Cut away the fluff of the article, and what they’re actually saying is: interact with your community and help out your friends more. I think this is good advice for women too, it would probably be good for me.
Couldn’t agree more. I have very loose friendships with old high school buddies and we rarely hang out. My wife however is doing something with her friends 2-3 times per week, having “women only” retreats, calling them almost daily, buying them birthday gifts even if they live out of state, and so on. She’s infinitely more connected to a community than I am and for some men I think it’s a real challenge to put themselves out there and to try and build up that trust and dependence to a certain degree. Men like to think we’re Batman: we want a bare minimum of relationships so they can’t be used against us.
I was going to say there are many flavors of feminism from basically communism to gloria stienman. The interact with your community and help everyone to do well is the type that jives with me. hull house style.
those things aren’t automatic wins. your community/friends can be ungrateful and abusive people who simple taking advantage of you and don’t offer you anything back, or worse, tell you your contributions aren’t enough and you need to give them more.
yes in an ideal world you would volunteer and it would create a positive feedback loop. but that is not often the case. lots of volunteer communities are shitty, exclusionary, and exploitative. personal/community relationships may leave you worse off than you were.
and socially isolated/emotionally vulnerable people are way more likely to fall victim/be targeted by exploitative groups.
Cut away the fluff of the article, and what they’re actually saying is: interact with your community and help out your friends more. I think this is good advice for women too, it would probably be good for me.
Couldn’t agree more. I have very loose friendships with old high school buddies and we rarely hang out. My wife however is doing something with her friends 2-3 times per week, having “women only” retreats, calling them almost daily, buying them birthday gifts even if they live out of state, and so on. She’s infinitely more connected to a community than I am and for some men I think it’s a real challenge to put themselves out there and to try and build up that trust and dependence to a certain degree. Men like to think we’re Batman: we want a bare minimum of relationships so they can’t be used against us.
I was going to say there are many flavors of feminism from basically communism to gloria stienman. The interact with your community and help everyone to do well is the type that jives with me. hull house style.
those things aren’t automatic wins. your community/friends can be ungrateful and abusive people who simple taking advantage of you and don’t offer you anything back, or worse, tell you your contributions aren’t enough and you need to give them more.
yes in an ideal world you would volunteer and it would create a positive feedback loop. but that is not often the case. lots of volunteer communities are shitty, exclusionary, and exploitative. personal/community relationships may leave you worse off than you were.
and socially isolated/emotionally vulnerable people are way more likely to fall victim/be targeted by exploitative groups.
for sure yes. There’s no magical solution to loneliness.