[rubashov]

Beyond the juvenile stage men can't bond through "play time". Men bond through shared struggle and purpose. You aren't going to make close lifetime male friends at some stupid beer centric sports league.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Men-Jack-Donovan/dp/0985452307

I think it's an interesting distinction that this is not really true of women. Women can get close over various shared interests and activities.

[nhashem]

Yeah, I read Fight Club too, dude.

We could have a much deeper discussion on the evolution of society and how the gradual reduction of physical survival difficulty has eroded a lot of the male bonding development that used to exist. But a lot the OP was about difficulty making friends even when people had a lot of things in common, so I was sharing an anecdote on how a shared activity and commitment, even for a mostly trivial hobby, still led to what I considered good friendships.

You may consider bonding through my softball team "play time." I posit that it's better than not bonding at all, but if you really want to dismiss my friendships and suggest the only way to forge lifetime male bonding is to form an underground anarchist militia and make bombs out of soap, I'll take that under consideration.

[Apocryphon]

I wonder how he'd respond to a non-aggressive, benevolent shared purpose and struggle. How about a mainstream charitable organization that makes soaps out of bombs?

[rubashov]

Yeah, I wasn't contradicting you, dude. Maybe you'd make more friends if you chilled out.

[jessedhillon]

How are you not contradicting him? He said he made some great friends through casual sports, and you're saying that lifelong friendship cannot happen through casual sports. You are directly disagreeing with him about how deep his friendships are.

Based on nothing more than armchair psychology!

[nickzoic]

I dunno, maybe he's saying that if you take casual sports as seriously as the first guy evidently takes his casual sports, they count as a shared struggle, etc, etc.

[greedo]

Methinks "How To Win Friends and Influence People" hasn't made it to your reading list.

[xenophanes]

Or his goal in this discussion isn't to win friends and influence people.

Maybe he's trying to gain entertainment.

Just because someone isn't getting X now doesn't mean he doesn't know how to. Maybe he's after Y.

[pehrlich]

I read that as the "shared struggle and purpose" being the softball team..

[msellout]

Then what is 'play time' if softball qualifies as 'struggle and purpose'?

[infectoid]

Best troll ever. Love your work man.

[Spearchucker]

Not always true either. I spent some time in the military in South Africa during the bush war. I can without a doubt say that I've never felt closer to another male as I did then.

However, 23 years later and I only have contact details for one of the 8, and even though he and I are friends on Facebook we never exchange more than the annual "happy birthday". Back then all 8 of us were in the same hole. Today we have different lives, with little (if anything) in common. Anything we have left for each other belongs to another time, and place.

A softball team is going to provide far more rewarding and, importantly, long-lasting friendships than "shared struggle and purpose".

[RockyMcNuts]

I got the impression the Band of Brothers Easy Company guys basically didn't talk for 20+ years after the war, except odd pairs and small groups that stayed in touch. People went back to school, started careers, families. Then they reconnected and ended up forming a strong social network, even though they had very different backgrounds and life paths. Stephen Ambrose was between projects and came across them, and the rest was (literally) history. They were an elite group and some were very successful, others were wounded, others ended up going through what I might have considered stereotypical Vietnam Vet experiences, even though WWII veterans are not associated with that. I suspect a critical mass of people working to keep everyone connected and provide mutual support makes all the difference.

[ajays]

I recently connected with a close friend that I hadn't seen since high school (20 years ago). We talked about common friends, etc. and it was as if the intervening 20 years had never happened. There were seeds of trust and companionship that had survived the 20-year drought.

My hunch is (and excuse me for suggesting this, since I don't know you at all) that if you ever got in touch with any of those 8 again and spent some time with him, you'd be able to reconnect very quickly.

[jessedhillon]

This is going to sound grossly presumptuous, because it is: Please find these men you served with and give them a call, or write a letter, while all of you are still alive. The thought of you guys drifting so far apart with so little contact is making me sad.

[mark_integerdsv]

Speaking as a fellow (?) South African, albeit younger (too young to have been involved in that conflict) I feel it's worth pointing out that their drifting apart may very well be by choice, or rather: simply not making an effort to stay in touch.

In high school I had two teachers who were involved in the bush war or 'spent time on the border' as it is often referred to, both of them clearly very scarred by their experiences. One of them outright shell shocked.

I'm guessing that there may be some level of self preservation in leaving experiences like that in the past, reconnecting with your life and getting on with it.

[xtracto]

It may very well be that they decide to forget that part of their lives.

I cannot imagine how some kind of reunion would be good for remembrance:

"Do you remember that time when we got a granade and almost died?" "aaah yes... bad times"... "Or what about when corporal Jones was blown into pieces" "aaah yes... that morning we played poker toghether".

[subpixel]

At first glance, I totally thought you were linking to a book by Jack Donaghy.

[dcotter]

It doesn't hurt the man-cred, does it?