In all my life, I have had several friends.
I have had close friendships with more females than males.
However, I have some really close male friends, and contrary to the popular opinion that most guys don’t talk about deep stuff, I actually spoke about really deep things to my friends.
Friendships are like treasures.
They should be guarded jealously.
The way friends turn up for you in tough times?
The feeling is so epic.
The way they also turn up to have fun with you is also wonderful.
Really, it’s great to know that you have support regardless of the situation you find yourself in.
While many people think that guys usually have superficial friendships with each other, the truth is that honesty usually thrives in that space.
There’s just this comfort you get from sharing a part of yourself with a trusted friend that no one else will ever get to know.
It’s like a breath of fresh air, and seriously, many guys are like this with their closest friends, sharing deep secrets and embarrassing tales that the rest of the world will always remain ignorant about.
Whether it’s a scandalous confession or just an embarrassing event, men confide in their closest friends, usually to relieve a weight or discover someone who has experienced something similar.
Follow me as I take you into the fun world of close male friendships and the things they confide in themselves…
7 Things Men Confess Only To Their Closest Friends
1. Their crush on a lady
What’s a gathering of men going to talk about if they don’t talk about women?
Don’t get me wrong; there are many other things men talk about, but one of their favorite topics is “women.”
I learned this from as far back as my secondary school days.
Guys love to talk about females.
Take my friends, for instance.
We have so many things to talk about, developing our careers, improving our finances, or merely catching up on what’s going on in our lives, yet, somehow, we always get around to the subject of women.
This is because women are quite an important aspect of our lives, and my friends develop new crushes every fortnight.
Some of these crushes are usually unexpected, and this makes them even more fun to talk about.
In every group of male friends, there is always that one who has crushes all the time.
So, the next time he says, “Ehen, guys, I have gist for you,” we all reply with “E no fit pass woman”– pidgin English meaning “It always has to be about women.”
I remember one time in school we got back from a class in which he was remarkably attentive.
He even asked questions from the female lecturer, something we agreed not to do as a rule because it usually lengthens the torture of classes.
He broke the rule not once but several times.
When we finally got back home, he sighed with a dreamy look in his eyes and said, “That woman is fine!”.
That was it.
We had our explanation for his weird behavior in class.
The guy was crushing on our beautiful lecturer.
Men may not do anything about their crushes, but they usually tell their closest friends about it.
2. Heartbreak
The first time I saw a really heartbroken guy, I was already attending university.
He was my roommate in the hostel.
He was in his final year, but he was in love with a second-year student.
Let’s call them Romeo and Juliet.
Romeo hadn’t told her about his feelings for her even though they were remarkably close.
He “knew” that she was feeling his vibes, and when the time was right, he planned to tell her and begin “happily ever after” with her.
At the risk of being called an envious person, I told him relationships don’t work like that.
You don’t have a girlfriend until you ask her, and she agrees to be your girlfriend.
He didn’t listen.
The first day I met Juliet, I understood why he seemed so enchanted by her.
Her smile was from out of this world, and she had the laughing eyes that usually hinted at a lot of mischief within.
I knew why my man was taken up with her.
Anyway, Romeo finally decided that it was time to ask her out.
So, he took her on a date he really couldn’t afford and asked her to be his girlfriend.
Well, her response was shocking.
She told him she was single, but he was like a brother to her, and she could never think of him romantically.
Romeo was heartbroken and came in crying.
We were concerned at first but when we got the full gist, we comforted him and soon were teasing about his antics.
We took him to a hearty dinner at the restaurant, bills on us since he had spent all his money on the date and didn’t even finish his food.
Dude didn’t recover fully for a long time.
Sometimes, he would sit down and stare into space.
But really, our room was a fun one.
So, it was hard to stay sad.
The truth is that men confess when they are heartbroken to their friends.
They may try to be macho about it and act like they are not so hurt by it, but the fact that they are sharing it with friends is a sign that the heartbreak was actually painful.
Heartbreaks are very painful experiences, and guys need the support of their friends through them all.
A typical male friend may not hug you so deeply or cuddle with you when you feel alone.
What male friends bring to the table is an ability to help you get over your pain by pointing out that you deserve more.
They can also tease you out of your sadness.
The fact that someone else knows and understands what you are going through brings some relief as well.
3. Embarrassing moments
When you are friends with energetic young men, you will hear a lot about embarrassing moments.
They just have this way of stumbling from one embarrassing moment to another.
Everyone has experienced those moments – moments they would rather forget.
It is funny how we want to forget that an event happened so much, but when we are with friends, we really can’t wait to tell them about it.
Reminds me of that time I was called to receive an award on stage.
Rising and walking smartly amidst the applause of my peers, I headed to the podium from the back of the hall.
I don’t know if it was because I was lost in the applause of everyone or because I could be naturally clumsy at the worst possible moments.
But I remember catching my foot and nearly stumbling face-first into the ground.
The applause faltered, and there were more than a few peals of laughter.
Gosh!
I couldn’t wait to snatch the award and run off the stage.
When I got home, I fought to forget for days, but I still told my friends about it, and we laughed about it.
It didn’t seem funny until I shared it with my friends, and then it all seemed so hilarious.
Since then, I have been careful when I am mounting a podium.
I don’t want lightning to strike the same place twice.
4. Silly things done for love
Every group of male friends has that one person who always seems to do more than his share of silly things for love.
We all actually have done some things that we will probably never do again because we thought we were in love.
But there’s that one person in every group of male friends who has done many silly things, all in the name of love.
There’s this close friend of mine who fits this description.
He told me about a lady he liked.
He said he had not asked her to be his girlfriend, but that was already a formality because they were really close.
I mean, they even prayed together every week.
On her birthday, he spent his entire salary to get her gifts because he wanted to appreciate her.
He got to her place with the gifts, met another guy there, and got introduced to the guy as her friend.
The painful part was that she introduced the other guy as the love of her life.
My friend didn’t know what to do.
He had been planning on asking her out, but all he could do was drop the gifts and leave, only to get a text from her thanking him for “his sacrificial love” and saying she loved him with the “love of Christ.”
It was sad, right?
But when I started laughing, he could see how the whole situation could have been really funny if he wasn’t the one experiencing it.
5. Dreams and ambition
We don’t always spend our time talking about women, in case you are already wondering.
We do other things.
If you are friends with people who are serious, it is inevitable that y’all will talk about personal dreams and ambitions.
Really, if you don’t talk about goals and ambitions with your friends, you need to start doing that.
Friendship goes beyond the fun gist and the hangouts.
When I hang out with my closest friends, we talk about our ambitions; we talk about our plans for the future and our career development.
Considering the fact that we major in the same career field, it is very helpful when we do this.
Working together to secure a brighter future for ourselves.
Apart from the normal dreams and ambitions, we also talk about the wild ones.
We talk about the dreams that seem so impossible that you may feel weird telling other people about them.
They could be really huge dreams like finding the cure for cancer by analyzing medical data or becoming the richest man in the world.
Men have these dreams, and while they may not be able to share them with the public, they confess them to their closest friends.
6. Financial issues
Ooh, I can’t count the number of times my guys confided their precarious financial situation to me.
There are certain levels of money issues that we experienced in the university that even outsiders would have been shocked by.
Like the time I had to drink garri twice a day for two weeks.
Garri is a meal made of soaking cassava flakes in water.
I would leave it to swell up for minutes so that it would be more filling.
My friends and I had this and more stories to share.
Now, we are better off, so we don’t have these really extreme stories to tell.
But we still tell each other about our financial issues.
Men confess their money issues to their friends.
They could be worried about paying an unexpected bill or some other unexpected expenses.
They could even need advice on what to do with their money.
Sometimes, we are caught between spending money on two important things but can only choose one.
In this situation, it is not unusual for a man to approach his closest friends for advice on what to do.
Apart from this, there is also the fact that they just want to rant to someone.
With the present economic situation in Nigeria, I get that a lot.
My friends call and rant for minutes about how expensive even the most basic items have become.
They just need to get it off their chests before paying for the items.
7. Their relationships
Men love to talk to each other about their romantic relationships.
It can be really hard when you are the only single one among friends who are in relationships.
You will be hearing things like “My wife made my favorite meal yesterday night” or “My girlfriend gave me the best birthday gift ever” and you won’t even be able to contribute anything.
Men want to talk about their happy relationships with their closest friends.
Similarly, if the relationship is going through times, they still love to discuss it with their closest friends.
Sometimes, they do this because they need some advice.
At other times, they talk about the troubles in their relationships just to get it off their chests.
When my friends tell me about their relationship woes, I can be very brutally honest.
I tell them when they are wrong.
I also tell them when I think they should already be identifying as “single.”
One time, my friend was complaining about his girlfriend’s male bestie.
He found out that the guy had been sleeping over at his girlfriend’s place without her ever mentioning it to him.
When he took it up with her, she said he was being insecure.
Well, my little contribution when he told us was that he was the only one in the relationship and he had better start identifying as single.
These are the things men confess to their closest friends.
Some of these secrets are little things, but talking about them helps them feel better about themselves.
At other times, they may be really deep, and even though you have been asked to be nonjudgmental, you can’t just help but judge.
Sometimes, they could be a cry for help.
At other times, they are merely things to laugh over.
Beyond all of these, these are the things that form the bonds of brotherhood between men who are not related by blood.