In this episode of one of the best wellness podcasts for men currently available, Peter and Darius explore how and why men find themselves increasingly isolated from other males (aside from parents / children / work colleagues). They discuss the importance of (re-)establishing authentic connections with other men, and offer strategies to either rebuild or create new relationships. They use personal stories to highlight their learnings and conclude with a powerful poem and a call to action.
Key points
- Men are increasingly, and unnecessarily socially isolated from peers and friends.
- Maintaining and rebuilding male friendships is essential for support and well-being.
- Being vulnerable can lead to deeper connections and provide a support network to help navigate life’s challenges in a judgment free way.
- The call to action is to reach out and initiate a meaningful conversation with someone they haven’t spoken to in a while, emphasizing the importance of listening and expressing support, rather than trying to offer solutions or advice.
Peter
Welcome everyone and welcome to this episode of 50 to 70, Meaningful Conversations Between Men. I'm here with my host, co host, Darius. My name is Peter, Peter Calin and I'm gonna ask Darius to reintroduce himself. Maybe today, give a little bit more about his background so that the audience can get to know us a little bit better.
Darius
Sounds great Peter.
Peter
And I’ll do the same.
Darius
Good to see you again.
Peter
Always.
Darius
Episode number two.
Peter
Always a pleasure.
Darius
So today, before I introduce myself, we're gonna be talking about something that's near and dear to my heart, which is we're gonna be discussing male relationships. Why we need to have relationships with other males and how to go about and effectively create those male relationships.
Peter
May I ask you why that's near and dear to your heart?
Darius
Yeah, because it's something that I let fall apart for an extended period of time in my life and for the last 5 or 6 years, have made that a major area of focus in reconnecting with those men in my life that know who I am and that have been there through a number of different challenges.
Peter
Yeah. Makes me wonder how many people in our audience are in similar situations and had similar experiences or living that life today, you know, not being in touch with friends that they had long ago and have since lost their way. So tell us about you, Darius, a little bit.
Darius
A little bit about me. So, I grew up in a small town in Northern Ontario – I’m Canadian originally – called Sault Saint Marie. It was a steel town, and I'll be referencing stories from some of the guys that I grew up with that I'm still close with and, in fact, I believe you met many of them, sorry about that, over the summer. I did an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, molecular biology and then did a graduate degree because I didn't know what to do with my life. So I figured I'd just stay in school. I went back and got an MBA and then I joined the corporate world as a management consultant to BioPharma where I was fortunate enough to find a career that I was passionate about for 20 years combining science with business and ultimately, hopefully, helping people by developing new medicines for people that were sick.
Peter
Wow. You're one of those genius types. I see.
Darius
If I'm a genius, this world is in big, big trouble.
Peter
Well, I'll share that I grew up in a military family and I’ll be saying that in a few moments. My father was in the army but I was born on an air force base in Northern California. And we moved every 3 or 4 years and that's important because it affected relationships. Any kind of relationships that I've had over the years, but also kind of has rippled out to male relationships and male friendships as well. We moved around quite a bit. Northern, Southern California, Texas, New Mexico. Spent some time, actually, it was the most delightful time in my life, in the paradise of the canal zone, Panama, when I was just ten. And I just remember these dunes of mounds of termites and fire ants and these sloths climbing the trees and iguanas the size of boulders. You know, I'm exaggerating, but anyways, it was delightful for someone at that age and then, by the way, my mother is Cuban and so we would visit every couple of years to Cuba. But from Panama and that delightful paradise, we moved to Georgia in the midst of the civil rights movement. That's a whole another episode.
Darius
That sure is.
Peter
And we moved from Georgia up to New Jersey and I played sports. I did everything that basically, I understood needed to be done to be successful in high school and was fortunate enough to be awarded a scholarship to University of Michigan for football. And, from there, I went to undergraduate school, finishing at Temple in Philadelphia. Then as a graduate, I went to Cornell Law and also got my MBA and went to work for corporate as you did. I'll kind of narrow down the summary of this history.
Peter
I ended up working with American Express. It took me from New York City to Miami, eventually, which is where I live now. And I had the opportunity to travel quite a bit, as the vice president of international tax for the Latin American division. So, some successes and I'm truly grateful for them, but eventually, I left the corporate because something in me just kept questioning it. That's another episode.
Darius
It sure is. I can relate to that one.
Peter
Long story short, I went and got another degree in human rights, Masters of the Law in Human Rights at the St. Thomas University and then I started working on my doctorate. But before I finished my doctorate, I decided to start teaching yoga, studying yoga more profoundly and moved into that area of knowledge and understanding which is also another episode we might have someday. It led me to mindfulness and currently I teach mindfulness, I teach mindfulness-based stress reduction. I do a fair amount of coaching and helping individuals privately find a more mindful life and more joy and abundance in it and be better or the best version of themselves they can possibly be. So that brings us to today and I'm going to shift us back to you to this topic we're covering today: male friendships. Would you like to introduce us to why and what is it that you want the audience to know about it?
Darius
Yeah. I think there's a couple of things, and I'll share an experience. I'd love to know if you had one as well. I think male friendships are lacking, unfortunately. I think a lot of males as they get to our 50 to 70 age range have let those close relationships lapse. And as a result, they don't have that support network that they need to turn to in order to help solve problems or to help overcome some of those challenges that are gonna come at us.
Darius
We're in a human body, you're going to have challenges and one of the stories that exemplifies it is what happens in my family. I think about the women, and not to sound sexist, but the women go to the kitchen and they are having conversations that matter. Sometimes there's tears, sometimes there's raised voices, but you can listen to what they're talking about. They're talking about how they're feeling, what's really going on in their lives, what's going on with the children. The men in my family go outside, and you gotta keep in mind, this is in Canada, to the garage, usually with a beer or more, they sit around a car and they talk about the car, the weather, or a hockey game.
Peter
Sports.
Darius
Sports, but no real deep meaningful conversations that are taking place, even within that close family network.
Peter
And how would you define meaningful conversations that they could have had?
Darius
Not about how bad the Maple Leafs played or how much snow we're getting in Canada. But what's actually going on with them. How they're feeling, how they're doing, challenges that they're encountering, what they're experiencing in life.
Peter
Now I don't know if my family is normal, have you had an experience like that as well?
Darius
Yeah, recently. I was at a wedding and we were watching football. And the men were all in the TV room, the living room at my nephew's home and watching a game and all of the conversation was around what was happening on the field, if there was conversation.
Peter
Yeah, the ifs! The grunts.
Darius
Yeah. “Oh, that was a great hit.” Yeah. But nothing beyond it, whereas the women, similar to how you described, they started in the kitchen. Some of them had drinks just like the men. They went out to the back porch and you could hear them laughing. You could hear the conversations being about how people were feeling and about what was going on in their lives. It wasn't centered around some entertainment, like a football game. And I just noticed that contrast so much and because we were preparing for these podcasts, the contrast struck me and it was something that I knew I would be mentioning here. Where in our socialization do we get the habit, the conditioning of separating ourselves out as men?
Peter
Isolating ourselves individually, even in that context, rather than talking about things that are going on in our lives that are affecting us, maybe profoundly? We just get numbed and lost in the entertainment, usually a sport. And, any conversation is around that. I don't know if you build relationships off of that. I know we have, you know, you have a drink in hand and you have a buddy that you go to the games with and you know, that's perfectly fine, there's nothing to condemn there. It's just that we don't have enough of the other kinds of conversations.
Darius
We don't and I think it's a conscious choice, Peter. If I think back to my own experience, I had some wonderful friends in high school and undergraduate. But the conditioning that I received or the beliefs that I instilled or chose, consciously or subconsciously, to allow to be instilled, you don't show weakness, you need to be able to handle everything yourself, independence is key, and you never ever ask for help.
Peter
Yeah.
Darius
And it was interesting because I know exactly when that entire belief system shattered. It was 2016 and I hadn't seen most of my high school friends for 20 plus years and I decided that was enough and we were gonna get together in Toronto. So we all flew in on a Friday or some guys drove in that live local to the area and we went out and had a meal and some drinks. We started going around the table and we said, “Okay, let's give everybody an update as to what's going on with our life.” And I was fully prepared to give the standard corporate nonsense, how great my life was, how everything was going perfectly, blah blah blah. And a friend of mine, Phil, went first. Now, you know, set the visual for Phil. Phil is 6’5, maybe 6’6, 260 lbs, maybe 280, depending on how much time he's spending in the gym. In high school, was known to chase around other people with a live chainsaw and threats to dismember said individual.
Peter
Yeah.
Darius
Talking about you right now, Chris. He is not what you'd call a gentle fellow. He's a giant type of a man. His alter ego these days is John Wick, this is an asset. So Phil starts talking and he starts sharing powerfully, beautifully, vulnerably about what it was like to get married young and to have children in his early twenties. The health struggles that some of his children have faced, the fact that he's been married for 30 years and what that's been like and when he was done, Peter, I just looked at him and said, “Okay. Here's what's going good. Work stuff is okay, I started a new company, it's maybe floundering, it may be sinking I don't know. My marriage was a wonderful learning experience.”
Peter
What do you mean by that?
Darius
Oh god, that's an euphemism for a wonderful year of learning experience. It was a challenge.
Peter
Yeah.
Darius
And the divorce, obviously, was really upsetting and left some of those scars, those individual scars that you don't see. And so I shared about how my marriage was and as I was sharing, another friend of mine, Jimmy, was just staring at me the whole time. So we went around the table and nobody said anything and then we were walking to another establishment to continue quenching our thirst at around 12 o'clock. Jimmy grabbed me and he looked at me and said, “I married your wife.” And I said, “Oh, no.” He's like, “They're identical.”
Darius
What do I do? And I said, okay, well, listen. I clearly couldn't solve it, but I'm here for you. Tell me what's going on. And the fact that I had shared and been vulnerable allowed him to see that he wasn't alone in a very challenging situation, another guy started talking about the challenges he had with one of his sons who was special needs. And I don’t think that if Phil hadn’t started the way he did, and I just said, okay, no bullshit, we need to be real, we need to be authentic, these guys know me? I don't think that would have happened if it wasn't for that.
Peter
So did you guys feel like you had to fix each other's problems or rescue your friend from whatever was going on with them. What was the reaction to all the conversations you had?
Darius
Love and support.
Peter
That was it?
Darius
That was it.
Peter
That was enough?
Darius
That was it. There's nobody trying to fix anybody else. It was “Hey, if you need to talk about this, let me know, I'm here. I know you, you got this.” But you can't. One of the things I've come to learn is you can't fix somebody else. You can show people paths, you can show them that there are options, but in the end, they're going to make the decision.
Darius
You know, this as well as I do.
Peter
Yeah, it's their life.
Darius
It's their life. And what might be best for me is clearly not gonna be best for them.
Peter
Yeah.
Darius
But it was profound, Peter, to know that these men who had known me when I was five years old. They know who you are because they have seen you. And, yes, the surface changes, but those same core principles, those values, those beliefs that you have, they're consistent, and because there was that common heritage and that common history, it made it easy for us to support each other.
Peter
Yeah. I suspect and I share this with the audience because it's something that I try to introduce throughout my teaching and my coaching, paying attention to the emotions that are ever present, is really critical to being awake and aware. Those emotions are really raw when you're younger and you're forming friendships. So wouldn't there be more bonding going on, more interrelating. Wouldn't it be a deeper kind of connection? Possibly so. I don't know. I'm just kinda speculating.
Darius
Well, I think kinda building off of that, the other thing that I've learned is the people that I'm close with, there's a common bond. It's also called sweat. I either played a sport with them –
Peter
Oh, yes.
Darius
Or exercised physically with them or done something, or recently, it's just getting in the sauna and sweating because as a man, at least in my body, when I sweat with somebody, I bond with them because you're having conversations that matter either during the moment on the way to the moment or after the moment.
Peter
Yeah. Sports are one of those experiences, at least in this country, and I would venture to say in a lot of countries abroad as well, that has been traditionally quite a bonding mechanism, bonding experience for men. It's probably, from my perspective, the closest we come to true relating and relationships and sharing vulnerabilities because physically, you show your vulnerability. You get blasted on a crossing pattern playing football as a receiver. You feel vulnerable in that moment.
Darius
But it's not only that, I was never a football player, but I played a lot of soccer. I did a lot of martial arts and I would get blown up because I'm not that big. I would look up and there would be two guys, whoever took me out collided with that guy and you knew who was gonna have your back and who wasn't at that moment. But I think there's the physical vulnerability and then there's the stuff that I have historically struggled with and have gotten much better with, being emotionally vulnerable and showing yourself, to who the people that you're relating to.
Peter
Yeah. Yeah. Even with my experiences, my practices, I still am very challenged with that. I'm still learning. I have to admit that.
Darius
I'd say one of the things I've learned. So I've made a conscious effort starting around four years ago to just be vulnerable. 90% of the time when I'm vulnerable, I am met with, if I had expectations, they would have been exceeded. Support love, kindness. 10% of the time, I am met with somebody who's closed off and wants to change the subject and in those situations Peter I've come to learn, it's not about me. I'm clearly stepping in an area that makes them uncomfortable, I'm potentially triggering something or bringing something up that they don't want to or are not ready to remember.
Peter
Yes.
Darius
So in that situation, I gently back off. They now know because I've extended the olive branch that I would love to have this conversation. If they're not willing to, I'm not gonna force them.
Peter
Super important. Super important for us as men to be aware of our pains and our vulnerabilities and the episodes in our lives that created them.
Darius
Peter, why is it challenging for you to be vulnerable?
Peter
Wow, it's, partially as I have witnessed and observed with others and from witnessing and observing myself, it's the upbringing. I was raised in a military family with military discipline and rigidity and you basically followed orders regardless of how you felt about it. That's how I was raised and that's the imprint in my psyche that extended throughout my life and like all of these imprints, all of these experiences we have that are challenging and difficult and can be emotionally havoc, they also have a plus side.
Peter
Because, especially in our society and our cultures, they spur us, they position us to have the strength, the courage that we need to be successful. And so the military wouldn't be successful without this kind of discipline and this kind of order and it's very easy to understand it from that context. It doesn't apply all the time when it comes to family and children and so that's where a child or someone who was raised in the military has to kind of learn to figure things out and the military is not the only thing, there's other aspects, corporate life is another one that, you know, has its own set standards in order and you follow them and your feelings about them are not important. What's important is the mission. What's important is the goals and the projections, but yet we're human beings. I'm a human being. I have feelings, I have emotions, I have fears, I have anger, I have guilt, I have shame.
Darius
Yep.
Peter
And they affect my present moment. I can either be blind to it or I can be aware of it and then make a choice. I could be blind to it, unaware, unconscious and just react, stressed out about what might happen in the future and worried about that. Keeping it to myself, coping, which is what I learned to do, I believe we all learn to cope in one way or another. Sometimes it's just numbing, sometimes it's just not speaking, not sharing, and that brings me back to male friendships. Other than on the sports field, there wasn't a lot of sharing that I've done throughout the years. And the other thing is I was always the ear. I think you can relate to that.
Darius
I sure can.
Peter
I was always the one people would come to for council advice. I was always, when I say always, let's put that in perspective: From the time of adulthood, and let's say from the time of young fatherhood, I took on the role and the responsibilities of being the one who had to be sage and figure things out. Had to be the one to solve the problems and so, I never learned to share, and I still feel that it's a challenge for me. I know it is. If you ask my wife, she would say it definitely is and so it's something I'm continuing to learn, but, again, you and I are talking so that maybe we can bring this to people's awareness. And maybe men start looking at it and asking themselves the same questions we've been asking ourselves. The questions I'm asking myself now.
Darius
Yeah. And I'll acknowledge something, Peter, which is us doing this podcast is an incredibly vulnerable thing for us to both do because not only are we sharing stuff with each other, we're sharing it with hundreds, thousands of other men so that they can learn and so that that guy who's sitting on his couch watching TV, unhappy with his life realizes, I have friends. They're out there. I just need to reconnect with them and I'll give you an example.
Darius
Earlier this year, there's five of us who were really close in school and four of us had gotten back together. The fifth guy we hadn't seen, hadn't heard from and I decided enough was enough. So I went on to Twitter. I've never had a Twitter account in my life. I found him on Twitter, well, truth be told, I might have had some law enforcement help finding him on Twitter. Here he is. This is the guy, so I reached out to him. My phone rang the next day. He and I talked for two hours and there were some issues that he had had towards the tail end of our relationship. And he owned up, he's like, “I'm really sorry. I f*cked up. That was really stupid. I know why you're mad at me. You had every right to.” And I said, yeah. I had every right to be mad but I didn't have every right to kick you out of my life after everything we had been through. I'm sorry too. Guy came out to my 50th birthday party, it was delightful seeing him. He and I pulled a little bit of a prank on some of the other guys and then after the party he stayed, and, Peter, we had a delightful day together. When he was flying back out, he left a little note in the room he was staying in. It said “I love you.” I folded that note. It's now on my dresser. So that I'm reminded of that every day and the power of those friendships. And Gilles you know man, I love you too, it's good seeing you.
Peter
That is the underlying power of friendships and relationships, I believe. I was there. It's love.
Darius
It is love.
Peter
It's hard for men sometimes to admit that and I think we might extend an invitation to them here, to not feel that they cannot be vulnerable in that way. And maybe it's actually a strength, maybe love is one of the most powerful elements in the universe.
Peter
We do a lot of things because of love. Children, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the women we marry, for instance. Let's talk about grief and death, it would mean nothing if we didn't love.
Darius
Correct.
Peter
Such a powerful element.
Darius
So let's talk about how to actually build these male relationships and what needs to be. We've talked about being vulnerable, we've talked about how it's okay to share with your friends how you feel, now it’s gotten to the point where when I talk to my friends, I'll usually conclude the call, or the call will conclude, “I love you, buddy. You need anything, you let me know.” What else do you think we need to do for someone who, like me, let those relationships lapse? What else do we need to do to bring them back and to create them?
Peter
First step is to reach out, call somebody, a friend, someone you haven't spoken to for 6 months or more, and call them. Have a conversation. Don't text them.
Darius
Don't text.
Peter
Don't email them. They probably already get enough of those.
Darius
Don’t tweet them.
Peter
Don't tweet them, call them and see how they're doing.
Peter
And listen.
Darius
Listen.
Peter
Just listen. You don't have to fix anything. You don't have to rescue them. They're not asking you to solve their problem. You don't have to feel like you gotta solve their problem.
Darius
That’s right.
Peter
Just listen. Sometimes I think, I feel, that as human beings, and especially with this loneliness epidemic, we just need somebody to listen.
Darius
Oh, it's so true. And then what I've learned is in having those conversations with people who knew you or know you, they can relate to you in ways, nothing against people who are close but are in your new circle, you've known these people for 20, 30, in my case, 40, possibly for 50 years, they know you. Yeah, and they can help.
Peter
Yeah. There's a difference, though, that I'd like to highlight. And that difference is: contrast the friends from high school, let's say, to the ones in the corporate world that you became close to
Darius
To quote unquote “friends?”
Peter
Yes, what was the difference?
Darius
When I was no longer of use to my friends in the corporate world, they weren't my friends anymore.
Peter
So what was the difference in the bond? Bonding.
Darius
The bond was superficial.
Peter
Yeah.
Darius
And I had, Peter, there were dozens of people that if you would have asked me the moment, I would have thought were my friends.
Peter
I had the same experience. I had some that we had a mutual admiration for one another's values and, you know, we had a bond outside of just work and so that had a ripple effect. But even then, it's not the same, my experience from people that you knew in high school when you're in your formative years and, again, your emotions are raw and you're just developing them.
Darius
Yeah. I gotta tell you, having that support network is just profound. So about a month ago, you remember that Saturday when you reached out to me and you said, you feel disturbed. I was going through stuff with my mom who's recently been diagnosed with dementia, and it was really sending me for a loop because I was seeing the personality changes and I was realizing that she wasn't going to be there forever and what was coming up was grief. I wasn't aware that what was coming up was grief, I was cognizant that I felt off, that I was depressed, that I was lethargic, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Darius
So one of my wonderful coping mechanisms is when things go sideways in my life, I like to point at my beautiful partner, Wendy, and blame her for it. So I tried that move and she basically said, it has nothing to do with me, “Get out. Go figure this out, and I'll be here to help you along the way.” My friends were so worried about me. They were calling, stopping over, and texting. ”Are you okay? Are you moving? Are you eating? What are you doing?” And knowing I had that support, really helped me know that if I did fall apart, I had guys that were gonna be there that would help put me back together and get me moving.
Peter
So that's evidence of the importance of male friendships.
Darius
It is. I went through it last month.
Peter
Yeah. So, what more should we share here? This episode on male friendships before we end and conclude.
Darius
Well, I think we need to share the call to action and then as we're doing in every episode, it will end off with a poem and mine won't be quite as elegant as your peace poem from the last one, but I have one that I would like to share.
Peter
No judgment here.
Darius
Thanks. Well, you can save that until after I'm done.
Peter
So do you want me to give the call to action?
Darius
Yeah! What's our call to action this time?
Peter
So our call to action to our audience is to, please, make a call to a male friend. And I wanna say here, we're not intentionally excluding women. That's not what we're doing. It's just that maybe men have a greater need and so we're focusing our attention there. So men who are out there, part of our audience, I wanna invite you to pick up a phone, and give a call to somebody you haven't talked to in 6 months or years. Ask them how they're doing and listen and speak if you wish. Say nothing if you choose it, just let them know that you're there listening and that you support them and do that with as many old friends or untouched friends as you possibly can. Maybe one a day and see what it's like for you, how it feels. So that's our call to action, the meaningful conversation is just calling them. That's it. That's the meaningful act and so please, please do that.
Darius
I love it. I think it's an excellent call to action. Find that guy that you just know you need to talk to.
Peter
Yeah and let us know how it goes!
Darius
Absolutely.
Peter
You can on agedifferently.com. Just let us know how that went for you.
Darius
So the poem?
Peter
Please.
Darius
It's called Choose Your Hard and basically it says:
Life is hard, but you have the ability to choose your hard.
Being alone is hard. Being in a relationship is hard.
Choose your hard.
Going to the gym is hard.
Sitting on the couch and dealing with the effects of becoming obese or deceased is hard.
Choose your hard.
Being vulnerable is hard.
Being alone is hard.
Choose your hard.
Darius
And it goes back to wise advice that somebody gave me that we'll be talking about. Three words, if you choose.
Peter
That's another episode.
Darius
Sure is.
Peter
Excellent. Darius, blessed again, spending this time with you and, hopefully, we've impacted one person out there in our audience and we'll keep doing this. And the next episode is one that, in some ways, brought Darius and I into contact kind of indirectly. Our next episode is going to be on that insidious, maleficent, experience that's out there lurking in the world affecting millions every day. We're talking about stress.
Darius
Wonderful. Thank you, Peter!
Peter
Thank you.
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