Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 759: Why Men Struggle With Friendship

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is cognitive distance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at today is whatever day long form day long form day long form day it's long form day today tom we're gonna talk about male friendship yeah

i gotta get one of those two stories are why men struggle with friendship and the other one is why is it so hard for men to make close friends? Really, you know, I want to start with the one, there's one article here, it's this first one, is why men struggle with friendship. I want to start here talking about one of the most glaring pieces of this. It talks about friendship from a 30,000 foot view, but there's also a very personal connection with two people in it. Two adult male friends. One of them eventually comes out as gay, but they're very close friends for many years. And the other one is afraid of being perceived as gay by a friend circle and by other people.

So he's not as close as I think he might want to be, you know, just be very close and, and, and have that sort of friendship, that close friendship. And the very first thing I want to say is what a crazy culture we live in where we will, we are so sort of subtly homophobic that we'd rather be lonely. Yeah. You know, we talked a little bit about this just before the show and I thought about this when I was reading the article and I want to make sure and I know you're not, I want to make sure that I don't sound blamey here because like it's not the homophobia necessarily

of the people. It's that we're living in a society that has taught everybody, men, women, everybody to look sideways at close male friendships. And it has really created a system of values and rewards for things like male stoicism, male individualism, male individualism. We live in a society that has created a system of rewards as well for getting most of your emotional needs met by women in your life rather than men in your life. I know so many men and actually like, I'll reverse the sentence. I know so many women who have had men come to them when they need, when men need, like male friends will come to the women in their lives,

when they have something heavy weighing on their heart, when they need advice, when they need to be vulnerable or cry, because men tend to feel more comfortable going to, even if it's not like they're a partner, men tend to feel more comfortable, because I think we've been socialized that an expression of vulnerability is more well kept

and more well received if it's male to female than if it's male to male. Because we also value so much male to male competitiveness. Yeah. I think that's one of the major things about this is the competitiveness aspect between males is something that makes this friendship stuff, I think a little more difficult. It's what makes things more difficult.

I try not to compete with my friends if possible. That's something I try to separate. I try to keep that away. Although in some ways, for many years I've been fencing and I've been doing sort of competitive fencing for, gosh, at this point it's almost, it's 25 years plus I've been doing competitive fencing. And I've gotten really close friendships with some of the people that I've competed with for years and years and years and years. But the only competition we do is on that field, right? It's only there. It's never anywhere else.

It's not like your whole, but if you, if you're not careful, it can sort of get involved in a lot of pieces and a lot of facets of your life. So you've got to be careful with it to try to keep it in its own place because male competitiveness can be a big driving force in your life. Yeah. It can be a huge wedge. Yeah. And it can make huge, huge waves in your relationships if you don't know how to hold onto it and

tamp that shit down. I still fight with myself and my own brain about competitiveness in my own head often. And I got to, you got to, you have to learn how to control it. And I think it's, it's, it can be a terrible thing and can be a bad thing for friendships. And I think that that's one of the things that, that, you know, and, and when you, it also too, we were talking earlier about how males in our society, and I want, I do want to also mention we're only talking about our culture, right? The United States culture. And I don't know if this culture bleeds over into say Canadian culture or UK culture. I'm thinking of English speaking cultures might have a very similar type of way

in which they treat men treat each other. But I'm pretty sure it's not. They were certainly talking about how it's very common for people to hold hands, men to hold hands, or to have a lot of contact, like holding contact with each other in other cultures that is just not the same thing. I had a boss who was from Columbia and the guy would put his hands on you all the

time and it was very, in some ways it's off putting because you're not used to it. But in his culture, for him to reach out and grab your forearms while he's talking to you is normal. He'll just grab you and talk to you. Like I need to talk to you right now and he'll grab you and hold you. It's not, there's nothing to it, but at the same time, it's a jarring thing for us because we're a very space-oriented culture. We keep a lot of things away from us.

Eat at a restaurant in the United States and then eat at a restaurant in Europe and see the difference on how far away tables are from each other, how far, how much space you have. We're a space culture. We're like, you know, arms length type culture. And to have somebody that close to you to hold you and to talk to you or to walk up behind you and just not like massage you or whatever or do anything caressing, but just like to put their hands on your shoulders, you know, uninvited is a weird feeling, but also for him, totally natural. Right.

I, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to talk. I'm excited to talk to you specifically because you're my closest friend of 25 years. 25 years. I mean, I'm my close brother. 28 years, I think. Yeah, no, it's been a while. It's a long time. We're coming up on 30. We got to have a 30 year anniversary. We got to have a 30. What would it be? Would it be 2026? No, 26, 26 or 27. 2626. But we met

in 26. We really didn't become tight friends until until 98, 98. I think it was 98. So we became became tight friends in 98, but we met in 96. Yeah. So we'll have known each other a very long time. We were right. But yeah, we didn't get tight until We got really close. We became really close friends a couple years before my marriage. Yeah. Yeah. And you stood up for me and my marriage at my wedding ceremony. And we were close friends all the way leading up to that. And then after, after very close friends until, I mean we've never, we've never really sort of had a moment where we've not really been friends. We've been friends the whole time. I think maybe we've talked at least every week since then. Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably. I like, cause I think it's important to acknowledge a couple

things. At least I want to that like, even though I fully recognize that like there's a hidden, not so subtle homophobia that drives men from like engaging with each other in these intimate ways. And I know that and I don't think that that's good. And I'm aware of it. I can't imagine holding your hand. No, I couldn't either. Right? No, it's not our culture. It's not our culture. It's not our culture. And that's why I want to say it.

Is that like, it's not because I'm not comfortable with you. It's not because I don't love you. Yeah. It's because like we live in this soup we're in. Yeah. And that's something that I think this bears saying. Sure. I think there's a wrongheaded idea sometimes

that gets kind of passed around that if you can recognize that something comes from a wrong headed place, that you will be able to just immediately overcome it and be comfortable. And it's worth saying that like, I don't believe that that's true. I think you can work really hard if you want to, to overcome pieces of your enculturation. Some people will do that more naturally than other people. Some people have incentives to overcome and culture because they're in an out group. Yeah. Right. And so they're already sort of on the outside. So, but just knowing that something is

true and is like probably not good for us. Does it mean that you just like wake up one day and you're over it? You can't do that. I totally agree. It doesn't mean that you just like wake up one day and you're over it. You can't do that. I totally agree. It doesn't mean that we can't touch each other because we've hugged many times. You know, we haven't seen each other for a while. We'll give each other a hug. We shake hands all the time. I remember when I first saw you after the pandemic. And like I gave you a big hug.

I missed you. And then, you know, there's been times we've been hanging out, especially if we're drinking. I've thrown my arm around you a couple of times that we're talking more than once. I mean, gosh, many, there's been times we've been hanging out, especially if we're drinking. I've thrown my arm around you a couple times like we're talking more than once. I mean, gosh, many, many, many times. You know, like, you know, I don't feel like the ways in which men show affection in our culture is something that we've shied away from. We've done those types of things. Culturally acceptable, culturally acceptable types of things all the time.

But the way in which men show show affection in other cultures, we just don't do. Because it's not our culture. Because like me walking up to you and grabbing your forearms and talking to you is not anything I've ever done to anyone. And it would be jarring. I've never even done it to my wife. But in their culture, it's a thing they do. So for them, it doesn't matter whether it's

a male or female, they would do it to whoever and that's how they communicate. Cool. But we're not in that culture. We're here. And our culture is very different. The thing that I want to point out too is that I can still get a very fulfilling friendship and still have a very fulfilling with a person who I love. We've said that to each other. I love you, man. All the time we say it to, we have another very close friend of ours who's like the third must get to for us who, you know, circle has been a tight friend of mine for even the little

longer love him like a brother to for years and years and years and years. And so the three of us have been, we met at the same time. And I want to talk about how to meet friends too later because I think that's important. How you meet people but you know We have had this tight relationship for a very long time where we have had You know those moments where we you know talk to each other very intimately about like our thoughts and our feelings and things And it's never been I've never felt in my life that I didn't have a male friend I could go to for advice. I never felt in my life that I could, there was a male friend I couldn't confide in, right? Cause I've had tight, tight male friendships and there's

other male friendships other than YouTube that I have that are very close, tight male friendships as well. So I don't feel like what they say in this article where they're talking about they're sort of lamenting about, oh, you know, in our culture, guys can't touch each other. And in some ways they're saying, well, and they can't really confide in each other because of that. I think it's sort of, it seems like those two things are connected. They're not at all. They're not. But I will say that I think that we are in many ways unusual. Oh, I don't disagree. Right. I don't disagree. And I've seen so many men and this is a it is a crisis point.

And like it's something that women complain about a lot, too. There's so many men who don't have male friends other than drinking buddies or fishing buddies. Right. Yeah, they've got, they've got male friends that they are able to engage in activities with, but that they don't have any emotional connection or intimacy with because they, they, you know, no homo, right? Like they don't want to do that or whatever the reason. And I don't want to like make fun of those people because again, we're raised in the soup that we raised in. So like, I think that, I think that it is much more usual for men to ask the women in their lives to do all the emotional labor of maintaining that

friendship, you know, like, and that's a really shit place for women to find themselves like as a result of men's inability to be comfortable connecting with each other. And I do know a bunch of men that like, they don't have strong male friendships. They have like buddies. And I think there's a big difference between a buddy and a friend. You know what I mean? Like a buddy is somebody that you hang out with. And if you don't see them for six months, you forget their name. You know, you're just like, yeah, I mean, like, if I never see so and so again, like that, I'm not going to be upset about it, you know, you're just like, yeah, I mean, like if I never see so and so again, like that, I'm not going to be upset about it, you know, but like a close friend, it's like, I've got a close friend of mine, my friend, Matt out in California.

I haven't seen Matt now in person since I was the best man at his wedding. It's been five, six years, something like that. I texted him every week. We stay in touch. Like I know what's going on in his life, but I know what, six years, something like that. I texted him every week. We stay in touch. I know what's going on in his life, but I know what's going on in his heart too, because we talk talk. I think that that's unusual. And it's part of why those relationships are so treasured. I think in part because I'm like, that shit's unusual, man. I don't think that a lot of dudes are able to do that. And I think these articles really speak to that crisis point where men have been so socialized

into that competitive stoic kind of attitude that they don't know how to bond or connect because there's a confusion about like bonding and connecting and like romantic love. Yeah. Right. And like, I don't think it is actually doesn't necessarily have to be confusing at all. But I think socially we've told people that it's confusing that if you love somebody as a man, it's romantic. Yeah. They got to be a friend with benefits.

You got to be. Yeah. Right. I mean, how many people it's so funny. Like how many men won't get a massage by a male masseuse, even though you're just getting a sports massage, because it's like, whoa, all touch should come from male, female. That's a really normal discomfort. I think that people would probably shy away from maybe a guy giving them a cut in their facial hair or their hair too. Yeah.

In some ways. They might be, they might, maybe not hair so much, but the beard, they have to touch it when you're close face to face. They pull it. So it might be that some people are like, no, I don't want to do that with a, I don't want to have a guy do that. Although they'll have a male doctor grab their balls, which is good. So I don't know.

What do you think about the idea about meeting people and meeting people with commonalities? I think about how we met and how we met our good friend Circle. And it was because we all were involved in philosophy. We all liked philosophy and we all liked, we all wanted to think for a little bit. I think our whole high school careers were all full of not that, and it became an opportunity to have conversations we might not have had before,

conversations about things that we were interested in. And Conversations we'd been looking for a long time. And we found a group. It wasn't just us three. It was a whole group of people that we became pretty close friends with for about, I would say maybe about five or six years after college, right? Because it was a junior college for all of us. And for about five or six, even after university, we were still all within communication with all those people.

And I think that those, those were, they clearly created some of the greatest friendships in my life, right? I've had close friends, you know, my whole life, you know, you're a kid and then you work your way through high school and whatever. But after, when I went to junior college, I met friends that I've been friends with for the rest of my life since then. Yeah. And I think like because of something that we were, it was an activity that I think we were all really involved in and really enjoyed. Yeah. I, I think a lot about like the problem of finding

friends in your sort of middle of your life. And I think about it because like I am in a place where I have, I work from home, I don't see people very often. So like there are parts of my life where I do get like kind of lonely, right? Like it's like big parts of my life where I'm like, fucking like I haven't left this house in four days, you know, five days.

Like I am like kind of a little stir crazy. And so it's something I just think about. This article stir crazy. Um, and so it's something I just think about this article talks a little bit about it. It's something I've thought about too is a lot of friendships are a function of time. When we're younger, we have a lot of downtime time to just spend. And then we can spend it on other people. We can build relationships building relationships takes a lot of time. It does. I remember, because I courted my wife in my thirties. I know you courted your wife when you were in your twenties. It takes an enormous amount of time to build a relationship from

scratch. It was kind of all consuming to build a relationship from scratch. It's not much different to build friendships from scratch. It's just that like when we're younger, it doesn't feel that way in the same in the same way because we have so much more free time. Sure. And when we were young, I think it was like, oh, well, we'll just hang out. That's interesting observation. Yeah. Because it there was so much hanging out. Yeah. I remember like now all of my hanging out is planned. Right. I don't I don't just drop by Tom's house and then just get a beer out of your fridge and sit down on your couch. I just don't do that.

Although in our twenties, that would have totally happened. It would have happened with regularity with certain groups of people. And I think that that's a very different place that you're in as you get older. And it does get more and more difficult, but that also means that you've got to go do those things that then get those introductions in. You met a close friend of yours because you worked out together. Right? So you and Matt, you're just talking about Matt, your best man and his wedding, your best man at his wedding, because you worked out that you had a thing you did together. Shivity, shared activities are so important.

Like building friends is got to be something you look at with. I think if you want to do it as an adult, I really think you've got to look at it with the same kind of intentionality as finding someone to date. You really just have to say, okay, I want to make a friend and I'm going to have to do the things that I would do if I were going to meet any other person with a relationship. I'm going to have to go places where people are likely to share common interests and I'm going to have to meet a lot of people and I'm going to have to like kiss a lot of frogs, so to speak.

Like, and, and that's true for like, like Matt is a great example. He's become a good friend. Other people that I met in that same community have all fallen off, right? You kind of like weed through and weed through and weed through and weed through. So I think it's not much different, but I think there's like the best way to do it is like, all right, we've got to bound around activities because I know I'm going to carve out the time. And I know like when that's such a resource right now, and I know this other person is going to carve out that time. Yeah. And I know they'll have something in common. Right. Yeah. That's that's how I met people through fencing for years and years.

They carved that out of their schedule. Right. It was a Tuesday night practice. We got to meet. We got to hang out. It was Saturdays at a big event somewhere in another place, another state. That's how we got to hang out was because we had those times that we all carved out of our schedule. Same thing goes for working out.

You work out every day at four.30 at the same gym. You're gonna get a chance to be around those same people. It's 5 a.m., you're gonna know the 5 a.m. crew. You're gonna know the 6 a.m. crew, or you're gonna know the 7 a.m. crew, or you're gonna know the noon crew, whatever it is. You were right at 4.30, by the way. I'm not meeting anyone at 5 a.m.

That's not my... There was a group of people in my old gym that were the 5 a.m. crew, and I was like, go fuck your face. 5 a.m. 5am? 5am? I am still broken. I can't put this together in that short amount of time.

I don't like myself at 5am. At 5am, like, oh, let's be friends. I'll fucking kill you. But there was so many things in my life, like little pieces. And I think you've got to find something you're passionate about. You know, it's one of the things like when you talk about when people talk to you, they say, oh, I want to start a podcast. You say you got to do something you really love.

You got to do something you really want to do. You know, I really want to talk to my friend. Right. That's what this whole show is. This whole show is. There's a lot of shows out there that pretend where people pretend they're friends or close friends or, you know, they might know each other kind of, but this is a friendship show, right? Like this is a no shit real friendship show. Other shows may script a lot of friendships, but they're

not real friendships. They're they're they they know of each other. They probably would be okay around each other's or but they're not close friends. Right. This is a different type of experience. And this is the thing that we've done for since the very beginning. And I think you've just like when you're starting a podcast and you're passionate about something, the same thing here, got to be passionate about what you're going to go do so that you can meet other people who have that same passion. So it's so easy to carve that time out.

Well, I think doing that too creates that regularity of contact. Exactly. Think about like why it's so easy to make friends when you're at school. You see them every day at math class. It's so easy to make that friend at 430 gym. You see them every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever you're going to see them. People make friends, oh, my besties at work. Why do you think your besties at work? Because they're at work and you're at work and you're there together.

Time is such a big function of this. So like, you've got to nurture a relationship with time. I think it's the biggest thing you have to feed a relationship with. If you don't feed time into a relationship, and that doesn't have to be in person. It can be from afar. It can be over, you know, playing computer games.

It can be any way that like, that satisfies two people. I'm not trying to prescribe that. The only thing I would prescribe though is like a regularity of time. I have thought so many times over the last 17 years now, how lucky I feel that we started this show or before everyone's a critic because it, it forces me to do what I'm not good at, which is to carve out time. I am the biggest

sacrifice or of time for one thing to the other that of anyone has ever met. I'll be like, I'll just, I'll do that next week. And I'll put this off and I'll do this other thing. I'll run this errand instead. I'll go do that other obligation, whatever it is all the time. This, this carves out time that I think in many ways has like solidified a friendship into adulthood, not solidified, but has continued a friendship into adulthood. That like, I don't know. I'd see you every week. Otherwise. I don't know that I'd be like, yes, every Thursday we'll have dinner. Yeah, I don't have as close a relationship with our friend Circle because of his, we're not as close.

We don't see each other every week. We see each other. We actually, funny enough, do a thing every two weeks. We have a gaming night that I go to see him every two weeks. And I see a crew of friends that I also met in junior college that all go to his house and we play role playing game, a role playing game. Um, that now we're playing star wars, but we play dead lands. We play D and D, we play whatever it is, whatever the person who's running wants to play.

We play role playing games at his house. We've been doing it since we were in college. Right. Right. This game has been going, these games have been going were in college. Right. Right. This game has been going. These games have been going on since college. So, you know, I go over to his house every couple of weeks and we play a game and then I'll see him and I'll see his family and I'll see those friends that I met. Like I said, at JJC years and years and years ago at the magic table when

he used to play magic gathering. So, you know, again, another thing that introduced me to a very close friend of ours for many years, I got introduced to him playing magic, the gathering and, and that person wound up living with you for a while. And you know, I mean, it was somebody I was very close to. So again, it's like the activities that were around us were the things that really turned us into close, close friends. And those, you can't say enough about some of those things that brought us together. I think like to do, I think, I think one of the things that you have to do that I've thought about too is that we have to decide that certain time is sacred in all the ways that things are sacred, right?

So like Thursday nights are just indisputably sacred. Nobody in my life ever pokes at Thursday night. Right. My kids, my wife, nobody pokes at Thursday night. If Thursday night doesn't happen, it's because somebody is sick. That's it. Somebody's sick or there's a vacation going on or something. The world has closed it down. But even if that happens, I'm on the phone. You know, like something, but something has happened to shift it. It's gotta be a big deal. I do think that, you know, as we get older and our obligations pile up, at least for me, but I see it other places. I think, I think it's easy to sort of sacrifice the sacred for the practical for what's, you know, like, Oh, is this expedient? I've just, just this once and people do that and their friendships fall away. And I do think, you know, I've read

other articles about friendship, not just male friendship, but friendship in adulthood. And there's this like desert period in people's lives in their thirties and forties where family and work takes the place of friendship. And then they find themselves later in their later years, lonely, or reestablishing an entirely new friend circle in their later years. And some people who successfully find that new friend circle in their later years are very, very fulfilled. Other people that are less successful in doing that are very, very lonely. And all the studies on flourishing and happiness seem to suggest that the most important thing for happiness and flourishing is Close intimate relationships with an ass. Yeah. Yeah, not just one. Yeah, you got to have many of them

Yeah, and I think you know draw off the ones you have to create more, you know That always helps it helps you to see what you know What you're involved in here can help you become a better friend in other places. And I think, you know, we talk about, you and I have, I think we have deep conversations on the podcast. So we get a chance to really talk about, maybe you can talk about the intimacy of morality in some ways, because that's a really intimate part of who you are.

It is. Yeah, that's a good point. And so you and I have conversations about morality all the time. It's just posed in politics and in, you know, what would be humanism, you know, it's posed in different. It's not, you know, a blatant structure about the philosophy of morality. It has a, but they're values. But they're values. Yeah,... But they're values conversations.

But they're values conversations. Exactly. They're values conversations. And those are intimate conversations, right? You don't have those. You wouldn't have that with your Uber driver normally. Right. Right. Normally.

I'm not going to say all the time. Because there's been times I've been in a cab and I've had some weirdest conversations. But there's been... But for the most part, you don't have those conversations, those deep, deep conversations. It's also useful to find a thing that allows you to have some of those deeper, deeper, more meaningful conversations.

You know, you were talking earlier about fishing or whatever, and I, all my whole life going fishing, everybody always just told you to be quiet. You can't talk because you'll scare the fish away or whatever. So it's not a thing you can do while, you know, if you had a like a movie club or something you went out with, you would never talk to anybody. You would just go to the movie and then that's it. So you've got to have something that there's at least an interaction with and you can have some of these more intimate conversations because that's the important part of friendship. It is. And I think that that's something men do a bad job at a lot. When I look at like stereotypically male like bonding activities,

the ones that jump out to me off the top of my head are things like golf. You cannot have a real conversation golfing. It's one of the things I hate the most about golf. It takes four or five hours and you're not having a real conversation because you get in the cart, you drive to the next hole, you're looking for your ball. The other guy's looking for their ball. You're like, maybe it's distracted. Then you get to the hole. You can't talk while somebody's putting, you can't talk while somebody's going to take

their swing. You're busy getting something. You don't want to fill up. If you want to like make a friendship and actually like deepen and strengthen a friendship, it cannot be full of things that you're constantly doing that don't give you opportunity. Like your point. And men do a bad job of that. We do things that are so physically active and distracting. A lot of times when we get together with other men that we don't have a chance to like get to know the other person really is. We get jokes. We get banter. We get like surface shit. Yeah. And I'm thinking about,

I got a chance to meet a lot of cool people while I was working out, but I never was while I was working out. It was always after for the beer. It was always going to go in next door for the beer or that Friday night when everybody from the gym was going to go get together. Then you got a chance to meet those people and know those people. But while you were working out, you didn't have those times to talk or have conversation or have a banter or a good back and forth.

Think about watching the big game together. Something's happening. Something's always distracting you. Something's always interrupting the action. There's so many things that you can choose that are bad things that you choose that won't allow you to have a, an intimate conversation. So it's something to think about that if it's, if the, if the activity itself doesn't allow

for it, at least there's an after activity that it does allow for it. You've got to have that time because if you don't, then you, what you have is a person who makes it so you're not lonely on the golf course. Yep. That's right. And it's funny because my buddy, Matt, we became friends exactly the same way. There was like a routine kind of group of people that would hang out, you know, in the

evenings after workouts. And Matt and I started going to these things. We started getting together and hanging out. One thing I would suggest that, you know, it's a great way to force not force, but a great way to have conversations is to drive places with people. Yeah, right. Man, when we were younger, how many conversations, how many great conversations that really deepen your understanding of somebody in a way. Cause you're in a car. That's it. This is what you've got to do. Take a road trip somewhere. If you're going to like, if you want to have a friendship and you want, and Haley made, met her best

friend this way. Haley just, you know, somebody, somebody was having something that was, there was an activity and she belonged to this dance organization and somebody was like, Oh, it's going to be this photo shoot. It's like an hour and a half away. And Haley was like, I'll ride with somebody. And she purposely put herself in the car with somebody. And she drove and the other person was in the passenger seat and they had three hours in the car together. I had to talk and they became best friends. You got to talk. And that's how it works. Yeah. You know, driving is a great way to create, to create that opportunity in the, in the fencing organization. I belong to the SCA. I've, I've, I I drive within several state areas.

So on a weekend, I may drive to Ohio to go to a fencing event. And I had very close friends for many years who would go with me. They'd get in the car, I'd pick them up at their house at six in the morning and we'd drive to Toledo. And then we'd have all that day, we'd hang out. Sometimes we'd get a shared room

or a room next to each other in a hotel the night and then come back the next morning or we'd drive out sometimes we'd get a shared room or a room next to each other in a hotel The night and then come back the next morning or we drive back late night and you have those long conversations great Amazing long time and you have to talk about so you can't listen the radio You're not gonna talk about the weather you have to talk about something right you're constantly talking about something great conversations with so many people over long talking about something great conversations with so many people over long road trips. And that's I, I love a road trip because of it, because you get a chance to talk to somebody for a extended period of time. Yeah. When you and I went hunting, we went on a hunting trip and like, it's like a five and a half hour drive down to where we were going.

And I liked, I enjoyed the drive every bit as much as I enjoyed any other part of that long weekend. It was great. And it was, it was a 10 hours in a car within four days. Yep. It was terrific. It was awesome. It genuinely, that's a good memory. And you have to, you have to think about that too. It's another carve out, right? Way harder

in your adult life to give up a whole weekend to do something. And that happens to be, you know, four hours in a car somewhere, four hours in a car somewhere. But, you know, I'm reminded too of some images I saw just this last weekend of people who look like they were really getting a chance to have a great time at the American Atheist Conference. Yeah. And what a great way to meet people of a very like mind in a situation where morality and, you know, your values are being discussed. Right. Openly with a group of people.

You're in the same room with them. You might be drinking with them afterwards. You're with them for a whole weekend. That's a great way to meet people too, is something like that. Absolutely. We've met plenty of people. I mean, we haven't become close friends with them, but I bet if, you know, I went every year there's people who you might want to see even sooner than that.

Yeah. And a lot of that, like a lot of that is a function of distance. Sure. And a lot of that is just a function of distance. But yeah, I agree with that completely. I like so much of this comes down to you just got to put yourself in places where the people that you want to talk to have time to talk to. You know, like, like it's, it's not

like going to a big loud bar. Yeah. Like a fucking loud sports bar. Like that's nothing. Like that's, I mean, it's not nothing. If you like it, it's fine. Do the things that you like. But I'm saying like, you're not going to be able to create that depth of friendship that way. So this other article, I want to talk about it quickly. Um, this is from the New York Times, why it's so Hard for Men to Make Close Friends. And they have in it several little pieces of advice. And I want to just sort of read some of these larger pieces. Practice vulnerability, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

And Tom, why don't you read these two paragraphs here? Though Mr. Fager is mindful of speaking in generalities, he believes the challenges some men face in developing meaningful platonic bonds boil down to how they've been socialized to equate masculinity with strength, competitiveness and stoicism. Even as traditional gender norms have shifted, those qualities can make close friendship tricky. If you look at boys, they're pretty open and affectionate with each other. And then something happens said Fred Rabinowitz, the chair of the psychology department at the University of Redlands and the author of deepening group psychotherapy with men, stories and insights for the journey. Societal messages teach them that

openness and emotional vulnerability are taboo. He said, and that time, and that leads right to what we're talking about with that competitiveness, right? Because this makes you somebody who's gonna lose, right? You're gonna lose this. If you show that vulnerability, you show that weakness, you're not as competitive as you could be. And all those things tie together really tightly. And they form sort of a toxicity.

Yeah. They really do form a toxicity. They form a toxicity that makes people not experience a natural emotion of being vulnerable. Yeah, and it's only, it seems to be primarily, I don't wanna say only, it seems to be primarily with men that the focus on strength as a masculine trait negates or is mutually exclusive with other men from vulnerability. And I think that that's, it's just dishonest, right? Like it's, we know that it's dishonest, right? Like it's a, it is a sign of real strength to be able to be

vulnerable, but that's not how we code it. And that's not how we hide it and express it. What we do instead is we show a stoicism, we show a shield of strength instead of actual strength or pretense or a performative strength. And because that's kind of what men demand of other men in order for us to like not be made fun of. And we learn these lessons pretty young. We learn these lessons early, really, really young, you know, like it is, it is a true that like young boys are touched less, cuddled less, held less, comforted less. We start teaching these messages to little

kids right away early. And it's really hard to just grow up and be like, well, I'll just do something different. Have you seen a difference at all in any of the younger generation? Cause you're in touch with some of the younger generation. Has it changed much? So different. I think it's, I think it is, and it's not, I I'm worried, I'm very worried about this generation. The worries that I have, I think we've spoken about this a little bit on air is

that as these norms around masculinity have begun to shift and gender norms have begun to shift, and I think that that's overall a good thing. I think a lot of the focus very rightfully has been on telling young boys what not to do. We don't fill in a lot of the gaps with what they should do and how they should be. And I think a lot of really toxic, shitty people have filled those spaces. The Andrew Tates, the Jordan Petersons, they've come in and said in the absence of other broader social messaging that says yes, I will fill your head with these other yeses, this more plates, more dates bullshit, right? Like all that horrible, evil, toxic shit.

What does that even mean? The more you eat, the more you go? No, like more plates you batch. Oh! Like it's a strike. Yeah, like it's yeah. Like how much more weight you can move. I was like what is this Nickelodeon?

I got that one. God. It's part of that. It's part of a really toxic Jim Crow culture. You gotta eat a lot of salad if you want to grow. You gotta get a salad. But on the other hand I do see. Somebody's walking back with like six plates full of fucking what's up ladies ladies what's up I'm carrying this shit from the buffet you see me?

I'll feed you oh it's amazing but I do see on the other hand I do see the the sort of polar opposite and they feels like there's not much in the middle yeah yeah and the polar opposite I really like like the polar opposite and they feels like there's not much in the middle. Yeah. And the polar opposite I really like. Like the polar opposite is like really sensitive young men who are not at all afraid to be sensitive and not at all afraid to express a certain amount of sensitivity and vulnerability. Being themselves. That would not have been acceptable when I was their age. Yeah.

Well that's heartening. The other thing that is also an interesting thing to see is I'm reading and seeing that Gen Z feels lonely as it is because of COVID, how it took a bunch of people away from each other. And there's been a lot of Gen Z that was isolated and they're not sure how to reintegrate with each other. And so that isolation, even though there may be some people who can experience that vulnerability, the isolation might be the thing that prevents them from actually getting those friendships. You know what he means?

Yeah, I see that with my kids. Yeah, there's real problems with that, you know, with the just, just face to face contact. Yeah. I see that definitely with my boys and it's something that I, I'm worried about. Like they, I think the pandemic did not do them favors. Yeah. Like it did not do them any favors. So this next one is don't assume friendships happen organically. And so this really just means like work at it.

You've got to do, you've got to do the work. You can't just like, you're not going to, you know, just like you're not going to just walk into a place and fall in love with somebody. The same thing's not going to happen. You're not going to walk in and become best friends with somebody. Right. Right. That's just us. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. You've got to work at it. It's not going to just happen. And the more passive you are, to be honest, the easier it is for somebody to just walk away. I mean, I've had so many friends, I don't know if you've had this, but I've had a lot of people who I've been close with or closer with that just fell off the map because there's never been that it's not a two way street. No one's working. There's no work. Right. So I might've done some work initially, but if that works, not reciprocated, then it's not, it's not anything you're going to want to keep doing the work for. I was, I was pretty close friends with a guy that I went to culinary school with. I thought

he was a really nice guy. It was fun to hang out with. I enjoyed him and his wife, um, going out to dinner with them. He was always funny and, and you know, we had very wildly different sort of political views, but he was a really nice guy and we were tight friends for a couple years. And then just after a while the there wasn't any back and forth. There wasn't any neither of us put any time in and then now I have no idea where he is. I literally couldn't tell you if he's dead or alive right now. I don't know.

Yeah, but it was a close friend of mine for a couple years and that's happened to me with many different friendships throughout my life, right? Yeah, and I think you know it I get I think a friendship is a relationship like any other and I what I would add to This is just like you would consider or you should consider Making yourself as appealing a prospect as possible by being as good a person and interesting Like if you're going if you're seeking to find a romantic partner, right, you would naturally put your best foot forward. You would naturally want to be as interesting as, you know, whatever your best traits are, the things you would want to put out there because you're trying to attract

somebody with friends. It's the same thing, right? You're trying to attract somebody. So I think it is worth thinking about when you're trying to make friends with an intentionality. What kind of friend am I trying to attract? Yeah. What are the qualities in a friend? I want to slut. All the same intentionality that should go into finding a romantic partner, you know, like who should I be in order to attract that kind of person?

Sure. That's the kind of intentionality that will land you the highest quality of friendship and deepest friendships, I think. Yeah. No, I don't disagree. And I think, you know, friendship is a two way street. It's a two way street. And this next piece really calls to that. It says harness the power of casual check-ins. And that's something that you've just got to do with your friends. You've got to check in with them. Tom is really good about that. Tom always, almost always. I get more texts from Tom that I sent to them. I'm not a texter. So I don't. And I'm also not a phone guy really. Like it's just like, but I, well, we also see each other every week.

So, you know, and we talk on Mondays too, cause we record citation needed. So we talk and see each other multiple times a week. But, your friends and with other people, you've got to go out there and reach out and do that reaching out. I had a close friend of mine recently had a casual check in with me when he was vulnerable. I'm not feeling great. We haven't talked to him all. Can we talk? And I had an opportunity to talk to him and then we set up another recurring chance for

us to see each other. And so that sort of thing is so important because the casual check-in is the way in which you stay in that contact. If nobody's making that outreach, then it just disappears, dissipates. You'll forget about each other. Like you were saying, you won't put the time aside. You won't put the time aside. You won't put the time aside. I would add to that because I 100% believe in that. And like, don't be embarrassed if you have to put those check-ins in your calendar. I am

the dumbest person that's ever lived. Cecil knows this. If I don't put something in my calendar, I'll never do it. It's like, it's like, it's like, it didn't happen. It can't happen. It literally can't happen. If Tom didn't put the eclipse in's like, it's like, it didn't happen. It can't happen. It literally can't happen. If Tom didn't put the eclipse in his account or a calendar, it did happen. It did not happen. So I put in, I put stuff into my calendar. Like if I find out somebody's going to have, we've got a friend of ours that that is struggling with some, with some health issues. So when I know that she's got like a big doctor's appointment or something, I'll see something on Facebook. I'll put it in my calendar and check in with her that day. And then I'll be like beep beep send, you know, just say like send so and so a text message. Hey, hope everything

went great today is all you gotta do. It takes 10 seconds. It means so much to people to do. I put shit like that all in my calendar constantly. It's a thoughtful thing that requires very little effort, but has amazing returns on your friendship. Because if something big, every time there's a big event in my life, I will get a text from Tom. It doesn't matter what that big event is. Tom will remember to text me if it's my anniversary.

Because my calendar remembers. But like you do too, like you put it in there and it's, and it's birthday or, uh, anniversary or like if I go in for surgery, Tom's going to send me a text that day. I know that's going to happen. And that's because that sort of thing shows that he cares. But it also is like, like you said, it's an easy thing. It's not like a time's not going on. I mean, it's five calories of energy and four seconds of time for him to quickly type something out and send it.

Yeah, but it means a lot even just that tiny little bit of effort means a ton and like when you get something like that, it means like, hey, you're on somebody's mind. Absolutely. It feels nice. It feels like you want to feel seen. Everybody wants to feel seen. It feels great. It feels great. It feels great. All right. So we hope you enjoyed that conversation. We hope you enjoyed the stories that were for this week. Like we said, patrons got a chance to hear Tom read them. If you're a patron, you can go check those out.

They got posted on Tuesday. If you're not a patron, you can become a patron and go listen to those stories. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this Thursday episode. We'll be back Monday with a new episode. We will also still not be able to see the full episode. So we'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. You can become a patron and go listen to those stories. All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this Thursday episode. We'll be back Monday with a new episode. We will also still not be on YouTube. They keep taking our videos. They keep doing it. It's like they'll just find some random, like this week, it's 6.41, we took it down because of four seconds

of the skeptics creed with a bad image of, so they keep taking it down because of Skeptics Creed. Fuck YouTube. It's fucking amazing. So we're still not on YouTube. We're looking at early May entry, maybe late May, something like that, but we're probably not gonna do any live streams until then.

So we're probably gonna skip the live stream next week, but we're gonna be back on Monday with a full show. So come back, hang out, and we're gonna leave you like we always do with the skeptics Creed credulity is not a virtue it's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno Babylon bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupuncturating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info, docutainment.

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