# Why It's So Hard to Make Friends as an Adult

An episode of [SOLVED with Mark Manson](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1247526593), 3 Apr 2024, 44 min.

Audio: https://claritaspod.com/measure/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/441/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/episode.flightcast.com/k79mdz9ntctor0410cj1boef.mp3

Making friends is hard, and unfortunately, as you get older, it gets harder. In this episode, we look at research behind friendships, plus the complicating factors people experience in making new friends as they get older. And for anyone struggling with their social lives, we share practical tips on how to meet and keep new friends. Enjoy and, good luck out there. CHAPTERS Chapters • 00:00:00 Introduction: Mexico City Birthday Trip and Getting Robbed • 00:04:20 Why Travel Builds Intimacy Faster • 00:05:33 The Four Variables That Create Friendship • 00:07:59 Remote Work Is Killing Workplace Friendships • 00:11:16 The Partner and Kids Problem • 00:13:55 When Your Friends Have Kids • 00:18:50 The Friendship Paradox of Your Twenties • 00:22:46 College: The Friendship Utopia We Can't Recreate • 00:24:38 Be Aggressive on Hobbies and Interests • 00:31:50 The Follow-Up Problem • 00:34:11 Lead With Generosity • 00:36:22 The Four Levels of Friendship • 00:41:47 Why Friendship Matters More Than Romance • 00:42:30 Final Wisdom: If You Want a Friend, Be a Friend ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://bit.ly/4w46FMH FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: https://www.instagram.com/markmanson Solved IG: https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/ Twitter: https://x.com/markmanson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

## Transcript

[0:00] So Drew, I just got back from Mexico and I spent my birthday down there with some friends. It was a great time. I have three takeaways. The first is that Mexico City punches way above its weight in terms of food and history. I always knew the food in Mexico was good, but
[0:17] Holy shit. The tacos, the guac, the tortillas, man. I could bathe in tortillas made in Mexico City, hand padded and baked by the hands of the Aztecs. It was phenomenal. Longtime listeners know that I set a goal of running a marathon on my birthday. A lot of people texted me said, hey, how's the marathon going? My response was, I'm running a marathon of tacos and it is going quite well.
[0:43] Literally the second we turned on, hit record, there's a lawnmower outside my window.
[0:51] It's like he was fucking waiting for us to hit record. Why does this always happen? I feel like someone is paying a yards man to follow me around and wait until I record anything and then turn on a lawnmower the second I start. God. Bro. Do you even podcast? Like, bro. This is the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.
[1:19] Second takeaway, I got robbed for the first time ever. I, okay, I've been dying to hear this.
[1:25] What happened? First of all, I was long overdue. I spent many, many years living in developing countries. And I resigned myself very early on of like, you know what, one day I'm gonna get robbed. That's just the cost of living in a place like this. And ironically, I never got robbed. So I was always just like mentally prepared for it and then it never happened. Well, of course I go on this quick three day trip
[1:51] It literally happened on my birthday. I had my phone stolen. But I got to give the guys credit because they did it well. It wasn't, this was no bullshit job. Like this was well-coordinated, well-thought-out. So we went to a soccer game at Stadia Azteca. And we were a huge crowd of people waiting to get into the stadium.
[2:11] And I had my phone in my front pocket and I felt like I was aware, knew what was happening. And it's so funny, dude, like instinct kicks in about five minutes later, a group of girls breaks out in a fist fight, literally right next to me. Like three Mexican girls pulling hair, just wailing on each other, closed fists.
[2:35] And the crowd starts getting pushed around and I'm like, holy fucking shit. And my immediate instinct is to reach out and grab my wife and put her behind me and make sure like she's okay.
[2:49] And then two seconds later, I realize, oh, shit, that's the mistake. And as soon as I put my hand in my pocket, the phone's gone. And so it's clearly the girls were in on it. Clearly, there was somebody behind me who was in position and ready to do it. Of course, I'm like the only gringo in the whole place. So I stick out like a sore thumb.
[3:11] So after it happened, I was like, okay, well, well played. You got me. There is a lesson here, which is, I think, and I apply this in a lot of areas of my life, which is most good things in life have some sort of, I just call them a tax, like a lifestyle tax, right? Like when you buy your dream home, you're going to be responsible for the upkeep of that dream home.
[3:33] Like stuff's going to break. You're going to plumbing problems. Your neighbor might be an asshole. Like that is just the unspoken lifestyle tax of owning that dream home. If you want to go on vacation on the other side of the world, you're going to deal with long flights and lots of layovers and there's more opportunities for unexpected things to happen. That's just the tax of...
[3:54] booking such an epic, massive trip. And if you're going to spend a lot of time in developing parts of the world, you're going to put yourself in situations where you can get robbed and, or pickpocketed rather. And I accepted a long time ago that that is simply a lifestyle tax of loving and being in these parts of the world. So they finally got me. I made it to 40 unscathed and then...
[4:20] the day I crossed the finish line. You got off pretty easy too. You weren't like robbed at knife point or anything like that, which, you know, you hear stories of that. It can get a lot, lot worse. Yeah, there are some real horror stories. Third takeaway is travel is this weird way of building intimacy. It's interesting. So we went down there with a group of friends that we've known here in LA for a while and we've hung out with them a bunch.
[4:44] But even though we didn't spend any more time with them than we would in, say, a typical weekend in LA, there's something about the context switching, the foreignness of the environment, the intensity of the experience, the cultural experience. It makes it feel much more personal. And we actually talked about this the last night we were there, which is like, it's so weird because we literally did the same things that we do in LA. Like we went to a game and went to a restaurant and...
[5:10] And, but it feels more intimate and more personal. Like it's a completely different vibe. That's a good segue into this episode's topic. One of the most common questions that I get from readers these days is about adult friendships. How do you maintain them? How do you make them? How do you find good ones? How do you grow in them? This seems to be something that a lot of people think.
[5:33] say, over the age of 25, are struggling with right now. And we've done a lot of episodes on things like social skills and loneliness and how the digital life is complicating our social lives and our psychology and everything. But, you know, ultimately, it's there are a lot of people out there struggling with simply making and maintaining adult friendships. And so today, what I'd like to do is get into
[5:57] What makes an adult friendship? How is it different than, say, adolescent or young adult friendships? Why is it so much harder? And then what are some practical things that we can do to get better at it? It's funny when you do research on friendship and what causes it. It's one of those areas of research that every paper you read, you're like, well, no shit, Sherlock. That's so obvious.
[6:20] Basically, psychologists boil friendship down into four variables that influence how good of friends you become with somebody. The first one is proximity. The second one is frequency, how often you see them. So first one is how close, physically proximate to them. Like how easy is it for you to see them again? Second one is how often do you see them? Third one is duration.
[6:44] How much time do you spend together? You can actually kind of just put frequency and duration together as, you know, total time spent together. And then the third one, which I think is the most interesting one, is intensity or emotional intensity. So there's a variety of things that go into that. Shared interests is really important. The intensity of the experiences you share together is really important. If there's hardship or difficulty in the experiences that you share together, that's also pretty significant. You know, it's like guys who go to war with each other, like...
[7:13] fucking feel like brothers for the rest of their lives, even if they don't see each other for 10 years. We're gonna go through each of these factors, look at how modern life is complicating them and making them a little bit more difficult, and also just how getting older complicates them and makes them a little bit more difficult. And then we'll wrap up the end of the episode with some practical takeaways. So why don't we start with,
[7:34] proximity. And this ties in a little bit with the episode we did a couple of weeks ago on loneliness to be physically close to people that you want to see repeatedly. Yeah. That was, that was me setting you up. That's my cue. That's my cue. Okay. So we're on fire this morning.
[7:59] I did. Okay. No, I did dig some of this up. And it does relate a lot back to the episode we did on loneliness a couple of weeks back. But for one, especially since the pandemic, you know, now that everybody's working remotely or they have some sort of like hybrid set up with their work.
[8:14] That's starting to complicate things. There was a Gallup study that's found even before the pandemic that there's like an emphasis on work relationships and friendships. You know, we want to have a good friend at work and there's more emphasis on that. And it shows that.
[8:29] a greater impact on job satisfaction, having a friend at work. At the same time that's happening, more of us are working remotely. And one of the biggest complaints that people cite about remote work is that they can't connect with their coworkers as well and just the larger company culture in general.
[8:47] And so you kind of touched on this with Cal Newport too. It's kind of a, we want our cake and we want to eat it too. We want the flexibility of that remote work, but we also want good friends at work. And those things, there's a tension between those. This was a Pew research study. 71% of remote workers say that it improves their work-life balance, but over half of them also say that they have trouble connecting with coworkers. Yeah.
[9:11] So there's this weird thing going on right now. I think we're in this transition phase where we're just trying to figure out how the hell we're supposed to work remotely. I don't know. What do you think is going on there? Well, it makes sense to me. You know, it's the water cooler effect, right? Like when you, I haven't seen any data on this, but I would imagine if you went back to say the 60s, 70s and 80s, I would imagine that most adult friendships originated either at work or parents of, of other children that your children play with.
[9:40] simply because those are the people that you're going to see repeatedly over an extended period of time. And I would say it's not even just remote work. It is people switch jobs much more frequently than they used to. Like I remember when we were entering the workforce, there were a lot of think pieces written about how millennials don't feel loyal to a company anymore. They'll leave after four or five years. Now it's like people leave after a year and go find another job. So if you are jumping from company to company, you're
[10:10] Every one, two, three years, again, you're not getting that frequency and that duration that's required to build a meaningful friendship. And then, of course, you throw remote work on top of that and it just compounds everything. People are traveling a lot more today than they used to. Millennials, both millennials and Gen Z, spend much more of their disposable income on traveling. I know just personally, my friends seem to always be on a fucking trip somewhere, which I can't even get mad about because for years I was always on a fucking trip somewhere and I was always on a fucking trip somewhere.
[10:39] As someone who just moved to a new city and has been trying to make friends, that's been a frustrating thing is you meet somebody, you really like them, you hang out a couple times, and the next three times you text them, they're in Europe or they're in New York or they're at a work conference somewhere. So that is complicated things as well. I think it's just...
[10:59] Again, it comes back to this tension between freedom and connection that you alluded to. It happens within the workplace. It happens between workplaces. And I think it also happens outside of the workplace. The more freedom and optionality that we have to be wherever we want, whenever we want, the more difficult it is to get that frequency and duration.
[11:16] in that proximity that is necessary to build meaningful friendships. So that's the first one is the, just the transience, the greater transience of people these days. The second one that I marked down is partners and kids and how they add exponential layers of complexity. This has definitely been a huge factor in my life. I think one thing that happens when you get married is,
[11:41] I think it happens a little bit in a committed relationship, but it really seems to kick in when you get married, which is it's no longer just about finding one person that you get along with. You need to find a couple that you get along with. And that is exponentially more difficult because now both of you need to sign off on two people instead of one person signing off on one person. And you get in a lot of situations where...
[12:05] I'll meet a guy that I really enjoy hanging out with, and then my wife will meet his wife, and we go home after dinner or something, and my wife's like, eh, yeah, no.
[12:19] And I imagine a lot of single people are listening to this and being like that's absurd like you shouldn't have to need your your spouse to like sign off on their spouse That is correct If I just want to like go cert like have a surf buddy or something like that's that's one thing the problem is is just that you have a very limited amount of free time and You want to spend a very significant amount of that free time with your spouse and so if you can combine spending I
[12:46] quality time with your spouse with socializing, like that's a two for one. And so if you do find a couple where you like both people in the couple and they like both of you, they're always gonna get priority over the people that you don't like both people. And so what happens is the people that one of you
[13:05] doesn't approve of both of them. Like they just slowly get weeded out of your social life over time. That creates a lot of complexity. It's just a much higher bar for people to clear. And then I think when you have kids from friends of mine who have kids, it adds a whole nother layer to that because, well, if the kids like each other, but the parents don't get along, well, then that kind of sucks.
[13:25] Whereas if the parents get along, but the kids don't like each other, that also sucks. So it's like every variable you throw into the equation just ups the complexity even further. And it's hard. It's really, it's disappointing a lot of times. Yeah. Like, I can't tell you how many times where, you know, Fernando will meet somebody that she really likes and she's like, I really hope you like their husband. And, you know, we like go somewhere with them. And within five minutes, I'm like, God, I cannot stand this guy. Yeah.
[13:55] And I'm just like, I look at her up like, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The kids thing I've been dealing with for the last few years too. And it's definitely, it definitely changes things in a lot of different ways. I don't know. There's, I, I, I like kids. I'm, I'm weird, I guess. I don't know. I like kids and I'm good with kids. I don't necessarily. You're a good human, Drew. That's what you are.
[14:21] i never thought of it that way you're not you're not an asshole like me yeah yeah you you like kids don't you like no i don't you don't get them away from me i don't like your kids keep them away from me
[14:40] Really? Oh, okay. I didn't know. I thought you were like kids. No, I don't. Let me put it this way. I don't dislike kids. Okay. I've never hung out with a kid and been like, wow, that was so cool. Like, I've never, like, it's just like a, I don't know. They're just there. I mean, I'm exhausted by the end of it. And usually I'm like, yeah, go back to your parents. I'm done with you by the end of it. But like, I don't know. I'm pretty good with kids. Yeah.
[15:05] um and i'm like that too but after like five seconds oh okay i can do a few hours i'm like i'm like oh cool nice toy go back to your parents okay no i'm not that bad no
[15:22] I I've got the phone uncle vibe going really well, I think for me. So that sounds like it's my, yeah. So I've had a few friends, um, who've had kids over the last few years, all kind of had them like started having kids around the same time. So they're all kind of the same age and they all kind of get along. So I don't know. I'm just lucky in that regard, but I also like, I'm good with kids. I can, you know, entertain them. And they, I think we're probably on the same emotional level for at least a couple hours. You relate to them. I relate to them. You relate to their problems. I definitely can. I definitely can.
[15:52] So that helps if you can put on the fun uncle, fun aunt vibe or whatever. But I get it. Not everybody's like that. And it just changes. Those friends too, we used to do – we'd go mountain biking a whole bunch or we'd do these –
[16:08] you know, outings where having a kid doesn't really work. And so we just don't do those things anymore. And so that's, that's a big part of it as well. I've also found too, what I found interesting, you know, not too long after they started having kids and if the kids weren't around and we like, you know, we went out to dinner and they had got a sitter or something like that.
[16:28] They spent a lot of time complaining about parenting and their kids. At first, I was like, OK, you guys are really selling this let's have kids thing like really makes me want to go have kids. You know, great job, guys. But then what I realized is that that was just their time to vent.
[16:46] You know, that was their time to just get all the shit that they can't say when their kids are around off their chest. And it wasn't that they didn't like being a parent and they didn't love their children or anything like that. It was that that was their time to vent. And I was like, OK, I can I can take on that role now. So that changed the dynamic of the our relationship, obviously, that way. But it also led me to realize that.
[17:09] Your relationship with these people is going to evolve and it's going to evolve in a way that you can't predict. And there's actually a lot of area for connection there, too. Like your friends are changing as their parents now. And they've changed a lot because of that. And you can kind of connect with them and like, oh, OK, let me understand how you're changing. How does this change you? How does having somebody being responsible for another human being change you?
[17:33] in a way. And it kind of, it can lead to a deeper connection, but it's very different. You're not going to, you know, you're not gonna be partying and mountain biking and, you know, doing all the crazy stuff you used to do together.
[17:43] Yeah, maybe this jumps ahead a little bit into like some of the practical takeaways, but I think having that patience and openness to that evolution is important. I've definitely found that to be true as well. I mean, I've had friends have kids. I've had friends get married, get divorced, move to another country, move back. Things do change. They evolve differently.
[18:04] And the friendship evolves. Sometimes, you know, you go through seasons with people and maybe you spend one decade super close and then the next decade you grow apart a little bit and then you come back together. That's actually an interesting conversation I've had with my parents, which is they have had friendships that have gone away for years.
[18:25] decades and then come back and been stronger than ever. And it's one of those things where like, you don't necessarily have the whole perspective on everything when you're in the middle of it. It's things can change and move at a slow pace. I would say 90% of the time that people ask me this question, they tend to be in their thirties or early forties, and they tend to reference how many friends they had in their twenties, um,
[18:50] and how vibrant their social life was and how many things that they were doing. And they kind of lament like, what happened to that? Why don't I have that anymore? And my instinctual reaction, or kind of the first place that my brain goes,
[19:05] is that when you're in your 20s, everybody's at the same level. Everybody is young, broke, completely inexperienced, doesn't know shit about shit, doesn't know who they are, doesn't know what they like, doesn't know what they want to do with their lives. And slowly as you move into adulthood, all of those things start to get figured out.
[19:26] People start figuring out what they want to do with their life. They start figuring out what they're good at. They start figuring out what type of people they like spending time with and what type of people they don't like spending time with. Also, money and status starts to become a factor. Some people become very successful in their careers. Some people become very unsuccessful. Some people...
[19:47] are very materialistic. Some people are not materialistic at all. Some people really crave novelty and new experiences. Some people crave a lot of stability and comfort and repetition. I think this is an under-discussed component of this issue, which is that as you get older and you take on this process of self-discovery and figuring out who you are and what you like and
[20:14] Who you are in the world and succeeding at things in the world each step of progress you make along that path Narrows the aperture of the friendships that you can potentially connect with Right, like it's it's almost like everybody is starting at the same starting place or a similar starting place But they all start walking in different directions And so your pool of people that you're going to relate to that you're going to share values and interests with that who are going to
[20:43] understand your lifestyle and the things you do for fun who are going to be of similar financial security or insecurity, those pools shrink and narrow and it becomes more difficult to find those things.
[21:01] I don't know. I think maybe one of the reasons that this doesn't get discussed is, A, it's a touchy subject. People don't like admitting that there are groups of people that they used to enjoy hanging out with and they don't anymore for whatever judgments that they might have. But two, it's a lot of it's just practicality, right? Like, it's if you're really into boating and you spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on boats—
[21:23] Like you don't want to hang out with a bunch of people who are just going to like freeload on your boat. You want to hang out with other boat people, right? Like it's that's just like a simple example of how this this takes place. Or I have a friend who literally spends all of his money on fixing up old cars. Like it's just his passion. It's what he does. He goes to racetracks. He like races all these like retro refitted supercars.
[21:51] I don't know shit about it, but I imagine that not only does that narrow who he is going to relate to and gel with, but there's also even within that sub niche of interest of cars and retrofitting cars or whatever. He's probably going to want to hang out with other people who spend all their money on cars and retrofit their cars and don't bat an eye of like spending half their savings on like an old Corvette or something like that.
[22:17] That's not to say that that's like a solid rule, but I just think it's a factor that gets overlooked. Like there's a lot of nostalgia for our late teens and early 20s of how everybody is kind of on this equal footing of just not knowing and being open to everybody and being interested in everybody to a certain extent. And also, if you went to college, like...
[22:46] being in an environment where you are in constant contact and proximity to all of your peers as well. So it is like, it's almost from a friendship point of view or a social connection point of view, university in many ways is a utopia. It's like, if you were to like sit down and maximize how to make as many meaningful friendships as possible, you would probably design a university dorm system.
[23:12] And for those of us who really, really enjoyed our college experiences, sometimes it's hard to let that go to like realize that that's not life. Like that's not coming back anytime soon. So, yeah. Anyway, that's maybe it's a little bit of a depressing point, but it definitely is an issue.
[23:30] It's a hugely complicating factor, I think. The older I get too, the more I'm like, no, I like these things. And I'm not going to really deviate from them all that much too. One thing I've noticed too, getting older, I used to be a sports fanatic. Like when I was in my teens and 20s, I just don't give a shit anymore. Like for making male friendships, I think for some people at least, that's a little tougher because sports are basically just...
[23:57] reality tv for men you know basically it's totally it and i'm just like i don't know it sucks too because i was the biggest kansas city chiefs fan when i was a kid and they sucked so fucking bad and now they're good and i just don't give a shit and i can't connect with anybody on it like yeah so you're you're missing out on the i know i know it's it's terrible
[24:17] I struggle now with balancing. Like what I want to do is I want to talk to people about abstract ideas and deep concept and deep concepts and really like dig into that kind of stuff. And that's hard to connect with people on quickly at least. And so I wish I had some kind of like just lighter, more mundane things I could connect with people on. But I don't know.
[24:38] All right, let's talk about what people can do because this is a widespread problem. I mean, we've covered the data extensively on this show. And it's not clear what they should do. So, yeah. Yeah, well, and I've talked about how this is something, this is an area I struggle with. I think it's something that I could be a lot better about in my life. So I threw down a few ideas. These are a few things that I have found helpful in my own life. First one is be extra aggressive on hobbies and interests.
[25:05] I think for most of us, our default setting is we kind of learn to socialize and we learn friendships when we're young, when everybody has tons of time and everybody's willing to try a little bit of something. Once you get to your 30s, 40s, 50s, you don't have time. You know what you like. You don't want to – you've tried most of the things that you're interested in trying.
[25:26] So I feel like the game shifts under our feet and we don't really realize it. And what I've, it's taken me a long time to figure out is that really you just have to go really hard on the things that do interest you and continue.
[25:41] kind of almost be like fanatical about it. Those are ultimately the people that you're gonna repeatedly see. It's funny now, like when I meet new people, like one of my first questions is, do you like to surf? Because if they say no, then I'm like, well, there goes like 50% of my opportunities.
[25:58] with you because I'm probably not going to do anything else. If you surf, then like, I'm pretty much up to hang out almost whenever. I think it's finding those two or three things you really like. I've met so many people out here who are in the pickleball. It's crazy. I'm almost like, I'm just going to convince myself. I like pickleball just so I can have friends. I do think this, this is at our age,
[26:20] You know, assuming you're not making friends at work and assuming you're not becoming friends with the parents of your kids' friends, I think this is the hack is just go really hard in on your interests. And don't do it digitally. Do it face-to-face. A Facebook group is fine to join, to, like, coordinate. But, like, ultimately, you want to get in person in front of a bunch of people.
[26:40] I think joining groups pretty liberally, like I used to be really skeptical of groups of like networking groups and social groups. I used to be really skeptical of them when I was younger. And I would like be like, oh, am I going to waste money? Now I just join them. And if I don't like them, I'll go to like one or two events. And if I don't like it, I just quit. Because what I have found is that one out of every five or six is going to be really good. And you're going to get a lot of
[27:08] good connections and friendships from that group. But sometimes you just got to get through the bad ones before you find the good one. So I've been trying to just say, fuck it and join stuff. What do you think though? Like with both of these, like your hobbies and interests in the groups,
[27:24] I think there's got to be some sort of, there's got to be like another layer to it too. So it can't be super superficial. Surfing, like to you, sounds like there's like a kind of a deeper underlying, I don't know, facet of that, that you connect with. That if someone else connects with it too, that's a deeper connection that you could have with them.
[27:43] Um, but like, you know, I don't know, maybe it's good to like go join a kickball league or, you know, ultimate Frisbee or whatever it is. But I also think they're like, don't just go, don't do too shallow on these things either. That's maybe, I don't know. That's something I've been thinking about as well.
[27:59] Well, I think there's two layers to it. There's level one, which is like, I'm going to try this thing and see if I like it, which I guess for me would be pickleball. I've played it once and I lost horribly and left the court.
[28:16] Yeah, so I don't I don't really know if I like it or not But that's something that like I would put that in my like try it out bucket and see You know try it a couple more times see if I like it and then there's like there's a level two Which is like okay. I know I like this thing and I know I like spending time with people doing this thing So let me invest more in it because that's probably where a lot of my friendships are gonna develop and I think historically like
[28:42] golf or bath again coming back to the sports thing i think with guys it's it's an activity you're never going to get a guy to like just hang out over martinis for three hours you know you you invite them golfing you invite them surfing you invite them to play tennis or pickleball i fucking hate golf
[29:01] My friend's golfing. I'm like, no, I'm not going golfing with you, dude. I tried so hard to enjoy golfing. I fucking hate it too. I want to see you. No, you want to, okay. Here's a crazy story. So when I was doing Will Smith's book, I was hanging out with him. We were in Miami. I think this was pretty early on. I think I had only been working with him for a few months and we're at a dinner and, uh, he like looks over and he says, Hey, do you golf? I've got a game going on tomorrow. And I was like,
[29:30] uh, I'm not really like I haven't played in a long time. And he was like, Oh, okay, cool. And then a few minutes later, one of his managers comes over and sits next to me and he's like, you sure you don't want to go to this golf game? I was like, I don't know, man. Like I'm really bad. I don't really enjoy it. And he was like, if you golf at all, you probably want to go to this golf game. I was like, it's like,
[29:51] uh i don't know now i'll pass like i think i just flown in or something anyway long story short it turns out he was uh he was playing with tiger woods the next day holy shit and and i was imagining like if i had gone oh yeah no that was a good call mark
[30:12] can embarrass yourself in front of Tiger Woods. I'm like kicking up like clumps of dirt, you know, in Tiger Woods' face. Oh God. It would have been fucking hysterical. But it's funny because that same manager told me, he was like, he was like, you know, cause it's so hard to get FaceTime with Will. He was like, you know, if you want to get FaceTime, you should pick up golf. And I actually, I went through a period where I'm like, okay, some of the most successful and interesting people I know love golf. Yeah.
[30:38] So let me try this. Let me like put some time into it. And I went golfing maybe four or five times and I hated every single second of it. I hated every swing. I hated every missed putt. And fuck that sport.
[30:55] It's really no fun when you don't drink too. Like, that's what I found. It's like bowling. It's not fun if you're not drinking. Even when I drink, I hated it. So anyway. So yeah, I think there's two levels to the activity thing. But I think it's just like you need to be aggressive on it. And I think you need to really pursue it. You know, you can't just kind of like show up to the pickleball court and expect to make friends. Like pick a group, go regularly, participate, sign up for things.
[31:24] et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Be patient. Cause it does take a long time in those settings, which that's, that's another good point is, um, you know, I think people will go to a group or go to an activity. Like they'll, they'll run into the same person three or four times and then kind of be like, well, you know, I'm still not friends with them yet. I really think to actually be friends with somebody most of the time, you probably need to be exposed like a dozen times at least.
[31:50] Every once in a while, you'll meet somebody and you just hit it off immediately and you're kind of instant friends. But in my experience, in most cases, you really need to run into people many, many times and slowly kind of build up to it. And then the last thing I have here is follow-up, which I'm terrible at, but text people, check in on them, follow up with them, ask them, you know, like here, so here's what I do. And this is wrong. This is what everybody should not do is like,
[32:16] I'll text somebody. I'll be like, hey, man, I'm doing this thing this weekend. You know, if you're around, it'd be cool to hang out. I'll get a reply. They're like, oh, sorry, dude, I'm traveling. I'm playing golf with Tiger Woods in Florida. And I'm like, okay. Like what happens, what I do, which is the wrong thing, is I go another month being like, damn, I wish I could have hung out with...
[32:36] So-and-so. That sucks. What I should do is the next week, I should text the same person and be like, hey, man, how was golf with Tiger Woods? Oh, I bet that was sick. And then think of something else to suggest, which I don't do that because I don't know, I'm lazy or something.
[32:52] Going back to your point too, though, about like you were saying your parents told you that they would go decades sometimes without seeing people and then reconnect with them. I've actually had that happen already with me too. There's a couple of people like from my childhood who I was good friends with, who I've reconnected with in the last several years just because I reached back out. So my follow-up game was weak for a few decades. And then, you know, I got...
[33:14] I got back to it and it's great. We've reconnected. We've been able to share our life stories with each other and what we've done since then. And we have a new friendship that's completely different, obviously, from when we were in preschool or whatever. But yeah, it's the follow up is it can it can happen over decades. I think the multi-decade follow up can work well with family as well. Yeah.
[33:33] I've had a couple of cousins that didn't went 20 years not talking to, and then we reconnected in our thirties and turns out we have a ton in common. Yeah. Including most of our families. So I'm getting to be really good friends with some of my uncles now too, which I really like as I get older. Yeah. I really like that.
[33:51] What did you have for this one? What should people do? You always talk about how you feel like your social life's in a good spot. So what is the Drew Bernie formula for friendship? Well, first of all, you have to be as cool and awesome as me. So I'm sorry if you're just not. No, that's... Give up, people. Just give up right now. It's over. Yeah.
[34:11] I, I think, I mean, I have the luxury, I think where, you know, I, I don't have kids and I don't have like significant relationships that I have to pour a lot of time into. So there's that, but, and so I have the luxury of leading with a lot of generosity with my time. Um, and just, you know, with listening to people and stuff like that. And I think that's a big one. Um, for me anyway, my, my friends have commented on that before that, like, um,
[34:35] I tend to lead with here. I'll help you with something. I, at the end of the day, I just, the way I see it, I'm like, what else is there to do in life, but help other people out? Like just lead with that. And importantly, not expecting anything in return. Like you're not doing this as this isn't a tactic, right? Like it's not a, it's not a way to manipulate people into liking you or anything like that, but just like, here, you need help with something. I can help you with that.
[35:01] And I think that goes a long ways. I think people remember those things. This one time, this one example that sticks out to me, and it's just a real pedestrian example, but I had a friend call me up one night. It was like on a Friday or Saturday night, and she was sick. She and another one of our friends, they lived in the same building, the same apartment building, and they both got sick pretty badly, and they needed some cough medicine or something like that, and they didn't want to leave their houses. And I was like, yeah, sure, I can...
[35:26] I can do that. No problem. And it was like a Friday or Saturday night still. But I was like, whatever, that's going to take me half an hour at the most, you know, dropped it off, just left it in front of the doors and left. A couple of weeks later, both of them were like, you were like the third or fourth person I called and everybody else said no, because they were doing something else or, you know, just didn't want to. And you actually showed up and did that. And I'm like, who the fuck says no to their sick friend? Just bring them some medicine. But I guess...
[35:53] If you just lead with that kind of mentality, I think that goes a long way with people. I don't know. That is true. I mean, I think about the friends that have stuck around. I mean, this is the other interesting thing is that I've consistently found throughout my life that it is hard to predict which friendships stick and which ones don't. Totally. But I definitely, when I look at the ones that stuck, a lot of them have been very generous to me over the years. I do have a question for you. What is a friend to you?
[36:22] What makes a friend, especially in adults? Because like, you know, kids, I think we have an idea of what that is. And it's probably a little simpler. Maybe not. I don't know. What makes a friend to you? It's an interesting question. I wrote an article years ago called The Levels of Friendship. And I would say, because I really see it as like they're kind of layers. And they're not...
[36:45] they build on top of one another, right? Like I would say the lowest layer, the most shallow or superficial is just an acquaintance. You know, somebody you bump into either at work or church or whatever you do. I'd say the second layer is somebody who you like have some really shared interest in and that you just genuinely enjoy talking to or being around. It can be something as simple as like a drinking buddy or a surfing buddy or a golfing buddy. But it's like somebody that you're like, oh yeah, I like that guy. Like you can go spend a few hours with them and enjoy your time.
[37:15] I would say the third level, you know, is when it starts to get a little bit deeper and more intimate. There's genuinely a little bit of emotional attachment to each other. Like you actually care if something good or bad happens to them, like deeply. Like if their mother dies or something, like you are genuinely upset for them.
[37:35] I think that usually comes along with understanding a little bit more about their lives, their history, their personality. You probably need to have been friends with them for at least a couple of years, at least for me. I don't know. Like sometimes sometimes I watch my wife and she seems to become like best friends with somebody in like two weeks. Yeah. And I'm like, what is that?
[38:01] How does that happen? But it's usually her with other Brazilian women. So I'm like, I think they're just like playing a completely different game than I'm playing. But yeah, I think that third level is like a real kind of emotional attachment. And then I would say there's even a fourth level, which is rarely gotten to, but...
[38:17] It's somebody who you have so much history with and have known for so long that it's almost like honorary family. You know, like there are a few people that I grew up with that I don't talk to frequently. But when I go home and I see them, it feels kind of like it's a very similar feeling as like visiting my brother. You know, I can like not talk to my brother for a year and then I go visit him and it's like, oh, yeah, it's my brother.
[38:46] I have a few childhood friends that have kind of are at that level, which is interesting because I think when you get to that level, you don't necessarily need the shared interests anymore. Like one of those friends, he and I have completely different lives and interests now. We have like almost nothing in common, but, but there's still that, that, that feeling or like that sense of brotherhood, I guess you would call it for lack of a better term.
[39:10] Yeah, I think what really fits in with that, I kind of came up with this, or I've kind of been toying with this for a while now. And I think friends, they, like real friends, when you get to that level, that those upper levels that you're talking about, they...
[39:24] hold, they hold contradictions, your contradictions, maybe even too, in some sort of balance for you. It's like, you know, they'll call you on your bullshit and they'll hold you accountable, but they'll also be there for you when you royally fuck up, when nobody else around you wants to be around you. Like that kind of thing. Or the one I thought of recently too was that they expect the most of you, but they don't expect anything from you.
[39:51] There's this weird, like they can hold these contradictions and all of the, all of your flaws and everything like that. They're way more forgiving. They know, they know your flaws probably better than you do even, and yet they're more forgiving of them. I, there's this weird kind of like place where you get with a select few friends that I think it's what you're talking about. It's beyond shared interest. It's beyond all of that kind of stuff.
[40:15] I would call it unconditionality, which is really, it's, I would say it reaches, it approaches a form of love, which is kind of like the, the honorary family member, right? Like you reach a point with very few people where you can actually not like them, but still feel a lot of affection for them. Whereas like if you kind of, the, the earlier stages of friendship, right?
[40:37] You know, if I start not liking my golf buddy or my surf buddy, I'm going to stop surfing with him. It's that simple. I'm just going to stop responding to his text. Whereas there are a handful of people in my life that even if I think they're annoying or even if I think they're doing something really dumb or self-destructing in some way, like, it doesn't really change how I feel about them.
[41:00] The same way as if like a family member is annoying or self-destructive in some way. It doesn't change my affection for them. So it is almost like it's like a platonic love, which the Greeks argued was actually the highest form of love.
[41:18] I don't remember if it was Plato or Aristotle who said that the love of two friends is actually the highest, the most pure form of love because it's not tainted with baggage that we get with our family members and romantic partners. Definitely. And people, when you ask them how important friendship is to a fulfilling life, people say it's very, very important. Like twice as many people will say that that's more important than marriage, than kids, than your job. It's friends.
[41:47] Absolutely. I mean, and the mental health data bears that out as well. Like you, there are millions of people in this world who are single and perfectly happy, living very happy, healthy lives. There is almost nobody in this world who has zero friendships and is happy and healthy. It's...
[42:07] It is more fundamental to our psychology, I think, romantic partners or marriage partners. Yet, I think if you look at people's behavior, most people tend to sacrifice friendships for their romantic partnerships or their pursuit of some sort of partnership. So I do think people have it backwards. I think they tend to underestimate friendship and overestimate romance. I agree.
[42:30] That gets into another episode. Any final words of wisdom, Drew Bernie, so that the rest of us can be as cool as you and be invited to children's birthday parties? I'll leave you with the wisdom of old man Bernie and my dad. He said, if you want a friend, be a friend.
[42:49] It doesn't get any simpler or profound than that. All right, everybody. Be a friend to the podcast. Please follow and review the show. Drew and I are hoping to move to two episodes a week soon. So you will get more of us in your ear holes. But following and reviewing the show is the best thing you can do to support us. Helps us get better guests. It helps us with the algorithms. It just makes our lives better.
[43:18] much easier and makes us feel loved, which ultimately, aren't we all just trying to feel loved, Drew? We are. We are. I'll leave you with that. Thank you, friends. I'll leave you, I'll leave you with that fellow listener. Until next week. See you guys.

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