🤗 Hey, Friend! You’re doin’ great! 🤗

How & Why Do We Define “Friend” Anyway?

Today’s Men’s Friendship Factor Issue:

• Why We Need to Define Friend

• 3 Bad Reasons we “Fall Into Friends”

• The 3 DNA strands of Friendship

• Hey, You, My Friend, Can Do This!

• Repeat or Avoid

• Action Center

• 3 Online Resources

Why Define “Friend”?

“Friend” is one idea that is easy to describe and feel but hard to define. “Patriot,” “Fun,” and the joy of Christmas are easy for me to describe, but I have to dig deep to give a definition that makes sense to someone else.

Most of the ways we describe a friendship are general:

• Someone who shares life with you

• A person who accepts you as you are

• That guy you can say anything to and be anyone with

Descriptive, yes. Identifying the heart or essence of a Friendship—no.

Don’t worry, we are not going to rob the joy out of making a new friend! Rather, we are going to look at how to understand that joy.

Three major benefits await us:

• High-quality friendships

• Seeing friendship as a process, not happenstance

• Helping a buddy or mentee think about their friendships

Good news…we will unpack the definition of Friend over the next four weeks and not all in one sitting!

3 Bad Ways to Fall Into Friend

Isn’t it kinda weird when someone makes a “Best Friend” after spending a week with them?

No doubt they connected with a person at an important level, and hanging out with their new buddy makes them feel good. Guys who jump into a friendship too quickly usually have a reason. I thought of 3 big ones.

Lack of Information—How does that saying go…

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

(Abraham Lincoln usually gets credit—but I’m not sure that is accurate.)

What is accurate is that we’ve all met someone who we thought we knew and didn’t. We’ve all made a friend who we thought was as interested in us as we were in them—but they weren’t.

We just didn’t have enough information about the person.

Crisis —When we get into crisis mode, we don’t always make great decisions. But, here’s the thing—we might make a crisis friend and get through a hard time in life together. It just might not turn out to be enough of a basis for a growing friendship.

Desperation—Ahh, the stink of the car salesman desperate for a commission! People get into bad situations in life and meet someone who they think is a friend. Their perceptions and needs at that moment are not healthy.

Bad news/good news.

We’ve all made a friend in one or all of these situations or—AHEM—at least know “some other guy” who has made a friend like this.

We can learn what not to repeat.

This brings up the question in my mind, “Isn’t there more to friendship than just bumping into someone and happening to “hit it off?”

Yes, there is—and that’s healthy for us.

3 DNA Strands of Friendship

Drew Hunter offers a definition of friendship in his book Made For Friendship. Hunter gives us: an affectionate bond forged between two people as they journey through life with openness and trust.

It’s not bad, but I needed something a little bit more specific and simple. I found some DNA!

Dr. John Townsend’s How To Be A Best Friend Forever is out of print—and I’m glad I have a copy. He gives the three strands that are helpful for me to evaluate all types of friendships.

Remember, neighbors, college buddies, work connections, and church friends all are important types of friends. (BTW, you need more than 10—that’s another issue). Not all friendships and connections are the same, but these are universally important to have in any type of friendship.

Knowing—Objective information and personal experience with your buddy.

Liking—You and your friend want to spend time with each other.

Presence—You actually spend time talking and doing “stuff” together.

For the next three weeks, we’ll talk about knowing, liking, and having a presence in friends’ lives.

I’ve been working on the next issue, and I’m learning some good stuff.

You Can Do This!

You can make and grow the number and quality of your friendships.

You can help someone else do the same thing.

Friendship is not a mystery, but a skill you can learn, develop, and master. In just this issue, having the simple definition of “Friend” as we broke it down, puts you in the top 25% of knowing what makes friends, well, friends.

Loneliness is not for you.

Repeat & Avoid

Every friendship is unique. Circumstances, the season in life, and a host of other variables spawn our friendships.

A healthy definition and framework allow you to evaluate the things that make your good friendships worth doing again.

And they let you see the ones that are “Do-Over” material.

Start thinking about your friends this week. You might surprisingly strong friendship waiting to grow.

ACTION CORNER

🔴 STOP—Waiting for a great friendship to hit you out of the blue. You are in charge of growing your friendships. Falling into friendship is a bad life plan.

🟠 SLOW DOWN AND THINK—Make a list of your “first,” “best,” and “worst” friendships. Take some time to think about the DNA (know, like, presence) and evaluate what worked and what did not work.

 🟢 GO, GO, GO—Make a friend appointment this week. It can be a phone call, in person, or on Zoom, but plan to spend some time with a person (not a spouse/partner) this week.

3 Resources for More

Man of The Year Podcast

A podcast by two friends in New York about friendship. I was introduced to Matt Ritter on Twitter and I’ve listened to a few episodes of the show he hosts with Aaron Karo. I enjoyed this episode thinking about the “third place” to meet people and make relationships.

Shrek Wisdom…From Donkey?

“Only a true friend would be that truly honest.”
—Donkey in Shrek

Yeah, that’s pretty good Donkey!

A Good Idea

The youngest among us and the oldest among us have few resources to combat loneliness. Why not put them together and see what happens?

It turns out, there are a few places doing it—and teens are making money. Over 25% of people over 60 live alone and their kids will pay someone to hang out for a couple of hours a week.

Do you have some way to connect older and younger generations?

(BTW—this is a topic I have a lot of thoughts about…hmm, I suppose that will be a newsletter!)

That’s it for this week!

Here are two ways you can help me equip and encourage men to make friends.

1. Send me some feedback if you get a chance.

2. Let someone know about the newsletter.

See ‘ya next Sunday!

Jared