Briefly Noted: What My Son’s Two Social Groups Reveal About Gender and Friendship

Yesterday, my son Declan showed me his homecoming photos from the night before. Eight kids, dressed up and smiling: six girls, my son, and one other boy.

I don’t think I realized until that moment that my son has two completely separate social groups: this homecoming group, which he has recently joined by virtue of being the boyfriend of one of the girls, and his longer-term guy friends.

It reminded me of conversations we’ve been having lately about masculine and feminine group norms, and concepts like male isolation and female kinkeeping.

Here’s what I noticed.

The girl-centered homecoming group seems integrated and inviting. The friendships between the girls are the foundation, and the boys readily adapt to the culture: movie nights, game nights, seasonally themed activities. It’s also porous, with people flowing in and out from other friend circles, so the gatherings are variable.

The guys’ group, on the other hand, is closed by design. Boys he’s known since kindergarten, who’ve played together and competed with each other through years of school and club sports. They have weekly poker nights, ongoing casual meetups, and an active group chat.

What they don’t have is any girls, and I wondered what it would take to get a girlfriend or a female poker player in the mix, so I asked Declan.

He said, “Poker is a sacred thing. We’re very selective. We don’t even invite other guys if they wouldn’t add to the group.”

I asked, “What if a girl from school were into poker? Would you ever invite her?”

“That would not be allowed,” he said. So I asked why. “People would feel like they’d have to censor themselves, and they wouldn’t want to do that.”

The word censor stuck with me. And it made me wonder if some of the emotional safety these boys feel depends on not being seen—on staying inside a shared, implicitly gendered bubble. And that bubble is part of what keeps the group vital, cohesive, and insular.

Which brings me back to the broader questions about male friendship and loneliness. As men move through life—into relationships, between jobs, across cities—what happens to the friendships that stay self-contained?

If your girlfriend’s world expands to include you, and your own group stays frozen in time, whose circle becomes the default?