I’m writing my second post in a week because I had a confluence of thoughts and experiences that intertwined for me, and I wanted to share in hopes someone might find it helpful.
I’ll start with the embarrassing confession.
I don’t really have many friends.
I call that embarrassing because I’m 57, educated, have a job, a marriage and two kids, and something passably called a “life.” I’ve had friends in the past, yes. Yet, I can’t say that there’s a guy or a group of guys in my life in whom I confide or even spend any real time with. Yes, I occasionally get together with a couple of guys. I started doing that a couple of years ago when a therapist suggested that I would benefit from cultivating more male relationships. I agreed it couldn’t hurt. So, very transparently, I reached out to a couple of guys in my life, and suggested that we should make an effort. If that sounds awkward, I assure you it felt awkward. Turns out, their wives had told them the same thing my therapist did. To my benefit, both of them agreed it would be a good idea.
As much as I like and respect both of them, I’d say we get together maybe 2-3 times a year. We sometimes text about kids, current events, questions about a purchase, whathaveyou. But we don’t hang out a lot and confide in one another, or check one another’s negative tendencies with enough frequency.
There is one woman I’ve known for a long time who is a very dear friend. But we live far apart and see one another maybe every year or two. She IS the sort of person with whom I have shared inner feelings, and we are close enough she will call me out on my bullshit the way friends do. She’s a friend for sure. But distance and our separate lives prevent us from hanging out in person and doing the sort of things friends do. I mention her because she reads this newsletter, and might rightly be miffed if I didn’t include her in a list of friends! But she’s not a male friend, and that’s the relevant topic here.
And that’s about the entirety of my catalogue of friends.
Otherwise, I have what I would call “acquaintances.” There are fathers of my kids’ friends with whom I text and gladly spend time – when our kids or wives get us all together. I never reach out to them or spend time with them, nor do they with me. They’re the sort of dads that over the years I’ve seen on soccer sidelines, or school events, or when our daughters want to get together. Nothing wrong with that, or them, but they’re not “friends.”
I USED to have some friends. I had a group of guys I got together with every single Saturday morning. We would run together. It was when I lived in Tucson, AZ, that we would meet up at 5am and run a brutal 16-mile loop through the foothills on the north end of the city, starting and finishing at Sabino Canyon Recreation Area. We’d often have breakfast together after that. We’d sometimes get together for parties. I moved away from there almost 20 years ago and haven’t run with a group or even a single other person since.
Now I’ll connect the AI reference.
I was reading this essay by an author and therapist Gary Greenberg in the New Yorker. In it, Greenberg writes about sort of accidentally doing therapy on ChatGPT. In the essay he explains a sort of seduction built into chatbots and how they’re built to reflect our desire for connection and companionship. And, while the essay isn’t exactly horrifying, my reaction to it has been. It’s probably worth a totally separate post about AI, but for today the upshot is I don’t think I need, and definitely don’t want, AI “companionship.” Greenberg’s article made me think about how many people are going to opt for this kind of “relationship.” And if you don’t see a problem with that after reading the essay, I submit that you might want to consider how social media impacts its users and then extend that to a “relationship” chatbot. Then consider how the whole thing driving that is the profit of a small number of companies. That’s not a future for relationships that I want. And I haven’t given my life over to either, social media or AI. But I have given away friendship in favor of the convenience of an occasional text or a beer a couple of times a year.
One more event before I get to the Effort to Change part.
Last night, I was at my youngest daughter’s school for Curriculum Night, where parents follow an abbreviated version of their kids’ schedule to meet their teachers. The hallways were crowded and loud. Parents where a bustle, moving between classrooms. Then I spotted a guy I know and his wife. We exchanged the usual, a nod and “how are you?” Before we could pass, his wife cut in, “You two should go running.” (Leave it to a woman to point out what we should be doing, eh? Is that “mankeeping?”) We both nodded, in that way people do when someone says, “Let’s do lunch,” and we started to move on. And she said, “No, really, you should.”
For some reason, I stopped, made a deliberate effort to look him in the eye, and said, “I would like that.” I wouldn’t have done that a year ago. Or if I were living unconsciously, or unaware of my needs. I have been doing a lot of work to be more present and conscious in my day-to-day life, so I will take a sec to pat myself on the back for being present in that moment.
I left Curriculum Night thinking about running with someone, and how I haven’t done that in almost 20 years. And Greenberg’s essay has been bouncing around my noggin. And I decided that one potential run with Let’s Do Lunch Guy is not where I’m going to stop. For all the reasons in my first post for this newsletter, I decided proactively to do more.
I went on to MeetUp and found a couple of running groups in my area of town. There’s one that meets on Wednesday mornings at 5:30am. I will go meet that group for a run. I’m also going to look for a trail running group because I have gotten into ultra-marathon running in recent years, and I want to find other people interested in that.
As you head into the weekend, if you or someone you know needs a nudge to go make some friends, share this post. I don’t know what will become of the running groups I meet. Maybe it’ll just be a run with some strangers. Maybe I’ll make a friend or two. The point is I’m doing something.