The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Would you rather have a few long distance lifetime friends, or a few in-person friends who comes and goes, for each season of your life?

The Origin Story

Right now, I’d settle for either. As a 51-year-old man, I can absolutely vouch for the “male loneliness epidemic.” In fact, I wrote about this very topic HERE a little over two years ago. I’m not sure why we men tend to lose touch with people as we age, but I watched it happen to my father, and I’ve watched it happen to me.

Part of my struggle was timing. Within my circle of friends, I was the first to get married and the first to get divorced. Those life milestones can create a rift that is hard to bridge, and before you know it, the common ground starts to shift.

The Legacy Characters

Because of that, I find myself mostly in the “long-distance, lifelong” camp. We don’t talk a whole lot, and we see each other even less, but I know that if things got bad, my friends would be there for me in a heartbeat. There is a deep comfort in that kind of history. In comic book terms, these are my Legacy Characters. They know my origin story, they’ve been there for the major crossovers, and they are baked into the core mythology of who I am.

Resetting the Status Quo

At the same time, there is something to be said for the friends who arrive for a specific interval. It might sound like a goofy comparison, but it’s not unlike when a new creative team takes over a long-running comic book title. They often “reset the status quo” by moving the hero to a new city or introducing an entirely new supporting cast to react to. In many ways, that might be the most realistic element of the superhero genre.

There’s a famous line in the movie Stand By Me where the narrator says, “Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant.” I’ve lived that. I can look back at my time in South Carolina and see a specific group; I can see the friends from the social club immediately following my divorce; and I can link back to the people from high school and my college bar-hopping days. Each was a different “volume” of my life, with its own art style and ensemble cast.

The Current Arc

But today? The stage is mostly empty. That’s not me whining; it’s just stating a fact. I don’t think it’s unusual for men my age, but I’m still not sure why it happens. If I had that answer, I’d probably be making big bucks as a psychologist or sociologist.

What I do know is that a hero can’t spend all his time reading back-issues. While I’ll always treasure the Legacy Characters, every good run needs a current supporting cast to make the world feel alive. My story isn’t over—it’s just waiting for the next creative team to step in and fill the panels with some new faces.

What about you? Does your current life feel like a “solo run,” or do you have a supporting cast that keeps the story moving? Whether you’re leaning on your Legacy Characters or looking for a new creative team to join your arc, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Let’s talk about how we’re navigating these chapters together.

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The article “The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship” first appeared in Rebuilding Rob.

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