When it comes to banter, men are in their element. But that is no foundation for lasting friendship

en have a friendship problem. You probably know this already, if only anecdotally – walk into any pub in the land and count the number of blokes sitting there drinking alone. Social scientists know this evidentially. Recent research by the mental health charity, for example, suggests that one in three men have no close friends. And I know this personally – in the summer of 2020, when I was planning to propose to my girlfriend, Naomi, I realised I had no one to call on to be my best man.

But hang on, I’m not toxic, am I? In my mind, toxic masculinity referred to other men – monsters like Harvey Weinstein, sociopathic tech bros and backwater Tory MPs. Not little old me. “I wouldn’t say you’re toxic,” Naomi reassured. “But you become very different when you’re around guys. Do you know that?”examine how I was with the men in my life, I realised that, yeah, maybe I was a bit weird, actually.

I had developed a number of handy tactics to avoid any sort of deep talk with “the boys”. Banter loomed large… Take banter, for example. Yes, men can be absolutely brutal to one another. Yet aggression is often employed not as the opposite of intimacy, but as a strategy to achieve it. While laughter bares teeth, this underestimates the complexity of what’s going on in that moment. It ignores the context – the sacred space of friendship, where there’s a tacit agreement that we don’t actually think or feel what we profess to think or feel.

This author is transposing all his 'issues' to every other male on the planet. Nothing wrong with bantering among friends - it's good fun. 'Progressive' soy boys and girls will always have 'issues' because they spend 100% of their time crapping on about their 'feelings'

I'm a man, but I don't know how to banter. It's really uncomfortable for me to do it.

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