There is an article going around that says the loneliness problem is not really a men's problem. Nick Keppler wrote it for Slate last month. His argument is that loneliness tracks poverty more closely than it tracks masculinity. Low-wage work with no steady coworkers. No money for the things men gather around. He calls it something society imposes on people rather than something men do to themselves.
I think he is right. And I think there is a second thing riding alongside it that the article never names.
Loneliness tracks poverty. So does sedation.
When a man is broke and alone, the easiest thing in the world is to reach for whatever feels good right now. It does not have to be good for him. It only has to work tonight. A drink. A screen. A bet. An hour that disappears and takes the ache with it. The cheapest comfort is always the one closest to hand, and a man with no money and no company has a short reach.
That is what makes it so hard to see from the outside. A man who is sedating looks like he is managing. He is not calling anybody at two in the morning. The numbing is doing its job, and that is exactly the problem. It works well enough that he never has to say a word out loud.
Peter had a word for the opposite of this, and he put it first:
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.1 Peter 5:8
Read what comes right after it. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. Sober-minded, then watchful, then brotherhood — in that order. Peter does not tell a man to white-knuckle it alone. He tells him to stay awake, and then he points at the other men.
A lion hunts the one that has wandered off from the herd. He does not pick the strongest. He picks the one standing by himself.
Men drift
We see the shape of this in our own group. There is a small nucleus that meets every week, the same men in the same room. Around them is a larger group that jumps in from time to time and then goes quiet for a stretch.
Men drift. That is not a failure of the men, and it is not a failure of the room. It is just what happens.
So we meet them where they are and we do not pressure them.
That sounds like doing nothing. It is a decision, and it cost us something to make it. A man has to want to change himself first. You can want it for him, but you cannot want it harder than he does and have it count for anything. Pressure gets you a man who shows up out of guilt, and a man who shows up out of guilt stays about a month.
What you can do is keep the room open. Keep the seat there. Keep asking without leaning on him. And when he is ready, he already knows exactly where to walk.
Some weeks the room is full. Some weeks it is the nucleus. Both are Wednesday.
The Challenge
Think of the man who has gone quiet on you. Not the one in crisis. The one who is managing.
Text him today. No invitation, no ask, nothing he has to answer. Just tell him you thought about him. Leave the door where he can find it.
If you have been the one who drifted, hear this plainly: the door has not moved.
Brian