This slowly absorb­ing arti­cle on the dif­fer­ences between male and female friend­ships seems to have been com­piled with an obser­vant eye… but then I am the same sex as the author.

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. […]

Stud­ies show that in their late 20s and 30s, women have a harder time stay­ing in touch with old friends. Those are the years when they’re busy start­ing careers and rais­ing chil­dren, so they don’t have time to gather for reunions. Money is tighter, too. But around age 40, women start recon­nect­ing. Before the 1990s, researchers assumed this was because they had more time for friend­ship in their 40s, as their chil­dren became self-sufficient. But now researchers con­sider this middle-aged focus on friend­ship to be a life stage; as women plan the next chap­ter of their lives, they turn to friends for guid­ance and empathy.

Men, mean­while, tend to build friend­ships until about age 30, but there’s often a falloff after that. Among the rea­sons: Their friend­ships are more apt to be hurt by geo­graph­i­cal moves and dif­fer­ences in career tra­jec­to­ries. Recent stud­ies, how­ever, are now find­ing that men in their late 40s are turn­ing to what Dr. Grief calls “rusted” friends—longtime pals they knew when they were younger. The Inter­net is mak­ing it eas­ier for them to make con­tact with one another.

That’s not to say men don’t have these inti­mate, shar­ing relationships:

But again, it’s a mis­take to judge men’s inter­ac­tions by assum­ing we need to be like women. Research shows that men often open up about emo­tional issues to wives, moth­ers, sis­ters and pla­tonic female friends. That’s partly because they assume male friends will be of lit­tle help. It may also be due to fears of seem­ing effem­i­nate or gay. But it’s also an indi­ca­tion that men com­part­men­tal­ize their needs; they’d rather turn to male friends to momen­tar­ily escape from their prob­lems. The new buzz­word is “bromance.”

via @vaughanbell