I stood up in my best friend’s wedding, and he took the photos at mine. I went in and covered for him when his wife started labor for their first child. I bailed him out of jail when we had a particularly wild night of drinking. We often have the same or very similar daily driver vehicles. I wrote him letters and post cards nearly every day when he was in basic training, and they were such a hit with his group, he asked me to write them all a letter. I’ve known him 18 years, could not with confidence tell you his age.

Hi there, can attest: have a childhood friend whom I’ve known for years, know surprisingly little about him. I think it might be a cultural thing, for men to not bond too deeply, which is a damn shame.

I have a pretty close group of male friends from highschool that I would like to say I know pretty well. I moved away from our hometown in my early twenties 10 years ago so it’s hard to keep up with the lives, who they’re dating, etc. We have a group chat that’s mostly just memes and stuff but it gives us a chance to reach out.

I don’t even know my best friends birthday.

If I was organized I’d have my friends birthdays. I know what my friends do but not specifics, I have a friend who’s a bartender and I know his schedule but not the name of the bar he works at. I have a friend who’s a packaging engineer and know some products he’s worked on but not the name of the company. I have a friend who had a girlfriend, now fiance, and I didn’t know her name for a long time. I had a friend who broke up and I didn’t know for months. Why? Nobody told me these things. And largely, I don’t ask, because both I don’t want to pry and I’m probably going to forget anyways. It goes the other way as well-I have a friend who vents a lot to me about his family and I know how his parents have hurt him far better than they do.

I know what industry they work at, but if they switched to a different employer, I might only find out months or years later sometimes because we almost never talk about work outside of work unless someone asks for advice.

Birthdays are actually quite easy, every time I learn of someone’s birthday, I put it on an app called Birday and I get a notification two weeks before their birthday. Before that, I missed people’s birthdays regularly.

I know if they are single/have a partner/married, have kids or not, or are divorced, but I might not know if they have had an argument with their partner and are sleeping on the couch or something.

At the same time, I have a lot of personal things I don’t share with anyone, and I don’t expect them to share it with me. I just prefer it this way.

I know my friends well and give them hugs and kiss them on the cheek when I see them.

I know tons of my best friend of 24 years dirty laundry, his background and job, etc, but I’ve never met his gf of six months, and only incidentally seen his other friends. He has never met most of my friends, but he knows my gf and family well. I see his parents constantly.

I don’t have any male friends. Most of the dudes I’ve interacted with in my life have been very different than I and had personalities that clashed with mine.

I’m not into trucks or sports or betting and I find punch-down jokes in poor taste so I don’t hang with guys.

My close circle is tiny and we know eachother almost too well. But I fall short on everyone else.

What people do or who they interact with (outside of the ones I know as well) is usually inconsequential to me. Who they are as a person matters far more to me than their past, their profession, their connections.

Which, I have found, is more interest than I usually get in return. So I guess it’s just the way we, males, work. Keep it simple.