Real talk on Black men, friendship, and the silence that’s killing us.
I used to think grief was loud. Like, thunderclap loud. Like the world's tiniest violins in the rain or a Mp3 with Adele's “ Someone like you “on repeat. But in my thirties, single, far from home, and pretending I wasn’t crying in the backseat of an Uber, I’ve learned grief wears sweat pants bro. It shows up quiet, smelling like basmati rice and peas that no restaurant can replicate and humming inside jokes no one else gets.
It’s not cinematic. It’s subtle. But it still bruises. Fo sure it screws with yo mind.
Lately, I’ve been wondering: when did Black men get so... alone?
Not movie-alone. I’m talking the kind where your group chat used to be nonstop, and now you send a meme into the void and get nothing back. The kind where you scroll through your contacts and realize you don’t know who you’d call in an emergency without making it awkward.
It didn’t always feel like this. As kids, friendship was easy. We were all Kool-Aid moustaches and video game beef. Handshake rituals that meant everything. There was lightness, even when life was heavy. Then somewhere around puberty, things started shifting. Affection became suspect ... Tenderness got disciplined out of us.
And not just by society, but by each other.
Niobe Way, a psychologist who studies boys, found that middle school boys describe their best friends in ways that would put war speeches to shame . “ my homeboy gets me.” “He’s my brother from another mother.” But by high school, that language disappears. Asked why, most boys shrug: “We just drifted.”
But it’s not really drift, is it? It’s more like conditioning. We learned the cost of softness early. That affection could be turned against us. That closeness between boys, especially Black boys, was a risk.
There’s this unspoken training: be loyal, but not too emotional. Be present, but not too eager. Be strong, but never soft. We’re supposed to just know how to be there for each other, without ever admitting that we need each other. You should attend your friend's mother funeral that fed you both but should not let him see you cry. Don't hug him. Don't mention the grief . Just act like nothing happened. Even when you see him dying for space to vent.
Anthony told me something that stuck. “Real friendship,” he said, “is when you see each other. Like really see, the quirks, the awkwardness, the changes. And you stay.” Anthony, said “growing up, most of his safe friendships were with women. But lately he’s been inching his way back into friendships with men. “ All I need is to be treated like a person,” he said. “I’ll show up with love, no question. I just want that offered back.”
Yassine put it differently, but the ache underneath was familiar. “As long as we can go past small talk, that’s a real friend to me.” But he noticed how some men, especially back home, treat connection like a contest. Who’s cooler, tougher, more detached. “That’s not friendship, man. That’s just performance.”
Favour, who grew up with brothers, says the best friendships she’s had with men are about gentleness and space. “It’s care and correction,” she told me. “The kind of friend who holds you down but also pulls you back when you’re off.” A lot of those friends are married now, so boundaries have changed. But the core is still there. They still check in.
And another friend Tim said something so clear I had to write it down: "Friendship is not a punch card. You don’t collect loyalty points. You just show up."
The data doesn’t lie. According to the Survey Center on American Life, nearly a third of Black men report having fewer than seven close friends. That’s a classroom. A minivan. Not a village. The CDC says suicide rates among Black men have gone up more than 60% in the past twenty years. The APA calls loneliness a public health crisis. And it is, especially for us.
Pop culture isn’t helping. Black male friendships are usually written as comic relief, ride-or-die chaos, or stone-faced loyalty. Martin and Tommy joked through it. The boys in Power bonded through violence. Even in Insecure, Chad existed mostly for laughs. Lawrence was too emotionally constipated to offer a blueprint. We don’t see the full thing, two Black men being real, soft, honest, and sticking around.
So we ghost each oother.I ghost my homeboys . Not because we don’t care, but because we never learned how to say, "I miss you." We just know how.
When I moved, I didn’t just lose people, I lost the version of me that made sense in their presence. I lost my reference points. My rhythm. My jokes didn’t land the same. The music hit different. And I started to wonder, am I still me without the ones who made me feel like me?
My friend Kofi* and I used to trade texts like mixtapes, music links, voice notes, unfiltered joy. Then it faded. No beef. Just slow silence.
One day, I typed “yo you good,” and stared at it until it hurt. Then deleted it.
Psychologists call that relational trauma. The ache of broken connection, especially when there’s no map back.
But I’ve started sending breadcrumbs. I am mostly the guilty party. But I am trying.
Not full essays. Just memes. A photo from 2016. A "this reminded me of you." No expectation. Just evidence that I still care.
Yo you good ?
And sometimes that’s how healing starts. Not with closure. But with contact.
It helps that we’re slowly seeing a shift. Tyler, the Creator’s out here talking about love and vulnerability. Kendrick is unpacking therapy and father wounds. Jay-Z told the world he needed help 👀. The blueprint is being redrawn.
What if we gave ourselves permission to follow that? To say “thinking of you” without needing a reply. To let our silence mean something other than detachment. To show up, awkwardly, inconsistently, but still.
I dont drink but here's to the friends who vanished and might still come back. To the voice notes with pauses too long to be comfortable. To the group chat that mostly posts memes but still feels like a lifeline.
Send the text. Not because you have the right words. But because silence is heavy. And someone you love might be carrying more than you know.
Needed this! Thank you for your words.
This is such a good piece that is very prevalent in general to friendship right now, thank you so much for including my voice!