Pete's Log: Friendship

Entry #2031, (Books, Writing, n such, Life in General)
(posted when I was 43 years old.)

I just finished "We Need to Hang Out: A Memoir of Making Friends" by Billy Baker. I hadn't heard of it before, but I spotted it at Barnes and Noble some time ago and it spoke to me. It's about loneliness and maintaining friendships in middle age, particularly from a male perspective.

For the most part, I enjoyed it. The events and research that went into the book occurred primarily before the pandemic, but he finished it up as the pandemic was starting, so he does include some thoughts on that topic. It alternates between the big picture—current science and studies—and Baker's own experiences, focused on trying to improve his own friendship situation.

The latter was entertaining but perhaps not entirely relevant to me, as it sounds like Billy Baker and I probably have fairly different personality types. But I think that's OK. One thing I admired was how vulnerable he let himself be, both in terms of his efforts to improve his own situation, as well as by writing about it.

There was much about the book that was interesting, entertaining, or insightful, but I wanted to note the points I've taken away from it that I think are particularly helpful to my own situation.

Friendships are important

I guess I already knew that, though, or I wouldn't have bought the book in the first place.

But I guess it's more specific than that, it's that friendships outside of family life are important. I don't actually ever feel lonely with Jamie and JB and Boogie around, but there are important reasons to maintain friendships outside of that.

This book won't tell me what to do

This is the only quote I wrote down from the book: [W]e’ve never had more peer-reviewed “expertise,” yet we’ve never had more people who feel such a disconnect.

I think it's important to acknowledge that neither the experts nor this book can give me answers on this topic, just ideas at best.

Shoulder to Shoulder

I'm not generally a fan of generalizations, but this book repeatedly mentioned one that resonates with me. It says men don't talk face to face. They talk shoulder to shoulder while doing something together. There are whole movements apparently based on this idea. I think it is mostly true of me.

I always have grand ambitions of how I'm going to be better at staying in touch. And I'm just not very good at it. But there are some exceptions. Two of my most important friendships are currently maintained primarily by StarCraft. Sure, the StarCraft is fun, but I don't play StarCraft for the StarCraft. I play StarCraft to talk with Branden and Brian. Would I talk to them as much as I do without the StarCraft? Maybe not, even though I would want to.

Beyond that, my social life has over the years often centered on either board games, team sports, or both. It's why I'm so excited to have been playing pickup soccer these past few months. It's good to have something to do "shoulder to shoulder" ... metaphorically, at least.

So I think the lesson is I shouldn't get as down on myself for being bad at staying in touch. Instead, I should find better ways to be shoulder to shoulder. What can be the StarCraft of any given friendship?

It's OK to be vulnerable

I'm not very good at that. To the extent that I've written and deleted several paragraphs on the topic and can't get myself to share any of them. So I guess I'll leave it at that for now.

It's always going to take effort

Many of the things Baker tried didn't work. Or only worked for a short span of time. Many of them are things I personally probably wouldn't even try. But there is a hopeful takeaway that just being more aware of it goes a long way towards improving things.

So as time goes on and we got booster shots and toddler shots and start traveling again and doing more things and then school starts and on and on, I'll just try to be more aware. And until those things come, well, I'll try to keep playing StarCraft and soccer.