If a married man needs a shoulder to cry on, there's always his wife. Unfortunately, however, many husbands don't have anyone else.
Married men are more likely to be without close friends who can help in a crisis than those who are single, researchers claim.
Nearly two and a half million British men feel they have no one outside the family to turn to in a serious situation, the YouGov study found.
The pollster said men's chances of having no friends nearly trebled between their early 20s and late middle age. But the problem was more common for married men - affecting 15 per cent of those with a partner compared with 11 per cent of singles.
It asked men how many friends they had outside the home with whom they could discuss money, work or health problems.
