DO I HAVE ANY REAL FRIENDS?

THERE IS SOMETHING a little sad about a 40-year-old man spending the better part of three months trying to figure out if he has any friends. Fine: it’s really sad. But earlier this year, after my social-media feeds started filling up with posts on a crisis in men’s friendship, I looked in the mirror and asked some hard questions. Do I have any real friends? Would I be happier with more friends? And, is this what I look like now?

So I did what any rational person would do. I interviewed 12 sociologists, psychiatrists, linguists and anthropologists about what it actually means to have and be a friend today. I read hundreds of pages of studies on how guys build and maintain friendships. Then I conducted my have friends – we’re just used to doing friendship in our own imperfect way. And as with everything else in our lives, we could probably benefit from getting better at it. Here are a few of my highly unscientific findings.