Four Rules for Finding Friendship

And why loneliness is a crisis of virtue.

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Photo by Julentto Photography on Unsplash

In my previous article, What Is a Good Man? I explored features of virtuous masculinity. One point in particular was pulled out by my readers for scrutiny: the need for accountability.

Some of my readers balked at the notion of intentionally seeking accountability, while others asked how they could find it. Reader

9A

asked, "Would you mind commenting on how you found (or formed) your community of accountability? Something like that can be powerfully helpful, but also seems fraught with risk of damage."

Meanwhile, as I was soliciting my audience for writing prompts in the Sacred Tension chat,

Michael Blissenbach

suggested that I write about "The male friendship and loneliness crisis: how did we get here, and how do we get out of it?” And

Nathan Morris

asked, “How can we bring back in-person community activities where people eat together, work to solve neighborhood issues, and create fellowship (and even, if the stars align, friendships)?”

It occurred to me that, in writing about accountability, I am also, by default, writing about friendship and community. Community is necessary for friendship, and friendship is necessary for accountability. The crisis of loneliness is, therefore, also a crisis of morality. It is relationships that keep us ethically strong; a lonely society is a morally weak society.

We’ve all heard the stats and hand-wringing about declining friendship and community for both sexes, so I won’t belabor the point here. Many people, especially the elderly and the young, are struggling with forming meaningful connections. I woke up to this reality myself not too long ago.

I realized, with some measure of panic, that I was lonely. It had crept up on me. Every close male friend I have has either moved away or spends large portions of the year out of town, and the friends that remain are so burdened with work, children, and family that I often don’t hear from them for days when I text them. It wasn’t until I desperately needed support that I realized, holy shit, I don’t have any local friends I can call right now.

I have good friends all over the world, and I maintain intimate correspondence with all of them. I cherish these text and video-based friendships with my whole heart, and I consider them real friendships in every sense of the word. Many of these friendships started locally and have continued across geographic distances. As Emily Dickinson wrote of deep friendship,

The absence of the Witch 
Does not invalidate the spell—

But, because I don’t just exist on the internet or in text, I also need local connections with people, and it is these connections in particular that are lacking. I call this phenomenon locally lonely. I think many people are in this position, assuming that deep non-corporeal friendships are sufficient to live a good life. We labor under this delusion until a real need pops up, like a wrecked car or a medical crisis, and there’s no physical presence of a local friend to be there for you.

Coming to this realization was frightening, in part because I consider myself extremely interconnected. Loneliness isn’t something I’m used to. Somehow, my local circle of friends had evaporated without me even noticing. I needed the physical, animal comfort of another human who understood me; I needed to look a brother in the eyes and tell him how much pain I was in; I needed a hug and couldn’t get it. It’s a frightening experience to look up one day in your thirties and realize that you need people who aren’t there.

“A diminishing circle of friends,” writes the poet

David Whyte

, “is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armoured personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most average existence.”

So, I am now in the process of rebuilding local connections and making new friends. I don’t have an answer for how anyone other than myself can find friends. This isn’t a universal how-to guide for friendship-making. It’s rather my guide that helps me. These steps are addressed to you, but only as a matter of form and clarity. They are really addressed to me, though I’m delighted if you find them helpful.