What Is Destroying Male Friendships?

Can you maybe just point to some of the things that you. That you believe are pulling male friendships apart, specifically pulling men into more atomized, you know, sort of lone wolf experiences?

I mean, if I just walk it back, my great grand. I mean, not my great. My granddad, David Deloney was a World War II vet. He fought Nazis shoulder to shoulder. And then he came home with all that trauma and sat in his recliner and put up a newspaper. There was no groups to go talk. There was no veterans groups to go, hey, let's go hang out. There was maybe the rally or whatever, but that wasn't his jam. And so he got involved in a local church in a very managerial kind of way, not in a relational kind of way. And he sat behind a newspaper. He had three boys and his daughter. And they're all savants, they're all brilliant, and they all. Saul, you do life by yourself. You do life by yourself and you go get what you can get. He also grew up in the Great Depression, so he straightened nails because he had to, right? They had a big coffee can full of string. I remember that as a kid. Like, what is this? And it's just wired in. So my parents generation got the very clear message, you are on your own and go get what you can get whenever you can get it. And they just happened to create this dope little thing called a credit card at the time. And so it just became unlimited. There was no. There was no breaks. And so I think where I sit and the men like, you know, 15, 20 years younger than me sit is, we have no models. We have no mental map of dads who had friends who go hang out. And even I think about this, I've become pretty pathological about it. Like, anytime somebody. We watch the fights every time we go do things together, but my son doesn't see that. He doesn't know that. He just knows Dad's not here. And so I've had to find very intentional ways. My friends, I'm notorious for, if you invite me, my son's coming. Unless it's going to be we're out till midnight being stupid or we're going to some Dave Chappelle show. It's probably not kid friendly, right? But other than that, like, if we. If you invite me hunting, my. My son's coming, you invite me fishing, my son's coming, my daughter's coming with us. And they need to see their dad having friends. And so I think we've landed where we have no picture of that. We don't even have buddy comedies anymore. I mean, remember, like, there's no Die Hard movies where guys are doing this thing like, or there's no what was, like, bad boys or. Those movies don't exist anymore. They don't even make them anymore. And so we have no picture for what it looks like. We do have a lot of lone wolves. And then you hand somebody a cell phone and Andrew Tate comes up on the thing and says, follow me and you are off to the races, or whoever the demigod of the day is. Follow me. And I remember, dude, I. My dad was a homicide detective and a SWAT hostage negotiator. He was a bad dude. And so I heard the stories and I saw him, but I didn't see all the camaraderie because I was a kid, right? I wasn't going out with him. And so I didn't see all him shoulder to shoulder with all these guys making hard calls and then him going out and doing the thing. And then halfway through my childhood, he quit and became a pastor at a local church, at a giant church there in Houston. And so I got this toggle of my old man.

But I was desperate for somebody to look at me and say, you've got power and strength, too. And that was just, There was no, there was no, it wasn't part of the culture. Pantera gave me that. And I remember shaved head Phil Anselmo standing on a stage screaming his head off and saying, you can get up and go do it, right? And I, I, I really believed in the old punk rock message back in the 80s and 90s was, the system's against you. Go get them. You know what I mean? Like, they were 20 years ahead of where we are right now. And that. I bought it, I bought it full, full sale. Because I didn't have another picture, right? I had this awesome picture of this badass dad, but I did not have a you can too, right? And so I think men are desperate for somebody, especially in proximity, to put their arm, arm around them and say, you, you can and you have value and I expect more of you. And not only that, I'm going to give you a road map too. And I think you either get all these road maps with no expectation, accountability, or you just get people screaming at you, you do it, do it. And we can't all go out and run 200 miles like David Goggins on a, on a Saturday, right? And so there has to be an in between, which is mentorship and connection and friendship and bring your son along, even though you're going to shoot less deer and catch less fish, even though your bowling league is going to suffer because your kid's 13 is going to throw it in the gutter every time. Your son playing a 30 year game, man. And so I, yeah, I think there's just no road maps, there's no models for this. And then it's gonna take a gr. A generation of men putting their arms around younger men and saying, come with me.

I, you know, there's a lot in, in what you're saying because I think it almost sounds maybe to some listeners it almost sounds like too simple, you know, and, and I think, and I think that that's the, that's the catch. Like, what I'll say is, I had this moment with my son yesterday, actually, where I'm like you, he's two and a half. But whenever I have the opportunity to have him do anything with me, he will come and do it with me. Even though he just, you know, like I took him to go wash the car the other day, you know, at the wand wash. Like he doesn't understand what the hell's going on, but he's just so freaking excited to get to help me. And so yesterday I had this moment where, um, I packed up all the garbage, he helped me take all the garbage and all the cardboard. And we have this long driveway and the stuff's all devoted, you know, at the end. And so we pack it up into the car and then we drive it all the way down the driveway and then down the road where the garbage bins are. And I had this moment where I pulled, I, I, I pulled up to the garbage, I threw everything out, he helped me throw everything in the garbage bins. He's so excited. He goes back in, he opens the door, gets back in the car and we drive back to the house. And as we're coming back up the driveway, I started to cry. I started to get really emotional. It could make me emotional right now as I'm talking about it. And I realized that those were the things that I missed out on as a kid.

Yeah.

You know, those were the moments that I was like dying for as a young boy. And it's, it hasn't been until I've had my own son where I've actually realized like, oh, this, that's the loneliness that's lived inside of me, you know, that's the thing that I've been battling for so long. It's just this kind of vacancy that's lived in me that I kind of knew was there but didn't really know how to identify. And it's been in these moments of having my son and bringing him along and having all these different experiences where I've been like, oh, that's it. That's the thing that I was craving for. And I think that that's, you know, I'm fortunate in the last, you know, decade that I've really prioritized building out exceptional relationships with the men in my life. But I didn't have that before. And I think it's part of the reason why, why I bottomed out.

And so I want to, I want to double click on that. Like, please, as you're talking. I kept thinking one sentence. This is fatherhood. It is not the big spectacle and the big, like, let's go on a camping trip with a sword. I'm going to knight you that. That moment's good and important and fun, right? But like my buddy Lane Norton, he's the, you know, late weightlifter extraordinaire and protein, probably the smartest guy on protein on planet. He always is laughing because I'll text him, hey, what about this? What about this? Hey, call me real quick, I need to ask you this. And he's like, dude, you are majoring in the minors and you are tripping over a hundred dollar bills to go pick up pennies. We like what you just described as fatherhood. And there's a little nine year old boy inside of Connor asking, what was so wrong with me that you wouldn't even take me to take the trash out? What was so wrong with me that you wouldn't even take me to like, help your buddy move his boat? That fell off the thing, like, and that question haunts us, right? What was so bad about me that my dad wouldn't even fill in the blank? And I think it's. You mentioned it. I've had some great conversations behind closed doors with some of the, the best neuroscientists, some of the smartest guys on planet. And we've gone round and round a little bit, but I think we have over, over, over, over intellectualized and over dramatized. And as I've traveled the country over the last three years, completely away from scientists and just sitting with guys who own gas stations and small business owners and single moms and truck drivers, there's a desperation, can you help me right now? And it's like, yes, turn your phone off and call a friend over and get whatever crappy casserole you have left. And y' all eat that together. That's how you turn this whole ship around and you can go down, listen to all the nonsense. Gotta have this app or this thing or this whatever AI is gonna get to know your freaking neighbors. It's not hard. I mean, hold on. Getting to know your neighbors is excruciating, but intellectually, this isn't, this isn't hard. It's not hard. It's just really difficult. It's hard just to eat less than you burn and to lift weights three to five times a week and then do some cardio. It's hard to tell your wife that you love her and hold her hands in your face. It's hard to get down on eye level with my 7 year old daughter when she's driving me crazy and actually listen to her and let her be heard instead of me just barking orders. Four feet taller than her. None of that's like innately. I mean that's, that's, that's how you turn this whole thing around, man. And that, that's kind of been my thing is, dude, we're going to take all this drama and data and all this stuff. I'm going to let the dopamine researchers do their dopamine stuff and I'm going to let the whoevers do the whoever stuff. I'm going to sit with firefighters and say, hey, your life can suck less if you would do these three things. And it's just become, like you said, it feels so easy. And I'm so glad you had that moment with your son, man, because that's fatherhood when you help me at the trash. And I also want to be careful at this. I have a buddy named Nathan and he, he texted me once. It was kind of a heartfelt lament. He has a young son and his buddy's boat, that's where I just got. His buddy's boat fell off the, off the trailer. And so he texted a bunch of guys, hey and gentle, come help me put this back on. A bunch of guys showed up and he brought his son and his son was off to the side and started to get in. He goes, hold on, hold on, back up, back up. And then they all these men lifted this boat back up, put it on there. They all high fived each other and got back in the truck. And he said, he looked at his son and said, wasn't that awesome? We got to help so and so. And his son said, dad, I didn't do anything. And we can't lie to our kids either. We got to let them participate like you that want like taking Your kid to wash your 2 year old, to wash your car means you're going to spend an extra hour there and have a soaking wet car on the inside, outside. And that is fatherhood, man. That's it. That's the magic of it. And let him squirt you with a hose and you squirt him with like. That is fatherhood, right? That's it.

Yeah, yeah. It's like the magic of, of presence. I've tried to like communicate, I think, in, you know, certain conversations that I've. That I've had, that I think that there's this kind of like nutrient or form of sustenance that we need, you know, that so much of what it looks like to be a man is presented through modeling, you know, and young boys, they watch and they mirror and they mimic. And you know, all those pieces are incredibly important. And so it's very hard to do that without. Without presence, without somebody there. And it's interesting because as we were talking about anxiety and anxiousness, I think sometimes it can be the thing that is pulling us away from presence, you know, pulling us away from being present with our kids, with our families, with our partners or, you know, business partners.

I gotta say, it's about presence, please. Most men believe so little in themselves that they don't believe their presence with their kids is enough. They don't believe just sitting next to their wife for 45 minutes or an hour and letting her exhale, not even talk.

Is of any value. We have so diminished our role as human beings into this utilitarian. I am only as good as the thing, the problem I can solve. I'm only as good as the action I am doing in this present moment. And if I'm not, if my wife doesn't need me to solve her problem at work, she just needs me to sit with her while she says it out loud. Then she's stupid. And I'm a. I'm a waste of space. And there has to be a revolution of men recognizing that they have innate value just because they are. And then you've got work to go do. But the work is often the presence. And it's just our inability to sit still because we think so little of ourselves. And that has to stop, man. That has to stop.

Man. I'll get choked up saying this. My daughter, here I am. I teach relationships and marriage and parenting for a living. That's what I do. And the big dirty secret in my house was my daughter would not hug me. She was a maniac. And I know she Loved me. And I'm not loud. I don't. We don't yell in our house. I don't hit my kids, anything like that. My daughter wouldn't hug me. She wouldn't come near. And when I would try to hug her, she would dug. And she had all. I mean, like, she had all these maneuvers. And, dude, Connor started to get on me real hard, and I was bigger than her, so I could pick her up and make her hug me, but she would get real rigid. And then my wife gently said, have. You're always teaching me about neuroception and all these internal radar systems with our bodies. What about your body maybe makes her not feel safe. And, dude, I was like.

So I went and sat with a trauma counselor and said some things out loud, Connor, that I've never told anybody, not even my wife. And some things about my childhood, some things that I just locked in. And I went through a whole series of trauma counseling. And just yesterday, I noted to my. I can't get my daughter off of me. She. She's like a monkey. But there was a little nuclear reactor that said, you're not enough. You're not enough. You got to fix. You got to fix. You got to fix. And my daughter internalized that angst and that anxiety in that nuclear reactor as unsafe. And so my wife did, too, by the way. She had just learned to stick her hand into the fire. Reached across, right? And my wife, will is just constantly saying, the whole house feels warmer because I went and did that work, right? That's presence, man. Presence has a. A. A masculine presence in a home has a powerful therapeutic effect on the entire system. And it's not just about, I can. I can fix the cabinets, right?