5 The Liberating Power of Connection

“I don’t mind solitude,” Roy explained to Ed Adams during a therapy session. “I don’t mind going to places like restaurants and movies by myself. But sometimes I feel so lonely I ache. And that, I do mind. As I think about it, one of my greatest fears is being unable to care for myself and dying alone.”

An epidemic of loneliness exists in the United States, affecting millions of men and boys. The former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called loneliness the most common threat to public health. In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Dr. Murthy stated that seclusion or “weak social connections, are associated with a reduction of lifespan similar to that caused by smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and even greater than that associated with obesity.”¹

It seems that loneliness actually increases our susceptibility to physical and emotional problems such as cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. In 2005, the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing found that friendships increased life expectancy by as much as 22 percent. It turns out that friendships positively affect life extension even more than family relationships do.²

Loneliness also creates confusion for men. On the one hand, loneliness feels lousy. On the other hand, men aren’t supposed to express pain, complain, or be needy. After all, a central value of confined masculinity is self-sufficiency—not needing anyone or anything else. Men like Roy silently suffer the pangs of loneliness while trying to convince themselves that loneliness doesn’t matter. Roy not only feels lonely, but his quality of life is diminished. As the surgeon general suggested, friendships, companionship, and intimacy offer us great benefits. In poetic terms, connections give life wings.

And those wings matter more and more. In the twenty-first century, connection is vital for men to live a full life. Cultivating social ties and an awareness of our interdependence is increasingly important to men in their individual relationships, in their organizations, and in society. Connection frees men from loneliness and from a myopic perspective, and provides opportunities to grow down into deep understanding and intimacy with the world. Put simply, connection delivers the power to thrive at home, at work, and at play.

Suicidal Isolation

How can you play if you have no close pals to play with? In one of Ed’s psychotherapy sessions with Roy, he asked Roy if he had a best friend. Roy replied, “I do. Stan. I’ve known Stan for twenty-five years. I see him once in a while, but we always talk to each other around New Year’s. It’s the kind of relationship where we always seem to pick up where we left off. I look forward to our annual call.”

Sadly, Roy rarely got to interact with his best friend.

We are hardwired to connect. The need for human-to-human connection is woven into our hearts and minds. Connection transcends gender and is archetypal. Connection is present no matter what other tribal distinctions we impose upon others. Yet, somehow men often fail to comprehend this reality; instead, they perpetuate the belief that real men are independent and self-sufficient. The truth is that men who choose to separate themselves from others are performing acts of emotional suicide.

And when our culture encourages men to be stoic and less feeling, our culture assists in that suicide. In a society that possesses such great wealth and innovation, we pay little homage to our collective emotional needs, especially the skills to develop meaningful human connection. The set of beliefs of confined masculinity is one of the most powerful engines that drives that destructive ethos. It denies men the comfort that close and intimate connection provides.

Men could use that comfort. The proportion of men living alone in 2018 was twice what it was in 1970.³ And the isolation of millions of men is leading to despair and death. One study found that middle-aged men who have many close relationships can weather three or more incidents of intense stress per year—such as divorce, financial trouble, or getting fired— without an increase in their mortality rate. That level of stress, though, tripled the death rate of socially isolated middle-aged men.⁴ Simply put, confined masculinity is killing men. But since they’re alone, their loneliness and isolation are often invisible.

Mental health professionals diagnose and treat men and women with various degrees of depression, anxiety, phobias, addictions, and destructive behaviors. Underlying these conditions is often abuse, lack of purpose, lack of belonging, fear of rejection and shame, or the belief that one is emotionally damaged. All of these conditions frequently share one essential ingredient: not being intimately connected with others in meaningful ways. This failure can occur in marriages, love relationships, friendships, and work settings. Unfortunately, disconnection is not restricted to our human relationships. We can become disconnected with other living creatures and the earth as well. Connection is not about sharing the same room, building, or planet. Connection happens when we look around and see and welcome our interdependence with all things.

Intimate Connections

In a TED talk in 2010, Dr. Brené Brown defined connection “as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”⁵

Intimacy with another person is one of life’s most precious gifts. Yet, so many men fear, avoid, or hold back expressions of intimacy, or they depend upon sex to be the primary way to express it. When intimacy is narrowly defined, important emotional relationships will become truncated. And yet intimacy can be furthered with just a little time and effort. Intimacy is a man hugging his spouse and whispering, “I love you,” or a father getting down on the floor to play with his children. And when men share inner conflicts or confusions with other men, that’s intimacy too.

Intimacy necessitates emotional vulnerability. But what important and creative act in life doesn’t require some level of vulnerability? If you try a new recipe or attempt to change a tire, isn’t there some risk of failure or inadequacy? Becoming more skilled at expressing intimacy requires courage and practice. But the men who move more deeply into intimacy by allowing themselves to be vulnerable soon find the rewards far exceed the risks. Intimate bonds create deep and satisfying connections that fill the painful voids within our hearts.

As noted earlier, intimate connections and human relationships are vital to greater life satisfaction, but intimate connections are not restricted to people. Most of us have witnessed or experienced the profoundly intimate bonds we can develop with our pets—and the powerful sadness and grief we can feel in losing them. This intimacy is created by shared experiences, mutual care, and many moments of physical touch. Animals not only crawl on our laps but move deeply into our hearts and imaginations. It’s an intimacy that emerges out of trust, love, tenderness, and smiles. It hurts so much when we lose a source of intimate connection because connection touches our souls.

Connection to Nature

The story continues beyond our relationship with people and animals. Our connection with the earth is fundamental. If any person or animal is to survive and thrive, then intimacy with the earth is needed, and we must take care of it. When we connect with the environment and understand our intimate interdependence with nature, we become better caretakers of our little planet. In turn, this increases the probability that the planet will survive. But if we refuse to maintain intimacy with the earth, that disconnection leads to collective suicide.

A confined masculinity that restricts intimate connection with life threatens all living creatures. When a man ignores his desire for connection, purpose, and meaning, it can make him physically sick or emotionally weak because his soul is running on empty. The soul of a man aches for meaning and to live a life that makes a positive difference to himself and others.

Liberating masculinity, however, opens men up and encourages intimate connections in all relationships. Expanding manhood toward a fuller expression of our humanity leads to great rewards. The antidote to our loneliness and isolation is found in both developing a compassionate mindset and moving toward meaningful and intimate connections with others and with our natural environment.

But men seem to find it difficult to connect with other men unless there is some task or agenda to fulfill. A man calling or inviting another man to lunch “just to talk” is not common. Men tend to connect with other men in the process of some activity like sports, working on a car, professional meetings, or social events involving couples. Once a man is married and becomes involved with family, his friendships with other men are often treated as unimportant, or something to fit into a schedule and between chores.

Connection Complications

There are a number of reasons why men avoid close connection with other men. The first, and perhaps most powerful reason, is the pervasive and ill-fated presence of homophobia, which is defined as fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals. Sometimes, homophobia describes the fear of feeling or expressing love toward men. Homophobic men often spread their fear and prejudice toward people with any variation of sexual expression, including lesbian, bisexual, or transgender individuals. Homophobic men seem to follow a rule that goes something like, “If you aren’t like me, I will fear and be hostile toward you.” These beliefs and reactions to diverse sexual expressions are hallmarks of confined masculinity. As a consequence, homophobic men often overgeneralize and avoid identifying feelings or talking about deeper emotions with other men. In fact, Ed Adams has met men who have never expressed intimate feelings to any other man in their entire life.

And yet, in early America, our culture prized lasting and intimate friendships between men. As historian Richard Godbeer states, “Early Americans assumed that the structure and well-being of society were determined by the dynamics and tone of personal relationships, especially those between family members and also between close friends who saw themselves as elective kinfolk.” There exist many love letters, letters of intimate appreciations and deep emotional expression between men that suggest this was a natural way to feel toward other men in the era of our founding fathers. Being closely connected with other men held no stigma. Godbeer writes, “Most Anglo-Americans living in the colonial and revolutionary periods treated emotional ties between male friends as quite distinct from sexual desire.”⁶ Today, homophobia prevents men from becoming close to one another.

The important factor is this: “masculine” behavior is subject to change through social evolution. We all lose when male-to-male relationships are feared and neglected. Just like compassion, connection does not deserve to be caked with judgment and avoidance.

No man, straight or gay, has connection and community figured out perfectly. Loneliness can creep into the lives of any gay man and older gay men in particular. Many older gay men lost lovers and friends during the worst of the AIDS crisis decades ago. And as gay men hit forty and beyond, they struggle to maintain close bonds with others, says Dusty Araujo, a community organizer based in San Francisco. Araujo says aging gay men no longer fit easily into a social scene of bars and clubs, nor are they very comfortable with social media dating tools geared to the gay population. “You become invisible,” Araujo says. “Where does the fifty-year-old gay man go to meet someone?”

But Araujo and others are working on the problem. He is program coordinator of the Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network, an initiative of San Francisco AIDS Foundation designed to promote wellness, friendships, and community service among gay, bisexual, and transgender men fifty years and older. One of the 50-Plus Network’s activities is a gathering every Saturday morning at Maxfield’s House of Caffeine, a café on the edge of San Francisco’s Castro District—one of the major hubs of gay culture worldwide. Roughly twenty to twenty-five men regularly attend the Maxfield’s events. They greet each other with hugs, kisses, smiles, and laughs.

It is a very diverse set of men. Some of them own homes, while some are homeless. Some have graduate degrees, while others have little education. “What brings us together is that we are over fifty and we survived the HIV epidemic,” Araujo says. That common ground, and the ability for men to share their experiences in a safe place, keeps them returning to the group.

“We bring people back from isolation into community,” he says.⁷

To Connect or Not to Connect

Araujo himself is a striking example of how reaching out to others leads to a richer life. The seventy-one-year-old was born in Panama. He says he was very self-centered until he and his former partner adopted two children thirty years ago. The responsibility to care for his son and daughter transformed his perspective. It led him to take a series of jobs in nonprofit and activist groups, including his current role at San Francisco AIDS Foundation. On his backpack is a pin with the word ME supported by the word WE.

“Having a child made me focus outside of me,” Araujo says. “It made me realize you can’t base your life on you alone. You have to focus on the other direction.”⁸

Still, some men take pride in isolation. This occurs when isolation is seen as being self-sufficient, independent, and manly. These men explain their preference for isolation and claim that being alone is easier, less demanding, and free of obligations. Certain men who desire friendships don’t know how to go about making friends. One man told Ed Adams that you “can’t go online and find a best friend.” And since making male friends is difficult, some men avoid connecting with others because it generates anxiety.

Think of it this way. Movement toward liberating masculinity requires holding a variety of positive and negative emotions while taking constructive action. It can be like a tiny clown car with a dozen clowns inside. In order to increase your social network and develop friendships, you must take anxieties, doubts, excitement, fear of rejection, discomfort, unpredictability, and social awkwardness along with you. In short, you are more likely to build social connections when you bring these feelings along for the ride—rather than waiting for them to go away before taking action. Every man attending his first Men Mentoring Men (M3) meeting comes with all or many of these feelings. The victory is in showing up. Then, after a meeting or two, most of these anxieties fade.

Men Loving Men

Ed Adams recalls a particular men’s meeting that became a watershed moment in the thirty-year history of M3. Over a three-year period, a group of fifteen to twenty men were meeting together every other week. Most of the participants felt emotionally safe to disclose intimate, or A-level, matters with the other men. Then, one member described how he’d followed the group’s advice and how the suggestion had helped resolve a particularly difficult issue in his life. He said, “I want you all to know how much you guys mean to me and how helpful you have been. I want to thank you and I lo . . . lo ...you. I mean I ...I—”Then another man said, “love you?” Everyone smiled. The first man said, “Yes, I love you.” The men knew this was not a romantic love but a “philia” love—a brotherly love comprised of appreciation, gratitude, compassion, and connection. This man didn’t know it at that time, but he’d activated the very opposite of homophobia, while shifting everyone involved deeper into liberating masculinity.

Within M3 today, the fear of men loving each other has become desexualized, and it’s not uncommon for love to be expressed among the men. The gay and trans men who participate in M3 find comfort and safety in the company of men, straight or gay, willing to be loving friends. The men of M3 prove that it’s not necessary to fear love and sexuality. In fact, connections with others are good for your health and overall well-being, as well as for society. Our forefathers knew this; they were on to something important and soulful.

It would be difficult to find research that showed social connection to be detrimental to your health. That’s because our need for connection is built into our DNA. The fear of connecting is learned. In today’s world, we seem to be more prone to isolation despite the ubiquity of social media. As mentioned before, the antidote to loneliness and isolation is not only in the recognition of it, but in behaviors that create and deepen relationships. Change requires action. Get into the clown car of life with all of your doubts and fears; turn on the ignition and go make connections. Make intimacy happen.

Connections at Work

This advice includes making connection and intimacy happen at work. If you do, you’re liable to zip ahead and manage bumps in the road that are coming faster and faster. But if you don’t connect deeply with others, you may find yourself getting left behind. You may find yourself booted off the bus of your current employer—and have a hard time getting aboard another.

Put simply, connection skills are critical business skills in the economy that’s emerging. We’ll say more about this in the next chapter. But the main message is that a faster pace of change, increased demographic diversity, and technological advances all are creating workplaces that penalize men who are rigid, cold, and isolated. Men aiming to succeed at work need to move away from that confined masculinity approach to a liberating masculinity mode of flexibility, warmth, and collaboration. This isn’t to say that men should discard independent work, dispassionate analysis, and principled stands. But those elements have to be harmonized with the ability to be more emotionally open and more deeply connected.

Connection with Life

Leo Buscaglia, an educator and author of many inspirational books, was considered a “cheerleader for life.” Dr. Buscaglia proclaimed that if you’re bored, you’re boring. Ed Adams heard those words during a stressful time in his life, so he found them difficult to accept. Truthfully, he was very bored with himself. He had been laser-focused for months completing his dissertation. He believed it was the only important thing in life. Once it was finished, Ed’s life felt empty and aimless. He resented the suggestion that he had anything to do with this pervasive, uncomfortable feeling. Eventually, despite his resistance, Ed took note of Buscaglia’s wisdom and finally admitted that he was boring himself to death. “My soul was withering on the vine,” Ed recalls.

Ed decided to de-bore himself. He began this journey with curiosity and challenging questions. What do I really care about? What activities engage my imagination? What am I afraid of? Who do I find interesting and why? And what does my boredom want from me?

He began to notice that every answer to these questions included one major ingredient: connection. Expanding life involves connecting more deeply and broadly with others, because infinite experiences and possibilities come from those ties.

Liberating masculinity occurs when we deepen our creative connections to others and to everything around us. One way to deepen our connection to life is to apply the following five steps in your relationships, career, and life interests. And while you will likely recognize a sexual parallel to these steps, the point is simply to generate a more connected, intimate, and creative life.

GET TURNED ON: Be attracted to life as it is, not how you wish it to be. Know that you are enough of a man to live, love, and prosper.

BECOME ERECT: Be ready to move into the possibilities of life and allow the places and things you enjoy to focus your attention.

PENETRATE: Move deeply into your relationships, interests, skills, and life choices. Become a subject matter expert.

FERTILIZE: Give new energy to your relationships and interests.

NURTURE: Protect and strengthen what you created and help it grow.

These five steps are interrelated. For example, if you are not turned on to life, then the other four steps will shut down. If you are turned on and excited but you don’t take risks or move deeply into your ideas, projects, relationships, and skills, there will be nothing to show for your prior efforts. And if you do the first four steps but don’t provide, protect, strengthen, and nurture what you created, it will likely fall apart.

We began this chapter with the story about Roy’s experience of loneliness and isolation. Roy was a therapeutic challenge for Ed because he believed his fate was to be forever alone, his destiny sealed. Because of these beliefs, he resisted making changes. Fortunately, he went on a dating site and had lunch with a woman who saw the acorn inside Roy’s heart. They began to date and eventually moved in together.

Roy developed new acquaintances, joined M3, and became interested in photography. And though Roy is an introvert, he is no longer isolated and alone. After so many sessions of Ed seeing Roy lonely and wistful, the fact that Ed now sees him relating, laughing and smiling is priceless.

THINGS TO PONDER AND DO

CURIOSITY: Is there someone you’d like to get to know better? Connect with that person and do something together.

COURAGE: Connection requires courage. Make a list of all that you fear or worry about, and then imagine all of them piling into your emotional “clown car.” Then take action to connect.

COMPASSION: Be gentle with yourselfand self-compassionate regarding your connections with other men. Our culture makes it difficult and challenging to develop male friendships. Instead of beating yourself up, appreciate the steps you take.

CONNECTION: Connections grow down. This means that you can deepen the roots of existing relationships if you are more kind, emotionally generous, and involved. Try to go beyond your typical comfort level with someone you are already connected to. Let go of any homophobia you may have and express tender feelings you may have toward another man.

COMMITMENT: Find a man or group of men with whom you can relearn how to be playful, trusting, and self-disclosing. Promise yourself that male companionship will not be neglected or marginalized.

Ways and Means