Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships
Geoffrey Greif
Abstract
Much has been made of the complex social arrangements that girls and women navigate, but little scholarly or popular attention has focused on what friendship means to men. Drawing on in-depth interviews with nearly 400 men and 125 women, the author takes readers on a guided tour of male friendships, explaining what makes them work, why they are vital to the health of individuals and communities, and how to build the kinds of friendships that can lead to longer and happier lives. The interviews with women help map the differences in what men and women seek from friendships and what, if anything ... More
Much has been made of the complex social arrangements that girls and women navigate, but little scholarly or popular attention has focused on what friendship means to men. Drawing on in-depth interviews with nearly 400 men and 125 women, the author takes readers on a guided tour of male friendships, explaining what makes them work, why they are vital to the health of individuals and communities, and how to build the kinds of friendships that can lead to longer and happier lives. The interviews with women help map the differences in what men and women seek from friendships and what, if anything, men and women can learn from each other. The guiding feature of the book is Greif's typology of male friendships: he dispels the myth that men don't have friends, showing that men have must, trust, just, and rust friends. A must friend is the best friend a man must call with earthshaking news. A trust friend is liked and trusted but not necessarily held as close as a must friend. Just friends are casual acquaintances, while rust friends have a long history together and can drift in and out of each other's lives, essentially picking up where they left off. Understanding the role each of these types of friends plays across men's lives, from youth to advanced age, reveals developmental patterns, such as how men cope with stress and conflict, and how they make and maintain friendships. We also learn how notions of masculinity and the women in their lives shape their friendships, and how their friends keep them active and happy. Through the words of the men themselves and detailed profiles of men from their twenties to their nineties, readers learn what friendships offer men and how to work on their own friendships.
Keywords:
men,
male friendships,
masculinity,
casual acquaintances,
stress,
conflict
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195326420 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195326420.001.0001 |