How to Save a Dying Friendship

The dog was asleep in the corner, and I was seated at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of weak tea. My 21-year-old son sat cross-legged on the floor, messing with his guitar, telling me a funny story about a dating disaster involving one of his good friends.

“Rocco’s a fool,” I said with affection when Sam’s tale was done.

“He is,” Sam agreed. “I love him.”

We laughed. Then Sam stopped strumming and looked at me. “You don’t really have any friends, do you, Dad?”

Sam didn’t mean it in a hurtful way. As far as he knew, it was a fair-enough assessment.

“I have friends,” I said. “I just don’t see them, but I know they’re there. And that’s enough.”

Sam considered me—probably knew I was full of it (even if I didn’t at the moment)—then graciously accepted my answer with a nod. But his comment stayed with me. What had happened to my friendships? Were they still there, as I had claimed? What did I get from my friends, and what did I have to offer them? I sipped my tea—it was cold.

Men, it turns out, have lost the knack for friendship. A 2021 survey found that 15 percent of men confessed to having no close friends at all, up from 3 percent in 1990, while fewer than half of men said they were satisfied with how many friends they had. Only one in five men reported having received any form of emotional support from a friend in the past week.

In the days following my son’s comment, I began thinking more and more about my friends and how long it had been since I’d really talked with any of them. I started surfing online about men and friendship—in my drift away from those close relationships outside of my family, I was far from alone. I clicked fast, and the statistics piled up. The U.S. surgeon general has declared an “epidemic of loneliness and isolation.” Even America’s favorite cuddly sex therapist, Dr. Ruth, in her later years, talked less about sex and more about loneliness.

[From the February 2025 issue: The anti-social century]

And the downside is not just emotional. Researchers have found a staggering 50 percent elevated risk in developing dementia, a 29 percent increased chance of heart disease, and a 32 percent increased instance of stroke for those with “poor social relationships.” Social isolation exceeds the health risks of obesity, inactivity, air pollution, and consuming more than six alcoholic drinks or 15 cigarettes a day. A Harvard study concluded that the No. 1 factor in a longer, healthier, happier life is not diet or exercise, but a positive and consistent connection to community.

A study by the University of Kansas concluded that making a good friend takes more than 200 hours—but losing one is much easier. One of the most vital ingredients in close friendship is consistency. Showing up.

When I was young, that seemed easy enough to do, when my friends and I were all circling the same orbit. But as life asserted its demands, those close friends moved away, scattered. There was Seve, the surrogate big brother I met when I was barely 20, and Matthew, a show-business confidant I met a few years later; Eddie, my oldest friend and early role model; John and Don, friends I met more recently. Dear friends, all. In many ways they were the cornerstones on which so much of my life had been built. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen any of them. On the rare occasions when we spoke on the phone, we laughed and caught up—but was that just the fumes of past glories?

My experience with friendship has not always been straightforward. Mine was a typical neighborhood upbringing, now long gone—driveway basketball games and stolen peeks at Playboy magazine in wood-paneled basements. I was the third of four boys, a shy kid with a small circle, yet I never wanted for friends. In my early 20s I became successful in the movies. “Overnight,” my position in the world was forever altered.

I was a very unprepared public figure. Someone who was content to slip along the edges, desiring to be special yet not craving overt attention, I was thrust into the center of things. People came at me. I wrapped myself tighter around the friends I had had before this burst of notoriety. That I began to drink too much spoke to my innate alcoholism and not to my newfound fortune. I retreated, then withdrew.

By the time this brush with fame had subsided and my drinking had been arrested, I was nearly 30. I discovered that I liked my own company and often sought out time alone. When eventually I married, I saw that almost all my friendships with women had been based around flirtation and the possibility of our going to bed. That obviously had to change. And with men, I looked up to realize that several close and longtime friends had moved away. Far away. On the rare occasion that I did form a new connection, the motivation to nurture it was often lacking. Whether a reaction to the hollowness of some insincere acquaintances made during my early fame, or a fearful nature, or just becoming set in my habits, I found myself uninterested, even unwilling, to reach out to new friends. No matter—I was happy in my own company and with that of my wife and children. And there was always work. Life felt full—at least full enough.

But after that conversation with my son, something my wife had cautioned me against came back to me. My introspection, my introversion, my avoidance had begun to chip away at the edges of who I was and narrow my experience, diminish my joy, limit what I had to offer and what I allowed myself to receive. My kids had affectionately (?) begun to accuse me of becoming a curmudgeon. If I was really willing to look, the answer was there to see: My self-induced isolation was diminishing my life, making me into a smaller man. At one point my friends had been instrumental in broadening my horizons, bolstering my courage, providing safe harbor. But were those dear friends even still there?

Because he was my oldest friend, I called Eddie first. I suggested flying down to Texas for a visit. “For sure,” he said. “But I gotta finish this fucking building first.” Eddie bought and renovated old buildings for a living and was in the middle of a large new project. “Just give me a few months.”

I reached out to Matthew. He was quick to say yes to my coming to Kentucky. I bought a plane ticket. Then, days before my flight, he called to cancel. “There’s just too much shit going on,” Matthew said. Work was a mess, and his son was going through “some stuff.” We pushed it a few weeks, and I rescheduled my flight. Then he canceled again. “Let’s just do it in the spring,” Matthew said. “Things should calm down by then.” I refunded my ticket.

John was mountain climbing in the Himalayas. Don’s email auto-reply said that he was in Japan for an extended stay. But when Seve and I connected, he was excited, and suggested that I come down to Baltimore and we hit the road—“I’ve wanted to head down to the Chesapeake Bay,” Seve said.

A road trip, just like old times, when we’d crisscrossed the country or spent weeks getting lost in Ireland. Seve and I had met in Greenwich Village. I was 19; he was a decade older. His real name is Stephen—though I haven’t called him that in nearly 40 years. We began to play tennis together, and on Sunday afternoons, we’d sit on the phone with The New York Times Travel section on our laps, and plot where we ought to visit someday. Then, one cold Christmas Day, I suggested we get in a taxi, drive to the airport, and actually go somewhere.

“When, now?” Seve asked.

“Now,” I said.

Seve surprised me by picking me up in a cab half an hour later.

Soon we were looking up at the departures board at Newark Airport. People’s Express—one of the original and most cut-rate of the cut-rate airlines—had a flight to Puerto Rico leaving in an hour. We bought two tickets. That night we were in a bar in San Juan. A man with a Hemingway beard and a Spanish accent sat on the stool beside us. He whispered of an island just off the coast—Vieques. A paradise, he said. The Navy frequently shelled the tiny isle for target practice, but we shouldn’t worry about such things, the artillery was well aimed, and besides, it was Christmas; surely the Navy would be on a break from the bombing. The next morning we boarded a six-seater plane.

[Read: Americans need to party more]

Vieques felt abandoned—the pavement ruptured (from the bombing?), the foliage scraggy and unkempt. We saw no cars and few people. Such simplicity would be my idea of heaven today, but as a young man, mai tais and swimming pools were more my idea of paradise. “There are no women here,” Seve said. And with that, we headed back to the airport.

We were the only passengers on the flight back. The pilot asked if we’d mind if he stopped at St. Thomas on the way to drop some things off. “It’ll save me a trip.”

“I didn’t like San Juan anyway,” I said, and we got off with the cargo.

A dreadlocked Rastafarian was behind the wheel of a cab. We climbed in the back.

“How you doing?” Seve asked.

“Cool and quiet, mon, cool and quiet,” came the languid reply. He knew a hotel, he said, and while en route I asked, “Anywhere we can get some ganja?” The driver shifted his bloodshot eyes to me in the rearview mirror and made the next left.

Properly stoned, we were deposited at a hotel (with pool) on a hilltop. “This is more like it,” I said to my friend. In the middle of the night I awoke, itching. I could hear Seve tossing in the other bed, the slap of flesh, and then a shout: “There are bedbugs in here!”

We went out to sit by the swimming pool. The air was close, there were no stars, the pool was too cold for swimming.

“I wish I hadn’t answered the phone when you called,” my friend said.

“You don’t mean that, Seve.”

He grumbled.

“Well,” I said, trying to look on the bright side, “at least it’s not raining.”

Lightning flashed. It began to rain. Hard. And we started to laugh. It was the kind of hysterical laughter over which a lifelong friendship is forged.

The Chesapeake Bay wasn’t exactly Puerto Rico, but a couple hours in the car was “probably all my back can take,” Seve told me. Several years ago, my friend had undergone a major operation to address stenosis, a narrowing of the spine. Nerves were being pinched and the pain had become intolerable. The recovery was long and arduous. I didn’t visit. More important, the operation hadn’t done the trick; his back was worse than ever.

The day before I was headed down to Baltimore, Seve called to cancel, citing a doctor’s appointment. It seemed odd that he didn’t know about the conflict in advance, but I let it pass. We rescheduled. Then, a few weeks later, just as I was walking out the door to see him, my phone rang again. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” Seve began, his voice strained. “I’m not in great shape. I can’t really walk very far, and sitting in a car for that long would be brutal on my back.”

“That’s fine. We don’t need to go far.”

“And I’m up and down all night long. My sleep schedule is all turned around. It’s not the right time. Let’s just postpone it a little.”

“All right,” I said. “Why don’t I just come down and take you to dinner?”

“I don’t want you to drive all that way.”

“I was gonna do that anyway,” I assured him. “It’s a few hours. It’s nothing.”

“I’m just really not up for it. I really appreciate it, but please hear me—” My friend was imploring me now. “It is not a good time. We’ll do it soon. I promise.” I could hear the pain, even fear, in Seve’s voice.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. “No sweat. We’ll do it soon.” I hung up, glanced at my overnight bag by the door, made another cup of weak tea, and took a seat in my customary spot at the kitchen table. The dog came over and nudged me for a pet. I shooed her away.

It was natural that my friends had full and busy lives. Although disappointed, I took no offense. I understood—or so I told myself. But the longer I sat with our conversation, the less comfortable I felt. My friend sounded like he was in trouble. I had not been there for our relationship for too long. Was it too late? Had I let the friendship atrophy too much? Was I being too melodramatic to think that I didn’t want the next time I saw my friend to be at his funeral?

That night I couldn’t sleep. Beneath the buzzing of my mind, I knew I had a decision to make. Would I allow my life to keep growing smaller or take the risks required for connection? Friendship had once been so central to my life. Could it be again?

“Fuck it,” I said in the darkness. “I’ll go see them all.”

And when the sun rose, I got in the car, drove to Baltimore—and knocked on Seve’s door.

This article has been adapted from Andrew McCarthy’s new book, Who needs friends: An unscientific examination of male friendship across America