goal. Few things encourage men to bond more than this.
The Role Of Humor
Without humor, it would be much more difficult to bond with other men at all. Humor plays an important role in bonding, in that it allows you to feel closer to each other in a safe and engaged way. When you are able to share jokes together, you are effectively saying that you are comfortable in each other’s presence, and that is a hugely important part of bonding in itself. That doesn’t mean that you need to make jokes the whole time, but it does mean you should make it a normal part of how you speak with other men. It makes a huge difference to how easily you can bond with them.
The other thing about humor is that it lets everyone’s guard down, and it becomes easier to relate to each other in whatever way might be necessary. That is something that you need to focus on sometimes when you are trying to get closer to men, so it’s worth thinking about.
As long as you are aware of these things, you should find it a lot easier to bond with other men and to really enjoy spending time with them.
