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I want to ask you a question. How many close friends do you have? And I mean close friends - friends you could call at 11pm in an emergency and they’d pick-up the phone. Friends who know the things about you which you don’t post on social media. My name is Tom Stroud, and I’m the co-founder of the Shoulder to Shoulder men’s community. In this article, I talk about why feeling connected to others is the most important factor in long-term health and happiness.

Overnight, at the age of nine, I went from an energetic, sociable child to housebound and isolated as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) and other comorbidities shrunk my world to my bedroom. ME is a chronic, fluctuating disease that causes symptoms such as severe fatigue, post-exertional malaise, pain, sleep problems, and brain fog. It can leave people bed or housebound, and there is currently no cure. As the years passed, I tried every form of low‐energy activity that I cou