A group of 40- and 50-something guy friends met up recently at a sports bar. As they were exchanging back slaps and handshakes, someone hurled the first insult, aimed at a friend wearing pants in a color close to fuchsia: ‘Did My Little Pony throw up in your closet? I hate it when that happens.’ Suddenly it was game on, and it continued all night — some of the insults breathtakingly personal and often profane, accompanied by raucous laughter. They all left vowing to get together again soon.
It is a familiar scene. Men, gay and straight, have engaged in what anthropologists call jocular abuse since ancient times, when Spartan warriors used wit to cut their peers to the quick. Today guys talk smack just about everywhere, and it is so second nature that if men are aware they are doing it at all, they cannot remember ever not doing it. ‘In Western cultures, and especially in the U.S., men are just socialized this way,’ a clinical psychologist tells the Journal.
Two different things wearing the same clothes
The article’s actual argument is more interesting than the anecdotes, and it is this: beneath the banter lies a complicated and character-defining social dynamic. The identical exchange can be a bonding ritual — I am close enough to you to say this, and you are secure enough to hear it — or it can be a quiet contest over who ranks where. Same words. Sometimes the same night. And the question of how you know when it has gone too far turns out not to have a clean answer, which is why the piece was worth writing.
We are including it in a financial letter for a specific and unglamorous reason. That exact dynamic runs through an enormous amount of how men talk about money with each other, and it does real damage that nobody ever attributes to it.
The version that costs money
Think about how investment conversations actually go in a group of male friends. Somebody mentions a position that worked. Somebody else raises. Nobody volunteers the trade that went badly, the year they panic-sold, the account they have not looked at since 2019, or the fact that they genuinely do not understand what their pension election means. The room is running the same status protocol as the fuchsia-pants exchange, and in that protocol, admitting confusion is a losing move.
So people nod. They nod through explanations they did not follow. They nod at a brother-in-law’s confident advice. They take a tip from the guy at the sports bar who mentioned the winner and did not mention the four losers. And because the format rewards certainty and punishes questions, the person in the group who most needs to ask something is precisely the person least able to.
This is one of the reasons a review conversation is worth having with someone who is not in your peer group, and it is not about expertise. It is that there is no pecking order in the room. Nobody is keeping score, there is no audience, and ‘I have no idea what this means’ is a completely ordinary sentence rather than a concession. A surprising share of the value in these meetings comes from that alone — people finally asking the question they have been carrying since a barbecue in June.
Keep the banter. It is genuinely how a lot of men maintain their closest friendships, and the world is not improved by making it weird. Just do not run your retirement through the same protocol. Bring the statement, ask the thing you did not want to ask at the bar, and we will take fifteen minutes on it — no scoring.