For the past few years psychology researchers, think-piece writers and purportedly compassionate people everywhere have been shouting about the “male loneliness epidemic.” Their pieces paint a hopeless picture. Perhaps one of sad, cheeto dust-laden men, doomscrolling their days away, alone in their rooms. And for some MSU men, reality is that bleak. When surveyed in 2022, 30% of MSU students reported feeling “very lonely” within the past two weeks. 

But the epidemic isn’t my focus here. There’s another less hopeless, but still frustrating situation many men live in. It’s one I often slide in and out of throughout the year. 

I’m (self-aggrandizingly) coining this milder loneliness the "male loneliness common cold."

Most men do have close friends, but the pitfalls of masculinity still manifest themselves in those relationships. They lead to a silent, often temporary and imperceptible form of loneliness. In the same 2022 survey, a combined 35% of MSU students reported feeling very lonely less frequently, at some point in the last month or last year. 

This is my experience with the cold: after a week of planning, you’re finally able to get all the guys together. The activity is inevitably one of a few options: playing a game, watching a movie or, just to shake things up, watching a game. You go, you have a great time, and you die laughing on a couch for hours. But when you get home, you're still lonely. 

It’s a paradox. How could someone regularly spending quality time with people they love still feel alone? It’s because it’s not about the time spent, or even about the people. It’s about what you do together. 

Consider your conversations with men, and what they’re typically about. Are you talking about things (school, sports, news) or people (relationships, moods, family)? 

Men just love talking about things. We’ll chat for hours about movies we like, our fantasy football team, the stock market or a podcast we listened to. But we don’t talk about people. We don’t talk about how hard it's been helping our relative in the hospital, we don’t talk about relationship struggles and we especially don’t talk honestly about “how we’ve been.”

Lacking those conversations doesn’t feel like much, but it adds up over time. To put it in stereotypically masculine terms, it’s like going a week without eating protein. It might feel like nothing each time, but eventually you start getting hungry, even without knowing why. 

The cold, like any other, comes and goes. It doesn’t feel as heightened as that very real epidemic you’ve been warned about, though it might have some of the same causes. It’s staved off by brief moments when we let the facade of masculine detachment go, maybe at a late-night bonfire after a few drinks. But it’s bound to come back.

Most writing on the epidemic like to conclude by prescribing some nice and easy solutions: “Join clubs!” “Volunteer!” “Have you ever tried wheel throwing?” I still don’t think these options hit at the core of the cold (although I do happen to love wheel throwing).

Men need ways to cut past the noise. Our conversations need to start exploring what we actually care about. Any real solutions start with finding ways to accomplish that.

My favorite at-home remedy? My personal Vitamin C packet? Asking some better questions. 

Lately I’ve been foregoing the old faithful in favor of some sillier alternatives. My favorite example as of late has been, “are you more of a hunter or a gatherer?” You can also go for something more personal like, “when someone comes to you for help, what are they asking for help with?” 

In my experience, asking things like this make for better conversations. They lead people to talk about their personalities, the people they love, and their lives as a whole.

Even if they aren’t therapist-level personal inquiries, they make people think a little, and that makes them dig a little deeper. If we can get men to do just that little bit of digging, I think we can reach a slightly better place. But until men can shake off those lasting vestiges of the old masculinity, I do still think the cold will keep coming and going.

Jack O'Brien is a junior studying Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and a columnist at The State News. The views in this article are his own and independent of The State News.