Summer means taking a break from the usual routine, so I’m skipping presidential politics, culture wars and federal lawsuits this month to tackle a much weightier subject: why is it so difficult for men to make and sustain deep friendships.

I’ve been mulling this over since my wife, Joan, related a recent chat with a long-time friend that focused on age-related changes to female body parts. “Really? You compared notes?” I asked. She assured me it’s common among women.

For the record, I have never had a conversation with anyone about male body parts. The closest I’ve come to a physiological admission is: “Geez, my back really hurts today”, or “My colonoscopy went well; how was yours?”

I’ll admit, body-part discussions might not be the best metric for measuring differences in male and female friendships. But feeling comfortable enough to explore such intimacies suggests a history of shared experiences, emotions and trust, which I’ve been been less inclined to develop.

I would guess that’s true of other men who aren’t the natural networkers, joiners, organisers, conveners and hosts that women typically are, and thus have not had the reasons or skills to connect at deeper levels. Sure, I have friends, hundreds of them: check out my Facebook page. But are they near and dear enough to unload deep emotional and physical concerns? Not really.

My resistance to greater openness with friends is partly attributable to a lifetime as a working journalist, which has entailed a determination not to get too friendly with people I write about, moving about the country for years at a time, and almost always working alone. I made friendly acquaintances along the way, but generally left them behind as the next assignment beckoned.

I should add that growing up I was rather shy and resistant to engagement, so journalism was a perfect vocation, allowing me to don an impenetrable armour that enabled out-of-context boldness. I was the newspaper or magazine, not myself, which meant I could be more assertive and confident so long as I was in uniform. Beyond working hours, not so much. In either case, my relationships tended to be more casual than long-lasting.

As men pair up and age, they become less inclined to exert the energy needed to seed their own lasting friendships

Now, as a resident of Los Angeles for seventeen years, I have no such excuse. But my biological hard drive seems unalterably programmed, so my circle here is composed mainly of Joan’s friends. While I’ve been warmly grandfathered in, I rarely import a friend of my own. Besides, in LA so many people are enormously successful with large circles of their own that I find them hard to penetrate on anything but a superficial level.

I also think that as men pair up and age, they become less inclined to exert the energy needed to seed their own lasting friendships. When I was single, I never declined an invitation to dinner, after-work drinks or a weekend basketball game. Through my 30s, most of my closest male friends had been college buddies, work colleagues and basketball teammates. But as our professional lives took hold and social status changed, the connective tissue thinned.

The urgency for finding new friends abated after my marriage and, finally, settling into one city. Joan had enough friends, men and women, for two lifetimes, so I didn’t have to work so hard at connecting with people on my own. Joan made nearly all our social arrangements, and while that introduced me to lots of men from interesting backgrounds, I’d usually see them in foursomes or groups. As for the male-oriented dinners, pub crawls and basketball, well, they just didn’t seem important anymore.

But without those years of shared experiences, I find my conversations with men default to more superficial subjects (than body parts) for connection, like office politics, cars and business deals – all calculated not to reveal vulnerabilities. In fact I have some men friends with whom the deepest subjects discussed are baseball, basketball and the work project of the moment. I can think of three I see only when we go to a game.

For sure, there are men with whom I have closer friendships and deeper conversations. With Larry, a television entrepreneur with a wife and two grown daughters, we talk about family and ageing (as well as sport). With Sheldon, a gay dad and film director with twin daughters, one of them recently married, I have my deepest discussions on politics and the evolving social mores of the country. With Ted, a tech executive, married with no children, our talks run the gamut from politics to travel to art to classical music.

Still, for most of my time with Larry and Ted, our wives are usually in close proximity.

My understanding of this male/female divide has been increased since reading Friendaholic, Confessions of a Friendship Addict, by the British author Elizabeth Day, who is also a dear friend of ours. The book broadly examines the enriching nature of her friendships with women and how they have shaped the arc of her life. The depth of love and compassion she reveals is surprising to me, but also enlightening as a primer on how meaningful friendships are built. She devotes five chapters to five different friends from whom she’s learned valuable life lessons. One of the chapters is about Joan.

I know lots of books have been written about male friendships, many explaining why they’re different from women’s. I Googled a list and found the only one I’d read was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Nor have I ever had what I’d consider a bromance although I’d love to hang out with Brad Pitt or Idris Elba.

Or maybe, after all, not everyone needs a wide circle of friends. Maybe it also doesn’t matter whether a close friend is male or female. A 2021 report by the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, described the country moving into a male “friendship recession” in which fifteen per cent of men surveyed said they had no close friends at all. The survey also found that men were less inclined to seek emotional support or share personal feelings.

But there is hope. The report concluded: “For those of us who have fewer close friends, it is reassuring to think that just having one or two close connections is enough to sustain us throughout our lives.”

Well, then. One or two close friends? That seems achievable.

Meanwhile, I’m reminded of one of our former presidents, Harry Truman, who is widely quoted as saying, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” We don’t live in Washington, and we don’t have a dog. But we do have a cat, Minky, who likes Joan a lot more than she likes me. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

Striking out

Despite falling inflation, rising employment and other positive economic indicators, some sectors of the American economy have ground to a halt.

High-profile labour strikes and the potential for more are bad news for Biden

This spring and summer, high-profile labour strikes and the potential for more have sullied the gains, which is bad news for the Biden administration and its efforts to push the economy onto a solid footing with the presidential election in 2024.

Already this year, striking workers have included teachers and hotel workers in Los Angeles, Starbucks employees, Amazon drivers and members of the United Electrical Workers union.

The current big trouble spot is the $134 billion entertainment industry, which shut down in early May when Hollywood’s television and film writers began picketing the major studios and streaming platforms, including Paramount, Universal, Disney, Netflix, Apple and Amazon. The 11,500 members of the Writers Guild are seeking better pay as streamers take a more robust role in production and speculation grows that AI-generated scripts will reduce opportunities for Guild writers.

In July, the writers were joined by the 160,000-member actors’ union SAG-AFTRA striking over similar concerns of pay guarantees; there are also fears that AI could digitally replace background actors and replicas of stars for their TV and film marketing promotions. The actors have also called attention to the extraordinary salaries, some between seven and nine figures, paid to studio executives.

“I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us,” Fran Drescher, president of the actors’ union and a former star of the television sitcom, The Nanny, said on the first day of the actors’ strike. “It is disgusting. Shame on them!”

In response, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, criticised the unions for failing to acknowledge the new economic landscape of an industry that claims to lose money in television subscriptions and movie attendance. In a statement, the companies said: “The union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.”

The actors had not walked out in 43 years, and a simultaneous union work stoppage had not occurred since 1960, when Ronald Reagan led the Screen Actors Guild; it merged in 2012 with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

The strikes are expected to continue well into autumn, with huge potential consequences. Besides denying audiences fresh programming for many months, it’s a big blow to the LA production community, which includes ancillary services like editing facilities, caterers, costumers, electricians, sound engineers and set designers, all of whom depend on a steady churn of productions. Which is not to mention lost revenue to restaurants, hotels and other businesses around town.

One former industry mogul, Barry Diller, predicted that the longer the walkout continues, the faster industry revenues will decline as viewers decide not to watch old films and television reruns.

“What will happen is, if in fact it doesn’t get settled until Christmas or so, then next year there’s not going to be many programmes for anybody to watch,” he said in a television interview. “So, you’re going to see subscriptions get pulled, which is going to reduce the revenue of all these movie companies, television companies, the result of which is that there will be no programmes.”

While Americans can withstand a lag in new TV shows and movies, they might be more affected if another important union goes on strike.

Contract talks are underway between America’s three biggest automakers – GM, Ford and Stellantis – and the United Auto Workers union, which represents about 150,000 hourly workers. Again, the central issue is pay, at a time when companies are transitioning from diesel- and petrol-powered vehicles to electric, and the companies are trying to build more with fewer workers. California and several other states have mandated phasing out gas-powered vehicles by the mid-2030s.

“If the Big Three don’t give us our fair share, then they are choosing to strike themselves,” the union president, Shawn Fain, told GM workers as their shift ended in Detroit. “We are not afraid to take action.”

Michael Janofsky is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. He previously spent 24 years as a correspondent for The New York Times