Deep Friendships For Men That Women Don't Understand - Part 1
 
By Jeffrey Zaslow 
 
Every summer for 25 years, Mark Vasu has gotten together for a weekend getaway with old friends from Duke University. The 15 men, who graduated in 1984, gather in the same cabin in Highlands, N.C.
 
"It's a judgment-free, action-packed, adventure-based weekend," says Mr. Vasu. "We go hiking, whitewater rafting, rock climbing, fly-fishing."
 
What they don't do is sit around as a group, the way women do, sharing their deepest feelings.
 
Male friendships like these are absolutely typical, but don't assume they're inferior to female friendships. 
 
"If we use a women's paradigm for friendship, we're making a mistake," says Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Social Work, who has studied how 386 men made, kept and nurtured friendships. 
 
Men might not be physically or emotionally expressive, he says, but we derive great support from our friendships.
 
Researchers say women's friendships are face to face: They talk, cry together, share secrets. Men's friendships are side by side: We play golf. We go to football games.
 
I've played poker with the same guys every Thursday night for 18 years. We rarely talk about our lives. We talk about cards, betting, bluffing.
 
I used to say that my poker buddies don't even know my kids' names. But then I wondered if I was exaggerating. So one night I turned to my left at the poker table and casually asked my friend Lance: "Hey Lance, could you name any of my children?"
 
He shrugged, paused to think, then smiled sheepishly. "I could rename them," he said.
 
Dr. Greif isn't surprised by my story. In his poker game, he says, if a man were to reveal that he lost his job or that his wife left him, the other guys would say, "Gee, dude, that's too bad. Want us to deal you out this hand?"
 
Since 1978, Mark Leonard has played on a softball team with eight pals he grew up with in East Northport, N.Y. When they get together, they reminisce about shared experiences, like the time they were asked to leave an all-you-can-eat dinner at Beefsteak Charlie's because they had consumed every piece of meat in the restaurant.
 
"Our conversations deal with the doing of things rather than the feeling of things," says Mr. Leonard.
 
In his research, Dr. Greif found that men generally resist high-maintenance relationships, whether with spouses, girlfriends or male pals. When picking friends, "men don't want someone who is too needy," he says.

 

A third of the men in his study said they learned positive things from female friendships, but 25% had a negative impression of women as friends, citing issues such as "cattiness" and "too much drama." And women are more likely than men to hold grudges toward friends, according to Dr. Greif's 2009 book, "Buddy System."
 

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