In 2022, the right-wing misogynist Andrew Tate uttered the words, “I don’t think most women can actually genuinely understand how lonely the majority of men are.” With a seemingly mundane claim, Tate put fuel to the fire of what would become a new internet trend: “The Male Loneliness Epidemic.” The phenomenon is situated as an experience that only men can understand and experience and that only women can solve and unburden. But really, how unique is loneliness to men?
The American Institute for Boys and Men conducted research in 2025 that supports the claim that, in fact, women and men are nearly equally lonely. When reporting on loneliness, all questions but one show men and women within a single percentage point of one another. In fact, the U.S. Census’ 2025 Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey, with a sample size of about 6,700 adults, found no gap in loneliness. Surprisingly, in some cases, young women are lonelier than young men. Research from the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in 2024 supports that 25 percent of American 8th and 10th-grade boys report often feeling lonely, while for girls it was 44 percent.
Obviously, loneliness is not uniquely inherent to men; thus, the “male loneliness epidemic” doesn’t exist. Rather, a loneliness epidemic plagues our society regardless of one’s socialized gender. So, if both men and women alike are increasingly lonely in this age, then why do we only hear about the men? Is it that they are louder? Or is it that they are looking to cast blame on others, refusing to introspectively evaluate why the relationships in their lives are not fulfilling? Realistically, I would posit that it is both, but from now on I will focus on the latter explanation.
As aforementioned, both women and men alike report experiencinge loneliness when asked in surveys, and also report similar numbers of close friends, but simultaneously, men are “more likely to report feelings of disconnection or irrelevance. They [are] more likely to say that they [are] “not meaningfully part of any group/community,” for example, or that their “place in the world doesn’t feel relevant,” according to the Making Caring Common from the Harvard Graduate School of Education survey in 2024. Men disproportionately report feelings of disconnection or irrelevance within their platonic relationships, which undoubtedly leads us to wonder what this says about the quality of said relationships.
To properly discuss the differences in friendships between men and women, it is necessary to address disparities in gender socialization and how these affect men and women respectively. Girls are socialized from a young age to express emotion in a “feminine way,” whether through watching their maternal figures put on a smiling face for their families despite deep sadness, or through the expectations for girls to exhibit empathy and be docile, agreeable members of society. Contrastingly, young boys are expected by society to keep their “tender” emotions bottled up, never to cry, and to maintain a stoic “masculine” persona. It is no wonder that those socialized as girls grow into women who report feeling emotionally fulfilled by their friendships, while men struggle to catch up. Oftentimes, instead of forming meaningful, fulfilling friendships, men look to their partners to fill the void.
Of course, it is normal to rely on a romantic partner for emotional intimacy, but in no way should this relationship be the only one providing such a vital need. The May 2021 American Perspectives Survey found that “For men, these shifts can have a sharper impact because they may rely more heavily on romantic relationships for affection, personal support, and to facilitate friendship.” So what happens when a man finds himself suddenly single, with no woman to meet his astronomically unrealistic expectations? This question can be answered simply: the reinforcement of gender inequality.
How a person shows up in a relationship can be categorized by a few attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. When a man anxiously attaches to a woman, it leads him to exhibit both benevolent and hostile sexism. According to The Society for Personality and Social Psychology, this represents “an ambivalent intergroup ideology that combines (paternalistic) idealization of women as intimate romantic partners with an underlying suspicion that women may not serve their needs.” To these men, women are both an opportunity and a threat. They are an opportunity for an emotional fulfillment they have been searching for and are hard-pressed to find in their platonic relationships, but a threat to their confidence when they inevitably drive her away.
In summation, “men’s attachment insecurities affect gender relations in interpersonal and intergroup contexts in ways that are likely to reinforce gender inequality.”
While Andrew Tate may not see women’s struggles, we must. We need to acknowledge the burden placed on women to manage men’s emotional ineptitude and see the way society violently socializes women to be emotionally intelligent and intimate, while the opposite is true for men. Finally, we have to recognize loneliness as a shared human emotion, not contingent on one’s socialized gender. It is high time for men to look introspectively at why their friendships are not fulfilling and how this harms the women in their lives.
