Men reportedly have fewer close social ties than women, especially in middle age. Why is this and how to address it?

A Harvard study, now almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier, as recently reported in the Harvard Gazette.

When scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great Depression, they hoped the longitudinal study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives.

After following the men for nearly 80 years as part of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, researchers have collected a cornucopia of data on their physical and mental health.

Of the original Harvard cohort recruited as part of the Grant Study, only 19 are still alive, all in their mid-90s (women weren’t in the original study because the college was still all male).

Scientists eventually expanded their research to include the men’s offspring, who now number 1,300 and are in their 50s and 60s, to find out how early-life experiences affect health and aging over time.

In the 1970s, 456 Boston inner-city residents were enlisted as part of the Glueck Study, and 40 of them are still alive. More than a decade ago, researchers began including wives in the Grant and Glueck studies.

Over the years, researchers have studied the participants’ health trajectories and their broader lives.

“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” said Robert Waldinger, director of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

“Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”

Close relationships, more than money, power, glory, career status or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, says the research.

Such ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or genes.

That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.

Another US survey also found that men have fewer social ties than they used to, with just 27% saying they have at least six close friends. In 1990, this figure was 55%. During that period, the number of men reporting no close friendships has risen from 3% to 15%.

In the UK, research by the Movember Foundation in 2018 found 27% of men said they had no close friends at all. This is pretty staggering, especially given how social media platforms have made instant connectivity so much easier.

The research also found that friendships become less strong as men get older, with 22% of men aged 55 and over saying they never see their friends.

Professor Robin Dunbar, a psychologist at Oxford University with a specific research interest in the way people socialise, has assessed that men’s and women’s friendships are basically inherently different, as women tend to be unfraid of having conversations concerning emotion and are oftentimes more adept at ‘deep and meaningfuls’ than men, who tend to connect with other men based around shared hobbies or interests.

He told the Guardian this week: “Men’s friendships are more clubby. In other words, do you belong to my club? If you do, that qualifies you to be a friend...A lot of men’s friendships seem to be built around activities, so conversation is quite unimportant, and is largely designed to trigger laughter as much as anything else. Men don’t do deep emotional discussions about friendships.

“Because men are inherently socially lazy, when they start to lose friendships, they find it more difficult to recreate them.”

In our 30s and into our 40s, and if we are lucky enough to meet the right partner and become parents, we may make friends through the connectivity made necessary by the process of raising children, but as you get older this becomes harder, especially, say, if a divorce immediately leaves you without access to half of your established friendship group, and men are apparently less able to open up to and bond with other men in order that incipient friendships might blossom.

Of this sorry situation Professor Dunbar has further commented: “At that stage [of middle age], you’re running out of energy and motivation; it’s an effort to get up and go out, to places you don’t know with people you don’t know and [you aren’t sure] what people talk about any more. If you’re not a complete extrovert, there’s a resistance to putting yourself in that awkward situation, so networks contract.”

As the Harvard and other US studies have clearly shown, the single biggest predictor of our psychological and physical health and wellbeing, and even our longevity, is related to the number of close friendships and family relationships we have.

So if you are a middle-aged man experiencing a friendship drought, the research indicates that the best thing to do is to find a hobby or pastime through which you will acquire the opportunity to meet like-minded other men, who will hopefully become stalwart buddies, increasing your social network and thereby improving your wellbeing and increasing your chances of growing old.

Professor Dunbar previously made it clear in a groundbreaking 2013 report that while ‘talking with mates’ on a daily basis is valuable, to experience the real benefits of friendship men must meet up in person twice a week with four friends and ‘do stuff’.

The research proves men need to actually get together in person to prevent the quality of their friendships eroding and, more importantly, experience the benefits associated with strong male bonds.

Men, on average, spend just less than half of their social time with an inner circle of four to five close mates (if they are lucky enough to have that many chums) – and research suggests that this is linked directly to the banter that such a group inspires and its benefits.

Prof Dunbar, whose study was commissioned by Guinness in 2013, told the Daily Mail upon its release: “Bonds can be formed through a range of activities from team sports to male banter – or simply having a pint with your pals on a Friday night.

"However, the key to maintaining strong friendships is to meet up twice a week and do stuff with the four people closest to you."

So men now have the perfect excuse to head down the pub with mates, play computer games with cohorts, watch the football together, go fly fishing or catch up more regularly on the golf course – a perfectly pleasant social prescription that should result in more banter, more laughter, more people to hang out with and improved physical and mental health, and actually living long enough to one day get an OAP bus pass.