I joined a fraternal org about 7 years ago and for all its ups and downs, its an insurance policy on those social connections where you can develop and grow in them. They change, but they can be pillars of stability for a lifetime. Churches and activities like hunting and golf are other ones as well.

That is similar to "well feel happy!" advice to someone who is depressed. It isn't exactly wrong, if someone can do that they should, but the suspicion is that there are other factors that need to be addressed first.

Nope. Men tend to stop making new close friendships starting after 25. There are no "other factors that need to be addressed first". For ordinary men with ordinary mental health, it really is as simple as "go make new friends".

If there are no other factors then there wouldn't be a detectable change at 25 years of age. That was literally a statement that age (more realistically, social organisation in school vs the rest of society) is a factor. A bloke can't just go out and recreate a college environment at 30 for himself to socialise in - society is wealthy, but not wealthy enough for everyone to be a permanent student.

There is a need to build an environment where people can get together first, before they can make friends.

> There is a need to build an environment where people can get together first, before they can make friends.

You really can join a club or meetup or just hang around in the park or a bar and make friends starting now. No need to wait for unplanned, unstarted construction projects to complete first. Good luck, sir.

I'll certainly admit to not being up to speed on the research for how people make friends, but as analysis goes, that seems a little brief. And my personal experience suggests there is more going on.

1) Approximately 0% of my close friends were made in those sort of environments. Not for lack of attempts I might add, but because they are places where it is quite hard to make good friends. Most of the friendships I can think of that other people have weren't made in those sort of environments either. I've made a close friend at a funeral. I've made 0 close friends at social clubs. The friends I had at the social clubs joined because I was a member or vice versa.

2) In a stroke of anecdata, I was talking to a colleague recently who was quitting the club he was member of because he felt the friendships he'd made there were so shallow as to be worthless.

You've already identified that something happens around age 25. That seems a like a bit of a tell to me that there is more to the situation than just awkwardness. It is true that nobody is going to help the lonely because, sort of definitionally, they don't have a strong support network. Therefore they are on their own and will have to figure it out themselves. Joining a bunch of social things certainly should help. Nevertheless it is worth approaching the situation with just a smidgen of empathy and a certain curiosity [0] about what the actual forces at play here are. Slogans like "just be happy", "learn to code" and, I suspect, "just join a club, sir" tend to age poorly.

[0] Not to insinuate that you aren't, but the word count and choice doesn't give me hope that you've really dug in to this topic to make sure there isn't something going on.

> A bloke can't just go out and recreate a college environment at 30 for himself to socialise in - society is wealthy, but not wealthy enough for everyone to be a permanent student.

Fraternal organizations, adult recreational sports leagues, social dance groups, etc., all exist. You don't have to be a permanent student to have a slice of your time in a not-too-dissimilar social environment.

> There is a need to build an environment where people can get together first, before they can make friends.

There are plenty of such environments. The people that aren't making friends are choosing not to engage with them. In many cases, because they are expending all their social energy on work and transactional relationships around work rather than non-transactional casual interactions on which to grow friendships.

I'll have a lot of experience by then. I'm more concerned about what happens when I can't take care of myself anymore.

Meh, no one would actually want to be my friend.

> "Over time, this vicious cycle may convince us we don’t matter to anyone and that we’re unworthy of love."

Doesn't mean it's wrong.

Not interested. I'm an introvert.

I understand the impulse. Truly, I do.

But there's pretty much no human being alive that requires zero social interaction to feel good. And GP's point is that you gotta make friends while you are more able.

You may not be interested now, but the worst case is finding yourself needing a friend and unable to make one.

> there's pretty much no human being alive that requires zero social interaction

That may be true, but my threshold seems too low for other people. And it doesn't mean interacting with others helps against feelings of loneliness, usually it won't or even does the opposite. The last person I met who I kinda vibed with expressed interest in living as a hermit, so I guess I'm not gonna be fun at parties very soon.

From one introvert to another - you can and should still make friends. Sometimes it’s more work for us than it is for others, but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t worth doing.

This gets especially hard if you are childfree and content. Odds are, the male friends you could make in middle age have had children, and that is much of what they talk about and it determines what free time they have to hang out. It is easy to feel like you and them are living in completely separate worlds, and if you detest children to the point you don't even want to hear about them, it makes conversation tiresome. This is why the fraternal society or pub/cafe culture route doesn't work for me.