[ravenstine]

I think what you said is very true, and I see it reflected in my own life. Though I think it also has to do with male nature. Historically, it has made sense for men to be less likely to form attachments in healthy circumstances, and I think evolutionary biology probably hs a role here. Men can form intense bonds with each other when they are comrades or fellow soldiers, but to irrationally attach oneself to other men is not an advantage to a man when the going gets tough and he has to find a new position in life that doesn't involve his old platoon; from a reproductive perspective, hanging out with the same men indefinitely isn't as likely to get him to fertilize some eggs as forming an emotional bond with a woman or women. For women, it seems more beneficial to form lasting bonds with other women as they can provide a support structure that can help raise children and consolidate effort doing menial tasks while men are off doing other things. A man, in times of yore, could make his own way even if he lacked a support structure. For women, vulnerability and lack of strength, made it much more difficult for them to simply go off at will on their own and form their own families and slay their own dragons. Nowadays, that's not so much the case in the west, but I think these innate behaviors we developed as a result of our physiology usually remain, aside from some conditioning (i.e. nurture). The lack of a physical community can amplify those behaviors.

On the other side of the coin, I think many men are forming friendships and communities, not in the real world, but online where people can form bonds with those who have common interests as opposed to those jerks on happen to live on your street who don't drink your brand of beer or root for the same football team. Our Burger King culture of "have it your way" makes forming communities with people who only share very general traits with one, like the kind of genitals you have, make little or no sense. Lack of common experience also makes it hard for people to really care about spending a moment with one another. Meanwhile, the Web has a segment for every belief, activity, or way of life, and people who one can relate to on an asynchronous basis with little social risk. I had online buddies for years, but it was easy because they never saw my face and I was never obligated to take time out of my day to go to lunch with them or attend a boring get together with their family.

[johncole]

+1. I read an anthropology article years ago that helped explain this from an evolutionary point of view. Men tended to make strong bonds with a few men for life, while women tended to have more mobility in their bonding. Men needed intense trusting relationships that their lives depended on: if you're going to organize and go hunt big animals, you needed to trust those you went with. Women needed different things during different periods of their lives. Vulnerability really is the need for community to help raise children. So you made friends maybe before you had children, then different friends who were also raising children, then you made different friends and had different relationships when you were finally a grandparent and not having children yourself.