Your essay is very thought provoking. I have also experienced glue-dot
relationships, but my experience has manifested in a less traumatic way;
my relationships often fail before they really get going. Specifically,
I mean regular relationships with other men. And by regular
relationships, I mean a frequent, repeating, one-on-one, intimate,
dependable and shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with another man. Just
to be clear, I am not discussing here male-male sexuality.

Why I am missing such a relationship? The answer is deceptively simple.
It is easiest to understand with a little bit of background. As a child,
my mom always told me to reach out if I wanted to do something social.
For example, if I wanted to play with a friend, I should call instead of
waiting for a call. Because of her encouragement, I always had
consistent social interactions with friends, and didn’t just sit alone
playing video gamez (although I did an unhealthy amount of that.) I also
enjoyed many close relationships with both guys and gals that shaped me
into a healthy social being. If I hadn’t listened to my mother, I doubt
I would have such fond memories of childhood because it was rare to get a
call from someone else. They weren’t doing anything better than I was,
but I believe they didn’t enjoy the same encouragement that I did.

As an adult, I have lost touch with the encouragement my mom so wisely
provided. The sad result is that I fail to reach out, and I have less
“friends” now. Indeed, I relate with wonderful couples from church, but
I lack a regular one-on-one relationship with a fellow man. I also fear
that without reaching out to lay stronger bonds, the relationships I have
had with couples from chruch will quickly dissolve over things as tiny as
schedule conflicts. I have already felt such dissolution in light of
several recent births among the couples of my small group. However, I
want to remain focused here on my relationships with fellow men beacuse I
feel that is an area that is solely my responsibility. Plus, I feel
confident in my wife’s amazing ability to boldly reach out and connect us
with other couples. I also avoid the topic of female relationships
because, for me, female relationships are strictly limited to relatives,
friends of my wife (where all interaction is supervised by my wife) and
professional relationships (all interaction must be business related).
Although some may disagree with my approach, I have decided to have no
female friends, and I plan on persisting in that way unless my wife is
called to Heaven before me.

So I have identified why I am “lonely.” That is, without male friends.
But what is preventing me from reaching out? Perhaps it is an inevitable
pitfall of all married men to lose touch with other men. That is
certainly true of my father, and if my wife is correct, her father as
well. Even accepting for this argument that such a view is true, it
certainly cannot be right beecause I have an easily identifiable hole in
my spiritual person for a strong male relationship? A “buddy.” To be
clear, I’m not talking about a Jesus-shaped hole. Rather, I’m talking
about providing the male aspects of God that a wife does not provide.

Assuming that it’s true that married men naturally tend to fall away from
healthy male relationships, the engineer in me demands to know why, so I
can solve what I view as an injustice. One possible cause, could be that
coordinating with a married man is much more difficult than coordinating
with a child. We are all busy, sure. But if that is why men are missing
out on filling spiritual holes, I cannot overemphasive that it is a sorry
excuse and not a justification. We all have to do yard work, take the
car in, research the next gadget to buy on Amazon, exercise, &c.
Reflecting on that list, however, reveals no concern so pressing as to
eschew building a close relationship with a fellow being, especially a
brother-in-Christ. Indeed, my truncated list of things-to-do suggests,
if anything, things we should do together. How much more fun is doing
yard work when you have a buddy? Being nerdy and talking gadgets?
Talking cars? For all married men, I encourage you to reflect on a
pre-marriage male relationship that you remember fondly. Do you miss
that today? I don’t think we should pass up an oppurtunity to build
strong male relationships. Just think, a married man is generally wiser,
more mature and more pecunious than a child. Accordingly, a strong male
relationship between two married men can be even richer in terms of
accountability, mentoring and what I believe is important for all men:
accomplishment.

My advice to anyone feeling a stone in their shoe after reading the
foregoing, is to be more proactive. A simple statement. How can it be
done? Reflect on my last paragraph. I identified “being busy” as the
biggest roadblock I face to healthy male relationships. To overcome
being busy, I just need to place on a scale the importance of what I am
busy with against all the benefits I enumerated of a healthy male
relationship. It is simply what my mother did years ago. She said I
could sit around and be bored, or I could pick up the phone and reach for
that relationship that made me feel strong and manly. The only
difference now is that I have less periods of pure boredom. When you are
bored, it’s easy to be encouraged to pick up the phone. It’s trickier to
stop in your busy-ness and reach out to your buddy. As men, we must then
look at what we are doing to keep ourselves busy and begin a process of
re-prioritizing.

Sincerely,
Walter