> Just saying: The threat facing middle-age men is loneliness (as the article states), not lack of male friends per-se. I fit the description of the men in the article, but I am not lonely now. Perhaps, in a few years, I will realize that my priorities change, that I am lonely then, and I will resent my 30s self for allowing so few male friendships to grow and flourish.

I was like that, as well, and am roughly at the same point in life - I turned 40 this year, and was happy with my life with my wife and daughter. I would also have told you I had “a few” male friends I talked to “a few times a year”.

Things changed for me, rather abruptly at the start of the year, when my wife decided she was capital-U-unhappy, and that the best way to deal with that was start a relationship with another man. In addition to the swirl of emotions I had to deal with, suddenly and unexpectedly, I quickly found out that I really didn’t have any close friends left, and had basically nobody to talk to about what I was going through. And, that I had nobody to blame but myself for at least that part of the situation I found myself in.

My point is not that my situation is typical, or that anything like what I described will happen to you (or anyone else reading this,) but that I found out just how important friendships were when I needed them, and didn’t have them. So, I’ve spent the last few months treating my lack of social interaction like the emergency it is, and I strongly encourage others to do the same. Hopefully, it will just make a person’s life more fulfilling. At the margins, it might keep you sane in a very difficult situation.