The Cost of Silence: Why Every Man Needs a Brotherhood
There’s a certain kind of quiet that doesn’t show up on the surface.
It isn’t the calm, reflective kind. It’s the kind that hums in the background when life looks full but somehow still feels empty. When you can tick every box, family, career, purpose, and still feel like something vital is missing.
That’s the silence I’ve been thinking about this week. The silence that seeps in slowly, through busyness, responsibility, and routine, until you realise one day that your world has become very small.
I wrote last week about the masks men wear, the way we hide exhaustion and self-doubt behind composure and competence. This week’s reflection feels like the next layer of that conversation, what happens after we’ve worn the mask so long that we forget how to take it off around other men.
Because if I’m being honest, I’m not immune to it. I don’t have a big circle of “the boys.” No regular pub nights, no weekend golf trips, no group chats that light up with memes and banter. I have friends, yes, good ones, but very few I’d describe as close, consistent, or part of a “brotherhood.”
And that absence, though subtle, leaves a mark.
The Circles That Shrink
In high school, I was friendly with almost everyone but truly close with only a couple of people. One of them was John. Through my early twenties, he was the guy I knew I could call for anything, from random hangouts to genuine crises. He was the one who drove across cities to get me to hospital when I had an emergency appendectomy, and the guy who stood beside me as my best man at my wedding. We’ve both got families now, and careers that eat up most of our bandwidth, and although there’s no bad blood, the regular contact just slipped away. Life got in the way.
My friend Jason is another one I value deeply. We met through work years ago and bonded over cars, food, F1, and our shared background in IT. We still talk, but his job in motorsports keeps him on the road most of the year, so we might only see each other once or twice between January and December. Ten minutes apart geographically, but often half a continent away in practice.
When I look back, the pattern is clear. Each season of life seems to carve the social circle smaller. Thirteen of my last twenty years as the IT guy in a law office didn’t help. For nearly all that time, I was the only male non-lawyer in the building, surrounded by people who were pleasant but not exactly peers. There were some exceptions though. My late friend Stanford, who I wrote about in last week’s article, was one of them. So was Suki, who I first met when he was articling at the law firm before becoming a friend, my martial arts teacher and training partner, and one of the inspirations behind my own fitness journey. And Josh, another lawyer at the firm, became one of my closest friends and remains someone I still meet up with for coffee whenever our paths cross. But beyond those few, it was a pretty solitary environment. When I finally left to run my training and coaching business full time in 2018, my world narrowed further. My work became my social sphere. Most of my daily conversations now happen between coaching sessions or on the gym floor.
And while many of my clients have become genuine friends, that line between “coach” and “friend” can be tricky to navigate. I’ve been burned before by blurring it too much. After one client I’d considered a good friend completely ghosted me once our formal work ended, I learned to be more guarded.
It’s not bitterness, just self-protection. But that kind of self-protection, over time, builds walls that are hard to see until you’re on the inside of them.
The Ones Who’ve Stayed
To be fair, I’m not entirely alone. Beyond the few and far between times I get to meet up with Jason and Josh, there are a few others who’ve stuck.
Scott and Dillon, brothers who were part of my original Spartan Team back in 2015, are two of them. We’ve slogged through mud, rain, snow, and barbed wire together, and shared enough pre-race coffee and post-race feasts to fuel a small village. They’re younger, by about twenty years, but they’re the kind of people who restore your faith in the next generation. Honest, hardworking, and the sort of men who show up when they say they will. We rarely hang out, but when we do, it feels solid.
And then there’s Steve. My most frequent running partner, roughly my age, with a shared history of races, parenting challenges, home improvement projects, and TV and film nerdiness. We’ve logged more miles together than I can count. Some of our best conversations have happened on the road, mid-run, between breaths. He’s the closest thing I have to a consistent male presence in my week, and I value that more than he probably realises.
But even with those connections, the loneliness still creeps in.
When my wife, Raina (my best friend, really), is away for work or out with friends and the kids are off living their lives, the quiet in the house can hit differently. I can have a full week of sessions, full days of conversation, and still find myself sitting alone on a Friday night feeling oddly disconnected from the world.
It’s not a dramatic kind of loneliness. It’s not crisis-level isolation. It’s just... the absence of something I can’t quite name.
Life in Boxes
Part of it, I think, comes from how our lives become compartmentalised.
For me, there’s the coach box, the professional version of me who’s confident, organised, supportive, and upbeat for clients.
There’s the husband box, the version who shows up for Raina, who’s emotionally available (or at least tries to be), and who prioritises our time together.
And the dad box, the version who’s there for my kids, trying to model discipline, empathy, and presence even when I don’t always have much of those left in the tank.
Those roles are important. They give structure and purpose. But sometimes I wonder, outside of those boxes, who am I? Where do I fit when I’m not performing one of those functions?
It’s part of why I’ve pushed so hard into my physical pursuits in recent years, trail running, endurance events, solo challenges. There’s clarity in effort. Running gives me a sense of progress when other parts of life feel static. But even that’s become increasingly solitary. I’ve trained my way into a kind of no-man’s-land, too fast to stay comfortably within my usual training group, but not nearly fast enough to hang with the competitive runners. It’s a weird purgatory, and one that’s as much emotional as physical.
The irony is that the group runs I do still manage to organise are often the highlight of my week. The camaraderie, the shared suffering, the casual conversation, all of it feels grounding. But being the one who has to lead those gatherings also means I’m rarely just another participant. I’m always “the coach,” even among friends. And some days, that role feels heavier than the miles.
The Real Cost of Disconnection
When I zoom out from my own experience, it’s hard not to notice how common this story has become.
You hear about the “loneliness epidemic” among men, but it’s more than just statistics. It’s in the little moments, the men who light up when someone genuinely asks how they’re doing, the ones who linger after training sessions just to chat a bit longer before heading home. You can feel how hungry people are for simple, honest connection.
The cost of not having that connection goes far beyond loneliness. It chips away at identity. When you don’t have a place where you can be you, without performing, you start to lose track of who that even is. You pour everything into work, family, or performance, and somewhere along the way, you disappear into the roles.
Many men are doing everything “right” on paper, providing for their families, showing up at work, keeping fit, but scratch the surface, and you find fatigue, frustration, or quiet resentment simmering underneath. When that builds unchecked, it doesn’t just hurt the individual, it spills into everything around them.
It shows up in irritability, emotional distance, and sometimes even outright anger, often aimed at the people they care about most.
I’m not proud to say I’ve seen that in myself at times, too. When I feel drained and disconnected, it’s easy to slip into impatience or numbness. To withdraw instead of engage. To default to problem-solving mode rather than simply being present.
It’s something I’m continually working on, but it’s a reminder that isolation isn’t just a personal cost, it’s a relational one.
How We Lost the Middle Ground
The world hasn’t made it easier.
So much of male connection used to happen through shared activity, working on cars, building things, playing sports, or just shooting the breeze over a beer. These weren’t deep therapy sessions, but they built familiarity, trust, and that subtle understanding that you could count on one another.
Now, many of those interactions have migrated online, filtered through algorithms designed to feed us more of what we already think. The result? Echo chambers instead of conversations. Outrage instead of understanding. We’ve lost the habit of disagreeing and still shaking hands afterward.
When you don’t practise having real, face-to-face exchanges with people who see the world differently, it gets easier to dehumanise them.
And that, I think, is one of the quieter casualties of our current moment.
We’ve confused connection with contact. We’re constantly “in touch,” yet rarely truly in relationship.
That lack of real-world friction, the kind that used to round off our rough edges, has made society more polarised and fragile. If you never have to coexist with differing views in person, every disagreement starts to feel like a threat rather than an opportunity to learn.
We can’t control the algorithm, but we can reclaim our part of the equation.
That starts with re-entering the world, with presence, conversation, and maybe a bit of discomfort.
What Brotherhood Really Means
The word brotherhood gets thrown around a lot, usually attached to locker rooms, teams, or military bonds. For me, it’s simpler, and harder. It’s about having people who see the unpolished version of you and don’t flinch. Who’ll show up not because they have to, but because they want to. Who can challenge you without belittling you, and listen without rushing to fix.
I can’t say I’ve had much of that in my life. Not in the deep, consistent sense.
What I’ve had are moments, flashes of what brotherhood could look like.
Like when Steve, Simon, and Liam jumped right in without hesitation to help move my hot tub (though it did get them out of one round of leg blasters or something else crappy in the gym, if I recall correctly... LOL). Or when Steve offered to haul materials for my backyard project, just because he knew I could use the help, and the other Steve (Liam’s dad - the apple truly doesn’t fall far from the tree) wouldn’t take no for an answer in helping me move some heavy equipment for that same project.
Those moments reminded me that maybe brotherhood doesn’t have to be some grand, cinematic thing. Maybe it’s found in those small acts of reliability, people who just show up when you need them.
Maybe that’s the point.
Maybe I’ve been measuring connection against an ideal that doesn’t exist anymore, when in truth, it’s the quiet, practical gestures that matter most.
Still, there’s that whisper of doubt that creeps in, maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I’m too guarded. Too self-contained. Too used to doing things alone. But even that thought has softened over time. I think most of us are just out of practice. We’ve forgotten how to reach out, or we assume everyone else already has their circle, so we wait for someone else to make the first move.
Taking the First Step
If there’s a way forward, I think it starts there, with one small act of initiation.
Reach out first. Send the message. Suggest the coffee. Extend the invitation.
Not every effort will land, and that’s okay. But some will. And each time it does, it chips away at the wall.
The second shift, at least for me, is giving myself permission to do things for me.
I’ve always prioritised time with my family, which I don’t regret for a second. But I’ve come to realise that carving out time for my own friendships or activities outside those roles isn’t selfish, it’s necessary. It keeps me grounded, balanced, and better equipped to show up for them.
It’s a mindset I often encourage in clients around fitness: you can’t pour from an empty cup. The same applies here. Connection fills the cup. It doesn’t take away from what you give to others, it multiplies it.
Movement and the Medicine of Companionship
That’s part of why my Movember “Move for Mental Health” challenge means so much to me. It’s about more than kilometres or fundraising totals. It’s about movement as medicine, physical, mental, and social.
Some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve ever had with men have happened mid-stride, side-by-side, not sitting face-to-face. When you’re walking, hiking, or running with someone, there’s no eye contact pressure, no therapist’s couch energy, just rhythm, breath, and space for truth to slip out.
I’ve seen it again and again with clients and friends: a quiet guy opens up halfway through a run, or a difficult topic finally surfaces during a cool-down walk. It’s like the act of moving forward physically unlocks something mentally. Maybe that’s what “healthy masculinity” looks like in practice, not big speeches about feelings, but small steps taken together.
So here’s my challenge for anyone reading this:
Find one person to move with this week. Go for a walk, a run, a hike, anything. Talk if you want, stay quiet if you don’t. Just share space and effort.
And if you’re local and want to join me for part of my Movember challenge, or just talk about ideas for how men in our community can build stronger connections, reach out through our Contact Us page. I’d love that. Seriously.
I’m still figuring this out, same as everyone else. But what I know is this: the silence we don’t confront will cost us far more than the vulnerability it takes to break it.
The Road Back to Connection
I don’t think there’s a perfect fix for the disconnection men feel. Life’s demands are real. Schedules clash, responsibilities multiply, and the cultural playbook for male friendship hasn’t exactly kept up with modern life. But there’s something powerful in simply admitting we miss it. That longing for brotherhood, for genuine camaraderie, isn’t weakness, it’s a human need.
So maybe the work is this:
To reach out more often.
To say yes when invited, even when it’s inconvenient.
To find small ways to show up, to offer help, to ask for it when needed.
To recognise that brotherhood doesn’t require matching hobbies, only mutual respect.
Because the cost of silence is too high.
It isolates us from others, and eventually, from ourselves.
And while none of us can fix that overnight, we can each start with one honest conversation, one shared run, one small act of showing up.
Join the Movement
This Movember, I’m running, walking, and hiking at least 300 km (but aiming for a LOT more) to raise awareness for men’s health and mental health. Every kilometre is a reminder that strength isn’t silence, and no one should have to carry their struggles alone.
As of November 9, I’ve totalled just over 150 km so far, and we’re a little over 20% of the way to my $2,500 fundraising goal. My legs are definitely feeling it, but I’m going to keep pushing forward.
If this piece resonated with you, I’d love your support, whether that’s joining me for a few kilometres, sharing this message, or donating to the cause.
👉 Facebook Fundraiser: https://www.facebook.com/donate/4327774960878267/
👉 Movember MoSpace: https://movember.com/m/15369756?mc=1
Every conversation matters. Every step counts.
Let’s start moving, together.