A plan to improve men’s connections and emotional resilience

A lot has been written and broadcast over the last few years, about the gaps men have in their lives, and the pressures they feel in a shifting landscape of work, families and society overall.

What has historically been presented, and still is, is that men are stoic and uninterested in personal connections, and that women are just more emotionally mature. Men are inward, women gossip. Men like things, women like people. This is how it generally goes.

The reality is that men are wallowing in an often multi-layered prison of their own construction and maintenance, and can’t get out of it. Why? Precisely because they do think it’s their own prison, when in fact it’s one they’ve wandered into without realising it, and don’t know how to get out.

And, more to the point, this is a prison that they think only they are in. Men tend to believe that, whilst they are feeling lonely, sad and hopeless, that everyone else, including the friends they no longer see, their colleagues, the man in the street, are busy, occupied, going on golfing holidays, at the pub every Friday, getting married with eight best men.

Clearly this isn’t true. Clearly not everyone can be correct in thinking that only they are lost. Clearly a spiral of believing you’re not friend material anymore, and so not reaching out to anyone, is as psychologically self-destructive as you can get.

So, why are we - a trekking company - talking about this. Well, we’re both men in our 40s. We both realised we don’t have a lot of the connections we used to have. We both know people who are genuinely friendless. We both know people who have taken their own lives.

We’ll be posting on this over the next 6 months, and looking for ways to use our business to bring men together, to connect by putting on a pair of boots and walking together. We believe that creating the conditions for connection is half the challenge, and we intend to try.

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Talk to us about getting a walk together, or check out our destination page first.