Conquering the Boundaries of Friendship: Making and Maintaining Meaningful Male Relationships

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Copyright © 2019 Mark Roman

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-0257-1

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This book is dedicated to Loretta, my wife of over thirty years, my beloved one wife for life, and to Ben, my best friend for nearly fifteen years and brother by choice.

To all my readers who are conquering their own boundaries for meaningful relationships.

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Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Anatomy of Friendship

1. Expectations of Manhood

2. What Makes a Good Friendship?

3. Friendships Are Made, Not Found

Part II: Obstacles to Overcome in Friendship

4. Accommodating Introverted or Anxious Friends

5. Loving Extroverts

6. Navigating Class Boundaries

7. Navigating Cultural Boundaries

8. Friendship and the Workplace

Part III: Moments When Friendship Matters

9. Romance

10. Fatherhood

11. Offering Support

12. Crossroads Moments

13. Mentorship

14. Maintaining Friendships

15. Tragedy, Health Scares, and Divorce

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Introduction

A good friend knows all your best stories, but a best friend has lived them with you.

—Unknown

Chandler and Wes were never meant to be friends.

Both men worked at the same company—the former in sales and the latter in marketing—but they came from different worlds. Chandler was a typical college football jock, while Wes was a gay nerd. They knew of each other, but they had never interacted in any significant way until they bumped into each other at a work party. To both men’s surprise, they immediately hit it off and ended up chatting together for the rest of the evening.

As the event wrapped up, Wes said, Hey, you want to grab a drink sometime?

Chandler hesitated.

Just a drink, right? Nothing more? Chandler said. I am straight, after all.

Yup, and I’m not, Wes said. What the hell does that have to do with anything?

Embarrassed, Chandler explained that he’d never had a gay friend before. He couldn’t tell whether Wes had been hitting on him or not. Wes laughed. Jocks were not his type.

With that awkward moment out of the way, Chandler agreed to meet with Wes sometime soon. Secretly, though, he was still worried. What if one of his friends saw him with Wes? Would they think Chandler was gay too? Aside from that, what would they talk about? Would he have anything in common with a gay man?

Chandler wasn’t the only one with worries. Wes was already picturing the ribbing he was going to get from his gay friends for hanging out with another straight guy. He already knew what they would say: There you go, trying to turn the whole world gay alongside you. Wes knew his friends were mostly teasing, but navigating those conversations over and over was exhausting—and unnecessary.

Eventually, Wes and Chandler got together for a drink and almost immediately forgot about any concerns they might have had. The more they talked, the more they found common ground. For one, they both shared a love of golf—Wes had even been an all-American golfer in high school and still played at a three handicap. Chandler had wrongly assumed that gay men wouldn’t be interested in golf; instead, he’d just found his new golfing partner.

Golf was just the beginning. The more they got to know each other, the more Chandler realized how much his biases toward gay men affected his everyday behavior. For instance, Chandler had long known that Wes was an excellent marketer, but had always found himself resisting Wes’s suggestions at work. Wes insisted that Chandler and his sales team focus more on the customer experience during their sales pitch. Don’t just talk about the customer, Wes said. Talk about the customer’s customer and what our product will do to solve their problems. Eventually, Chandler listened, and his sales team saw an almost immediate improvement.

Several months passed. One night, Wes and Chandler were sharing drinks again, and Wes mentioned that he’d been having relationship problems. He and his partner simply hadn’t been connecting the way they usually did.

Try a date night, Chandler said. Have a nice bottle of wine waiting for him when he gets home, and treat him to a nice romantic evening. It always works for me and my wife.

It was a small moment, but it proved a turning point in their friendship. Before meeting Wes, Chandler would never have offered relationship advice to a gay man—and here he had done it without even thinking!

Realizing how far they had come, both men committed fully to their friendship from that moment on. They confided in each other, they defended each other, and they even traveled to the Masters Tournament together. Chandler finally became comfortable introducing Wes to his other jock friends, discovering that most of them also had gay friends—and that they had struggled with the same self-doubt that Chandler had. All that fear Chandler had been holding on to was for nothing!

Years later, I had the opportunity to learn this story firsthand from both Wes and Chandler. Reflecting on the early days of their friendship, both said the same thing: if they hadn’t gotten over their initial boundaries and biases, they would have missed out on meeting their best friend.

Why Is Male Friendship So Important?

Stories like this are all too common. Two men meet and share a connection, but then they hesitate, fearful of the obstacles to friendship standing in their way. In truth, these boundaries are often of our own making, but that doesn’t make their effect any less real. With the right tools, these boundaries are easily overcome, but many men grow up without the tools necessary for building meaningful male friendships.

The world has plenty of advice for young men when it comes to dating, choosing a career, and seeing the world. Why not for making friends? After all, having strong, authentic male friendships can be incredibly beneficial to our long-term well-being. The results of two seventy-five-year (and counting) Harvard studies—the Grant and Glueck studies—found a direct correlation between male friendships and a man’s sense of satisfaction with his success, health, and overall happiness and fulfillment. Regardless of wealth, advantage, or perceived privilege, relationships with other men simply keep us healthier and happier.*

No doubt, you can point to experiences in your own life where a male friendship left a lasting positive impact. I know I can. For instance, one of my college roommates was a big fitness buff. We bonded over weights, jogging, hiking, and other forms of exercise. This bond helped cement a lifelong passion for fitness in both of us—I remain physically active more than thirty years later, and he now owns his own CrossFit gym.

Every man benefits from strong male friendships, but rarely do we stop to think about what we want out of them. Consider yourself for a moment. What do you want out of your friendships? Are you looking for someone to respect you? Are you looking for someone to give you advice? Or are you looking for someone you can just shoot the breeze with to take your mind off of other concerns? What is it that makes your male friendships successful, and how can you work to create that in your life?

I’ve sometimes found this last question difficult to answer. Intuitively we might understand the value of male friendships and why we need them, but the second we try to articulate what that means to us, the words escape us.

We care about our friends. We share our lives with them. We invest in their success. And yet, every friendship is unique, fluid, and adaptive. Friendship can take on whatever form we ask of it. Sometimes we need a work friend, sometimes we need a weekend golf buddy, and sometimes we need a confidant. Sometimes a single friend can be all those things. Other times, it takes three different friends to fill three different needs. Sometimes a work friend stays a work friend, and sometimes a work friend becomes your most trusted confidant.

Despite all this incredible nuance and variation, I’ve always felt that there must be a common thread, some rudimentary defining trait that characterizes all friendships. Whatever that common thread was, I knew from looking at my own friendships that it certainly had nothing to do with age, race, or demographics. I’ve had older friends, younger friends, black friends, Jewish friends, Hindu friends, white-collar friends, blue-collar friends, and just about every other type of friend you could imagine.

Academic explanations couldn’t help me identify a common thread either. Without exception, the texts I consulted all conceived of friendship as some sort of life cycle involving initiation, maturation, and termination. I struggled with that presentation. Why did I have to terminate a friendship at all? Does every definition of friendship mean that you must accept your friendship will eventually end?

Respect Makes the World Go ’Round

After enough reflection, I finally decided that friendship comes down to mutual respect. At various points in my life, I’ve been a freelance photographer, a devout Deadhead, and a high-ranking corporate executive. My pursuits have taken me from my hometown in rural Ohio all across the globe. Through all these adventures, I attribute much of my success to my ability to build meaningful friendships with those around me—particularly with other men.

Through it all, I’ve always found that it’s the quality of those friendships that counts, not the quantity. Whether you’re more comfortable in a large group of friends or in one-on-one settings, what’s important is how safe you feel sharing with other people to the extent that you can and seeing each other for who you truly are. When we do that, we can forge connections, solve problems, and create opportunities that we never would have otherwise.

I don’t mean any of this in some abstract, touchy-feely sort of way. In my experience, powerful friendships lead to even more powerful results—whether in your personal life, your social life, or your career.

Never has this been clearer than it was during a particularly scary moment during my days as an executive for a medical company, where a friendship was the only thing that prevented a dangerous mishap from becoming a full-blown crisis. Long story short, in the process of selecting an insurer for our three hundred thousand employees, we had the chance to work with one of our highest-value clients. However, we decided that their prices simply weren’t competitive and went with a different provider.

This didn’t sit well with our contact person at the company. As soon as we gave him our decision, he shot off a nasty email saying, We do $250 million in business with you every year, and you’re not even going to consider us?

The employee didn’t know it, but he had just broken the law.

In the healthcare industry, you can’t entice a vendor by giving them special treatment, and you certainly can’t recognize previous business as an inducement. Yes, they were a client of ours, but we were explicitly forbidden from considering that fact when selecting an insurance provider. And now, an errant comment from an angry employee had put both our companies in jeopardy.

After being alerted to the message, I was legally required to report the incident to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services within seventy-two hours. I wanted to do everything in my power—and within the scope of the law—to avoid filing that report. Immediately, I picked up the phone and called the CEO, who had become a good friend over the course of our business relationship.

Hey, we have a problem. Somebody just sent my senior vice president this note, I said, and then proceeded to read him the message.

Holy shit, came his reply.

Yeah, I know.

Have you reported it?

Not yet. I figured you’d want a chance to investigate it and retract it so that it wasn’t reportable and wouldn’t be in violation of the law.

I heard a big sigh over the line, followed by a weary, Thank you.

The CEO immediately launched an investigation, and soon, we received an official retraction of that employee’s statement, along with a formal explanation: the employee was new on the job and hadn’t been aware of the law. As an accountant, he had seen the amount of business we did with the company and felt like we’d given them the cold shoulder.

Crisis averted.

If I hadn’t built and nurtured that relationship with that CEO, things might have gone very differently. I would have assumed the accountant spoke for the company and reported the incident without hesitation. However, because I knew the CEO and knew he would never direct his employees to run afoul of the law in such a careless way, I was willing to go out on a limb and give my friend the chance to makes things right. I respected him and trusted he would do the right thing—and I was right to. In my life, I’ve found that such trust rarely goes unrewarded.

Finding Friendships That Work for You

This is a book on male friendship. It’s about overcoming the many boundaries we face that prevent us from connecting with other men as real people.

This is not a book full of academic research, statistics, and metrics. It is a book written by men for men, offering candid, heartfelt accounts of both our successes and failures as we learn to seek out, initiate, and develop strong male friendships.

As the stories in this book illustrate, when we put in the effort to grow and sustain strong, meaningful male friendships, we can open doors and overcome boundaries that we never even knew were there—enriching not only our own lives but also the lives of those we connect with along the way.

However, be warned: friendships don’t just happen. Each of us must overcome certain boundaries—whether real or imagined—in order to make our friendships work. The good news is that by dividing the effort and sharing the load, we multiply the benefit.

The following accounts, observations, and advice are the result of extensive interviews conducted with over two hundred men of various ages, demographics, and ethnicities. By sharing the results of these interviews—as well as my own experiences—my hope is to start a dialogue with other like-minded men and, in so doing, continue to identify and promote successful strategies for developing lasting, meaningful friendships. We may never be able to fully define and quantify the value of male friendships, but it is my hope that this book will deepen and enrich your own understanding of friendship and the role friends play in our lives.

To help us guide this process, I’ve divided this book into three parts:

The Anatomy of Friendship: Most boys are raised with a certain universal set of beliefs that can both aid and hinder friendships throughout the course of their lives. Using that as a starting point, we will examine the key elements that make up a good friendship and how we can better seek out and cultivate friendships in our own lives.

Obstacles to Overcome in Friendship: Some of us are introverts, and some of us are extroverts. Some of us were raised in blue-collar towns, while others of us have rarely wanted for anything in our lives. By recognizing the differences between us—personal, social, racial, or anything else—we can learn how to overcome these boundaries and find common ground.

Moments When Friendship Matters: Most of us experience similar turning points in our lives—romance, fatherhood, and moments of deep struggle and uncertainty brought on by a variety of circumstances. Together we’ll examine the various turning points we all encounter and how our friendships can help us navigate those challenging times.

If there’s one common thread in all the stories, observations, and advice within these pages, it’s to challenge the norms. You define what you want in a friendship. It doesn’t matter if your friend is of a different class, race, or age. If you’re comfortable with each other and able to share without fear of judgment or reproach, then everything else is simply a boundary to overcome.

If we’re to make those kinds of connections, however, we must check our egos at the door so that we can be open to new opportunities, experiences, and types of friends. It’s not always easy to let down our guard and allow ourselves to be genuine, but, as we’ll see in the chapters that follow, the reward is a lifetime of fulfillment.

Why Is This Book Only about Men?

One question I was asked while writing this book is why I limited my scope only to male friendships. What about friendships between men and women? What about friendships between women?

This is a fair question. To answer it, let me start by saying that much of the friendship advice in this book is universal, and many of the boundaries both men and women face in making and maintaining friendships are similar. In that regard, a good deal of the content in this book can apply to just about any sort of friendship you can imagine.

But not all of it. Just as women face unique challenges in making and maintaining friendships, men do too. As a middle-aged man, I can’t speak to the unique challenges women face as well as I can speak to the unique challenges that I have faced as a man and that many of my male friends have as well. This is what I am most familiar with, and this being my first book, it made the most sense to stick with what I know.

While this is a book written about men and by men, I didn’t write it for men alone. This book is also for the many women out there who have men in their lives who they love. As one of my female friends put it when I told her about this project, I want copies of this for my dad, my three brothers, and my husband! They all struggle with making and maintaining meaningful male relationships.

Further, I am sure that many women like my friend will find this subject matter enlightening, and that it will help them understand the boundaries men face in making meaningful friendships. In fact, because many men are encouraged not to share their struggles (see chapter 1), many of the conversations here might be nothing short of a revelation.

Ultimately, the goal was to help produce a book that would both continue the dialogue on male friendships and serve as a guide for men to be better friends, fathers, partners, role models, mentors, guides, coworkers, and so on. Adult men can serve as fantastic role models, both as fathers and as part of the extended family of uncles and brothers inherent in many close-knit friend networks.

Now, with all that out of the way, I hope you will enjoy the book. Whether you’re a man or a woman reading this, I’d love to hear your thoughts—not only about this book but also for a future book that will tackle friendship in a broader sense. Please write to me at CTBFBook@gmail.com, and I will get back to you. (And yes, it will actually be me, a human being. There are no software bots or automated response units on my email. I will respond to your email personally.)

* George E. Vaillant, Adaptation to Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 303-320.

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Part I

Part I: