One Man's Impossible Quest — To Make Friends in Adulthood
Episode Stats
Summary
When my guest date came face to face with the anemic state of his own friendships, he set out to try to do the miraculous himself and make friends in middle age. His name is Billy Baker, and he s a journalist and the author of We Need a Hangout: A Memoir of Making Friends.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Several years ago, there was a tweet that went viral, which said that of Jesus' many
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miracles, perhaps his greatest was having 12 close friends in his 30s.
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When my guest date came face to face with the anemic state of his own friendships, he
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set out to try to do the miraculous himself and make friends in middle age.
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His name is Billy Baker, and he's a journalist and the author of We Need to Hang Out, A
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Billy and I begin our conversation with the problem of male loneliness in the modern age
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We then discuss how men and women do friendships differently, the way men do theirs shoulder
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to shoulder, what this means for what male friendships need to be built around, and why they require
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Billy then shares how he started his project, which experimented with different ways to
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recover and create connections by rekindling his old friendships, but why that ultimately
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Billy then describes what did, a kind of casual fraternity for middle-aged men that he started
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and how he was inspired by something called the Men's Shed Movement Australia and its philosophy
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that men need somewhere to go, something to do, and someone to talk to.
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We end our conversation with Billy's takeaways for making friends in adulthood, including
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the need for embracing intentionality and social risk.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash makefriends.
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So you got a book out, We Need a Hangout, A Memoir of Making Friends.
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And this is all about you trying to make friends as a 40-year-old middle-aged man.
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So what began your quest to make friends as a middle-aged man?
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Well, I got conned by an editor with one of the oldest lies in journalism, which is, we
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So this came from a guy at the Boston Globe magazine.
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And I marched down to his office, sat down, told him to lay it on me.
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And he said, we want you to write about how middle-aged men have no friends.
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And, you know, I had that, you know, brief existential crisis sitting there as he's rattling
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off all these dire health consequences of having a poor social life, defining what we've
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come to understand is really a loneliness epidemic in America.
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And while all this is going on, all I'm doing in my head is trying to get out of this story
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because this was not, I mean, this is not something I wanted to think about or think
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So I, uh, the first thing I did was, you know, on the walk back to my desk, just kind
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of go through the, the names of my head of those guys I think of as my best friends,
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And it was, uh, it was a sad inventory and that, you know, immediately it was like, God,
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I haven't seen that guy in a, in a couple of months.
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And, and, you know, by the time I made the short walk back to my desk, sat down and thought
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I really was perfect for this story because not because I was, I was unique in any way,
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And, you know, as I'd come to learn from this pitch, I just sat through, like being a typical
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guy right now is someone who's suffering from high loneliness and someone who's susceptible
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So you don't want all because of a lack of friends in your life.
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So do we have any statistics on the state of American male friendship in particular?
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Well, so the, the general thought is that men are suffering more than women, but it is
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not an exclusive, but the, the data is that the average American man and woman, which there's
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You just answer a few questions and it gives you a rating.
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That rating for the average American is what they consider to be high loneliness.
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And when I took the, the UCLA loneliness scale, I, I scored dead average.
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So the stats are, I mean, they're all over the place.
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Some of them are a bit, uh, apocryphal, but the data is there.
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The average person, particularly the average male is suffering from loneliness, even in loneliness
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It's this idea where you're the social connections you desire don't meet the ones you actually
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You can be, you know, completely isolated and feel perfectly content, but the average person
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is not feeling like their social needs are being met.
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And it's only getting worse and worse as the years go by right now.
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The each generation of Americans is measurably lonelier than the ones that have come before
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in our loneliest generation in American history is our youngest.
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What are the, you mentioned there's, there's health consequence to this.
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What are some of the dire health consequences of loneliness?
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You don't want to get heart disease, cancer, dying.
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Everything is magnified by being measurably lonely or even living alone.
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You know, your chances of dying go up dramatically.
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If you don't have a strong social circle, you know, every time I say these things, they seem
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like I'm laying it on pretty thick, but the data is there.
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It's, it's healthier to eat Twinkies with your friends and to eat broccoli alone.
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Like it really, and if you had told me that, you know, it's that simple, if you don't want
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to see the doctor, see your friends, I wouldn't have believed you, but I've delved into this
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science and every, every, you know, obesity, diabetes, like all these things that you, you,
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it seems like impossible that your friendship circle could affect these things.
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And a lot of those things you mentioned, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, et cetera,
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And also what hits men a lot more of these things that are referred to as deaths of despair,
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alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, deep depression.
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See, these are, I mean, the suicide rate for men is appalling.
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And a lot of it is attributed to this fact that, you know, men don't have the social circles
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I mean, you know, every time some, some idiot shoots up a school or whatever it is, like
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they, they dig into this person's life and guess what?
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So when your editor asked you this article, you were like, initially like, that's not
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But then you did that walk back and went through like, I haven't really, I don't, I don't have
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I haven't seen my friends in a couple of months or years.
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I mean, how did you end up sort of, I mean, I wouldn't say you're, you don't want to call
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yourself friendless, but you're not hanging out with your friends as often as you like at
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I think it happened without even noticing, you know, I w I was checking off a lot of boxes, you
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know, I was doing the things that, that seemed like I should, you know, was supposed to be
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I had a wife and kids and, you know, I was taking care of getting the groceries at the
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But I, I think what I was guilty of was I just wasn't budgeting any time in the daily calendar
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And I think I had moved friendship into this category of things I do when the important
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And I think I was also guilty of putting a lot of pressure on my wife to be the, the
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You know, I'd be like, when are we getting together with so-and-so?
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You know, when can we hammer that into the calendar?
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And, and another thing I think I was, I was counting on was that I would make a lot of,
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you know, good connections through my children.
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You know, when I look back at my childhood and picture my parents hanging out with their
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friends, they were the parents of the kids I hung out with, you know, and they'd meet
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each other on the sidelines or wherever it might happen.
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So I think I was the saddest part of my whole story was that I was treating it as like normal.
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Like, oh, this is just, this is just what happens at middle age.
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You know, your, your friendships disappear and then, you know, we'll all reconnect on
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I think that happens just for a lot of, I think particularly men, you get sort of lazy
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You just, you, you, when you were, we've had another guy, a psychologist on the podcast
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So the problem with men is, and this happens with boys and girls in the beginning, early
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on in your life, you have these systems set in place for yourself where you can make
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friends, there's school, there's sports, there's activity.
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And then you get into adulthood and you really don't have that anymore.
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Women tend to, you know, take on that, that mantle and start, you know, being proactive
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Guys tend to still rely on structures outside of themselves to make friends.
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They rely on sports, their kids' sports to make friends with the sports dads, or they
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rely on their wife to like manage the social calendar.
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And so there's a fundamental difference in the way that men and women interact.
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And so women talk face to face and men talk shoulder to shoulder.
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We know this from studies where sociologists creep around and take photos of people interacting,
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And with, with men, it's just a very clear picture.
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And it is two men standing shoulder to shoulder, side by side.
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And so knowing that, you also can understand why your strongest connections are from things
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You know, we know that men are measurably make their strongest friendships through school,
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through sports, through military service, through things like that.
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And then when you get into middle years of life, those things are largely gone.
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And with it, you're losing these chances to sit shoulder to shoulder.
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And when I first learned this, it really, it made me understand why I would never get
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super psyched when someone would say, oh, we should get together for coffee or something
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Or when, you know, my wife would get off the phone from having a long chat with a friend
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And it's like, I don't, that just doesn't feel like how we connect.
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I don't know about you, but every time I talk to one of my friends on the phone, feels
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like 90 seconds later, someone's saying, all right, good talk.
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I'll catch up with you later, you know, and it disappears.
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And there's a study showing that men hate the phone and women can keep strong connections
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But so what goes missing in these vital years in the middle of life are these shoulder
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And so when I set out on this journey to write this book, you know, I wrote an article initially
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about this loneliness epidemic and kind of raised my hand and admitted that I was a card
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carrying member of it, that article went crazy viral.
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It went, it was, it became for a period, the most popular article the Boston Globe had
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And the responses from men were not questioning me about the dire consequences.
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They weren't asking for any more evidence of the cancer or that they had the cancer.
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And so the book was me trying to figure that out.
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Like on the surface, the cure for loneliness is friendship, but actually making it work
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when you get to this point in life is wildly tricky.
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And so what I, what I had to do was ultimately figure out, I use the phrase velvet hooks.
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I had to find these velvet hooks that were these soft connectors, a way to be friends with
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my friends, something that we could do some activity that was just gentle enough to not
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be another ironclad commitment on the schedule, but just fun enough to actually make us follow
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through and, you know, put something on the calendar, make it happen.
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These are, these are your whatever, fantasy football leagues, weekly sports night, the
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poker night, the book clubs, whatever they might be.
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I mean, you know, I, I've never been to a book club.
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Every woman I talk to always says the same thing, which is, you know, we almost never discussed
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It's this velvet hook just to get them together.
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So for guys, it was about, for me, trying to find these velvet hooks that would get us
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And that's when often like the magic happens, right?
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Like it's, you know, I, I think as I've been doing these rounds, talking about the book,
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I think a lot of people think that I'm pushing for this idea that men need to get together
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and have real vulnerable conversations about their feelings.
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And then if it gets a little deeper through these moments, then that's great.
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But for the most part, you know, when I get together with my friends, I mean, we act like
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juveniles, we screw around, nothing serious comes up.
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I come home and my wife says, oh, how's so-and-so's mother doing?
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You know, but there's something about simply getting together that makes me a better,
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better in all my, you know, my other jobs as a dad, as a husband, as an employee.
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Well, yeah, and to this idea that when people talk about friendships, we often put the platonic
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ideal of a friendship or relationship as what a woman would want, right?
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So you have to like, if you're going to have a friendship, you have to like bear souls to
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You got to like talk, have these deep conversations.
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And for guys, that's, that's typically not, like you said, it's shoulder to shoulder.
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And for some reason we say, well, that's, that's not good.
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And so guys are like, well, if I can't have these deep heart to heart conversations, because
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that's, it's not, that's the ideal, you know, and I can't make that happen for me.
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I might, I might as just, it's no point if I can't, but I think that's wrong head.
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I think you should be like, okay, generally men and women are different, different.
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They have different ways of how they have relationships and it's okay for guys just to get together.
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Like you said, just to hang out, just do stuff together.
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It could just be completely, I mean, like women would look at it and be like, well, nothing
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Like there's no connection, but for guys, like a lot of connection happened.
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And I think guys that connect a ton through ball busting, you know, I think that women
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have a real, like my wife sometimes is like appalled at the stuff, you know, my friends
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and I will say to each other, but it's like, that's how we share our love.
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I know how I look good because my friends will tell me how terrible I look.
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But I think women don't communicate in those ways.
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I call that sort of like, you know, ball busting, aggressive nurturing.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And one thing you, the first thing you did, you tried to reactivate friendships you had
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when you were in high school, a young man, college age.
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And you begin by going and reaching out to an old friend of yours you had since you were
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Like, when did you realize that you had completely drifted apart from this guy that had been a big
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I had mentioned Rory and another buddy named Mark in the article.
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And Rory said, oh, that's going to make what I'm about to tell you even worse, which is that
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And I mean, this was the guy I would have considered my best friend in the world.
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And it happens like so quickly without either of us noticing.
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And so I, I, I hopped on a plane, flew over to Vienna.
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And it was like, I, we, we got to save this thing.
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And it was, and we did, and Rory and I are close again.
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And the beginning of this journey in general was just that, me trying to get the bands
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back together to kind of repair or strengthen friendships from the past.
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But it, it kind of hit a wall in a, in a strange way where I, I still didn't have, you know,
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so I took a leave from the globe to write this book.
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I'm sitting in a room, I'm feeling, I'm doing the loneliest thing I know of, which is writing,
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And I still didn't have an answer to the question of, do I have anyone to hang out with on a
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It was great to fly to Vienna and, you know, a professor, you know, best friendship forever.
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But I, I, I was, I was still lacking friendship in my daily life.
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And by lacking that, I was lacking all the health benefits that come with it.
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And so I did, I set out to do something that is just remarkably uncool, which is I set out
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Like you can smell it on someone when they're coming on a little strong.
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And, and I was inspired in a way by this thing I heard Mindy Kaling say on her TV show, which
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was that a best friend is not a person, it's a tear.
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And so I started thinking about it where, you know, if you ask men to name their best
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friends, we know from surveys that they'll say someone from childhood or high school or
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maybe college, but there's a cutoff after a certain point.
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And I think the idea for men is that you have to go way back with somebody for, for them to,
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to really be, you know, a meaningful connection.
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But the truth was I needed meaningful connection in my day to day.
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So what I did was set out to try and make new best friends.
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Didn't feel like, you know, now that I'm absorbing this, this throwaway line, Mindy Kaling, it's
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that on a, on a sitcom, you know, now that I'm, I I'm operating on this idea that adding
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new best friends is not betraying my best friends of the past, but instead sort of, you know,
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putting more people on this pedestal, I set out to connect with guys that I had, for lack
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of a better word, felt a spark with, you know, the, these were guys I'd met him, however,
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but you know, they, you, you know, sometimes you meet someone, you're like, you know what,
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I could be, I could be friends with them and spark is, is usually reserved for romantic
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relationships, but you know, I, I think it happens in, in friendship in general.
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So I, you know, what I ultimately did was try and start a, you know, a, a middle-aged
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dad fraternity that hung out on Wednesday nights and it had some ups and downs, but I will say,
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you know, it's all chronicled in the book, much of it's a dumpster fire.
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But now years later, I can say I added four new best friends to my life.
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And those are the best friends that are part of my daily life.
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And that's where I'm getting the benefits from all of this.
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All right. So let's talk about that middle-aged men's fraternity you started because you reached
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this point where you realize that friendship and adulthood is going to take intentional effort,
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like a natural spark could happen, but then you'd have to be proactive to, to fan that flame of
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friendship. And something else you realized along the way is that friendships aren't that dissimilar
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for romantic relationships. So you try different things to make connections with friends.
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And the thing that really worked out, this men's fraternity was the big idea that got you to the
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point where you're hanging out with friends on a regular basis. So what you did, you invited a
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bunch of guys you felt a spark with. These are acquaintances from different parts of your life,
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work, I think a CrossFit gym, that you wanted to get to know them better.
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And the inspiration for this idea was this thing that happened in Australia called
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Men's Shed. For those who aren't familiar with that, what is the Men's Shed movement?
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A Men's Shed is exactly what it sounds like. So it started in Australia when a guy named Dick McGowan
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was at a senior center and he threw a fit. And his fit was basically that all the activities at the
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senior center were geared towards women, you know, the, the knitting and the bingo and all these
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things. And it was like, this isn't what guys want. So he, he says, you know, the shed out back
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that nobody uses. I'm cleaning out that shed and that's for the guys. That's going to be the men's
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shed. That's where the guys are going to go hang out. And so these old retired guys in Australia
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started hanging out in the shed. They love it. They get a little bit of media attention in a
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newsletter for a bank. Somehow or another, this thing goes viral in, uh, in the pre-viral days.
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And it leads to, in the blink of an eye, a thousand of these men's sheds opening up in
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Australia. They're everywhere. And what they are is there's no like central theme or, or thesis behind
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them. It's just a place for men to get together. And the Dick McGowan had a saying that men need
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somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to. And that's what the men's sheds are.
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Some of them take on a, you know, they might become like a woodworking shed or we, we fix
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motorcycles at this one, but in general, they're open to anyone. They're also open to women, but
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they're largely used by men. And the health data on the men who go to these things is that they seem
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to live longer, healthier, happier lives simply from hanging out with some other guys. And that's,
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you know, as opposed to, you know, right now my dad is, is recently retired and I, you know,
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I'm worried about him sitting at home and watching too much law and order every day. And I, and I
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wonder if having a place like that could change his life. But so the men's shed was an inspiration.
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Also an inspiration for me was this, this thing. I heard an older guy in my, my town say one day,
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which was, he was talking about something. He said, I can't go to that. I have Wednesday night.
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And I was like, what's Wednesday night? Don't we all have Wednesday night? And he said, no, no,
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it's just like basically this idea, this promise I made with a bunch of buddies years ago that on
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Wednesday nights, if we're all around, we'll get together and do something, anything. We just need
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to, just need to be together. And when I had heard that it was before I, you know, wrote this article
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and took on this book, I filed it away. Like, oh, maybe, you know, someday I might need something
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like that. Getting this assignment made me realize I needed it immediately. So I basically combined
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the men's shed idea with the Wednesday night idea and opened a Wednesday night men's shed
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in a barn in my community. And it's been a blast. Like it's, you know, it had some ups and downs
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in that, like, we got together the first night. I told the spiel of, you know, what I was hoping
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to do. Everyone had a laugh at my expense. We had a couple of beers. It was great. Second night,
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everyone comes back and it's like, all right, wait, what are we going to do? We're just going
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to sit around here and talk about our feelings like this isn't us. And quickly we, we needed
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to find, you know, these activities, these things to do. And those activities are soft.
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They're simple. You know, we, we, we light a big bonfire or we, you know, help the guy
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build a BMX track in his backyard. Or we, lately we've been playing pickleball, which is
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like, you know, if ping pong and tennis had a baby. And, you know, it's, it's things like
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this that, you know, go back to this Dick McGowan guy, this Australian guy that threw a fit
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and said, men, men need somewhere to go, something doing, someone to talk to. Like
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by accomplishing those three things, I think I've changed my life and I've changed the lives
00:23:25.740
of the, the men that are coming to this little Wednesday night men's shed.
00:23:30.240
Yeah. So I've got similar things going on in my life with my, so there's like two groups
00:23:33.820
of friends I've got. So I've got, I belong to a book club, but we've been going through
00:23:38.500
like the great books of the Western canon. So we started like at the Iliad, we were finally
00:23:44.220
up to like Cervantes, Don Quixote right now, but we get to get like, we, but it's like
00:23:48.480
a regular thing. It's like the, the third Wednesday of every month we get together at
00:23:52.880
some guy's place to discuss. And the thing is like, you end up sort of discussing the
00:23:56.660
book, but then you just start bullcrapping about other stuff, just shooting the breeze
00:24:00.120
about whatever. And then the other one is I've got a group of friends where every other
00:24:06.160
Thursday or Friday, I think it's kind of been kind of screwy with, with COVID, but it's
00:24:12.000
like the sauna session, just getting a sauna. And we just talk, I mean, about nothing really,
00:24:17.800
or just sit there and just be miserable in the heat and then jump in the pool and cool
00:24:22.560
off and get back in. And it's great. We love it.
00:24:26.760
It's that simple, isn't it? Like, I mean, a lot of times I'll come home from one of these
00:24:31.920
Wednesday night things and it's like, I, on paper, I have nothing to show for it, you know,
00:24:36.660
but it's like, I, I wake up the next day in a better mood. You know, I, there, there's
00:24:41.100
something, something's been scratched that, that wasn't getting scratched before. And, uh,
00:24:46.780
it really is that simple. And, and I'm, I'm appalled that it, it turned out, the answer
00:24:54.800
Uh, so you mean in the book, there was some ups and downs with this Wednesday night thing
00:24:58.280
at first it started off strong. Everyone was on board, but then you said it kind of fizzled
00:25:02.380
out for a while. And we've had those moments too, with, you know, various friends groups
00:25:07.580
we've, I've belonged to things go, are going great, but then they kind of fizzle out. What,
00:25:12.660
what happened with you? Like what, what caused it to fizzle out?
00:25:16.340
Huh? I think, so I think initially my biggest concern was that it would seem like it was my
00:25:23.860
thing. You know, I wanted it to be our thing, but it, it, I didn't want to have to be the person
00:25:29.760
that sent the text every Wednesday saying, you know, we're doing this. I didn't want to have
00:25:34.280
to be the cheerleader every time. But, uh, I realized it was, you know, if I didn't do that,
00:25:40.240
it wasn't going to happen. No one else wanted to take the reins. And then I think the biggest
00:25:44.520
thing we suffered from was a lack of purpose in a way, you know, like, uh, we were back to that,
00:25:50.580
that almost like face to face conversation, which is not what men are cut out for, not what any of us
00:25:58.420
were looking for. So it was a matter of finding activities, finding these velvet hooks, these
00:26:04.000
simple things that we could do to, to connect. And, um, and, and then it picked up, you know,
00:26:11.900
and then COVID arrived and, and that was interesting. Cause I think, uh, that was a moment for me. I don't
00:26:20.640
know if you felt like this happened to you as well, but all of a sudden it felt like every tribe I'd ever
00:26:25.800
been a part of every squad kind of circled the wagons, you know, it w it was the zoom chats with
00:26:31.740
the college buddies you haven't talked to in forever or the group texts or whatever it might
00:26:35.880
be. And there was something about COVID arriving that really re-strengthened the Wednesday night
00:26:41.360
crew where we realized, okay, we do need, we do need something here. And, you know, there's this
00:26:47.260
grand evolutionary question of like, why do we need friends? Right. And in the, the best guess is that
00:26:54.860
we have friends around for when, when it hits the fan, you know, like, uh, we, we feel like
00:27:01.080
we, we, we need someone that will have our back when it gets real. And COVID was the first time
00:27:05.940
in my life that it got real for everyone. And, um, I think the Wednesday night group really found
00:27:11.240
its footing finally by that feeling like we all needed a, a, a squad to have our back, someone
00:27:19.060
close by that could come in to assist us. How'd you guys adapt? Was it, did you guys
00:27:25.400
do zoom or just do outdoor stuff? Like what? We did outdoor stuff. It turned out. And again,
00:27:30.620
this is so painfully simple. Uh, I hate it took a while to get here, but like a fire was the,
00:27:37.240
the one thing we could do. We could light a fire, you know, on these cold nights, get together safely
00:27:42.080
outside. And there's something about sitting around a fire with guys that feels very primitive
00:27:47.760
and nurturing something simple as being triggered in your soul. And that for a while, you know, I
00:27:54.420
mean, we, I'm in new England and the winters here are miserable. And this past winter, this,
00:27:59.700
this COVID winter, I mean, we lit some fires that were obnoxiously large. I mean, it really became a,
00:28:05.800
a, a juvenile attempt to get the cops called on us for a, for a backyard fire. But you know what?
00:28:11.480
I mean, it was, I don't know that these things, these simple moments of magic are, are what has
00:28:19.960
really, you know, changed my life for the better this, you know, having to take on this assignment
00:28:25.520
and then take on this book was like the best gift, gift I've ever given myself. And it was a gift of
00:28:31.300
regular friendship. And it's the simplest things in the simplest ways it's gathering around a fire.
00:28:36.040
It's having a beer with a friend. It's farting around, it's ball busting. And at the end of the
00:28:40.980
day, like I, I feel better, you know, I, I, I can't, you know, I can't look inside of my body and
00:28:47.840
measure, you know, the, the, the, the effect it's having, but I have to believe in, in the health data
00:28:53.340
that says I'm a happier, healthier person. And I'm going to reap the benefits of this for years to come
00:29:00.680
if I simply keep these friendships up. You didn't talk about this in your book. I don't,
00:29:04.580
and I don't think it came up, but one issue I've seen with guys who's like, you know,
00:29:07.940
I want to make friends, but like my wife gives me a hard time. Anytime I try to go out and hang out
00:29:13.160
with my, my dude friends. Did you encounter that at all with, with guys you're trying to get to hang
00:29:19.040
out with you? Well, I, so here's the way I think that happens. I think that when you're, you're pairing
00:29:25.820
up, you know, you're getting to that point where you're getting serious with someone, every guy gets
00:29:30.260
that talk where it's like, all right, you need to stop spending so much time with the boys and start
00:29:34.360
spending more time with me. But then I think a reverse happens after you've been together for
00:29:39.200
a while where the, the woman's like, you need to get out of the house, you know, like you, you need
00:29:43.680
to call so-and-so. So I do think there's this sort of pageant performance of like, oh, if I'm out with
00:29:52.300
the guys and I, then I, oh, you know, I'm on the list. I better show up with flowers and chocolates
00:29:56.640
or something. Cause I, I was stayed out late with the fellas, but it, for me, at least in my
00:30:01.520
relationship, that's not the case. It's my wife is very supportive of this. And if anything,
00:30:06.680
this trip I've been on has influenced her in a very positive way. She's much more deliberate in
00:30:12.220
her friendships, much more protective of her time to do those things. But I do know, I mean,
00:30:18.460
every relationship is different. And I do, I do hear from some of the guys that like, you know,
00:30:23.360
they're in the doghouse for hanging out too much with the boys and they're going to have to skip this
00:30:27.720
one. Well, the other problem too, you see married guys run into is if they're going to make a friend,
00:30:33.340
they think, well, I got it. It's got to be a couple friend, like my wife. So the friend,
00:30:38.220
like the, the dude friend I make friends with, like my wife's got to be friends with that guy's
00:30:43.220
wife. And often that doesn't sink. Usually you love the dudes, you know, the dude, the dude's
00:30:48.400
awesome, but like your wives don't get along with each other. You're like, well, we can't,
00:30:52.040
well, don't do that. Just, it's okay. If you have your own friends, they don't have to be couple
00:30:54.920
friends. I mean, it's, it's a, I feel like that stuff, it's a, it's a cliche, but it's a cliche
00:31:00.440
for a reason. Like it, uh, the, I don't know if you saw John Mulaney when he hosted Saturday Night
00:31:06.500
Live not too long ago, his whole opening monologue was about how men have no friends. He stole my bit
00:31:13.620
basically, you know, but he says, he has this great joke. He says that dads don't have friends.
00:31:19.760
Uh, moms have friends and those friends have husbands.
00:31:24.920
And, and, and there's some truth to that. You know, I mean, they're, they're, especially,
00:31:30.420
I think, you know, when, when women are thinking of, of get togethers, it's in a, in a couple sense,
00:31:35.700
at least in my relationship, my wife's like, oh, if we're going to go to dinner, like let's have it
00:31:39.820
be with a couple that we both like, and not just one of your friends and his wife that I don't know,
00:31:45.320
or the, or the reverse, you know, one of her friends and the husband, I'm not crazy about.
00:31:49.000
I mean, those couple, I don't know if you have them in your life. I mean, when you do have those
00:31:53.100
couples where you are great friends with both of them, that's the best, you know,
00:31:57.400
especially, you know, if your kids are great friends, but like, I think a, you know, my problem
00:32:03.140
was I was relying on that is basically my social life. Like the, those few and far between dinners,
00:32:09.300
get togethers, weekends away with those other couples we had that sort of great connection with,
00:32:14.160
but you know, you need more, you need it on the day to day, you need, you just need to hang out.
00:32:20.800
You know, I mean, right now my, my kids are just finishing up their, their final bits of zoom
00:32:27.380
school. And then they start full-time in person in, in a week. And I mean, they're so looking forward
00:32:33.520
to just having daily friendship, you know, like, and not having it be something where they need to
00:32:38.720
have a scheduled event, you know, some play date organized by the parents, whatever it might be.
00:32:43.660
They just need that like day to day, you know, broing out with their buddies to, to, to scratch
00:32:50.580
something they're clearly not getting. So what are the big action point takeaways that you,
00:32:55.580
from your experience with trying to make friends that, you know, as a middle-aged dude, what,
00:32:59.600
what works, what doesn't work? I mean, yeah, you have to be intentional. You have to find
00:33:04.580
activities, you know, you need to, it needs to be activity-based that that's the glue for guys.
00:33:10.080
And I think that you, as part of being intentional, you need to be a little bit vulnerable. Like it's,
00:33:17.180
it's an awkward situation to put yourself in, to try and make friends or try and make a friendship
00:33:22.980
work. And I think guys are, are, you know, either naturally are raised to be uncomfortable being
00:33:30.020
vulnerable. But I will say this, anytime I made myself vulnerable, it was rewarded. You know,
00:33:36.100
it's what led to the, the special moments, the special connections. So it's a matter of,
00:33:42.900
you know, finding that activity. You may already have them. If you don't have friends, which I,
00:33:48.260
I've been hearing from a lot of people that it just fundamentally, like I don't have friends. I'm a,
00:33:53.520
I'm a lonely person for that reason. I mean, I was lucky to be someone who had friends and just
00:33:58.200
wasn't being friends with them. But if you are lonely, you have to look first, probably at the
00:34:02.760
activity. There's probably something you like. So go do that and connect with people who share that,
00:34:08.820
that interest. But it's just about making effort. You know what I mean? If I could give anyone some
00:34:13.060
homework at the end of this podcast, it's like, you know, text your buddies, you know, think,
00:34:17.720
close your eyes and think about that person you miss that you haven't connected with that,
00:34:21.200
that you, you would love to spend some time with and reach out and say, you know, I just heard
00:34:25.540
this idiot babbling on a podcast about friendship made me think of you. We, we need to hang out
00:34:29.980
and go from there. But it takes, you know, more than just saying that it takes, we need,
00:34:36.060
it's saying we need to hang out on this day, doing this thing. Can you be there?
00:34:42.120
So maybe instead of saying vulnerability, we can re-brand it as social risk. You're taking a social
00:34:48.440
Yeah. It's, I mean, you know, the, of the, I, I tried a lot of things that were, I mean,
00:34:54.380
I tried to reunite my high school class. I had this thought experiment where I was like,
00:34:58.720
what was the best day I remember from high school. And it was senior skip day when, you know,
00:35:03.380
everyone kind of ditched school at the same time. We all, you know, felt like we were these real
00:35:09.260
rebels. And so I tried to bring it back. I was like, all right, on a Friday, let's all gather
00:35:14.660
in this field. We used to go to when we skip out of school and we'll play kickball and drink some
00:35:19.800
beers. But the point is you got to skip. We're going to do it on a weekday. And so many people came,
00:35:25.320
but as I was sitting in that beach chair, you know, when I got there early, you know,
00:35:30.020
sitting in a chair, a lot in this field, fingers crossed that anyone was going to show up.
00:35:35.100
That was as vulnerable as I've been in years. You know, I was scared. I was back in high school
00:35:41.560
again. And you know what? That vulnerability was rewarded. And so, yeah, the, what was the phrase
00:35:49.560
Social risk. I took a social risk and I was rewarded.
00:35:52.820
So there's no manliness. Yeah. There's no manliness without risk.
00:35:58.520
Well, Billy, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:36:02.800
So I'm a reporter at the Boston Globe, you know, constantly doing that. But the book is called
00:36:07.760
We Need to Hang Out. It's a hopefully a fun adventure with some takeaways. The best thing I
00:36:12.700
hear from people is that they find it relatable, you know, that I'm in many ways just an every
00:36:17.820
man with every man problems. And I found some every man solutions.
00:36:21.800
There you go. Billy Baker, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:36:25.820
My guest today was Billy Baker. He's the author of the book We Need to Hang Out. It's available
00:36:29.520
on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Make sure to check out our show notes at aom.is
00:36:33.440
slash makefriends where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper in this
00:36:36.880
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at artofmanliness.com
00:36:48.680
where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over
00:36:51.680
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00:37:19.640
Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind you not only to listen to the AOM podcast,