That is a big part of it.
When the first question you are asked for decades when meeting someone is “What do you do?” it gets ingrained that your only value is what you do.
Add in the fact that men hitting that age now have basically never received any positive reaction for expressing any emotions or vulnerability and usually outright been mocked for doing so and it is no wonder they are are hard group to reach…
And they’re all totally socially isolated to boot. How the hell do you make friends as an adult?
As with most things, the hardest part is the first step: you have to find a community to join. It can be anything, but senior centers are greater resources for older people that they unfortunately don’t take enough advantage of. My parents found a seniors’ program at a local college and started taking classes with people their age, which created an entirely new friend group for them. You just have to find a group of people doing something you enjoy and the relationships will likely form without much effort after that, provided you don’t have crippling social anxiety or something else that makes social interaction difficult. Point is, once you get the ball rolling, momentum takes over; the hardest part is getting it (i.e. yourself) moving.
You need a group that’s small enough to allow for personal interaction, but large enough that there’s enough people that you’re more likely to find ones you click with. It’s easy enough to do online - a lot of people meet in games like MMOs and on social media sites. You already share a common interest, and if you click you can expand your friendship outside of that immediate context. Even within the context, you get friends and community.
Real world kinds of places can include things like a men’s choir or a community theater group if that’s your demographic. Those can lead to Saturday brunches and such. There’s also places like dog parks where you can hang out with other dog owners, and sports groups like bowling and ultimate that have various levels of serious vs fun. There’s also a lot of volunteering opportunities.
Some groups can be cliques that can make it harder to get into at first, and just like in dating you can’t let a negative experience turn you off from the whole scene.
I’ve seen a few people complain about the question “what do you do?” over the years, and I think it’s pretty telling that most people seem to interpret that as “what is your job?”
For me, my job is a footnote to my life, it’s not something I’m overly proud of, if I woke up rich tomorrow I’d never go back to work, it’s just how I fund the rest of my lifestyle.
I tend to answer that question with my hobbies, things I’m working on, trips I’m planning, etc
Sort of a double-edged sword is that I do actually work a pretty interesting job that people really want to hear about when they find out what I do, and I’d really rather talk about the other things I do. Probably the one thing I miss about when I was a random schmuck working a shitty warehouse job, I didn’t have to talk about work outside of work as much
How people make money is often the most boring thing about them. A whole lot of the prestigious jobs that make big bucks that people like to brag about boil down to a whole lot of paperwork, emails, and phone calls, I don’t want to hear about that, that’s the kind of stuff I make any excuse I can to avoid thinking about.
If they’re making big bucks though, hopefully they’re doing something cool with it, they can tell me about their ski trips, or yacht trips to private islands or whatever rich people do these days, that’s what I want to hear about it. If the only thing they can come up with to say that they “do” is a job doing the boring shit I try to avoid, that’s their own fault. They’re free to judge me, I’m judging them right back, they’re wasting their lives.
And most of the time my current job is far more interesting than theirs anyway even if it’s not as prestigious.
Sort of a double-edged sword is that I do actually work a pretty interesting job that people really want to hear about when they find out what I do, and I’d really rather talk about the other things I do.
Yeah but what do you do for work doe?
When the first question you are asked for decades when meeting someone is “What do you do?” it gets ingrained that your only value is what you do.
Exactly. I stopped asking that question because I don’t wanna be asked that anymore. I ask other guys what their hobby(ies) is(are).
I’ve always taken that question as a form of trying to find common interests. If you answered it with your hobbies, it would fulfill the same purpose which is getting conversation started.
If you asked me “well, how much do you make?” that would be way more pointed towards “productivity”.
