The American Journal of Sociology recently published a study suggesting sexual problems may emerge if your partner gets too friendly with any of your friends. Think of this as your partner coming between you and your friends. Not in the sexual sense, you understand. This is not about sexual infidelity. It’s about the relationships we make as friends. Now as most of you in steady relationships will know, most partners can’t stand your friends. They’re all lumped together as drinking too much beer, spending too much time obsessing about sport and generally being untidy around the home. Yet, in a study of men aged between 57 and 85, this betweenness phenomenon was considered a real problem.

Let’s go back to basics. As we age, we lose friends. We move, they move. Worse, some die. As the years pass, the number of positive friends reduces. Remember that thing called the male menopause? It’s the slow reduction in the amount of testosterone produced by the body. This can reduce our sex drive and make some men feel their manhood is under threat. They feel vulnerable and so want to spend more time with their friends. This is not to suggest they’re suddenly going to start talking about their male identity or emotions. Only the women do that. But it’s kind of comforting just to hang out with other men and remember what it was like when we were younger.

Now suppose a slightly more dominant partner muscles in and starts making friends with our friends. She figures if she can’t persuade you to like her friends, she might as well join you. Loneliness is not a one-sided coin. About one-quarter of the men aged less than 70 said this produced erectile dysfunction. It seems we calm down and accept who we are as men after 70 so any betweening into our friendships is less of a problem. But for younger old men, the closer the partner gets to their friends, the more difficult the sex. To repeat, this is not about jealousy. It seems to be more resentment at an invasion of privacy. So, this is not about men and women having separate social lives. There’s no reason in principle why a couple should not have a shared circle of friends for general socializing. But it’s important for the man to have a small group of independent male friends. (more…)