'My Husband Has No Friends' | Hacker News Reader

'My Husband Has No Friends'

thecut.com

18 pointsgmays11 comments

As a man, with an introvert partner i can say this is just what life is. I have to also push her to come to social events with me, and even though it exhausts her, she feels better after.

Putting this on gender is such a weird thing to do. It is just couples where one partner is intro- and the other extrovert.

> Putting this on gender is such a weird thing to do.

Yes -- this phenomenon is somewhat gendered, but not overwhelmingly so. From the article's own statistic:

A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that 54 percent of women say they turn to a friend for emotional support but only 38 percent of men say they do.

So I think this is a problem that affects men somewhat more often than women, but happens plenty to both.

Not turning to a friend for emotional support, is not the same as not having friends.

That study would point to men having other ways to deal with emotions or indeed bottle them up, but the phenomenon of having friends or not like OP said, perhaps isn't gendered.

This article has some weird ideas that men should only hang “with the guys” and that women are social butterflies because they volunteer at their kids’ schools. This kind of blatant bias makes me skeptical about the entire premise of the article.

It feels like an intentionally provocative/obtuse article meant to evoke an emotional reaction and drive engagement

I didn't see the author make that statement. She stated she's seen that behavior from other women. My wife was a volunteer coordinator for our school district for two years. Not a single dad volunteered during the entire time she was there. Consequently, my wife seems to run into someone she knows basically every time we leave the house. Every time I leave the house I hope I don't see anyone I know and can just get about my day in peace.

https://archive.ph/SrNY7

My pet theory is the elimination of the third place[1] where socialization can happen. Much of this is because the push for higher and higher levels of productivity and profit has made people more and more busy, which leaves less time and energy for these third spaces.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

There are a lot "third place" spaces in New York and other big cities.

Would be interesting to see if New Yorkers have more friends/more social.

Unwalled link: https://unwall.app/www.thecut.com/article/my-husband-has-no-...

I feel like this article oscillates between sympathy for the lonely men, and victim-blaming that they're not trying hard enough, they're expecting their wife to manage their social life, etc.

I will say that loneliness and depression go hand-in-hand. And if someone's husband is clinically depressed, that's going to look a lot like "they're not even trying."

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