Don Martin

If they are somebody who is not like us, if we do not initially view them as part of our in-group,

If they are part of our out group, we are taught not only to fear them, but to stay away from them.

Stranger equals danger.

But that fear that we have been seeping into all the crevices of society, especially here in the US, is only keeping us more disconnected and only exacerbating the loneliness crisis.

And which is bad because it's literally, it's not good for our mental and physical health.

Like I said, loneliness is trying to keep us alive by connecting us with others.

And the more that we fight that, we fight that to our detriment.

No.

In fact, the male loneliness crisis is a myth.

It is made up by dating podcasters, mostly like those alpha bro male dominated podcasters.

It's bad dating advice from incel folks on that side of the patio verse from a decade ago that's been repackaged as a loneliness epidemic.

In fact, the data tells us pretty consistently that men and women experience almost exactly the same amount of loneliness.

How they go about creating and fostering connection are different, mostly because of how men and women are treated differently in society.

Women are allowed to be emotional.

Men are not allowed to be emotional.

So women will talk, men will act differently.

That's, there's a lot of other stuff in there and I go into it farther in the book, but a guy is a cisgender heterosexual man is much more likely to create or foster connection with you by saying, oh, you're going out of town.

Yeah.

I'll watch your dog or, oh, you need some help fixing that.

I'll help fix that for you.