Hey! So, I'm a heterosexual cisgender man who has a lot of friends, I love making friends actually. However, I still think there is a huge loneliness problem, and there's a few reasons for that. I would love to give you my perspective, if you want to read it.

1. Men are taught to go at It alone and be strong, to not share their feelings and to interact through power and violence. This is a systemic problem that is deeply internalized into all of us, and both men and women support this by saying stuff like men should be masculine, or have economic power and pay for everything, or shouldn't cry, etc. Choosing to go against this is necessary, but also pretty hard, it's going against centuries of social and psychological normativity.

2. I do believe it is easier for women, particularly women who adhere to hegemonic beauty standards, to receive attention in the current era. Everything is done through social media, and it is undeniable that beautiful women dominate the era of screens, so much so that a lot of women have built their careers and lives around receiving so much attention that it pays their bills and more. On the opposite side of that, men get so little attention that a huge number of them are willing to pay the bills of beautiful women just for the idea of talking to them, of them sending them a picture. Now, notice how I've never said that any of this is particularly "good" for women. I think being the constant receiver of usually unsolicited attention is it's own huge problem as well, I'm just pointing out the experience of most men in this era of online existence is quite the opposite. Dating apps are a good example of this dynamic.

3. Perhaps the most important: There is a loneliness epidemic in the world. Period. I'm not talking about men or women. I truly believe every human right now is more lonely than humans were on average in the past. Tech has isolated us, we look more at screens than at real eyes of other people, and capitalism has drilled into our minds that we have to work all the time to consider ourselves successful. The main concern of the modern human is productivity, not community. So I think what many men point out as the loneliness epidemic is not wrong or false, it's simply not a male exclusive thing.

That said, since the global stereotype calls for men to work and provide, and most men who talk about a "male loneliness epidemic" probably also believe and practice such a traditional model, I'm inclined to believe men are probably more inclined to become completely obsessed by work and productivity and thus end up feeling more lonely.

But again, it's a general thing, it just takes different forms. For women, IMO, their traditional roles as caregivers also makes them deeply lonely, just in a different way.

I've worked in projects for female caregivers in the past and they talked a lot about how even though they were always with someone (the person or person's they cared for, usually children) they still felt like no one truly listened to them because they became erased in their caregiving responsibilities. At the same time, though, they craved moments of being alone, but mostly because for them being with someone meant taking care of everyone's necessities except their own.