Why So Many Men Are Lonely — And What the Bible Says About It

The exhaustion you feel isn't just about being busy — for a lot of men, it's the weight of carrying everything alone in silence. In this episode of the True Man Podcast, Mike Van Pelt confronts the male loneliness epidemic head-on, traces it to its biblical root, and gives every man three concrete moves toward the brotherhood God designed him for. #truemanpodcast

Contact Mike Van Pelt:

mike@truemanlifecoaching.com

https://www.truemanlifecoaching.com

https://www.americanfamilyrenaissance.org/

Order Mik’s New Book, True Man True Ways – A Roadmap of Discovery to the Masculine Heart

https://www.truemanlifecoaching.com/truemantrueways 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the True Man Podcast. This is an invitation to radical reconstruction of a man's masculine heart and soul in a place of safe community where we dare to ask questions deep-seated inside a man and explore ways to help you become a better man, a better son, a better dad, and a better spouse. Let's make you a well-rounded man. Isn't that what you're looking for? Well, I hope everyone was able to escape Independence Day with all of your fingers. Boy, people really love their fireworks, don't they? We had a full-fledged display going on uh behind our house. Now, that was not me, that was my neighbors putting that on, you know. That's uh about that point where you uh hope your roof just doesn't catch fire. But, you know, it's part of the 4th of July, right? We got to uh have fun here during the summer months, the long, hot summer months that are here right now. So I hope you're enjoying uh time with family and friends and taking some downtime for you so that you can have the life that you want. Well, exciting news is coming to the true man world. We've been talking about this a little bit, been working on this for oh my gosh, this probably started about a year ago, close to a year ago, when uh the whole idea of the American Family Renaissance Men's Summit first came up, and we really realized that it was bigger than that. And so we've been working on a website here. And on episode 250, you're just gonna have to wait and see. We're gonna roll out what we've been working on and the direction that this is all headed in. And boy, am I excited! But in the meantime, and this is a little bit part of it here. Do you have a group that meets in person or online, a retreat or something like that, where you're looking for a speaker? Reach out to me at Mike at true manlifecoaching.com. I'd like to talk with you about your next speaking event, your next men's group. What are you working on? What do you want to hear? Now, I talk a lot about the power of asking for help. And boy, there's a lot of legs off that. But if you're looking for a speaker for your next event, let me know. Let's get the conversation started. Just reach out again at Mike at True Manlife Coaching.com. Let's jump into this episode of the True Man Podcast. I think this is a very, very important topic to address here on episode 248. Why so men are lonely? And just what does the Bible have to say about all this? Well, I want to ask you something, and I want you to answer it honestly, not loud, just inside. When was the last time somebody asked you how you were really doing? And you actually told them the truth? Not I'm good, busy, but hanging in there, not the version of yourself that you present the world to be because it's easier than explaining what the heck is actually going on in your world on the inside. When is the last time someone got the real answer? You know, for a lot of men listening right now, it's been a while. It's been a minute, right? Maybe a long while. Maybe you genuinely can't even remember. And here's what makes that so striking. You are probably more connected right now than at any point in human history. You got a phone in your pocket with access to thousands of people, maybe more. You got social media followers, work, contacts, group chats, email threads. You are reachable 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by more people than the your great grandfather even knew in an entire lifetime. So accessible, so easy to contact people and get a hold of people, and yet something feels missing, something feels hollow, something that used to have a name. Brotherhood, friendship, fellowship, community feels like it exists everywhere except in your actual life. And here's the thing: you're not imagining it. The research confirms it. Fifty-three thousand men a month search the phrase male loneliness on YouTube alone. Not because they're looking for a diagnosis, but because they're looking for someone to tell them they're not the only one. You are not the only one if you're experiencing this right now. But today we're going deeper than that because I don't just want to name the problem. I want to trace it to its root, talk about what it's doing to you physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and give you something real to do about it. You ready? Let's go. So, how did we get here? What is the disconnect in our world? Well, let me tell you about a man I know. He's in his early 40s, successful by every outward measure, career, house, family. His kids are in activities, his wife works, his weekends are scheduled from sunrise to sundown. Does that sound familiar? He goes to church on Sunday, shakes hands with people, smiles, answers, doing great, doing great over here. When ask, and he drives home and sits in his driveway for a few extra minutes before going inside. Not because he doesn't want to go inside, because inside is just more performance. More rule, more role, more version of himself that isn't quite all of him. And he told me once quietly, like he was confessing something. Mike, I don't think I've had a real conversation with another man in years. Years. He's not a broken man, not a failure. He's the guy most people look to and think he's got it all together. Yet he's drowning in silence. I've heard versions of that story more times than I can count. And every time I hear it, I ask the same question. How in the world did we get here? Here's what I believed happened. And it happened slowly over decades, so gradually that most men never saw it coming. We built a world optimized for efficiency and stripped out the conditions that friendship actually requires. Friendship, real friendship, the kind that knows your actual life requires time, doesn't it? Unscheduled, unhurried, purposeless time, time where nothing is being produced, nothing is being accomplished, nobody is being managed, just two men present with each other with nowhere else to be. Might find this out on a lake someplace with a couple of dudes fishing, maybe, or on the golf course. And we have systematically eliminated all this time that we've spent to build relationships. We moved away from neighborhoods where we grew up. We traded front porches for back decks, literally moving our social space from the street facing side of the house to the private fenced inside in the back. We got busier, we got optimized. We filled every margin with productivity or consumption, and we confused connection, the digital kind, the performance kind with community. And the loneliness just began to crap in so quietly that most men didn't even recognize it as loneliness. They just felt vaguely hollow, like something was missing inside, vaguely tired, vaguely like something was just absolutely missing that they couldn't put a name on. And here's what makes this particularly dangerous for men. We were taught by culture, by the masculine code, whatever that is, that we absorb before we were old enough to even evaluate it that needing people is weakness. That a real man handles it all on his own. That asking for help, admitting loneliness, reaching out first, well, these are certainly signs that something's wrong with you, right? Not something wrong with your circumstances. So men don't talk about it. We manage it, work harder, drink more, disappear into screens, and just stay busy. And guess what? That isolation deepens. So here's the first question I want you to sit with. When did you last have an unscheduled, unhurried conversation with another man? With no agenda, no task, no time limit. And if you can't remember, what does that tell you? Now, what is isolation doing to you? Let's talk about that. I want to I want to talk about this and not skip over it because it's important, the physical cost of loneliness. Because this is not just a feeling problem. This is not soft. The research on what chronic isolation does to the human body is some of the most sobering data that I've encountered. So, Dr. Vivek Murphy, former Surgeon General of the United States, wrote an entire book on this. He found that loneliness is associated with a significantly increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia, and early death. He concluded that the health impact of prolonged loneliness is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That's right. You heard me 15 cigarettes a day. Now we have men in this culture who would never dream of picking up a cigarette. They care about their health, they work out, they watch what they eat, and they are isolated. And that isolation is doing to their body what a pack and a half of cigarettes would do, believe it or not. But here's what I want you to feel even more than the physical data, and that is the exhaustion. Oh, there's that word. Exhaustion. You ever notice how tired you are? Not sleepy tired, depleted tired. You know, the kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix. The kind where you wake up already behind, already heavy, already carrying something, and you can't even name the doggone thing. You know, that exhaustion has a source. And for a lot of men, the source is this you're carrying everything alone. Every decision, every pressure, every fear about your marriage, the finances, the kids, the purpose, the future, all of it held inside, managed in private, never sat down, never shared, never lightened by the presence of another man who looks at your life and says, I see it. I'm with you, brother. You're not carrying this alone. We were not built to carry it alone. And when a man tries, year after year, decade after decade, well, the body keeps score. You ever felt it? The soul keeps score. Can you feel it? The exhaustion is the score. I don't know about you, but I don't like the score on that scoreboard. Ask yourself this What are you carrying right now that nobody in your life knows about? What is the weight that you have managed so quietly and for so long that you have forgotten it isn't supposed to be heavy? Name it even just to yourself. Because you cannot put down what you haven't acknowledged picking up. So, what does the Bible say you were built for? Now, let's uh let's take you somewhere here that reframes this entire conversation because the male loneliness epidemic is not a new problem with a new solution, it is an ancient wound with an ancient remedy, and the Bible addresses it with directness and a depth that no self-help book, no podcast, no wellness program has ever matched. Although we're trying on this program. Go back to the very beginning in Genesis 2. God has created the world, he has spoken light into darkness, order into chaos, life into the void, and after each act of creation, he looks at what he's made and calls it good. And then for the first and only time in creation narrative, God looks at something and says, It ain't so good. He looks at Adam alone in paradise, in a perfect world with perfect communion with God, surrounded by the whole creation. And God says, It is not good for a man to be alone. I want you to feel the weight of that. God said, It is not good for a man to be alone. This is not a man in a broken world. This is actually a man in a perfect one in this case, no sin yet, no dysfunction, no fallen nature, just a man and his creator, and God himself looks at it and says, It's not enough. You need more. And then look at how Jesus lived, the Son of God, fully divine, in perfect communion with the Father. He chose twelve men and did life with them. He ate with them, he traveled with them, he wept with them, he told them things he told nobody else. Boy, would I like the notes on that? How about you? And at that moment of his greatest agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, he didn't go alone, he took Peter, James, and John with him and said, Stay here and keep watch with me. Stay with me. Even Jesus, in the weight of a cross bearing down on him, wanted the presence of his brothers. Don't miss that. And then in Proverbs chapter 27, verse 17, one of the most quietly powerful verses in scripture is iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Not one person sharpens himself, not one person reads enough books, listens to enough podcasts, gets disciplined enough in private, and arrives at sharpness alone. It's ridiculous to think that. Iron sharpens iron. It's right there in scripture. The friction of genuine relationship, the kind where someone knows you well enough to press against you, is how God designed men to grow. And Ecclesiastes chapter 4, 9 and 10. Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Pity the man who falls alone. This is not a metaphor. This is a diagnosis of exactly what is happening to men right now. Men who are falling in every sense of the word, with no one close to help them up. So here's the question Who in your life is close enough to know when you're falling? Not after the fact, in real time. Who sees it? Who would reach for you? Who would tell you the truth? Who do you call at three o'clock in the morning when your wife kicks you out of the house and you have no place else to go? Who's in your bunker? If nobody comes to mind, that's not an indictment of you as a man, it's a call. So here's what I've learned from years of working with men on this specific issue, reading a lot, looking at a lot of these things. Most isolated men are not isolated because they want to be. They're isolated because something is in the way. We need to move that impediment. And until you identify what's in your way, you're going to keep circling the same loneliness circle. So here are five things I see most consistently. One, the performance trap. Men are trained to present strength, not need. Walking into a relationship and saying, I need you, for a lot of men, that feels like the most dangerous sentence in the English language. So they never say it. And nobody ever gets close enough to see past the performance. Two, the busyness alibi. I don't have enough time for deep friendships right now. This season is just too full. I've heard this from men in their 30s, their 40s, and their 50s. And the season, the the season never empties. It never goes away. The time never appears. Busyness is often not circumstance, it's a choice to avoid the vulnerability that closeness requires. Three, the geography shift. Boy do I. I know this one. You moved. Your college friends scattered. The guys you were close to in your 20s are in different cities, different stages, and are building new friendships in your 30s and 40s. Feels awkward and slow and slow in a way that it never did before. So you just don't. And the distance grows. Let me tell you on this one, I can speak directly into this right now. There are times when I just go out networking, business networking, talking with people. I know absolutely nobody in the room. But I go anyway and I shake hands and I meet people and I make new friends. Do not make geography a crutch. Four, the comparison game. Other men's lives look full from the outside. Well, of course they do. We create whatever we want. Their social media looks like brotherhood, wink wink. Guys at the game, guys on the golf course, guys laughing. And you look at your own life and feel like something is wrong with you specifically. So instead of reaching out, you retreat. The comparison produces shame, and shame produces what? Well, of course, more isolation. Five, the pride problem. At its root, and I say this with love because I've lived it. The deepest reason men stay isolated is pride. The unwillingness to need. The conviction that asking for help, initiating a friendship, admitting loneliness is somehow beneath a man of strength. That conviction is a lie. And it is keeping men in prison of their own construction. So which of these five is do you have? Maybe you have more than one. You know, which one landed when you read it or heard it, I guess I should say. What would it cost you? Really cost you to begin tearing down that wall and moving out and building friendships or starting a men's small group. So what do we actually need to do about this? Now I'm not going to give you a 10-step program. You don't want that. You don't need it. I'm going to give you three moves here for this week. Do these three things, and your life will begin to change. Move one. Name one man. Just one. A man in your life, existing relationship or not, who you respect, who you think could handle the real you. Who'd you want in your corner? Who would you again? Who would you call at three o'clock in the morning if you had a flat tire? Name him. Write it down if you have to. Pick him up. Send him a text right now. Call him. Move to make the move. Just like I said, call him. And say something like, hey man, I've been thinking. I don't think I invest enough time in a real friendship, and I'd like to change that. Want to go grab coffee? That's it. That's all you need. You don't have to explain the whole loneliness conversation. Just make the move. I'll bet they're feeling the same thing too. Move three, find your band of brothers, a small group, a men's ministry, a brotherhood in your community, something where you show up consistently with the same man over time. See, brotherhood is not built in a single conversation. We try sometimes, but it's not. It's built in an accumulated presence. In other words, overtime. Over time. Find the container that you need to get to to make this happen. Show up. Keep showing up. The question is simple. Which of these three moves will you make before the week is over? Don't answer it in your head. Put it on your calendar right now. Take action. And here's where I want to land today. God looked at man in paradise, a perfect world, and said it was not good enough for him to be alone. If it wasn't good then, in a perfect world, what makes you think you can pull this one off? You can't. You see, the exhaustion you feel, some of it is the weight of isolation, the holless. Some of it is the absence of men who actually know you. The quiet desperation that you manage every day without naming it. It has a remedy. It's not a program, it's not a podcast, although this is a pretty good one. It's not more discipline or more productivity. It's a brother. A few of them. Men who know your name, your real life, your actual struggles, and show up anyway. That is what God intended from the beginning. And it is still available to you right now, today. But you have to want it more than you want to look like you don't need it. That's the move. Boy, I hope you enjoyed this conversation on isolation. It is really, really important. It can take you down. Don't let that happen. Step up today, find another man, build a relationship, find a church, find a club to be a part of. Go do something that you like, but get around other people. I'll tell you what, most of them are experiencing the same doggone thing. I'd almost assure you. But go find somebody. Just put your hand up in the air and ask for help. Start there. Be in action this week. Thank you for listening today. If you enjoyed this podcast, again, please leave me a great review on your favorite podcast uh channel. If you need to talk, reach out to me, Mike at true manlifecoaching.com. Or you can go onto my website. My calendar is readily available. People use this all the time. And believe it or not, I answer the call. I do. I do. I make an appointment and I talk with him. That's how you learn. That's how you grow. That's how you build these friendships. Does that take courage? You're doggone right. It takes courage. So have courage. Have the courage to make a change today. God bless you. Thank you for listening. Come back next week and share this show with a buddy. Thanks for listening.