Most men don’t have friends. If you mention that to them, they’d argue they do. But what they are calling a “friend” is what women would call merely an “acquaintance”. Most of us have loads of acquaintances we “shoot the bull” with, matching that last guy’s tale with our own similar story or observation.
You can usually find them at any barbershop. A group of men talking is a kind of jazz performance. One man begins by improvising an initial melody. Then another responds with a counter melody, similar to the other while building on it. It’s fun to be in the middle of, and it makes men feel for a moment like they really made a connection of sorts.
However, the trick is no one actually reveals anything deeply personal about themselves in the exchange. It’s really just kind of a game. We pretend to open up, about an opinion or some event, while never truly approaching being vulnerable to the others.
Men don’t like to be vulnerable, we want to be strong. Or at least to appear to be. That’s why we get uncomfortable when people cry around us. Crying is a bit too raw for the currency we deal in. We prefer the surface, light-weight emotions and the relationships of an Andy Griffith episode. No man on Andy Griffith ever had an existential crisis. No man was racked by self-doubt or imposter syndrome. All their worries were easily resolved in 30 minutes, and each character’s idiosyncrasies made them funnier to watch, not tragic.
So when you plan the next men’s retreat for your church, be ready to twist some arms to get anyone to show up. The prospect of a weekend “sharing our feelings” and “being transparent” is pretty much the kryptonite to our Clark Kent. We avoid those things like the Plague.
We’re pretty sure Andy never went to a Men’s Retreat, anyway.
I’ve got a few friends with whom I’ve let my guard down through the years. Some of them are younger, and I become more the mentor in the friendship. There’s one I meet with once a week now who is also creative. I’m the one friend who can tell him “it’s normal to feel that way” so that he knows he’s not alone in his fears. Reciprocally, I guess he helps me feel I still have something relevant to say to the present generation.
A few friends are older, and they mostly listen and smile while I whine about my circumstances. My father in law is one of those, with years of wisdom and loads of patience. It helps that he is nothing like me, and he serves as a calm balance to my knee-jerk tendencies.
The toughest ones are the peers close to mine own age. They are hardest to maintain and are more likely to fall apart in conflict. I have maybe one close friend near my age, a man I got to know at my church in Florida. We’d meet every week for coffee and 2 to 3 hours of conversation. He had been through 2 divorces and recovery from alcoholism, among other things. Being transparent was something he’d practiced regularly since first going to AA, so real talk came easily.
But other than him, I really have no honest friendships with men my age, just acquaintances and buddies. I think I know why: men are way, way too competitive with their peers. We compare ourselves to each other endlessly. So instead of listening to the other guy and offering supportive input when asked, we start picking them apart flaw by flaw. We lob unsolicited advice about “how we would have done it” or “where you messed it up”.
Guys often label this “constructive criticism”, or if we’re spiritual, “iron sharpening iron”. When someone chafes at it (which they do unless they have a self-destructive streak), we say we thought they could handle our “honest feedback”. We pretend we’re disappointed and that we were only trying to help. That’s usually when all plans about being “accountability partners” (the “AA sponsor” for your spiritual life) are abandoned. We simply cannot resist the urge to whittle each other down to size. We compete, compare, and convince ourselves we came out on top.
It’s all really just little boys in the restroom again, seeing who can produce the longest arch into the urinal.
We do this even to our sons, who’ve learned to avoid our self-congratulatory advice and stories of our past victories. Often, they move past us and seek out a grandfather instead of us. And that’s our great loss.
Grandfathers are enough removed in age so that the grandsons won’t feel picked apart by any advice that’s given, and many grandfathers are wise enough to avoid just dispensing advice. They are old enough to know sometimes the best thing to do is just listen. But most men I know really could use some wise advice, sometimes we want it desperately. We just don’t want to ask for a helping hand only to discover we’re really in an arm wrestling match. Before we know it, our arm is slammed to the table and we’ve lost before we ever knew we were competing.
I’ve just spent the day with my grandson, a troubled little boy who desperately needs ADHD meds that his biological mom won’t allow. He had a bad day at school yesterday, but surprisingly was terrific all night and into this morning. Why? Because he was with Pop (that’s me).
He didn’t want to do anything that didn’t involve Pop the whole time. I let him lead me around the yard by the hand for about an hour, as he snuck up on the girls and yelled to surprise them over and over again. He’s a little guy for his age, so it’s probably important to let him be in charge when we’re playing, even if it gets a bit tiresome. As a grandfather, you’re ok letting another guy be the boss, because you love him and you understand that he needs to be.
With grandkids, your goal becomes their success, not yours. That’s harder to embrace for some men than others, because it means letting some of your self-serving dreams die. But what a miraculous change it can bring about in the most driven, ambitious men after their glory days are done. Finally, after trying to prove our significance (or even dominance) for years, we realize the best thing we can do is just be the coach for someone else. To be a home for a weaker soul, and let our friendship bring them back to life.
I have a calming influence on my grandson, something no one who knows me would ever guess. For some reason, I bring stability into the chaos of his little mind. So I’ve decided to be whatever he needs me to be in the future. I’m resolved never to pick him apart or foist my accomplishments in his face as some example to live up to.
Instead, I plan to be listening, loving him, reassuring him, and occasionally giving a little advice (but only when I’m asked).
That’s the value men can have when we finally stop competing; when every conversation is not about proving ourselves. Every man desperately needs brothers and fathers and grandfathers and friends. But we’ve all got more than enough competitors. Friends reveal themselves to be rivals way too often, challenging us and always comparing their best attributes to our worst.
And I believe every man needs a grandson in order to truly comprehend his own worth. They may teach us the most important lesson of all: that we are the most valuable, not for the races we’ve won, but for coaching another man to win his own race.
