How to Make Friends as an Adult, Solved

Welcome back everybody to The Solve Podcast, the most over-researched and under-rehearsed podcast on the internet. I'm number one New York Times bestselling author Mark Manson, and this is my co-host, lead researcher, longtime acquaintance. Drew, Bernie. And we are here to be your friends for the next few hours. You see what I did there, Drew? I do see what you did there. All right. Am I clever? Was that a good intro? Was I clever enough?

on that intro? I think we hooked him in. Okay, yeah. Are you hooked yet, audience? Do you need two friends for the next five hours? well we've got the podcast for you uh in all seriousness drew i'm actually very excited for this episode for two reasons one reason is i think friendship is probably The most important topic that is talked about least. I 100% agree with that. Absolutely. If there was like a ratio of importance to discussion, I think friendship would be.

maybe the highest romantic relationships get all the airtime yeah and yeah physical health mental health uh happiness like everything like your social life drives so much of all these things we're going to be talking about it And on top of that, it's a huge problem these days. There's some scary stats that I know we're going to talk about later, but just a few to like, just the...

wet the beak of the listener. The number of people without a close friend has quadrupled in the last 30 years. The amount of time the average person spends alone has grown by 25% and the amount of time that they spend socializing has dropped by 60% in the last 20 years. 20% of adults report feeling lonely on a daily basis, which is an all-time high. So yeah, this is a problem. It's like a very, very real problem. And you and I, we've been creating content in this industry for...

15 plus years at this point i remember there was a time where we used to do friendship content and it would just kind of bomb because nobody cared and we've really noticed in the last two or three years and it's it's starting to get a lot of traction because i think a lot of people are feeling

isolated, they're feeling alone, and they're feeling lost as to how to actually build and maintain friendships. So we're going to get into all that. And then the second reason I'm excited for this is purely selfish, which is...

I need friends. I need more friends. Oh, we're going to get into that. I need more friends. You know, that sounds kind of pathetic when I say it that way. But in all seriousness, I think... this has been an unexpected challenge i'm middle-aged now and um i this was never a problem throughout my life i always had a good circle of friends and i would say really in the last uh

five to eight years this has become a pain point it just it feels harder to maintain uh friendships it feels harder to make friends good friends uh and i'm not I have not entirely been sure why that is. I've had some theories. And prepping for this episode is – there's been some interesting realizations, which we will definitely talk about. We're going to dig into all of that. Yes. So yeah, we might just end up –

Maybe we'll pull a couch in here in the studio and I'll lay down and we can just have a little Mark Manson therapy session. Oh, God. So friendship is incredibly important. I think people underrate its importance for a lot of reasons. I think it's the water we swim in in a lot of cases. It's not as sexy. You mentioned romantic relationships. It's not as sexy or emotionally dramatic as romantic relationships.

It's not as practical and tangible as say like career development or improving your productivity. But ultimately it is maybe the highest leverage.

part of your life in terms of mental and physical and emotional well-being right i'd also say too there's not a lot of like there's there's not a lot of social structure like there is for relationships there's not all these scripts there's not you know yes clearly defined ways of how you go about these relationships so yeah it's a very murky area well and we i think one of the reasons for we've already

kind of tripped over it, which is like, I made a joke earlier about like, I need friends. I immediately felt like a loser when I made that joke. And I think this is part of the problem is that people don't feel at liberty. uh there's like a certain amount of shame attached to it that if like if you need help making friends or if you feel like you don't have any friends uh there's just like this intense

self-judgment that happens. And so you don't want to speak up about it. So some of the things that we're going to cover in this episode, we're going to talk about the three factors that lead the friendship formation and then how to find them.

maximize them as much as possible we talk about how to be a good friend and the difference between a healthy friendship and a toxic friendship and how to know which ones your friends might be We're gonna talk about how to maintain friendships over the long term as well as how to reconnect with old friendships that maybe you've lost touch with. And then we're gonna talk quite a bit about the modern challenges to friendship.

from smartphones and remote work and social media to also just kind of broader social and cultural dynamics. You know, the modern education system and the lack of family formation and the decline in religiosity, like all of these things I think have very real effects and impact on the lack of friendship that's happening or the lack of social life. We'll talk about the highest leverage practices to build and maintain a fruitful social life and of course, much, much more.

Now, if you're new to the Solve podcast, our whole thing is we take one topic and we just dive so ridiculously deep into it that the goal is that once you listen to this podcast, you will never have to listen to anything ever again. And we believe so strongly in this that we have an agreement with ourselves that once we cover a topic, we can never go back to it. So the idea is that this podcast is so comprehensive and so full of all the relevant and useful information.

that you don't have to go back to it and we don't have to go back to it. As a result... It's very dense and it's very long. Generally speaking, the first half of each solved episode goes deep into the theory and concepts and all the information you need to understand.

about the topic and then the back half of the episode is where the actionable advice is the practical takeaways the examples the exercises the tips most people as they listen to the podcast they listen to it over multiple sessions they like to take notes We provide a PDF guide that summarizes everything that we talk about in the show. It has all of our citations, all the research, all the references, resources to read further. You can download that for free at solvepodcast.com slash friendship.

It's all there for you, folks. There's no excuses. And, I mean, really, Drew, it's not about the podcast itself. It's about the friends we made along the way. Well, I... As one of those hopeful friends, as a very familiar acquaintance with you, I can't get over... You have a soft curl hanging down from here. And I can't look at anything but that. No, keep going. It's still there. It's still there. Can you give it a, give it a, there we go. There we go. Hair diversion aside. Let's get into it.

So I actually want to start at an interesting and maybe unexpected place on this topic, which is Darwin. So everybody's familiar with Darwin's theory of natural selection. What they don't realize is that there was something that kept Darwin up at night. Quite literally. It was something that vexed him very deeply, bothered him, and he struggled with throughout his entire career, and he never solved it. And that essentially was, how do you explain friendship?

The whole idea behind natural selection, survival of the fittest, each person's genetics is looking out for its own survival and replication. That makes sense. Even something like... parents helping a child or children taking care of a sibling, from a genetic point of view, that also makes sense. You share 50% of your genetics with your brother, so it makes sense that you would feel some sort of...

desire to help your brother or help your kin. Although in a lot of species, there is no such thing as family. It's just every creature for themselves. What Darwin could not figure out is... Why are there hundreds and hundreds of species, from insects to bats to birds to humans, that consistently help other creatures that are not genetically related to them? It makes no sense.

And while Darwin was very confident and kind of cocky about this issue publicly, we know from his private letters that it bothered him very deeply to the point where he even wrote to a friend that he believed that if...

Anything could unravel his theory and his work entirely. It was his inability to answer this question. So this question, this problem persisted in science for- over a century and it actually didn't really get answered until the 1980s and it got answered in a very unexpected and kind of strange place which is game theory and political science so

By the time the 1970s rolled around, game theory had emerged and I think everybody's probably at least heard of or is loosely familiar with the idea of a prisoner's dilemma. A simple example of a prisoner's dilemma is drew and i have to prepare for a podcast now i have two choices i can either do no preparation and hope drew does all the preparation or i can do my part of the preparation

and hope Drew does his as well. Now, if Drew and I both prepare for the podcast, the podcast will be better. If I don't prepare for the podcast that Drew does, the podcast will probably still be good. And guess what? I didn't have to do anything. But if Drew is thinking the same thing as me and neither of us prepares for the podcast, well, it's going to be a very long day in studio Mark Manson. Let's just put it that way.

You get these prisoner dilemma situations between selfishness and cooperation that show up all the time. Game theorists love to come up with different strategies and simulations of what is the optimal decision making. to make in these sorts of scenarios. You can attach different value amounts to each outcome and then you can kind of calculate out like what the optimal decision making or strategy is in any given situation. Now by the 1970s,

kind of a new way of thinking about this emerged, which was called iterative prisoner's dilemma. So generally speaking, if you are in a prisoner's dilemma in a single instance, a selfish behavior is... probably higher expected value because it's like if i invest nothing in the podcast and i believe

you have a 50 chance of of doing the work for the podcast 50 of the time i still get a podcast for no effort and the other 50 of the time i just get nothing but i also invest in nothing it generally is going to work out in my favor but what researchers found is that if you run the same

prisoner's dilemma over and over and over again. Drew and I do 10 podcasts together, 20 podcasts together. So now if I defect and decide not to prep for the episode, well, then maybe next episode, Drew... is like well fuck mark i'm not going to prep for this either and now it hurts both of us uh and so what you tended to see is that when you ran the prisoner's dilemma multiple times over a long period of time it made more sense to be more cooperative

the other interesting thing about the iterative prisoner's dilemma is that researchers noticed that this was kind of a microcosm of society in general right like There's a tension within all of us in many situations of doing what's good for ourselves versus doing what's good for the group. Maybe in isolation, we pick the selfish action. But the fact that we have to repeatedly see the same people over and over and over again...

means that we develop a reputation and people remember what our choices were in the past. Now what's interesting about the iterative prisoner's dilemma is that researchers came up with different strategies. So one strategy could be

always cooperate it's like no matter what drew does i always prepare for the podcast no matter what another strategy is always the fact no matter what drew does i never prepare for the podcast There's a strategy that researchers came up with called the Grimm Trigger, which is basically...

I prepare for the podcast until Drew doesn't. And then as soon as he doesn't, I never prepare for it ever again, which is, you could see this as like the person who holds a grudge, right? It's like, I'll cooperate with you. But then as soon as you screw me over.

fuck you, buddy. I'm never cooperating with you again. Some of these strategies got very elaborate. There was one called A. Pavlov that took a long string of past... uh actions from from the other person in the prisoner's dilemma and and ran all sorts of probabilistic models and stuff to calculate what the highest expected value action was in the next iteration of the prisoner's dilemma

So researchers like really went ham on this in the 70s. So there was a political scientist in 1980 named Robert Axelrod. And he had a really clever idea. He devised a... computer simulation that created a tournament to pit these prisoner dilemma strategies against each other to determine which one created the most value.

And he reached out to some of the most brilliant mathematicians, economists, computer scientists from all over the world, and he had them work on strategies for months and then submit them into the competition. to see which one would perform the best. He ended up with 62 submissions from researchers all around the world, and he ran his simulation. And to everybody's surprise, the strategy that won consistently was maybe the simplest strategy of all.

which is known as tit for tat, which is basically whatever Drew does, I'll respond in kind. So if Drew preps for the podcast, I'm going to prep for the podcast. And if Drew says, fuck the podcast. I'm going to say fuck the podcast. In evolutionary biology, this is known as reciprocal altruism, which is basically like I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Reciprocal altruism is in many ways like our innate sense of justice.

right like it's if somebody does something nice for you you are just naturally inclined to want to do something nice for them and if somebody hurts you or breaks your trust in some way you're naturally inclined to want to get back at them in some way But if that same person who hurt you or broke your trust comes back and apologizes and then does something nice for you, you're like, oh, they're not such a bad guy. Let me be nice to them again. So it's –

Basically what Axelrod's tournament showed is that this reciprocation of cooperation is evolutionarily advantageous. It is the most optimal strategy for a community. It basically solves Darwin's problem. It shows that friendship, building friendship and trust and cooperation within a group of people over a long period of time is the most evolutionarily adaptive strategy. it promotes the most survival not only for the individual but potentially for the whole group as well

Yeah. I want to dig into this just a little bit more because I dug into this because this is fascinating. I love this shit. And it was actually, so it was this program where it was submitted by a psychologist, not a computer programmer. Yeah. Okay. I believe it was Anatole Rappaport who submitted it.

It was four lines of code. Four? Four lines. Okay. I looked it up. I could even understand the code. I don't program. I'm not a programmer. Wow. And I could understand the code. It was four lines of code. And one little detail I think you missed there was that. Actually, the strategy is cooperate first. Yes, I forgot that. If you go first, cooperate. Cooperate first. And then copy whatever the other one did. That's tit for tat, right?

And it was so simple. There was these huge programs that people wrote, right? These huge computer programs. Very complicated. They spent months on it. Statistical models that they used, everything like that. And a psychologist came along and wrote four lines of code and it... By far. Blew everybody out of the water. In these iterative competitions. And it's crazy because they actually ran the competition twice. So the first round they ran, they had 14 models. And tit for tat won.

And everybody kind of looked at it and they're like, no, that's too simple. And they're like, oh, I'm going to beat this now. Yeah. And they're like, no, let's run it again. And let's run it with way more. Let's go get way smarter people and run it with way more models. And then they like did the second round with 62 models.

tit for tat one again yes uh so it is sometimes simplicity is is the most effective uh in the most optimal and so essentially what this tit for tat strategy tells us is that uh

Friendship is an evolutionary technology. It is something that we adopted for our survival. The emotional attachment that we feel to individuals, the mutual pleasant feelings the the desire to help somebody who's helped us to support somebody who's has supported us uh this is extremely innate it's it's not only in our nature it's in the nature of thousands of species around the world

it's it's like such a fundamental aspect of our not even psychology but biology um that like we literally rely on it for everything now not to nerd out too much but some of these evolutionary benefits. In the emotions podcast, we talked about how one view of human relationships is that it is co-regulation of each other's nervous system. I think that's one way of looking at a social friendship. That is what we experience as emotional support is this kind of

merging of our nervous systems through communication and the sharing of emotional stimulus with somebody else. Friendships were the original information networks. It's the way like if you think about what cooperation is it is building trust it's building the belief that what you have done in the past you are also going to do in the future

And if I trust that you are going to do the things in the future that you say you're gonna do It also means that I probably trust the information that you have that I don't have you don't only have to rely on the knowledge that you gained from your personal experience you can now rely on the knowledge of all the people that you trust and that you have relationships around you um it allows for risk pooling which is basically a kind of a

fancy way of saying it's like an insurance policy. The original insurance policy. The original insurance policy. A simple example is like, you know, if I'm by myself, let's say we were like cavemen and I'm by myself and I want to go hunt.

giant elephant or something that could potentially feed me for a month but it's very high risk and if I fail then maybe we don't have food for a week you know if i'm by myself that's a hugely risky proposition if i'm in a tribe of 30 or 40 other people who are also hunting and gathering their own sources of food and they're willing to share it with me that suddenly liberates me to take that big risk

uh to go hunt that elephant and then you know maybe i bring if i successfully hunt the elephant then i bring it back for the tribe and so not only do we pull the risk but we also share in the rewards together and really just collective action

In many cases, you get the whole is greater than the sum of the parts type of dynamic, right? So in technological and scientific discoveries, generally speaking, you know, Newton has that famous... quote where he said if i've seen further it's because i stood on the shoulders of giants um you know generally speaking nobody discovers anything in a vacuum on their own it's by collating and combining and recombining and remixing

information and creativity and thoughts from a wide range of people that you make profound discoveries. I've always found it super interesting that you tend to see major breakthroughs throughout history whether it's in like science or technology or business or or even like political revolutions there's always clusters of people that show up together like it's never just a lone wolf right who

makes this massive discovery. Like in the 17th century England, with all the early scientific discoveries, it was the Royal Society in London.

um you know in the 18th century you had all the founding fathers in the united states a lot of the great physicists and uh breakthroughs around uh nuclear energy and quantum mechanics like they were all they're all refugees from world war ii living in the united states together and teaching at the same two or three universities and so you had people like john von neumann and claude shannon

like hanging out at lunch just like shooting the shit about like hey i was thinking about this thing recently and you know sure enough you get all these like world changing breakthroughs happening in succession over and over again from from the same group of friends, essentially. Silicon Valley today. Yeah, that's a perfect example. That's another great example. The last thing I want to point out, which I guess is just...

It's appropriate, and maybe this kind of foreshadows a future episode that we do, but there's a little bit of a tragedy in all of this, which we've decided to call the tragedy of the nice guy, which is that the nice guy finishes last. Basically, the prisoner dilemma strategy of always cooperating gets you smoked. Like you just get wrecked. You get exploited.

cheaters liars take advantage of you um you get punished i think this just raises the point that friendship uh it requires that tit for tat dynamic right like if your friend is disrespectful or an asshole to you, you need to be able to stand up for yourself. You need to be able to put down a boundary and say, hey man, that's not cool. Don't do that again. Otherwise, that friendship quickly turns into exploitation.

turns into a toxic friendship, which we're gonna get to later in the episode. And so I just think it's interesting that even in this like super nerdy, abstract, theoretical, game theory computer simulation. You get the basics of human boundaries and the dynamics of what a healthy relationship is versus a toxic relationship. Right.

I want to put just one little finer point on that too, because there was, I dug into this a little bit more even too. There was a later version of Tip for Tat called Generous Tip for Tat. I think it was called Generous Tip for Tat or something like that. copying what the other person did that's you know if they defect then you're just going to defect right but then um they threw one more line of code in there later that said

kind of put a little bit of a randomness variable in there that even if the other person defected, like a very small percentage of the time, you would kind of forgive them and cooperate back. And that one did even better. Oh, wow. Put a pin in that because that's going to come up a little bit later too. Okay. So there's a generosity aspect to it too and a forgiveness aspect to it that it can even be programmed into a line of code. The thing this reminded me of this point.

You know, we still haven't done a relationships episode, which don't worry, audience. We will definitely do multiple relationships episodes. But I remember, you know, John Gottman, who's him and his wife are like... pretty much the preeminent researchers on romantic relationships, long-term relationships, and the quality of those relationships. It reminded me he has this concept of bids. So when he analyzes married couples,

one of the ways that he analyzes them is uh in measuring what he calls like bids for affection he says that like married couples will make these bids in all in mostly subtle ways right so it could be something as simple as like if i'm If I'm sitting on the couch and my wife comes and sits down next to me and she just puts her hand on my leg, you know, do I lean into her? Do I look over? Do I give her attention? Do I, like, smile at her? Or do I just...

completely ignore her and keep playing my video game or whatever. Generally, what he found is that bids are, in healthy couples, bids are reciprocated the vast majority of the time. Anytime either partner kind of reaches out to the other partner for just a small bit of attention or affection, it's reciprocated. And it reminded me of this tit for hat thing, because what he also found is that generally in unhappy or unhealthy relationships, you see those bids go.

unreciprocated or in some cases even punished and again it's just it's interesting that like such an abstract theoretical game theoretical model of evolution right like explains probably the most sophisticated and important relationship research that we have on like why married couples stay together or get divorced. So I thought that was super cool as well. And I, you know.

This is some nerdy shit. Dude, we are deep in the nerd zone. For sure. It's absolutely fascinating, though, that these simple principles apply to very complex relationships. So that's like the scientific and theoretical foundation. Let's get into what friendship actually looks like throughout history, how it's been defined, and what that means in the modern world.

So the word friend is a Proto-Germanic word. I'm going to totally butcher this. Freon. That sounds right. But the word Freon comes from basically ancient... prehistoric germanic uh and it literally means one who is free to love so the the free is actually still is the word free that's where we get the word free and then i guess the yawns is the um i think it's the active verb of like

a person who is loving okay so it's like a person who is free to love so encapsulated in this word is everything that defines a friendship now what's interesting about these prehistoric germanic communities is that they would they used to sit in circles around the fire and all the slaves had to sit outside the circle and so the word freons was meant was reserved for the people who were in the circle it was literally the people who were free

to love you or love whoever, right? So there was a status component attached to it from these Germanic tribes, which we're going to come back to this. Okay, interesting. Put a pin in this.

So across pretty much all ancient traditions, friendship is seen as both a moral good, a virtue, and also seen as something, a path to spirituality. So from ancient Greece to the Bhagavad Gita, You see ancient texts extolling the virtues of friendship, how friendship is one of the most valuable and important things that you can experience in your life.

and then from everything from christianity to sikhism to islam you see people talking about how friendship is a path to god himself that to freely love somebody to unconditionally have positive effect or regard for another human being is in essence, holiness, spiritual attainment, path to enlightenment.

whatever you want to call it. It is one of the few concepts that is universally lauded and seen as a good thing cross-culturally, across history and time, across the world. There was one ancient philosopher who Really nailed it. And for those of you who have been listening to the show for a while, I'm going to give you one guess who it was. Starts with an A, ends with an Aristotle. Once again.

Aristotle fucking nailed it, as he usually did. So in the Nicomachian Ethics, Aristotle differentiated between three different types of friendships. So you had utility-based friendship, you had pleasure-based friendship, and then you had virtue-based friendship. So utility-based friendship is relatively obvious. You and another person have a shared interest in common. You can help each other achieve that shared interest. So this could be...

Maybe a coworker that you get along really well with or somebody who shares the same hobby as you. I remember I had a friend who moved to Austin maybe like 10 years ago. And it was interesting because his wife was really having...

a hard time making friends, she would keep meeting these women and hanging out with them and was very frustrated that she didn't seem to get along with any of them. And this buddy of mine, like he seemed to have no problem. And I remember talking to him. I was like, why do you think that is? And he was like, well.

I'm going to be honest, I think I just have lower standards. And I said, I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, you know, my wife, like, she kind of wants her friends to be a good person and... be a good mother and have like the same hobbies and be excited about the same things and listen to the same music. And he's like, honestly, man, I just like to work on cars and I don't really care if my buddy is like.

a shitty father or not as long as he's good at working on cars i'm i'm gonna hang out with him probably something to that yes yes and we we will probably discuss that i'm sure we're gonna come back to that yeah but I think that's a nice illustration of the difference between, say, a virtue-based friendship versus a utility or pleasure-based friendship. I have poker buddies. I never see them outside of poker.

I never really talked to him much outside of poker. I don't really have anything in common with them outside of poker, but we like to play poker. So, you know, we're poker buddies. I think everybody.

kind of intuitively has something like that there's pleasure-based friendships which as somebody who was a big party boy when he was younger i can definitely relate to this uh in fact i would say that i think maybe a common mistake that young people make is they mistake pleasure-based friendships for virtue-based friendships they assume that because they have tons and tons of fun with somebody

And they do a bunch of cool things with that person that they must be very close and intimate. And it turns out that actually those two things are not the same thing. And then finally, you get the virtue-based friendships, which...

Aristotle said a virtue-based friendship is long-term, it's enduring, and it is based on an inherent respect for the character of the other person. That basically it's not just a person that you... enjoy being around that you have fun with that you have shared interests with but you actually see them as an admirable and good person and you are happy to spend time with them or do things for them

simply for the sake of doing something for them. And Aristotle considered this one of the highest experiences in life. He saw virtue friendships as some of the most meaningful and enriching. relationships that we could have. It's funny because it's in many ways the ancient Greeks probably correctly put friendship above romantic relationships in a lot of senses.

They really saw something sacred and very profound about like a deep enduring friendship like that. Now what's interesting about Aristotle's model is that it's kind of like a layer cake. Like you kind of need the utility, like the utility is the entry point, right? Like you need to have a shared interest with somebody to kind of open the door, to have enough curiosity to find out if you like hanging out with them or not. And then.

You have to enjoy hanging out with a person to really get to know them well enough to really understand that, is this a person, do I admire their character? Are they a really impressive human being? Would I like to learn from this person? Would I like to identify with this person, belong to the same group as this person? So each level kind of opens the door to the next level. Like they're not mutually exclusive. Like generally speaking, a virtue friendship.

has all of these going on simultaneously and then the last thing that that aristotle well not the last thing aristotle said but the last thing i'm going to talk about in regards to aristotle is um that is i think is very important and it's going to come up a lot in this episode, is that Aristotle made two points. He basically said the first two levels of friendship, the utility and the pleasure, are inherently transactional.

you know it's like if we are if we only hang out because we play poker together the minute you stop playing poker i am probably not going to see you anymore right and similarly uh a lot of my party friends back in the day As soon as I stopped partying, I didn't really have anything in common with them anymore, right? So I didn't spend any time. Aristotle said that there's nothing wrong with that inherently. Like, there's nothing wrong with a transactional relationship with somebody.

He just argued that as long as the transaction is, there's a proportionality between the transactionalness of the friendship, then it's okay. And this comes back to the tit for tat thing, right? Like it's as long as. both of you are getting some sort of benefit out of the friendship, things are fine. I'm happy to have a poker buddy that I only play poker with, right? I'm happy to have a party friend that I really only go party with.

it's okay there's nothing wrong with that it only becomes a problem if say like i'm always the one inviting the friend to the party and they're never inviting me to anything And they're coming to my house and drinking all my booze and never bringing a bottle of wine. And, you know, it's like it's only when when there becomes an imbalance in the proportionality of who's contributing to the relationship that these friendships break down.

And again, back to the tit for tat thing, it's kind of the breakdown of that tit for tat dynamic. Yeah. There was a parallel, too, in Confucianism as well. So Confucius outlined the five relationships of human nature, basically. And friendship was one of them. All the others had a hierarchy to them. Yes. Right? But friendship.

was considered the only relationship where there were equals, or at least some balance there that he was talking about. But yeah, God, Aristotle nailed it, though, didn't he? Yeah. You took my next point. Because the interesting thing is that Aristotle's point was that with virtue, The virtuous friendship becomes non-transactional. You start doing things unconditionally for each other. Maybe your buddy is going through a hard time and it's always you inviting them out.

And you're covering, you know, you're buying him dinner and you're like helping him move into his new place. Yeah. And it's kind of one sided. But you also understand like, hey, this is a really good friend and I care about them. And. know we're gonna one day it's gonna be me on the other side and like it doesn't matter right because i i love them i care about them i want i wish them the best and it has like the transactional nature of this is gone at this point aristotle is like that's the

beauty of the virtuous friendship, but Aristotle said that for a virtuous friendship to exist, there could be no status dynamic. There could be no hierarchy. Nobody could feel like one person is better or superior than the other.

And this is a very important point. It's the same point Confucius made. It's a very important point. And I think we're going to come back to it because Aristotle's argument would be that as soon as there's a status dynamic, as soon as there's like a higher status person and a low status person, the relationship...

is kind of forced into becoming somewhat transactional. Like it's kind of impossible to make the relationship entirely unconditional and just due to power dynamics within the relationship. So would you say then, Mark, that you say—

What you're saying when you say you don't have as many friends as you would like, it's these friendships of virtue. Because I think you do talk about friends all the time. And you're like, oh yeah, my surfing buddies. This is what you do. You say, oh yeah, my surfing buddies, my poker buddies, my go-to-dinner party buddies that I have right now.

That's what you're talking about when you say- I think so. I think it's a scarcity of virtuous friendships, although it's funny because I do have a lot of virtuous friendships. Part of the problem, and we'll get to this, this will definitely come up. in one of the next sections. The part of the problem is that all my really good friends live in completely different places. So it's like I have half a dozen great friends that I really love and I see them all once a year.

Sucks. We'll talk about that very soon, Mark. We'll talk all about that. Yeah, so we'll come to that. So in terms of modern psychology, psychologists have identified... really kind of three ingredients of what makes a friendship a friendship like what's the difference between say a friendship and an acquaintance or a friendship you know a friend and i don't know somebody a colleague or somebody that you see

all the time around the neighborhood. And they define it as basically, number one is there's reciprocity. So both people are putting in effort to spend time together, to do things for each other, to share things about one another. there's trust uh so you obviously you you trust that this person has your best interest or isn't trying to fuck you over or lie to you doesn't have an angle or something right

And then number three is there's intimacy. So there's self-disclosure. I mean, intimacy sounds like a heavy word. In this context, it's not. It literally just means self-disclosure. Like you're willing and able to openly talk about yourself. Not necessarily everything about yourself, but like...

You are sharing personal information with this person and they are sharing personal information with you. So those are like the three defining aspects of a friendship. So to come back to the proto-Germanic word of like somebody who's free to love or these two.

these two let's call them let's call them the two disruptors uh for the episode so the the transactional nature or the lack of proportionality right it's like a friendship that's one-sided or somebody who is really just trying to get something from the other person uh and then the uh the equality the status equality so if you take these three ingredients of friendship and then we kind of return to this idea that

Generally, to function, friendships need to be at least proportional, if not non-transactional or kind of unconditional. If you think about a...

very transactional relationship or a disproportionate relationship it generally involves one person who is always taking and the other person is always giving um that breaks the reciprocity that's going to interfere with trust and it basically puts conditions around intimacy so it's like if in our relationship like you're always giving and i'm just always trying to take as much as i can get from you

it's going to create incentives for you to be very careful about what you share with me and maybe like not always be honest, maybe not always tell me what's going on. Similarly, if there's a status hierarchy, if there is like some sort of imbalance in the relationship. um it can create trust issues it can create reciprocity issues the disruption of those two things can also interfere with with uh people's ability to be intimate and honest with each other so

I do think it is worth noting that both of these things, the kind of unconditionality and the status equality, these are subjective. These are completely perceptual. I think I've mentioned maybe briefly on the old podcast, but like when my career blew up, one of the things that happened that was a little surprising and also upsetting, some of my friendships got weird after that.

And I think looking back, all of the people it got weird with were generally men. They were generally people who attached a lot of their self-esteem and... self-worth to status particularly like money and career acclaim and i think for them you know if i'm doing super well that then like now they perceive us on different, like there's a hierarchy now and then that interrupts our ability to have intimacy, to reciprocate to one another and to have trust. On the other hand, like.

I had tons of friends who didn't really give a shit. They're like, good for you, dude. That's awesome. And they're like, are you going to pay for this beer? Are you fucking cheapskate? Nothing changed. Absolutely nothing. A lot of it is subjective. A lot of it is kind of perceptual. And people tend to, when it comes to the status equality thing, like a lot of people will project their own assumptions and like.

One of the things I've always said is that we tend to measure others the way we measure ourselves. So it's like if I have attached my self-esteem to some certain metric. Let's say I base all my self-esteem on being an amazing golfer and you joined the PGA. That's probably going to freak me out.

It's going to cause all sorts of complications and I'm going to get weird around you and start being anxious and start second guessing the things I say to you. And then as soon as that starts happening, it's almost impossible to have a genuine friendship. Right. It is by definition transactional. Yeah.

no i i love that you're pointing out the the subjective nature of this too because i think there are a lot of people who want to try to objectify that balance um so when i said that you know confucius said that this was an equal There was no hierarchy in the friendship, right? Ideally, there is none. Well, maybe objectively there is in some way or another. Like with all of my friends, I'm sure there's certain friends of mine who I've helped.

with certain things that they've never repaid i'm not sitting here keeping tabs on that subjectively it feels like we're still very equal though because i get a lot of reward in return for helping them or for them doing other things or whatever it is. So it's, it is like, I just want to highlight, it's a very subjective thing and don't try to objectify it. It's funny cause it's, you know, studying this aspect of it and thinking like.

It really started to make sense to me why celebrities are only friends with other celebrities and only date other celebrities, right? Because if you're Kim Kardashian or whatever. Every room you walk into there is such a massive status disparity that you can it's almost impossible to have like a genuine friendship or relationship with anybody new you meet unless they're relatively on your level right and and yeah a lot of like theoretically you could say like well you know

she could that she could just choose to not see herself that way or the people around her could choose to not see her that way and like sure yeah sometimes like on the margins there you're gonna have situations like that but like by and large it's just easier to just go find the other celebrities and you don't have to deal with any of this bullshit. You also see something similar with like rich people tend to hang out with other rich people. Athletes tend to hang out with other athletes.

you know like humans were naturally drawn to people similar to us both in terms of what were our interests right friends of utility but also status you know so it's it's like Pro golfers probably want to hang out with other pro golfers. Real estate tycoons probably want to hang out with other real estate tycoons. Like it's just, and not only because you have similar interests, but also like, hey, this is a peer. Like this is somebody who's going to get what I go through.

They're not going to like put me on a pedestal or I'm not going to put them on a pedestal. Yeah, I guess what I'm getting at, I guess, is there really ever a true balance in the relationship though?

You know what I mean? Yeah, because like I think it probably like kind of hangs around an average, you know, goes back and forth a little bit. Probably. You know what I mean? Probably. Like there's imbalance in a relationship at one point and then it might swing back a little bit the other way and it kind of goes.

And everybody's comfortable with that imbalance too at the same time. You know what I mean? I mean, we'll talk about toxic friendships later, but I do think this is where, you know, your self-worth really, like generally speaking, people who have a terrible self-worth.

have terrible friendships and i think a big reason of it is that um yeah people with a terrible self-worth they see a status imbalance in every relationship they have and so every relationship becomes transactional and they're trying to compensate and they try to compensate they try to impress people they try to manipulate people and it creates a very ugly unhealthy dynamic constantly trying to prove themselves in some way or show how friendly or yeah exactly

And so there's like, I guess there's kind of an unhealthy status dynamic there, like where that subjectivity works against you. And then I think there's just the reality, right? Like it's funny because it's writing Will Smith's book. Like I really noticed this hanging around him. I actually started to feel bad because I'm like, how does this guy make friends? Every room he walks into, people just start screaming and crying and laughing. And he's immediately the center of all the time. You can't.

How do you have a friend after that? So it just, I think some of it too is just circumstances and human nature. One, okay, it wouldn't also be a solved episode if we didn't talk about Nietzsche a little bit. Yes. And Nietzsche was like a real – he was all about – correct me if I'm wrong here, but he was all about – friendships are actually a little more adversarial in a way. Like they challenge you. For instance, Mark, what the fuck are you wearing today?

I feel like I have to point this out. Dude, it's my surf bro outfit. You know, the very first episode we did, you were wearing a blazer, and now you're in here in Javiankas and gym shorts, okay? I know I'm not exactly like a fashion...

King over here. I get it. My black shirt. Coming from the guy who wears a black t-shirt and black jeans every single episode. I get it. I get it. Where's the professionalism? You're throwing rocks in a glass house right now. You and I could have a Nietzschean friendship.

and I could just call you out constantly on this kind of shit. I think I look good. I think I look good. Nietzsche being Nietzsche. Of course, had to be hardcore. And he thought transactional relationships were stupid. He was like, fuck utility, fuck pleasure. That's for weak people. He said, you should only have virtuous friendships and you know they're virtuous because you challenge each other. I actually think this is a very valuable point for maybe people to ask.

about their own friendships can you call out and challenge a friend because if you can't then it's probably a transactional friendship yeah right like in a transactional friendship if you challenge somebody or if you'd like talk to somebody or call them on their

you're going to break that. The proportionality is going to get out of whack. But like if it's a friend of virtue, that person will actually probably be appreciative. Yeah. Be like, wow, you're making me a better person. I appreciate that. Yeah. At least at some point. I know my friends will call me on my bullshit and I get pissed off. So yeah, no, I get it. That's our friendship definitions. Reciprocity, trust, intimacy, friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue.

um and generally virtue is where that that that's the that's where majority of your meaning and happiness and well-being is is having people in your life that you know are unconditionally supportive of you that um have an unconditional positive regard for you and you have an unconditional positive regard for them and that you see yourselves as equals and peers companions all that yeah right and just like be aware that those those types of friendships exist

And if you are like, oh, I want more friends. Maybe you have some friendships of utility. Maybe you have some that are just based on pleasure. Could any of those? You've got to start there. You have to. You probably have to start there. Like if you're.

and we're we're going to talk about this in a minute but yeah if you are coming from zero friends or you just move to a new place it's like what's the the most obvious thing yeah it's like well go do a fun activity and meet people while doing it like that That's like step number one. You want to get into some, like some neurobiology and maybe even some of the health effects of friendship? Not really. You don't want to? Well, I do. Can we skip? Can I go?

get some water or something you can you can yeah kick your sandals off real quick and go get some water mark i might take a nap while you do this section and then i'll come back you don't want to miss this section then no no you don't want to mix this section because there's more

evolution on this stuff. And I know you're like super excited about the evolution. I was excited about the evolution and stuff. So, okay, I'll stay. I'll stay. Okay. Why do, you know, friendships feel the way they do? Why do we only have...

a small number of friends, most of us, right, that we can really connect with anyway. Why do we gravitate towards the people we do? Well, this is, I mean, part of it, the answer is that's what humans do, right? But there's obviously a little bit more to it than that. Right. And there's this anthropologist named Robin Dunbar. Okay. Who's kind of famous in this. And he has this idea called the social brain hypothesis. And his argument is that we evolved.

the neocortex specifically, and large brains more generally, because we needed to navigate all these social relationships, okay? Specifically, that's the reason we evolved. It wasn't tool making. It wasn't foraging. It wasn't mating. It wasn't any of these. It was navigating these complex social relationships that we have. And in primates and specifically, these are very complex relationships and it takes a lot of brain power.

It takes a lot of cognitive machinery to do this, right? And so sociality itself, it's a very high effort, very laborious cognitive process, right? You have to track just who, first of all. Who's doing what? Who said what? Facial recognition. How are they related to this person? Yeah. Can you trust them? The obligations they owe to you, you owe to them.

previous experiences you have with them, the emotions that they elicited from you or exhibited themselves, the history you have with this person. That's very, very complex. in terms of like neural capacity. Evolution has selected for larger brains to handle that complexity, right? And he even came up with what's called now the Dunbar, Dunbar's number, okay?

In humans, this number is about 150 meaningful relationships. That's about the upper limit that you can have. But what's really, really interesting, though, is that he even found out that you could predict the typical group size. of just about any social species just by seeing how big their neocortex was. Like, it's really, really interesting. So again, with humans, it's about 150. With chimps, it's about 50.

and then with lemurs who are like proto primates they're hardly primates i would say it's like a few to maybe 10 maybe 12 right and each one of those you see like smaller and smaller neocortices smaller and smaller brains OK, so you can actually predict a group size just by looking at the brain, especially of primates in particular. So what he said was you have up to a limit of about 150 stable.

connections that you could have. There is some debate too. There's others, other anthropologists and biologists who say, no, it's actually an ecological reason. You can't have more than 150 people in any small area because there's not enough food, you know, it's not enough water, it's not enough resources, this and that.

But what Dunbar has found kind of over and over again, you go to even modern tribes like hunter-gatherer tribes, they top out about this number. And if they get bigger than that, the groups become very, very unstable. and the homicide rate goes up interesting okay yeah so it's like there's like a maximum and it's it's probably set because again it's

really, really cognitively demanding to navigate these social relationships. And anything above that is just kind of chaos. And everybody's at each other's throats and literally killing each other. You know what's funny? Okay, this is going to really date me and make me sound like a boomer, but... I remember when Facebook first came out. I'm talking like 2004, 2005. And what people started doing, I mean, initially it was just you would add your friends at your university or whatever.

But then once it kind of broke out of the universities, maybe 2005, 2006, the first thing people started doing is they just started adding and friending everybody they had ever met.

Oh, for me, I was going for that for a little while, and then I was like, oh, this is stupid. But for a while, I was like, yeah, yeah, get it. Everybody was just friending everybody. And I remember there were all sorts of think pieces back then that this is... actually where i learned about dunbar's number they referenced dunbar's research and they were like the human brain can really only handle 150 relationships basically and like

think from what i understand like the way to think about this is that it's not that you can only know 150 people like in the abstract it's it's you can only have a relationship with 150 people like you can only that's the upper limit too yeah you can only like empathize or identify with personally, emotionally, being emotionally invested to some extent with 150 people. And beyond that, people become an abstract.

Number 100% and and so people at the time people were freaking out like all these people are like adding a thousand friends on Facebook and like you know dunbar's number says that this is just becoming people people are being objectified and they're becoming a number to like a high score in a video game that people were trying to like max out and so then facebook ended up putting a maximum 5 000 friend limit

on people's accounts to basically prevent that sort of behavior. Which is interesting. That 5,000 number is kind of interesting too. Because Dunbar, it's not just 150. He actually broke it down into more concentric circles, right? So you had that 150, you could have kind of meaningful connections with these people or meaningful contacts. You could know them and have some sort of relationship with them, right? You could have 50 about good friends.

15 kind of close friends and five like really intimate friends. That's kind of how it broke down. But on that upper bound, what you're talking about, that 5,000, they say 1,500 like is like kind of a... somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000 faces that you could recognize. Oh, interesting. Like that you would have, like, could really memorize and be like, I've seen that face before. Even if you don't know the person or know the name or whatever it is.

You could know that. So it was interesting that they kept it at 5,000. I don't think they intentionally did that, or maybe they did. I don't know. Maybe they did. I don't know. But it's just interesting that it landed there. Yeah. Stalin once said, you know, during all of the atrocities he was committing in the Soviet Union.

He said, the death of one is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic. This is why. Yeah, this is exactly why. Your brain literally cannot, it doesn't have the machinery. to relate to more than a few thousand people at most. And so once you get into millions, it just becomes this abstract, blobulous concept of people. Your ability to empathize or...

emotional investment just hits the ceiling and everything past that number is just the same. And kind of what Dunbar is saying, I think, anyway, is that we didn't evolve brains to only handle those. Number of relationships because that was the group size is that the group size is that big because that's all our brains can handle

So it's the other way around. So again, there's other people who's like, no, it's ecological reasons and food. Yes, the food, food resources and access to mates and all that does matter. But what he's saying is we just, it's so expensive for mother nature. Like they had to. cut it off at some point, right? So we were kind of topped out at 150 for most of human history, but then it's like agriculture comes around.

and that's when you get city states and civilization and everything and then obviously like now i mean we're in a city of 11 million people right now so it's maybe that does lend the ecological argument we what we had to do was we had to create all of these cultural and social institutions on top of that in order to regulate uh these relationships and behavior we have laws we have you know social norms like all of these things that we of modern society that we had to put on top of that.

That's true. Now, it was I mean, those those laws and and social norms and everything are able to fit into our cognitive frameworks, obviously. Right. But they still have to be in place and enforced by an external.

uh by an external entity right interesting yeah sidebar i had a friend who told me once i don't know if he originated this theory but his his theory was that um that All of the major world religions emerged around the same time, which was at the same time of the first early city-states or large-scale civilizations.

And his theory was that religions emerged as a socially organizing technology for thousands and thousands of people. It was basically the first way that you could coordinate multiple thousands of people in human history.

and so like all of the myths and the belief systems were uh kind of optimized for that like it's not like somebody sat down and figured that out it's just that they like spontaneously religions spontaneously emerged from the need to coordinate thousands of people at the same time Dunbar actually says that. Oh, does he? It all comes back to Dunbar. Yeah, Dunbar, Dunbar. And I don't even know if he was the one who originated that idea, actually. Actually.

I think Freud said something similar. Yeah. You know, I think even Karl Marx was even saying stuff about that. But yeah, there are all these kind of external. uh institutions and um kind of social technologies if you will yeah um that we use in order to kind of um i i would say a little bit hijack your cognition around this yeah yeah or at least

Keep it in a box. Okay. Yeah. In some ways like that. All right. Back to friendship. Yes. Yes. So you have those concentric circles we were talking about, right? So all the way down to the few thousand faces you can recognize to the... you're kind of topped out at about five intimate friends that you can really like on that intimate kind of virtuous level that we were just talking about that aristotle said so again aristotle was right like this is another another data point um

You're topped out at about five of those real intimate ones. Again, these are limits, though. I think I want to emphasize this here. These are limits. They're not the goals. The goal isn't to say, oh, OK, I need five close friends. I need five real intimate.

you know, ride or dies. Basically 15 close friends, 50 people I can call good friends. It's not that. That's kind of just kind of the upper limit. There's a lot of variation in there whether what people need versus what they can actually handle. introversion, extroversion plays a lot into that. I mean, it's funny because when you were running through that, you were like five ride or dies, 15 good friends, 50 friends. I was like, man, who has time for that?

I was listening. I was like, really? Does anybody have time for that? Right. We keep getting ahead of ourselves. We're totally going to get into that too. Sorry. We keep teasing all these things, but they do. This does though. You already mentioned how this.

this dunbar's number and his framework echoes in all sorts of different areas so it's not just in yes it's in uh social media uh your circles even if you have thousands of friends you only typically interact with like 5 to 15 of them you know and over the course of a year or longer term times it might be 50 right up to 150 probably is what actually ends up happening there

um pre-modern villages or or modern hunter-gatherer tribes they all kind of top out around 150 um military companies are usually organized around about 100 groups of 150 let's see workplaces too like organizations once they once they hit that 150 number then they have to start that's when like all the corporate stuff that you know a lot of

people will make fun of or you know kind of deride that's where it comes in but there's a there's a necessity for it it's like we have to regulate behavior or some way again these institutions have to come in on top of our complex hr departments basically yeah yeah so this comes up and over again and it's just kind of it again it's this cognitive limit that that humans seem to have and it's because once again it's just it's really really difficult it's a very very difficult problem to solve

But it's a very important one too, apparently, because it's so conserved, especially within primates. All this cognitive machinery that we devote to... uh, social relationships and particularly friendships as well. Um, so it's just, it's kind of a testament to how, what, you know, if you think friendship's difficult, well, mother nature thinks it's very difficult too. Cause like she gave us, this is what she gave us. She's like, this is the best I can do. Sorry guys. Right.

That's kind of, that's kind of where, uh, Dunbar's theory leads me anyway. Now you already kind of brought this up about the social media and there's always this. There's always a strain of utopianism, right? That runs through technology. We're going to connect everybody. And you've alluded to this already. And that's what Zuckerberg was saying. I'm here to connect the world. It's like, not only can you, I mean, yeah, you can do that.

in a very superficial way, but we're just not capable of being connected intimately with thousands and thousands of people all over the world in disparate locations.

uh with with disparate uh beliefs and all of these types of things it's just we don't have the cognitive machinery too much load it's way too much load and i i think this is you know back to that utopian vision i think the idea at least back then, there was kind of this optimistic view that if the world is exposed to everybody else, if everybody in the world is exposed to everybody else, then it will diminish judgments and...

stereotypes and assumptions and we will have more compassion for other people not realizing that that ability like all of those things stereotypes assumptions like group affiliation judgments prejudice Really what those all are are like cognitive shortcuts. And so the more cognitive load you put on people, the more you expose them to thousands and thousands and thousands of strangers, the more they have to rely on prejudice.

assumptions and stereotypes to make sense of the world. And so it's just like a classic backfiring of intentions. And this will come up, I'm sure, several times too, but that's probably a cautionary tale for any future technologies we might think about. Okay. Okay. Put a pin in that one too. So I hope I've established that. Yes. This is a very hard problem. It takes a lot of brain power to do this. Okay. Let me give you some fascinating, fascinating examples of how we.

how we do connect and how our brains work when we're connecting with other people and friends basically the neurobiology of friendship here okay so for example there's this thing called neural synchrony okay uh it's kind of like when brains become one all right so there's this really interesting study

They took, they got, I think it was about 250 to 300 graduate students at this one university. Like they mapped out this social network of these graduate students. Okay. And then they took a subset of them and they brought them in to the lab and put them in an fMRI scanner.

they showed them um all sorts of different videos and be funny videos comedy sketches you know maybe documentaries um maybe uh political stuff whatever it was all sorts of different kinds of videos okay and they measured brain activity in different regions of their brains they could predict with a very very high degree of fidelity just from these brain scans who were friends

If they had kind of matching neural responses to these different videos, that predicted how the friendship network that they mapped out. That's fascinating. Isn't that crazy? Okay. There's a chicken and the egg thing here. It's like, are those people friends because their neural networks map out the same around the same stimuli? Or do their neurons map out similarly because they're friends?

Yeah, that's a good question. Or do we know? I don't know if we know. I don't know if they addressed that in the study, actually. Or it's probably both. It probably is a little bit of both. Some of the other stuff I'll bring up, I think kind of corroborates this though. Okay. So, um, because the similarity even persisted, even when they controlled for things like demographics, like age, even too. So you had some older grad students, some younger ones.

uh, backgrounds, ethnicity, uh, socioeconomic status, all of that. Okay. Their conclusion anyway, from all of this, it wasn't like we didn't, we didn't grow up the same or we don't like the same things as that we have really the same brain patterns around. or how we see the world even or how we interpret what's coming in. Yeah. Yeah.

They call this neurohomophily, okay? Homophily. I thought it was homophily for a little bit, but I worked it up. It's homophily. Okay, glad we got that. Neurohomophily. We are a big podcast now, so we should pronounce things correctly. I thought of these words. I always see them when they're written. I don't see them.

Neural homophily is a term that's used to describe how we're drawn to people's brains who literally fire like ours. So like when I do think, and this is another point I'll make a little bit later too, but. Have you ever, like, you meet somebody and you just, like, you instantly click with them? There's probably, there's a neural basis for this, okay? And this is probably at least part of it. This is, maybe, apologies if I'm getting ahead, but does this have anything to do with mirror neurons?

Okay, sorry. Sorry, sorry. I think another point that might kind of corroborate this evidence as being that your brains just kind of operate the same is that even when they scanned them at rest, when they weren't watching anything, when they weren't.

you know, viewing any stimulus or anything like that, there's still a high degree of synchronicity between those, neural synchrony between those, which is pretty, that's pretty wild. So friends even nap the same way. That's crazy. Nap the rest of it. Yeah, seriously. They're just sitting there and like daydreaming. Yeah. it's the same some of the implications of this like your friends

They're probably shaping too in some way. There probably is some back and forth to that, definitely. When you get with somebody and you jive with them, then you will over time sync more and more. I'll get to that here in a second too. But you're literally kind of shaping.

each other's brains or at least you're sharing some sort of like mind space with them and there's a neural basis for it. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah. Like the big thing was from this is that it's not that you're kind of seeing the world together. It's not you're seeing it from the same.

uh vantage point it's that you're you're really seeing it in the same way you you view the world you somehow have this neural similar neural activity that causes you to view the world or interpret events or sensations or whatever it is in a very similar way to somebody i feel like you see this most in married couples like the the stereotype is that married couples after enough time together they become the same person right right and it's funny because

uh my wife and i were just joking the other day about how similar we're becoming yeah she so just to give two examples uh uh my wife is one of the most like conscientious organized clean Very buttoned up people and I'm obviously a fucking savage. and we were we were sitting down for dinner and she uh she was really hungry and i had forgotten to get serving spoons and she i was like oh i like got up to go to go back to the kitchen to get them and she just like

reached her hand into a bowl of green beans and just took a fistful of vegetables and threw them on her plate. And I looked at her, I was like, what the hell? And she was like, I guess I've been married to you for too long. But it's funny because I've noticed similar things. Like there are similar things that she does that I've started doing over the years. And it's completely unconscious. And it's like to the point. So here's the other example. She's super.

picky about smells and um and i've been you know i've i've i started this second company this year so i've been spending a lot of time at this co-working space with them um trying to trying to get that company off the ground and uh And there's a corner of the office at that co-working space that smells like a fucking bathroom. And it's subtle, but every time I'm in there, I'm like...

Do you guys smell this? It smells like a fucking toilet in here. And my wife, my entire marriage, my wife has complained about smells. Like she has zero tolerance for bad smells. And all the other guys at the company are like, they just kind of, they're like, what are you talking about? I don't smell anything. god mark's like so whiny it comes in here complains about

Smells all the time and and I was just it was really funny because I like I was sitting there complaining the other guy I'm like you don't smell this like how do you work here? I don't even think I can work in here anymore and like to the point where I took my laptop and I went to the common area because I

I just refused the work and the smell. And as I was sitting out there, I was like, oh my God, I've become my wife. Yeah, yeah, because you weren't like that. You used to be like, whatever, smell this, smell that, doesn't matter. Yeah, never.

No, that's wild. That's wild. Not only, not only when you meet somebody who kind of like sees the world, the world in the way you do, but also over time, you kind of do get to this. And that's, that's another thing actually, um, on here that I have is interpersonal neural coupling.

um it's another kind of mechanism a very related one uh to it's basically every conversation you have is literally like a brain to brain link up so there's uh they've put people they've had two people have a conversation

And the person listening is usually simulating the same brain activity that the speaker is with a slight lag behind it, which is pretty wild. And then they find that that coupling, that degree of... a similarity in their brain waves and the brain activity that they measure and the fmri is tighter and tighter uh if you're closer friends and if you've known each other longer and you have a closer relationship that you start to mirror

So cool. Isn't that wild? So cool. This is the same sort of stuff like when we did the emotions episode with the co-regulation piece.

To me, both of those things, I mean, they're kind of the same thing, but it's just so fucking cool. Yeah, I mean, the researchers call it like a superorganism forms when people are having a conversation like this. And it makes like, I mean, not to... derail pull this too much back to the emotions episode but like it it calls back to the the power of talk therapy right it makes sense right so it's like if you have something inside of you it's been eating you up

and really causing you to suffer, and then you tell somebody about it, you are generating that same neuronal state in their mind that you have been experiencing.

Because of their context and they don't have the same baggage and background and assumptions and history that you do, they're able to sit with it and handle it and carry it. And due to – mirror neurons so like they hear it they feel your state they understand what you're going through but they're okay then you can you can empathize from them oh i can be okay too and you know it's like you start to it's almost like you see

The puzzle pieces of like why this stuff works. I would say you just defined what the ideal therapist is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's what you're saying. Yeah. It's so cool. It's wild. No, it's absolutely wild. But it is. It creates this, like, shared brain state, like I was saying, and creates this superorganism even, too. So I'm sorry, but Mark, maybe some of the woo-woo crowd is like, oh, we're on the same wavelength. Like, they're almost kind of right. God damn it. Go.

True. We already did this last episode. We can't do this again. We gave them the resilience episode. We can't give them this one, too. Tiny, tiny morsel of truth in that. The brain science seems to be backing that up just a little bit here. Okay. I'm sorry.

that are vibes and you need to be on the same wavelength? Are you shitting me? I'm not. I mean, I don't think there's any like cosmic order. I think it's just there's a, there is a. There's something to it. There's something to it. But it's funny because it's, I mean, it makes.

it does it makes sense so like imagine imagine you meet somebody who just does like and you try to express something to like we've all had this experience you meet somebody new you try to express something like maybe you try to make a joke and like they are just not getting it. Like they don't see what you see. They don't understand what you understand. They like feel things differently. They see things differently.

You can feel that on a very deep level. And yeah, it feels like a missed connection. Like there's like a wire that's. broken or something yeah you're absolutely that's a good point you can really feel this when it's not happening yes you can really like i don't know i i feel like i'm very sensitive to that anyway i come into a group or something like that i'm like oh god i do not

fit in here most people can feel that i think pretty pretty easily yeah and there's a dissonance to it which i think is probably why people use vibrations and and wavelengths and energy as like the the metaphor is is because it does feel like dissonance i'm sorry God damn it. Sorry I even brought that up. I feel like by our 50th episode, we're going to be coming in here and like togas and sarongs and like lighting incense. I'll bring my crystals.

Stay tuned, everybody. Okay, you mentioned a couple times now about mirror neurons. Most people have probably heard about this at least in some capacity or another, but I think actually the way they were discovered was maybe... uh the one of the most interesting interesting things about it like almost all great scientific discoveries it was discovered by accident um it was uh giacomo result uh risolatis uh lab in italy okay and um

What the, the story goes anyway. So they were studying, um, uh, neurons in the premotor cortex of monkeys. Okay. So premotor cortex is when you're planning motions. There's, there's a entire. little sliver of your brain dedicated just to that okay so if you're reaching out to grab a glass or something like that first the premotor neurons in your neocortex uh fire up and then they go to your motor cortex to move it okay fine so they were studying these neurons in monkeys

And the story goes that one of his lab techs came in one day and was eating ice cream, or I guess it's Italy. It's not ice cream. Oh, gelato. Gelato. Yeah, it was probably gelato, right? Yeah. And the story goes one of these monkeys was hooked up. uh to to their whatever uh equipment they were using and um they're eating the ice cream and neurons in the premotor cortex of this monkey started to fire and they're like what the hell the monkey is not even moving

Yeah. Or not like then there's not not being primed to move or anything like that. Right. Can you tell this story in an Italian accent? Wait, they are not even moving. I have Italian friends and they get so pissed off and they want to do that. The monkey, he is not the moving. The monkey, not the moving.

With the fingers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell the story with the fingers. Emiliano, if you're watching this, I'm very sorry. I know you hate it when I do that. I'm so sorry. This is a monkey. His neurons are firing. You can't get canceled by making fun of the Italians. All right. Well, okay. For one thing, I'm not, I don't know how apocryphal this story is because I, well.

No, it actually does make sense. And the labs I worked in, we were eating in there all the time. And the OSHA guy at our university was like, guys, what the fuck? You have food? Next to the radiation fridge, like this camp. So this is probably, if you're like, they wouldn't have been eating in the lab, they definitely would have been eating in the lab. But anyway, so he comes in, he's eating the gelato.

And these neurons are firing in the premotor cortex and they're like, what the hell is going on here? This was the discovery of mirror neurons, right? Yeah. This is how they figured it out. It was like, wait a second. So not only are there neurons that fire when you. when you do an action or when you observe an action to a subset of those exact same neurons that are involved in the movement or in the reaction of whatever kind are firing as well. Okay.

This is what they call mirror neurons. And so it's not just, it's not just motor actions though. This is how they discovered it. And they're the most obvious ones, but it's also things like, uh, especially in humans with the, you know, bigger neocortices and stuff like that. we can simulate observations that we're having for people's intentions or their emotions as well. So like, you know, humans are pretty good about emotional recognition from facial.

different differences in facial features mirror neurons are firing when that's happening or if you're sad or you're happy or something like that some of my sad and happy mirror neurons will fire as well um so These kind of three things that we talked about, you know, the neural coupling, the neural synchrony, the mirror neurons. Again, these are very, very complex neurocognitive mechanisms, but they're highly conserved too. Evolution.

thought it was important enough to keep it around. So it has, but it also, it just, it, this is why we have these big, beautiful, messy brains too, is to do things like this. This isn't the only thing, you know, obviously these aren't the only three. mechanisms that we have friendship and connection and all of that these are three really big ones and they're very very complicated and fascinating and messy and yeah

I'm just, I'm really, I actually am having like one of those, holy shit, the brain is so cool moments during this section. It's just imagining the intricacy and the complexity of... evolving like if you think about the eyeball right like the fact that like i don't know like i can see you make a movement and my brain is able to take the light

that is bounced off of your body in that configuration and automatically knows how to process it in such a way to imagine myself getting up and making the same movement as you, that's just so fucking amazing. It is really incredible. And then you think about movies and TV and theater and performance art and everything. All of it is playing on our mirror neurons and our ability to like...

project ourselves into situations and empathize with complete strangers, really. It is really incredible. We'll have to get some weed with our spirit crystals, I think, too. um but that i mean so it goes from we have these complex uh nervous systems in general and and brains in order to navigate all these complex social interactions that we have. And friendship is among the most complex of those interactions that we might have. And so...

Just again, if you think making friends is hard, well, it is on every single level you can think of all the way down to the like neurons that are firing in your brain. It is a difficult problem to solve. And so. take a little solace in that i think this is is what i want you to take from that little section anyway i think it's also really cool and kind of i don't know poetic or ironic that it's like human rationality

happened as a side effect of evolving the ability to socialize and develop social relationships with each other. Rationality wasn't the point. It was just the tool that was necessary to... to develop social relationships and maintain them over a long period of time right you really have to work at rationality too it's not like a built-in you know like yeah um connecting with people is more more innate to us than like

logic right you know what i mean we're not we're not logical which is anybody who's been on twitter lately can it's very obvious to you Um, it does kind of, and maybe we'll put a pin in this one too, because we are going to talk about this a little bit later, but you know, it does kind of raise the question. What, what happens to our neural, like our neural coupling and the mirror neurons and everything when more of our.

communication is uh more and more distributed more and more uh asynchronous like maybe put a pin in this one but like you start to see like you don't have there is no neural coupling There is no, the mirror neurons aren't firing when you're texting somebody or when you're communicating online as much. Even like a Zoom call, you know, the loss of fidelity that you have in a video chat, there's a loss of.

uh mirror neuron firing in that there's a loss of neural coupling uh and neural synchrony there too so this is something i think that you know you don't really quite think of and again why i think and as we'll see later a little bit too is that why digital communication isn't necessarily a good substrate for uh at least not for like really deepening your friendships or even maintaining them yeah over over time

Yeah, we're definitely excited to talk about that. But yeah, I think we've all had the experience of maybe texting something to somebody or receiving a text from somebody that sounds absolutely awful or is completely taken the wrong way. And then you actually...

see the person face to face and talk to them and you realize it was the whole thing was a misunderstanding. Right. Or like, you know, during the pandemic, you know, the like Zoom parties were kind of a thing for a while there. And I was always just so like, ugh. When I got done, I was like, that was so unsatisfying. Too cool. You're too cool, Drew. I don't know. Maybe I just have a well-developed mirror neuron system. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe.

I want to end this section, though, too. So not all just neuroscience, but a little bit more mixed in some of the kind of health benefits and ramifications, I think, of friendships. And, you know, you did mention already that. there's all these health benefits to um to friendship but i want to go over some of them a little bit more in detail some of the more interesting ones anyway this idea has actually been around for a long time so there's there's now you know there's the loneliness epidemic

you know, uh, the social connection crisis and all these things going around. And I'm sure people are aware that like, yeah, there's, there's health consequences. This back in the resilience episode two, we talked about the Rosetto effect, right? Remember Rosetto, Pennsylvania.

There was this small Italian immigrant community there who they smoked, they drank, they ate gelato. They ate a bunch of gelato. They didn't exercise really intentionally, but they lived like these long, really healthy lives. And it was because they had these strong, strong social ties, right?

It goes back even further than that, though, too. There was this Persian philosopher named or is a physician kind of physician philosopher named Ibn Sina. We know him in the West as Avincena, I think is how you say it. He actually prescribed, though, friendship as like a medicine almost because he noticed just how how much healthier people who had like strong social networks were than people who didn't. He believes things like, you know.

isolation made people ill this was thousands of years ago too this was about about a thousand years ago actually um he would also do this thing where he matched temperaments um like so if you were a melancholic you know a sad person you needed to be around cheerful people and if you were like a stressed out person you need to be around calm people you know that kind of thing kind of simplistic but also probably kind of wise in a lot of ways too uh he recommended

He would prescribe shared meals, conversation, and playful gatherings as deliberate therapies even too. Okay. Wow. This was, again, a thousand years ago. He was already on top of this. Right. And modern medicine has showed there's actually something to this. Right.

friendship isn't just emotional it literally extends your life okay so um one study that i came across found that people with a more developed and stronger social network, had about a 50% decrease in mortality over a seven-year period than people who self-reported themselves as more lonely and had weaker ties with people as well.

There's even some evidence that suggests that like loneliness can be as bad, like chronic loneliness and social isolation can be as bad or worse for you than smoking about a pack of cigarettes a day, 15 to 20 cigarettes a day. mind-blowing which is insane because like you and i are both former smokers you know how terrible it is for you right and social isolation is even worse than that um and then you think about all the heart disease and all of that right

Social groups and diverse social groups tend to encourage healthier habits as well. One of the, like just getting up and going out and going places with your friends that just, you know, you get the exercise benefits from that.

If you do have health-conscious friends, though, too, those habits will rub off on you. There's also this kind of whole suite of... uh physiological responses that your your body and brain has when you're in the presence of friends like lower blood pressure um uh better immune like when they take blood draws you have better immune markers in your in your blood

Lower inflammation, too, and protection against heart disease. I'm going to go back to the inflammation thing real quick. This was something I came across that I thought was really, really fascinating, too, and relates back to the evolutionary stuff. When you are socially isolated or alone...

um at least for longer periods of time or in any situation where you don't want to be alone inflammation markers upregulate in your body yeah now why would this be this is kind of weird well what they think is you know A socially isolated human in our evolutionary past was probably a dead human. Or at least you were very, very likely to be, much more likely to be physically injured. And so upregulating those inflammation markers.

kind of readied you for that right so you know if you're alone you have a higher higher chance of being physically injured and so your body's like okay let's just prepare for this right okay no big deal if you then rejoin the group and then those inflammation markers come back down that's why we see this like lower inflammation markers and people who have stronger social networks but the thing is is that in modern society where we're uh

you might suffer from chronic loneliness or social isolation or just stress in general that upregulates all that inflammation. Long term, that's very harmful for you. So in the short term, that's adaptive for like any injury you might cause. It'll help you deal with that injury, physical injury. Longer term, though, it wears on like your your your vessels, your blood vessels, you know, longer exposure to cortisol.

messes with your metabolism long-term, screws up like your hunger and thirst and all of that kind of stuff. So there's actual like physical things that happen to you when you are socially isolated that can lead to long-term chronic health conditions. It's so interesting, and this is not meant as a call-out, but I do find it interesting or kind of amusing that all of these health and longevity experts that are huge now...

You never hear them talking about relations. First of all, they tend to all be single men. Yeah. Yeah. And second of all, you never hear them talk about social relationships or. community yeah and again that's not that's not a call out like i'm a huge fan of like huberman and yeah tim ferris and a lot of what those guys do but like it is just kind of i i don't know it's just funny

Like that, knowing how big of an, like what you just said, social isolation is worse than a pack of cigarettes a day. Yeah. And they're saying, you should take this supplement. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, AG1, this episode is brought to you. Right. Yeah, I guess it comes back to the very first point I made at the top of the show, which is like the delta between the importance of this topic and how much it's discussed is just – it's absolutely mind-boggling.

i think you do you generally do see it though like a lot of um unhealthy people are generally socially isolated you just anecdotally you see this everywhere and it's it's it's sad and you see it and it's it's it's heartbreaking um But yeah, there's, there's all these physical health benefits. Obviously there's a lot of mental health benefits too. Um, we've already alluded a lot of these, but, um, isolations, it's a predictor of higher rates of depression and anxiety.

Friendship, though, it lowers the risk. I'm sorry. It lowers the recovery time that you have after like surgeries and injuries and even like life events that kind of take you down. from depression and anxiety, you bounce back a lot quicker too when you have these social networks. I mean, to me, just the fact that the worst punishment that we know of short of the death penalty.

is solitary confinement right that you can take hardened criminals who have spent their entire lives being anti-social and violent and uh with awful relationships with everybody and the worst thing you can do to them is put them by themselves for a long period it's been outlawed in some states in some countries too because that's it's found to be so bad for you yeah it's so terrible

for your mental health and physical health obviously as we just saw two but it's yeah it's it's like a cruel punishment at this point like like we've realized it's like a cruel and unusual punishment yeah you and you can literally drive somebody crazy yeah if you if you put them In isolation. In which case, like death might not be a worse outcome for that. Another set of studies, too, though, has shown the stress buffering effects. So interesting. You just.

mention that I actually, when I was doing research with monkeys, this was kind of a, one thing we did. We do these, um, we, we call them social isolation, uh, protocols, and it's not as bad as solitary confinement. Okay. you would take a monkey for a few hours out of their cage with their their family groups and you'd put them in a cage by themselves and they would obviously have this like

really measurable stress response, you measure their cortisol or ACTH or whatever it was, whatever stress marker you were going to measure would always increase during that time period. If you put one of their cage mates next to them though, like one of their siblings or whatever, that.

that stress response was blunted. It was shortened. It came down. You see this in humans as well. You would put somebody in an fMRI or hook them up to heart rate monitors and measure their cortisol response and everything like that and give them electrical shocks. uh if they were holding the hand uh of somebody that they like a good friend or a spouse or whatever that stress response was blunted

It even worked if it was a stranger too. It wasn't as, it wasn't as strong of a blunting effect, but it would even work in that case too. So there's this stress buffering effect that, that again, uh, that friends have, like I was just talking about with the inflammation stuff. It's very similar to that too.

um so we talked about this in resilience as well like the absolute best thing you can do for your like mental health your physical health is probably have a good social support network yeah and friends so yeah okay one last thing here There's also a lot of these effects that I've just said, the mental health effects, the physical health effects, the stress buffering, all of that. It's kind of a two-way street even too. It's not only that, like the person who has been socially isolated.

uh feels better when they regain the group they're the the other people in the group also feel better when they're helping yeah so there's there's a reciprocal nature to this Let's go back to the tit for tat, tit for tat, generous generosity. Yeah. And it's a two-way street here. Well, this comes back to the happiness episode where we talked about that actually giving to people makes you happier than giving to yourself. Right. Yeah.

right like it's it is actually one of the highest drivers of happiness is helping others right and this is i think this is the point i was trying to just make about the the subjective balance in um in relationships Just because I provide you like with something like some nourishment, social nourishment or whatever it is, doesn't mean that you owe me for that because I'm getting something out of this too. Not to reduce it to a transaction again, but I'm just saying that there's a way to see.

subjectively where it's like, okay, I actually, I get something out of this too. And so I'm not going to sit here and keep track of everything, you know, from that point of view anyway. Yeah. All right, before we jump into some of the actionable advice, I do want to remind listeners that everything covered in this podcast is available in a PDF guide. It's at solvedpodcast.com slash friendship. You can download it for free and check it out.

And also the Solved membership community. Every month we do a Coursified version of the podcast. So if you are somebody who wants to work on your social life and you want everything in this... Podcasts broken down into daily exercises, things that you can go out and do, work on yourself, try out to make more friends in your life or reconnect with old friends. That is available. That's at membership.solvepodcast.com. And our own Drew Burney.

is going to be doing a live Q&A webinar for our membership. You definitely don't want to miss that. He's doing it because I have no friends, so we had to find somebody. Who actually has a social life here. It'll be fun. Come check it out. Yeah. It'll be a good time. All right. On to the meat of the episode. The how to make friends section. How do you make a friend?

Drew, how do you make a friend? Well, I think it's a, I mean, you're going to get into this here, but I think it's a simple, but not an easy process. There's some simple practices or simple principles, but. Implementing them is not always easy. So fun and true story. You and I have been working together for 12 years. 11 and a half, 12 years. Something like that. And it's funny because for years you've been telling me.

Mark, we need to do friendship content. Mark, we need to, we should do an article on friendship. And every time we talked about it, I would go look at the research and I would be like, this is so fucking simple and obvious. No, I'm not going to write an article about that. But here we are. It is shockingly simple, but we will get into all of the reasons that people are finding it more difficult and all of the things that can kind of get in the way of finding and creating friendships.

I will run through the research very quickly. It is not rocket science. None of this is going to surprise you. Basically, what researchers find is that making friends boils down to three things. Number one is proximity.

How close are they to you? What are the chances you're going to run into them? Are they in your neighborhood? Are they in your city? Are they going to the same school? Basically, proximity is the container of... potential friends that you can make it's the people that you i guess have access to right right like you're not gonna you're probably not gonna make friends with somebody a thousand miles away uh even if you happen to run into them just because you're never gonna see them again

Funny LA story. So for people who don't live in LA, LA is absolutely massive and the traffic is terrible. And the running joke in LA is that if you meet somebody from the other side of LA, you're like, oh, it was great meeting you. I'll never see you again. And that has happened a number of times from like, you know, they tell me where in town they live and I'm like, might as well be Dallas. So proximity is the first one.

Second one is repeated exposure. And so this is why we tend to make friends with people at work, people we go to school with, people who live down the street. It's the more you see somebody, the – the more likely you are to become friends with them. And then factor number three is reciprocated disclosure. And I'll get into this one a little bit more. I think there are a few different ways to look at this one, but basically it's like...

Are you open about yourself? Are you sharing information about yourself? And is the other person sharing information about them? So the way to look at this is proximity. Factor number one is kind of the container of potential friendships that you can have.

Factor number two, repeated exposure, is the probability that you will become friends with that person. Generally speaking, the more you run into somebody, the more likely you are to become friends with them. And then factor number three, the reciprocated disclosure, is the depth.

of the friendship that you'll end up having so some people you know you run into we talked earlier about my poker buddies there are i have poker buddies that like i couldn't even tell you their last name or whether they're they have a girlfriend or not uh Obviously I'm not very good friends with them, but so you just know him by like snake eyes or something like that. Yeah.

So it is, you know, the disclosure piece is, and I'll talk about this in a little bit, but the disclosure piece like really. It is a necessary part of kind of going from the friend of utility or friend of pleasure to a friend of virtue, somebody who you feel emotionally attached to, identify with. you know respect and admire simply for who they are one thing that i find interesting is and again this this kind of comes back to the idea that

This is just so painfully simple, and it's almost stupidly simple. So in psychology, there's a thing called the mere exposure effect. I don't know how familiar you are with that, but it's basically, it's actually, it's very prominent in advertising. So if people have ever wondered, like,

Why do why does coca-cola just buy billboards and run commercials everywhere? Well, it's because there's there's a thing called the mere exposure effect, which is generally that the more people see something or exposed to something the more positively predisposed they are to it. And it's just like a basic facet of human psychology and advertisers leverage it with all the advertising that they do. And it turns out the same thing is kind of true with people.

If you run into the same person over and over and over again, you just generally start having a positive predisposition to them. Or you're much more likely to have a positive predisposition to them. And I think this is very important to understand because... I think a fallacy that maybe our generation made or like younger generations make is something that I'm going to call, for the purpose of this episode, I'm going to call it the peak experience fallacy.

So it's interesting. I actually had a conversation with a friend recently and another guy in his 40s. We were talking about how much harder it is to make and maintain friendships in middle age than it was like when we were teenagers or 20. And he said, he's like, you know, I think it's just all about, you know, creating these epic experiences with people. And yeah. Yeah. I told him, I was like,

Actually, I was like, I was totally that guy. I was like, actually, let me explain the research to you. But I've noticed that this is a very common belief among people and particularly younger people. Like they think that. that the way you make friends is you go on some epic trip together or you do this insane party or concert or something like that. And it is, interestingly,

What the research finds is that peak experiences don't create friendships. What they do is they solidify friendships that already exist. So they like – A peak experience will take somebody who is a casual friend and potentially make them a good friend, but they will not take a stranger and make them into a friend. Right. And I don't know about you, but.

I've definitely made this mistake a lot throughout my life. I remember when I was like a... in university i i did a summer abroad in new zealand and the group of people that i was with it was people it was kids from all over the united states so it wasn't i think i was the only person from my school so it was people from were from all over and basically we spent like

two months all day every day together in a foreign country just having adventures having a blast and it's funny because that peak experience i mean especially as a 20 year old It was a very intense experience. It was very profound. It felt very life-changing at the time. And everybody grew very close very quickly on that trip.

As we were coming back like there was a very much a sentiment that we were we were gonna be bonded for the rest of our lives We're gonna keep in touch with people We're gonna have like reunions in different cities and people are gonna drive to go see each other and like all this sort of thing

And a little bit of that happened. Like I ended up keeping in touch, I think, with maybe two or three people that I went on that trip with. But it was funny because within a year, I don't think I ever spoke to any of those people ever again. Right. And it's. When I look back through my life, I see this mistake made over and over again, and I still see it made with people I know today. Consistency trumps intensity with friendship. It absolutely does. I know it sounds boring, but...

yeah no 100 this is what i found with my friends too um over time a lot of my friends you know what they'll thank me for is hey it's like really good hanging out with you glad we could grab dinner yeah on a consistent basis this and that yeah we've had we went on trips international trips and all that but

that doesn't stick with them. Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed, I've noticed the flip side of this as well. Um, so I had a friend, uh, I'll give him a shout out. Uh, so Steve cam founder of nerd fitness is really good friend of mine. And, um, he and I became friends in New York. And I was still kind of in my big party phase or whatever. And he wasn't as big of a partier. So he wasn't one of my closest friends in New York. I would see him occasionally. And sometimes we would co-work together.

you know we weren't like super tight and uh i had like my my new york friends that i went went out with all the time and but the funny thing is is that steve is a video game nerd and i'm a video game nerd And so he eventually moved away from New York and we would just keep in touch. Like to this day, I think he and I text each other.

at least three or four times a week. Okay, yeah. And 95% of those texts are about video games. It's like about the game we're playing, about some boss we just beat, about like some game that's coming out next month. Like that is 90% of our conversation. But it's funny because those conversations have slowly accumulated over 10 years now. And it's funny now because I actually talked to him. Like, I considered him a much closer friend than any of the people in New York I hung out with.

essentially for a few texts a week yeah yeah and it just it just adds up and it's funny because he was just out here and you know he's been going through some personal stuff and like he and i had like a super deep conversation about life and and age and and marriage and like all this stuff that that we've been going through and it was like a very deep personal friend conversation and then we went back to texting about video games and and it's so it's like

What I've learned, I guess the hard way, is that that's actually what building friendship looks like. It's like just a mountain of little pebbles stacked on top of each other. Yeah, it's not as sexy as people want it to be, I think, but yeah. Yeah. I will also bring up again the word that you pronounced so well earlier, homophily. There we go. Which is basically that we tend to like people who are like ourselves, right?

And this, again, this is similar to the mirror exposure effect. This is just human nature. It's not, you know, you... You could get all politically correct and argue that this shouldn't be the case. But the fact of the matter is, is that we tend to associate and relate to people who look like us, who are same age, same gender, same occupation. have similar interests and hobbies. So it is...

Again being like painfully obvious look for people who are into the same shit you're into Good place to start at least. Yeah. Yeah, and I honestly so this is one thing that I kind of Changed my mind on doing the research are not necessarily changed my mind on but i think i have a little bit of a different perspective on it because i think we're going to talk later about how the like oh just go join a gym or take a yoga class or whatever like how that advice is

Maybe a little bit overrated. I think one of the things that the conclusions I kind of came to like digging into this, is that it's not necessarily the interests that create the friendship, it's the interests that create the repeated exposure for the friendship to emerge. Ah, okay, yeah. Right, like it's not, like I'm not friends with Steve because we both play video games.

It's the video games are the excuse for me and Steve to have exposure to each other hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. That's a really good point, actually. Yeah. And I think too, and yeah, we will get into that, but like the, you know, join a yoga class or, you know, go do some interest group thing. I actually kind of came the other way because I used to think, ah, it's kind of, I was like, yeah, it's super overrated. And I'm like, actually, there is a way.

yeah to use this and i think that point actually will come up again so yeah i'm excited to talk about that because it's like that's that is as somebody who just went down that route yeah and it didn't really turn up anything um

I think there's an interesting conversation we have there. Okay, cool. I do think it's overrated, but I think I'm going to predict that your point is that it's just not done correctly. Yeah, I think it's overprescribed but underdeveloped is what it is. Yes. I think I would agree with that.

The last thing I will say about this too, this relates to the proximity piece, is that we don't think a whole lot about the institutions and communities and networks that we embed ourselves into. Well, they're disappearing too, which, yeah. We're definitely going to come to that.

it is for example um you know not just the the neighborhood that you move to but uh the company you take a job at for instance like let's say you get two job offers you know one is from apple and one is from like some small local business with like 10 people um the social reality of both of those companies is going to be completely different you know at apple you're going to be exposed to tons of people you're going to have

Probably a lot of infrastructure to create social relationships within like a lot of large corporations will actually like plan things to foster friendships at work. Whereas like a small local business, you're probably going to see the same.

eight or ten people over and over again and if you get along great that could be amazing but if you don't like you might just kind of be out of luck so that's just one example there's a lot of uh downstream effects of thinking about you know what career path you choose uh what religion you follow what hobbies you get into um as well as where you live

So that's how to meet people. And we're going to come back to that. I know you're going to talk about a bunch of strategies to meet people more effectively and see people more frequently. Let's talk about deepening relationships. So the way I think about this is basically our emotional attachment to people tends to be in proportion to the sum of...

the emotional experiences we have with them. So I think one way to do this is through vulnerability. And that is simply because being vulnerable, disclosing yourself, sharing very personal details about yourself. tends to be an emotional experience. You feel very emotionally close to somebody that you share yourself with or they share themselves with you. But I don't think that's the only way to do this.

And we're going to talk in a little bit about the differences between men and women. And the reason I didn't want to limit it to vulnerability is simply because i've had a lot of male friendships that i of of guys i feel super close to and i literally go years without having a like a deep personal conversation with them but like they're like a brother to me, right? Like I feel a very intense attachment to them.

so one realization i had during all this too yeah oh yeah yeah i like that that bugged me some of you know some of the research does label the third factor vulnerability like i i like to see it more in terms of like disclosure or shared emotional experience. Yeah, I like the word disclosure. Earlier on, we were using vulnerability. I was like, ah, that like... Yeah.

It doesn't have to be like burying your soul or anything like that. As two dudes, I'm like, no, man, I've had really good friends that I would never. Especially with me, like just exchanging information, which isn't super vulnerable, but just exchanging information can even be a connection path. Yeah. So I see it in terms of the sum of the emotional.

events or experiences that you share together so one and one version of that can be like a deep vulnerable conversation another version of that could be a peak experience you know a trip together a concert a crazy concert or a party together um it could also be uh dealing with hardship together right so you you know you there's a very intense friendship and bond between war veterans you know guys who served in military together

Generally speaking, tragedy can often bring people together. Illnesses can bring people together. The other thing, I think this is very timely as well. I wrote a note here. This was not in the research. I didn't see anything about this in the research. But I wrote a note just because it's... anecdotally very timely like my wife just had a very good friend of hers just went through a divorce and then went through a bunch of crazy shit in her life after the divorce

And it's funny because like, you know, they grew up together, then they kind of grew apart for 10, 15 years. And then they were like barely even friends anymore for a little while. And then it's like something changed and happened that like they've grown very close together again. They've kind of like rekindled or rediscovered their friendship. And it's like, I just think there's some, and I think about some people in my life as well, like some of the guys that I grew up with.

There's something about just being present for a long period of time. Like just seeing somebody go through many life phases, I think there's something about that that builds an intimacy. Like if I've known college drew and I've known grad school drew and I've known no magic drew and I've known you know, research drew and I've known podcast drew like there's just a there's a certain level of intimacy and comfort that that comes from sustaining multiple periods of life together.

I don't have any data to back that up, but that just feels very true to me. I wanted to like throw that out there. No, I absolutely agree. And I don't know how far you want to get into this right now, but I've had this happen in my life too, actually with one friend in particular.

that I'm thinking of we've known each other since preschool oh wow and we've gone through everything and he lives in a different country now but um and he's went through a lot he lost his wife a few years ago he's been remarried and Yeah. It's like, it's a completely different friendship that we have. It is. Like when we were kids, it was, and we'll talk about how friendship changes throughout the life. Yeah.

it was you know surface level and fun and this and that and then we've went through all the lives up and down and seen each other change we've grown apart we weren't friends for a little while not not like didn't have a friend breakup or anything but then

it's kind of like the virtue friendship aristotle's virtue friendship but it's not you know because aristotle really defined it as some is like uh somebody's character you admire or like somebody who you you love simply for the sake of being themselves And it's funny because I don't even know if it necessarily requires admiration. It's just like at a certain point, I think being a part of somebody's life journey for long enough.

you develop an emotional attachment. And then also, if that person's been part of your life journey for long enough, you also develop an emotional attachment. I have friends that I've known for decades, and we've grown very apart. Not like in terms of how we feel about each other, but it's just like we don't really have anything in common anymore.

But there's some threshold where you've known somebody long enough and you've just seen them go through enough things and you've been with them enough times that, yeah, it almost becomes like the chosen family thing. You know, it's just it.

I see them more as a brother or sister than I do a friend. Right. There's just some constant element to this relationship that you have that is enduring enough that you're... willing to like even if they've changed or you've changed a whole lot it almost doesn't matter yeah because you've known these different versions of themselves and they know who they are and yeah yeah i i think there there is some enduring element of it speaking of which

There is some research on how long it takes to develop, to go from... Yeah, I found this actually pretty interesting. I found this too, so yeah. Yeah, and it's much more than you would think. At least it's much more than I thought. So some researchers, they estimate that to develop a casual friendship with somebody, it requires spending 50 hours with them approximately to become a friend.

somebody that you consider a friend, it's around 90 hours. And then for a very close friend, it's 200 hours. Which, yeah, that feels like a lot. Yeah, it does. And people need to realize that it is a lot, too. You have to be patient with this. Yeah. It's funny. I remember I was at a party maybe a year or two ago, and I ran into this guy, super young, very... very optimistic, kind of one of these delusional tech bro types.

And he, with a very straight face, he said that he wanted to develop the technology that solved the loneliness crisis. And of course, I became very amused. And I was like... tell me more and um and it was interesting because his strategy was basically he wanted to engineer like the the highest peak experiences possible okay with the least amount of effort and i remember trying to explain to him that

that that's just not how it works exactly backwards yeah i was like i was like what you should be doing is is uh is is engineering ways for people to see each other repeatedly in very casual situations over a very long period of time like that's how you solve it

And he he was like not having any of it. And then finally, that's not a move fast and break things. Well, no, the funny thing is, is he and I went back and forth like I was like, I'm sorry, dude. I'm like, don't shoot the messenger. This is just this is what the psych research says. And then finally he just looked at me and he's like, yeah, but dude, that doesn't scale. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Friendships don't scale. Friendships don't scale. That's why they're meaningful.

And go back to Dunbar's number, right? You can't scale. You cannot scale your friendship network because you were just cognitively limited. Yeah. Anyway. As you said, consistency beats intensity. 10 different one-hour hangouts is going to beat one epic 10-hour hangout in the long run. It isn't so much the shared interest and values that...

make the friendship, I think they become the infrastructure that allow the friendship to emerge. It's really funny, like that story I told earlier about my friend who was like, I don't care if my car buddies are good fathers. I'm actually thinking there's wisdom in that. So what do you mean? Well, what I mean is like...

Because I think part, and then maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but I think maybe part of the problem these days is that we have too high of expectations for friendships. Oh, okay. Yeah, 100% agree with that. Like we think our friends should be like amazing and brilliant. and into all the same stuff we're into. And, you know, they should be able to teach us something and we should be able to do things with them. And it's when I think back throughout my life of like some of the.

Closest friendships I've had or best friendships I've had it's like most of it. It's just like yeah, I I just really enjoyed doing that thing with that guy and and and he's fun to be around and and we respect each other and Yeah, I don't really care what he does with half of his personal life. I don't care if his wife was a bitch or not. I don't care if he wants kids or doesn't want kids. He can do whatever he wants. It's his life. I just...

I don't know. I'm not expressing myself very well right now, but I do think maybe we're setting too high of a bar for some of the relationships in our lives, and it is backfiring a little bit. You don't need...

Not every friend needs to be all things for you. You can totally just have a car buddy that you love going to the racetrack with on Saturdays and talking about sports and the weather and maybe bitching about... your kids every now and then and like that's fine that's totally fine yeah yeah i 100 agree and i think we will get into that a little bit more in a little bit so what are what are some strategies drew like you know that's the high level

I just kind of laid out the high-level terrain of like, okay, this is how friendships are formed, and this is generally what makes them deepen, and this is how you build a social life. What are some actual implementable...

strategies that we can use. Yeah. Maybe what we can do is kind of go over some of these strategies kind of in the abstract a little bit. And then maybe you want to try to like work through, let's take like an example or even use ourselves. Like how would I do this or something like that? Can we do that? i would love that okay let's do that okay well first of all like let kind of get your mindset around this um

One of the things you just mentioned is like, yeah, there's probably not a perfect friendship out there. There's not going to be a perfect friend for you. And so, yeah, okay, it's set there. But there's a few other mindsets I think you need to kind of have going into this. One of them is just like assume people like you or at least will be receptive to you.

um there's what they call a liking gap researchers have found this like when you have an interaction with a stranger and you walk away you generally think oh that didn't go so well and that person probably doesn't like me that's generally people tend

towards that. When the data shows, they'll go and ask the other person, how much did you like this person? They either have a tendency to be like, oh yeah, they were great or at least neutral. Most people aren't just going to be like, that person was a...

piece of shit right they're more forgiving to like a social socially awkward interaction with them or something like that people are forgiving of that because we all do that yes right everybody everybody's so like worried about themselves they're probably not as

as judgmental of you as you think. So I think first of all, just go into this thinking, okay, people are at least going to be receptive to me, or at least some people are. There's people out there who are. I've gotten better, I guess, over the years of just...

because i wanted everybody to like me at one point in my life like everybody probably does when you're a younger person you do i've gotten better at that person went away from that wasn't my best word right they probably don't like me and i'm okay with that yeah um because i like There's somebody out there who's as weird as me and as, you know, as, as quirky and neurotic as me and all of that. So assume that people are going to like you. Okay. Or at least be receptive to you. Another thing like.

Some of this is going to be uncomfortable when we're going to get into some of these examples. It's probably, you're probably going to get a little squeamish at some of this. It's going to suck. Some of it's going to suck. Okay. So be prepared for that. Go back and listen to the resilience episode. That's what you need, right? Yeah.

Don't discount friendship either. I think sometimes people are like, it's hard to make friends, so just fuck them. You know, not going to do this. Negative self-perceptions too. If you are kind of a more neurotic person and you go around, people don't like me and you're very... kind of obsessed with that part of yourself, probably get some therapy around that. Honestly, CBT does wonders around this. Yeah. We'll get into this in the toxic friendship. Yeah.

segment but it is your self-perception is your relationship with yourself is very much reflected in your relationships with others and so if you kind of walk around thinking you're an unlikable person um you're going to attract a lot of people who don't like you. Right. Basically. Because anybody who does like you is going to be like, well, what am I doing here? If I'm trying to be friends with you and you just keep, you know.

keep hating on yourself. It's exhausting. Yeah, it is exhausting. It's just exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so like, like get your mindset around this, you know, right before you, before you jump into anything too crazy. Okay. Um, But then there are, I'll just kind of go through some of these and we can get into like an example, I think. But, you know, invest in recurring time.

together going to the same coffee shop all the time whatever it is invest in that for the long term you just laid out you know 50 hours to like kind of an acquaintance type you know to like what was it 80 hours 90 hours, 90 hours, like a friend to like a friend. Right. That's a long time. Okay. So patience is really key here too. When you're making friends, it's usually around positive emotions and like fun things. And then the self-disclosure part we've talked about too.

Be gradual with that. Yes. Don't don't word vomit. Right. Right. Be gradual with that. Learn like small talk is there's actually an art to small talk. And, you know. i've i've ragged on people before about talking about the weather and you know stuff like that and yeah you want to get past that but also to like get good at small talk and be gradual with it right um i think another tactic you can use too is lean on any existing friend networks that you have right now

Oh, there's also some research to suggest as well that synchronized activity is is better at making friendships for you. So like. Even if it's just moving dance class or that's like the singing. Yeah. Those kinds of things definitely. But even just like going, like I mentioned, going on a hike or running, like you're all moving together. Like that kind of stuff is even for whatever reason, it's, it's.

It kind of gives more of a surface area too for the friendship to come around as well. I guess it technically gives you more. Yeah, it gives you more to empathize with. Yes. Right? Because if you're just sitting and talking, all you can really empathize with is what the person's saying. But if you're walking together or you're working out together or you're dancing together, now you can empathize with.

the movement the practice the art yeah you know i i do i do yoga and i do specifically i do hot yoga yeah and so uh you go in there it's all synchronized everybody's doing the same thing at the exact same time and you have

you know, a very similar experience and you come out there, you get into the locker room with the other guys, you know, holy shit, that was hot, you know, today or, oh man, when we were doing this thing, this and that, and it's, you, you kind of have this shared experience you just went through that you can very much relate to. That's a window. That's an, that's an opening for you.

to like bond and identify with someone okay early on um there's you made friends through hot yoga so i wanted to bring that yeah i actually wanted to bring this up so you know when Cause I have kind of dogged on like, like, go join a club and you'll make friends or go to trivia night and you'll make friends. And I'm like, that doesn't work, whatever. So I've been going to hot yoga for a long time now, or like two, three years, I guess, close to three years now.

And I was like, you know, I know the faces that are there and we say hi and have some small talk and this and that, but I don't make any friends from it. Well, what I've noticed too, is that honestly, if I put in just a smidge more effort. That I probably would. So what I've noticed, there's a few people in particular who I've made like a strong acquaintance with, let's say. This one guy, really warm guy that's there.

once we got to talking and we're just at first it was god that was a hot one you know that was the really intense today or whatever And we got to talking and we're like, you know, he's like, oh, hey, I'm Derek. I'm like, I'm Drew. Like, you know, we get to talking. He's like, what do you do? What do you do? He's a therapist. Oh, I have a lot of therapist friends. And also, you know, like I do this crazy podcast thing and work for this guy. And he's like, oh, really? I'm trying to write a book.

that kind of develops um he hasn't been in yoga for a while so i haven't talked to him but i i think what i missed was um the whole kind of second part of this which is the self-disclosure and that like taking a little bit of risk and being a little bit vulnerable with people and the patience it requires, too. I think there's that. And I think there's a consistency element. And it's funny, I'm thinking about the interest thing. Like, I do think...

Because I'm thinking about my experiences around this. And particularly, I joined a CrossFit gym in New York for a while. And part of the problem was I went all the time. but it was different people every single time so it's like yeah so you have to like you have to go you have to go so much for so long before you start running into the same people over and over again and then even once

And maybe that was a New York thing just because there's so many people. But I definitely felt like there was a lack of consistency. And then it's on top of that, like, I feel like it can't just be. Like if you go to a CrossFit gym and you meet people at the CrossFit gym, unless you're like obsessed with CrossFit and they're obsessed with CrossFit, it's probably not enough. Like you probably need something like that, like a second thing outside of the CrossFit.

that you're both into and interested in. I think there's an interesting distinction here between interest, shared interest, and shared obsession. Oh, yeah. Because I... like i have an interest in surfing i have an interest in running yeah i have an interest in a lot of things um i have an interest in watching football but i don't think i would ever become friends with a guy just

by watching football together. Same thing with my yoga studio. Like I'm not obsessed with yoga. I do it because it makes me feel better. And that's great. Like the people I've met in there that I.

that would potentially become friends of mine. Like I said, like Derek, he's a therapist and he's like, he likes writing and he likes reading and all that. And like, that's what we connect on is not on the yoga. Yeah, I think there's, but there's like two or three things in my life that I am kind of obsessed over. And if I meet somebody who's also obsessed over that thing, then it's almost like instant friends. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's, that's fair too. I do that with like, like people, if I run into another woodworker, man, we're boom. Yeah. It's like, oh, dude, what kind of saw do you got with this? Oh, do you use this planer to use this? And it's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, I think you're right. That creates a, the obsession level creates a.

deeper spark more quickly anyway. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I, you know, there's, there's lots of little techniques and stuff like that. I think I'd just rather though, get into like an example, like kind of walk through this. Sure. Um, how, how would you, I guess. How do you want to do this, Mark? Because I guess what I could do is I could tell you what I would do. Let's say I moved to a new city or something like that and I knew no one. Yeah. And what I would do. We could walk through that maybe.

We could try it like that or we could take a hypothetical example of somebody too if you wanted to. What do you think? Wink, wink. Why don't we do this? Why don't we do the move to a new city and walk through that and discuss that? And then I'm happy to just be open. I mean, I've been very open on this podcast that like, you know, social life's kind of the pain point in my life at the moment. And I'm happy to kind of talk through what I think.

my situation is, like why that's happened. Because that's going to tie into a lot of other themes around age, phase of life, proximity, shared interests with people, consistency. Stuff like that. Okay. Okay, cool. All right. Well, okay. So if I moved to a new city and I didn't know anyone, I probably would.

This, I think, has changed recently for me. I probably would join some of these clubs and groups and meetups and everything like that. I think you're right. The hit rate is not going to be what you think it is, most likely. what I would change about this is I, you know, I probably would go to a CrossFit gym. I probably would go into yoga. And I would be, I would practice that self-disclosure.

gradual self-disclosure a little bit um more easily introduce yourself first of all just be like hey i'm i'm drew yeah you know um who are you that's it for the first probably i don't know handful of times that you even go um and just kind of get the lay of the land you go Find something, though, that really matches with your personality, your values. You know, I know one person in my life in particular that I'm thinking of is a very compassionate person.

they would do really well in like an animal shelter volunteering situation or um food bank or something like that right those i think are actually really really good um places to meet friends yeah because not only are values aligned but it's usually like people who are also very warm and open to like you think about somebody who goes and volunteers in an animal shelter or something like that they're going to be open to to meeting new people and being

warm to you and everything like that, right? You just can't expect that to like... It's not automatic, though. I think that's what I thought before, is that it's just going to be automatic. If you just show up these places, it's automatic. And it's not. You know what I would also do is I would probably look for other people in there who seem to be a little uncomfortable or maybe out of place or maybe looking for...

something like i don't know i i have an eye for those people i'm like this person's uncomfortable um let me go introduce myself and we'll both be a little more comfortable after doing that um so i think that's kind of how to get started anyway and get into your community and just be a little more active and engaged.

Obviously, like finding these things online, finding groups online, you know, you can be in proximity to people online to some degree. There is like a kind of psychological proximity you have with online groups, but you need to take them physical, is my opinion.

anyway yeah um and i think that that's a that's how to really get started on this but you have to be super consistent you know the 50 90 200 hours that you're going to put in so let's talk about the nuts and bolts of that okay because like i'm with you i want to get into this yeah yeah i'm with you all the way to there okay i i go to a bunch of clubs Groups, whatever, meet a bunch of people. Okay. Cool. Hey, I'm Mark. Nice to meet you. Blah, blah, blah. Now what?

Yeah. It's three weeks go by, I don't see this person again, you know? Oh, okay. Or a week goes by, I don't see this person again. And then next week it's like, oh, hey, how you doing? Nice weather. You know, like, what are the nuts and bolts?

Do you invite them to something else? Do you organize something outside of the group or the event? Do you follow up with them? What does that look like? I usually go to yoga at... in the middle of the day so it's right before i eat and so one of the things i've thought about was a couple of the guys that i've become friendly with there and be like hey you want to go grab

uh some like there's a lunch spot right next to it that i go to all the time like hey come grab a lunch with me you know if you want yeah i'm heading over here if you want to grab lunch yeah do it that way keep it casual keep it very casual at first especially yeah um and i

at some point you do have to cross that threshold though and you do have to say hey we need to meet somewhere besides here yeah we need to do something besides this thing here yes uh that's what's gonna take you up to the next level i think yeah with someone

and i feel like that's the moment where you need to find the second thing like it can't just be like oh we do yoga yeah like it needs to be like we do yoga and we're both psychology nerds or we do yoga and we're both really into long distance running hey we should run together or or we do yoga and we're both really into tennis or whatever you know so so generally speaking like i meet people through business networks because my obsession is business yeah and i i just find that that's that's

generally the people I gel with the most quickly. But the people I kind of stick with are the people who share an interest outside of business with me. So it's like I start with the business stuff. Like honestly, if I could do LA again.

I would come and I would just join business groups. I would have skipped the CrossFit gym. I would have skipped the tennis lessons. I would have skipped like the surf classes. I would have skipped all that stuff because I'm not obsessed with it and I didn't stick with it. Like I went... five times and then i'm like i'm i'm bored i'm busy yeah and uh but the business stuff because i'm obsessed with it i would go all the time and i would see everybody all the time

and then from there i'd be like okay who in this group likes to go surfing who in this group you know wants to go to a crossfit gym who in this group wants to you know go see a soccer game or whatever And then like take it from there, I guess. I'm kind of. You're still skeptical it sounds. Well, I'm kind of like figuring this out on the fly. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Because listening to you talk, I'm trying to piece it together with my own experience. The obsession thing I do think is important. It's like start with the thing that you love the most and then maybe move on there. I'll give you an example.

made some surf buddy friends and would go sit sit on the water with them and talk to them for hours um it had nothing in common like you know just like completely different lives you know they they work a nine to five at some insurance company or whatever and um it's like we kind of run out of things to talk about after a certain point whereas it's like if i start with the business guy

I know I'm never going to run out of things to talk about. Okay, okay. And so then I can invite him surfing. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Hmm. Okay. It's because I think I, I, well, I don't know if I'm super obsessed with any one thing. I'm like, I've told you before, I'm so fascinated and interested in so many different things that I can usually find something to connect with.

just about anybody on yeah like you know i grew up in a small farming uh community and i can talk to people about farming or i can talk to them about like you know running a regression analysis yeah over here and so Yeah, I get that. Maybe that's a personal thing to me. I mean... It could be. No, it could be. Yeah. Having that mindset of, like, you are a likable person, but I also think it's important to have a mindset of people are likable.

like it's it's yes like not going into a new job and being like oh these these people are losers or i don't like these type of types of people that's okay that right there that's a huge one i think that people um so Some of these people I've already talked about like in my yoga class and stuff like that if like you're probably to me at first I was just like I probably wouldn't like this person and you'd like They're actually pretty

they're nice people surprising open people people surprising who like actually are interested in you that's another thing be interested in other people show genuine interest in someone else They'll show interest in you. You'll be very surprised. So don't like I think there are there are a lot of people who are like, oh, I don't want to associate with this type of person or whatever it is. I've I've dropped a lot of that. I don't. Yeah, I don't know about you, but like.

I am consistently surprised at who I become friends with and who I stay friends with. Like if you, at any period of my life, if you had asked me to go through all my friends and ask who I'd still be friends with in five or 10 years, I would have been wrong about a lot of them. and i think it's important to uh yeah to just not make predictions don't make assumptions about people don't assume

Like I've had, I've had, I've met, I've met friends that annoyed the shit out of me. Like the first year or two, I knew them. I was like, my God, this fucking guy, like what is his problem? And then it's 10 years later, I'm like good friends with him, you know? So it just.

stuff like that happens you you never know when you offered me the job and i left grad school you know you have this built-in network in grad school right basically or any any type of situation like that and when i was leaving i went to my cohort and you know i was like ah guys i'm leaving or whatever in there There's this one woman and she was Italian too. And she goes, no, Drew, I just started to like you. And this was after a whole year. And I was like, what the hell?

so again it does take some time sometimes sometimes personalities that you think aren't gonna gel with you end up gelling with you yeah yes um but i mean okay but there is that okay there's the proximity the repeated exposure the the gradual self-disclosure

Think of it in those terms when you're doing this. The one thing I think maybe the reason why I'm dancing around a lot of this is because I've always been able to either have like a built-in network where if I've ever moved or anything like that, like.

You know, when I moved from the small town that I grew up in, went to college, you have your, your college network, right? You're, you're, you see the same people in the classes or the dorm or whatever it is, the mere exposure effect that we were talking about. When I went to graduate school, left again for graduate school, there's you have a built in social network there. I moved to Ohio with a girlfriend and it ended up we.

all the like spouses and boyfriends ended up hanging out with each other and it actually ended up working out. Like I've always kind of had that. Yeah. So that's why I'm saying like leverage anything you have like that, any sort of network you have in place, maybe a friend of a friend.

You know, one time I was traveling through Mexico. I went to Oaxaca and I told you, hey, I'm going to Oaxaca. And you're like, I know somebody in Oaxaca right now. Let me hook you up with them. And you did. And you know, like that was just serendipitous stuff like that that happens. Yeah, you definitely want to rely on networks. I think the thing that.

like really makes friendships and this is related to the interest thing but i think it's actually more important it's like there needs to be stakes like if you just show up to uh a yoga class or something and you're not in the yoga you don't really know what you're doing and you just kind of sit there and chit chat with people no no it's very active yeah yeah nothing's gonna happen like i and i think maybe this is kind of where the obsession thing is is coming from is that like i find that it

you have to really care about the thing you're doing, and then you find other people who really care about it too. And that caring can also be network-based, right? So it's like, I have a friend that I really care about. And I really care about you as a friend. And so I'm going to introduce you to, and like there's stakes now to that relationship because you're both friends with me. So like, I think it's the.

And I think this is actually going to be a really important component of what we're going to talk about in the next section about like why it seems so hard to make friends these days. And I think a lot of it is that the stakes, society is quickly being optimized to be stakes free.

Yes. That you can come and go anywhere as you please, that there's no downside to anything. There's no friction to anything. And I think it's actually the stakes that make it meaningful and that make the relationships that are meaningful. become the glue of the friendship. Which is why you can't engineer an app that's frictionless. Yes. That's why. Yeah.

And it's funny because I remember I talked to that guy and I tried to kind of explain that. And he's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. So the peak experiences, we're going to have friction built in. They're going to be challenges and they have to accomplish them to get. And I was like, okay, great. Yeah, that's not going to work. Wrong order. This is, you know, we haven't talked about church.

and religion yet. Okay. I was going to just get into that too. Yeah. But I think church, school, and business, like if you look at the data on where most people make friends, it's those three things. Yeah. Church, school, business. Yeah. If you look at all three of those things, massive stakes. Huge stakes involved. And things matter. And things matter and you're going through it with somebody else that it matters for. And I think that is...

That's at the root of it. And I guess, and again, to kind of return to my obsession point, maybe it's not obsession, but it's like, it needs to matter to you. Like you need to actually really care about it. Like looking back, I think part of the problem is I didn't really care about CrossFit. And I look at the people at that gym who were friends with each other and that was their fucking life. It was their identity. It's the thing they look forward to every day.

You know, for me, I was just like, I don't want to be fat, dude. Those are those are exactly the people at my CrossFit gym that I don't connect with. Yeah, they are. And it's that's OK.

Yeah. You know, they, they connect with the coaches really well. They connect with each other really well. They all come over and they're drinking their protein shakes. What'd you think of those pull-ups, you know, and this and that. And I'm over here with the other like nerds and stuff who are obviously just there to like, Hey, I need to get off my ass. Cause I sit in front of a computer too much. Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Back to the church thing, though. For the record, Mark and I are not shitting on religion ever, okay? Are people getting mad? We've gotten some comments, and whenever we brought up religion in the few episodes that we've done in the podcast so far, people are... You're shit, non-religion. It's like, I don't.

Kind of the opposite, actually. Even though we're not religious. I feel like I'm the most pro-religious atheist in the world. I don't know what you people are thinking. And I feel very similar, too. And I do, both you and I, I think we look back like on our parents' generation and especially my grandparents' generation, the church was so central to their social lives and such a source of like resilience for them too.

And not only just friendships and everything like that, but, you know, somebody dies in the church community. Everybody rallies around. You get sick. Everybody rallies around. When my mom had a pretty major surgery almost 20 years ago now. um she was had to go three and a half four hours away for the surgery and the pastor showed up yeah she was there like insane right um so these types of things now i'm obviously you know if you're not religious i don't know

There's probably some ethical things around that. If you're not religious and you go to church to make friends, I don't know. They'll be welcoming. I can tell you that. I don't think it will work. I mean, they will be welcoming. Yeah. But I don't think it will work. And I think because there won't be stakes. Yeah.

Yeah. There won't be stakes. Yeah. You're there for the friendships. You're there. It's it's transactional. Ah, OK. That's I think what we're getting at. Yeah. Is that you can't make this. You cannot be transactional about your friendships in general.

Yes. And so stop treating them like that. And if you're only in the yoga class or the CrossFit class to meet people and make friends, then it's like that kind of undermines it. Yeah. Because it's not actually an interest. It's not actually a shared interest.

It's just a thing you're doing to talk to a stranger. So let's summarize really quick. And then I actually want to hold my personal LA example until we finish off this section, because there's a couple more things that I think we should go through. that will inform kind of my story. So in summary, moving to a new city, first thing that matters is stakes. So whether that's...

an interest, a genuine interest, something you actually care about, not just like, well, I always wondered what playing tennis would be like. It's like, no, no, you love doing this thing. You are super interested in this endeavor.

pursue that yeah and then find people on that same path and then also related to stakes is like tap your networks tap the people who are associated with you know whether it's a new job uh your partner family friends of family all that stuff like tap into into those networks um because i think what

what drives what's going to drive all these relationships is that there's there's stakes attached to them that it's not just like a well i might as well meet this person for coffee because i have nothing else to do step number two be proactive good attitude proactivity introduce yourself Be friendly. Be patient, I would say. Give it time. More time than you think you need. More time than you think you need. If you're in an environment where you see people over and over again,

Give that time. I can tell you, you know, one of the differences, the jarring differences between New York and L.A. is that in New York, because there's so much going on all the time, you do get that frequency of contact kind of naturally. just because you're constantly invited to stuff. Whereas in LA, that frequency and that repetition gets dragged out over a much longer period of time.

And I think that fucked with my wife and I for a while. Like we were frustrated of like, wow, we've been here two years and we've only seen this person like five times or six times and it still feels like. were just acquaintances and whatnot like i i would say the friendships i do have here it took significantly longer than other places i've lived um for those friendships to kind of

formulate and cement themselves. So patience, wait for the consistency. And then when you find the people who share the stakes that you have, find that second or that outside interest. that second commonality so you meet somebody at church turns out they also love playing tennis or you meet somebody at tennis turns out they also uh are an accountant you're an accountant you know like it it's stuff like that i it feels like

In my experience, at least personally, it's like it's almost never one thing you have in common. There needs to be something else, too, that you can do together or talk about or, you know, you can't just sit there and talk about tennis. all day, every day, every time you see him. Otherwise, it's just a friend of utility. No, absolutely. So let's start with phases of life.

age-based friendships, like how friendships look throughout each stage of life, how they change from one stage to the next, and why these things are important. Yeah, sure. So starting really early on.

right um when you're a kid from let's just say zero to 12 years old when you're born to when you're about 12. Friendships are very much like activity-based. They're play-based. They're feeling good-based. I mean, proximity is really all that matters there, right? If you're around somebody, you're probably going to be friends with them just by being around them a whole bunch.

you play a lot and you get into trouble a lot all that kind of stuff your attachments kind of system forms in this during this phase though too right so you know we've talked about attachment before but just real quick if you're uh secure attachment you're kind of okay with

uh relationships and their ups and downs and you can manage all of that if you're anxious you're more like kind of want to glom onto somebody you're avoidant you kind of want to keep everybody at arm's distance right or somewhere in between and some combination of those two that

also bleeds into your, um, friendships as well. So, you know, if you're anxious and you have a friend and you're, you get possessive of that friend, or if you're avoidant, you don't really, you're like, ah, this is a friend sometimes. And I, whatever secure people seem to have better, uh,

better luck with that by about the ages five to seven, you, you get your first best friend, right? You remember your first best friend? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Me too. Yeah. And actually, uh, we stayed best friends for a long time. Yeah. It was, it was kind of cool. Probably not anymore. Life has changed. We don't live together anymore, which, you know, the proximity thing and all that. But kind of getting into those double-digit years now, you know, you're 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 in there.

peer groups kind of start to form right and you start to a little bit at least see your place in the pecking order sometimes if there is a hierarchy that forms you kind of see where you fit in how much do people you start to get a sense of how much people like you Um, versus, uh, like, am I a likable person? You start to develop those beliefs then. Okay. And that affects you throughout your life as, as we'll see a little bit too. Okay. At this point is friendship is really less about.

kind of the deep emotional sharing you know it's not that that's not that uh friendship of virtue at this point yet it's more about just uh presence and proximity like i talked about and um What you're really learning in these though is like how to share, how to cooperate.

how to empathize, how to belong in a group. Okay. A lot of that foundational stuff is set there, but these really aren't those virtuous friendships. So they can develop into that later, but you're probably not, you don't have the cognitive machinery yet to really develop those deeper level ones. that kind of some of the more more of that deepens as you get into adolescence okay you go through puberty it's a very intense time right um you uh

Friends become more central to your emotional life at this point. You start kind of pushing your parents away and your peer group becomes a lot more influential on your identity, on your emotional well-being, your mental health at this point too. really like i said a big part of your identity is formed during these these phases too peer influence obviously this is peer pressure really comes in right now okay um

Risky behaviors. You take, you take risks with your friends and stuff like that. And that's, there's going to be really strong bonding periods too. Right. Which is probably one of the reasons, you know, kids do stupid shit, do stupid shit. Peak experiences. Feel closer to each other, identify with each other, yeah. Exactly, during this part. Which is why, and...

Since you're processing emotions so intensely at this period, I think that's why we probably start over indexing on it because we remember those really intense peak experiences like, oh, that was like really, really formative for me or really like a core. part of who I was at that point. And so we kind of tend to overvalue them at that point. This is also too where like.

uh romantic and sexual desires can come in and start clouding everything right remember what life was like before you had to worry about sex god it was just so it's easy so easy so right it's so great and you could just like be with your friends right it was awesome

But then you start throwing in like, you know, your crushes and everything that happened maybe in middle school. Uh, and those complicate your friendships or, you know, I would, there was definitely times when I was in middle school too, like me and a friend be fighting over, like, who's going to.

who's going to be her boyfriend, right? Like, no, I do, I do. And that complicates things. I lost a friend in high school over a girl, yeah. Yeah, yeah, same. Yeah, yeah. Their intense identity shaping.

periods of your life that adolescence period is um and like i said it's kind of when you're pushing your family out it's kind of the first time you're seeing you you feel yourself more seen in like a larger group or even society at this point right because you're starting to form your own identity because you're starting to get that independence that you have you start to see your yourself in relation to other people that aren't your family at that point which becomes very very important for

the next phase, um, young adulthood. You get into, basically you're out of high school, you're into college, maybe you're in your twenties at this point too. This is where you start to form more capacity for deeper friendships though. Okay. um again you're you're you're cutting yourself off more and more from your family usually at this point and establishing more and more independence and you're leaning more on the social relationships around you not just for

you know, kind of emotional support, but even like to some extent survival, you know what I mean? Like they become more important to who, uh, not just who you are, but like whether or not you're going to get along in life. that's this is that period where friendships really take up a huge major role there's also a lot of transitions during this phase though too and i know for me anyway i probably went through

like two or three friend groups, I would say, in my 20s. And those were pretty jarring, pretty traumatic events for me. I think one thing that changes from these periods, like you said, when you're a kid, it's just about fun and... convenience yeah when you're an adolescent there's this identity formation that's happening and and i think what's interesting about this period is that you're still

There's a lot of status games going on. Yes, like a big part of being an adolescent is like trying to figure out where you are in the pecking order Who's cool? Who's not cool? Are you likable and and but the The funny thing is that you don't realize at that age is that you're judging status on very superficial, silly traits. It's like who has the prettiest hair and who is the best football player and whatever.

uh who is the highest test score it's it's stuff that doesn't really matter in the long run but you're kind of obsessive over it and there's a lot of insecurity around it and i think that's why a lot

a very, very, very large percentage of adolescents' friendships are toxic to some extent, which we'll talk about in the next section, because they are primarily based on status games and they are based on insecurity. But it's part of... unlike an adult toxic relationship it's not a flaw necessarily it's just part of the maturing process like you kind of have to go through a lot of those toxic friendships to realize oh that's not a friendship

I was just being very insecure, and I thought she was really cool because of XYZ reason, and it turns out, no, that's not the case. I think what happens in young adulthood is you start figuring out what you actually value and care about. And similarly, yeah, part of that process is shedding old friendships of realizing like, oh, I don't actually care about this thing.

now that I realize I don't care about this thing, it's kind of hard to be around this person after realizing it. Yeah, I had a lot of experiences. Yeah. um and so there i do think there is quite a bit of disappointment but there's also it's funny because you know one of the common tropes in the self-help space is uh is that when you grow you're going to lose friends and it's always

It's always framed or positioned as like, well, they weren't good enough for you anyway. People are just trying to hold you back. It's kind of this very competitive, they're jealous because you've like. discovered who you are or whatever or you've uncovered some flaw in them and they don't like it yeah yeah and sure

I think on the margin, there's probably some of that, especially if you do have like very toxic relationships in your life. Yes, there's going to be some of that. But I think a lot of it is innocuous. I think a lot of it is just like, you know. I realize that this isn't my path and I want to be on a different path. And as soon as you realize that, you stop relating to that person. And it's not, nobody's wrong. Like nobody's jealous. Nobody's like.

turning their back on you. It's not this big, dramatic, movie-like thing. It's just life. It's just realizing like, oh, I don't really have anything in common with you anymore. and that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Like in adolescence, like late adolescence going into adulthood, there's a lot of pressure to kind of like find your tribe, right? And that spins up all of that, I think.

you know, it's, if you, there, there's some people who like, if they don't find that they feel like less than right, they feel unworthy and all of that, and they can carry that into adulthood. And I think that's a lot of what happens.

um but the the pressure that mounts there if you can find that release valve that you're talking about like it's that's just how it is that's life yeah that for me that softened the blow quite a bit too because yeah i wanted to be like a part of a certain crowd or whatever it was and then i found out oh No, I don't. Yeah, I don't. And I'm OK with that. And after it happens a few times, you you you kind of get over it. You're like, oh, yeah, that's just natural.

People aren't supposed to be in your life forever. Very few people are supposed to be in your life forever. And that's okay. Yeah. I think one of the good things about modern culture is that it's... like if there is a good part about the fragmenting of modern culture is that like you can find your little pocket in whatever stage of life you're in

you know, they're like nerd culture or whatever culture is. I thought you were going to say it's easier to ghost people. Yeah, that's the other side of it. That's the other side of it for sure. Yeah. But yeah, that's I think. you can find it as long as you don't like kind of glom onto the, all of those, um, all of the, like, you know, you need to be a part of this certain crowd or fit into this certain way. Like.

do your own thing, take your own path. There's plenty of opportunity for that. And that's where I, hopefully you can figure that out at this stage of your life when in young adulthood and carry that on. and later in life and just be okay with yourself. That's what I found anyway. It's like, oh, okay, I'm okay with who I am and I don't fit into this mold over here. So I'm going to go over here and that's fine. So, yeah.

so what about middle age yeah adulthood where we are mark middle age ish well 30 to 65 let's say or something like that 30 to 60 somewhere in there right I think there's a further narrowing that goes on here too, right? But a lot of things get in the way of friendships here. And this is where I think the whole narrative around the dip.

and friendship comes during adulthood parents parenting you're very focused on your career um you i think it's worth explaining what you mean by the dip like there's okay yeah there's like a yeah so think about it you know like when you're in high school you have this built-in kind of infrastructure for your friendship same thing with college for the most part and it's even narrowed down a little bit more because you're all kind of

in these little interest groups, right? Like your major, your degree or clubs that you join, whatever it is. And there's this whole infrastructure for it. Then you get out into the real world. Um, and there's not that same infrastructure there.

Right. And then not only that, but you have all these responsibilities on top of you. And maybe you've gotten married by this point and had kids and you have a career or at least a job that takes up a lot of your time. And all of these things just start pushing out your social network a little bit.

You think anyway that you have to prioritize all these other things. Yes. And friendships kind of get pushed aside or tend to get pushed aside in this stage of life. Yeah. I would imagine that this is kind of the... if you were to average it all out like the all the all-time low of friendships is probably in this period of like 30s 40s 30s 40s 50s yeah and then it probably comes back in retirement yeah for sure yeah

A lot of people you do, though, there is a winnowing and this can be a good thing. You go from a bigger social group. I mean, like in college, I kind of had this kind of diffuse group of friends. Right. And then it definitely narrowed down after college. And my friend groups got smaller, but they got tighter.

um and you there's good and bad ways to navigate that obviously too but that does happen um you start to realize in this stage though too that oh friendships really take effort yeah and then i think where the problem comes is are you willing to pay that price or not right and this is where i think a lot of people are right now at least like in our age group anyways like i'm not willing you know people are this sucks i'm not even gonna

worry about this i'll focus on work i'll focus on my relationship with my spouse yeah whatever it is right what are your notes i've got bullet points to go through here i mean i i do think And now we're getting into like my personal experience as well. I would say there's a few dynamics that I think make friendships in middle age particularly difficult. You know, when you're young.

You have no idea who you are, so you could potentially be anybody. So you're now interested in meeting, associating, and hanging out with anybody, right? It's like there's just the world's your oyster. the more crazy background the person has, the more interested you are to discover and figure out what type of person this is. I think once you hit middle age, you know what you like, you know what you care about.

You've got your commitments. You have your goals. I think it just narrows the range of people that I'm not going to say that you're curious about, but you realistically are like, am I going to be a close friend with this person? Probably not. I can't go to Tahiti four times a year. So nice meeting you, Tahitian friend, but have a nice life. I would say there's a focus on...

higher quality relationships and lower quantity of relationships. And part of that is just out of your own psychological interest. The second reason for that is that I think there's real opportunity costs in middle age. so again when you're young nobody has anything going on nobody has any like nobody knows what they're doing nobody has a career right yeah like no nobody is it's just yeah sure i can take two weeks and go to ireland like and drink beer like

Fuck it. Why not? And so you just start doing things. And once you get to middle age, chances are you have a family, you have a house, you have car payments, you have insurance. You have a career. You've got a bunch of goals and dreams for yourself. Suddenly it's like just taking off and spending two weeks in Ireland. There's major opportunity costs to that. You're like, okay, I'm giving up a lot to go on that trip.

Do I actually want to do that? No, actually, I probably don't want to do that. And I think that limits, that potentially limits a lot of the peak experiences that, you know, you get tons of peak experiences in your... adolescence in your 20s. And then I think once you get to your 30s and 40s, it's like a peak experience is a Saturday without the kids. That's kind of your peak experience.

So that's a complicating factor as well. And then I would say that the third thing I wrote down is the relationship piece. It's funny. I feel like every married couple... is is gonna immediately understand what i'm saying but you know when you're married i i can't tell you how many times uh like my wife will will make a friend and she'll come home and she'll tell me about the friend and she'll be like

please, please, please, I hope you like her husband, you know, or I'll meet, I'll make a friend and I'll, I'll come home and I'll, I'll tell my wife, like, please, please, please, I hope you like his wife, you know, because it's.

there's fucking like it's a thing it's a real thing and it's the difference between um the spouses getting along and them not it like very tangibly changes the relationship it's the difference between uh a surf buddy that i see once a month and like a very close friend that i see on a weekly basis when you're when you're a couple and you and like the magic formula is when you're a couple and you find another couple where it's like you both both of you like both of them

and both of them like both of you and it's but because there's four people involved instead of two it's exponentially more complicated that's not a linear like one-to-one thing that that's that's very true yeah that's okay yeah that's very complicating yeah it's a very big complicating factor that yeah and it and it's tough because then what you end up with is you know so my wife and i we have two or three couples that we're close with and

those are probably our closest friends just because you get from from like an roi point of view right if my wife and i are going to spend a saturday night it's better to spend it with a couple that we both like you know so we we both get to have an enjoyable social experience um you know so we have two or three couples that that we get along really well with and we probably see them the most often but then it's like she has her girlfriends

and i have some of my guy friends and you just kind of like fit them in where when when and where you can and often you know if you're busy and you're traveling and you got work stuff and um and you're hanging out with these other couples yeah these other couples like it just is the time it becomes very hard to fit them in and on top of that you know when you have kids you compound that even a third time yeah which is

do we like the couple? Does our kid like their kid? And I think a problem that a lot of couples or a lot of people run into is that their kids make friends with some other kid.

and they meet the parents and they're like please god let me like the parents please please please let me like the parents and it's it's and you know once you find those the parents uh uh that you that you get along with and that you really you can be friends with and it's like oh my god this is gold now we can travel together we can do weekends together we can go to disneyland together like we can have play dates together it's um

it's hard to find but then when you find it you like latch onto it and uh but yeah there's a lot of complicating factors in this age range and i think that the hardest part the like the the most difficult thing for i think my wife and i to accept is that these complicating factors they exist for a good reason right like my my career makes it complicated makes it hard and complicated uh to make a lot of friends um

Part of that is just being a public figure, but part of that is just how busy I am. But I wouldn't give that up. I wouldn't trade that in, right? Being married in some ways complicates making friends.

i definitely wouldn't give that up right so it's like knowing who i am and knowing what i care about and like really only spending all my time focusing on like the two or three things that are most important to me also complicates making friends but i wouldn't give that up either so um it's it is a tough phase i think yeah and it is like it's not that there's no solution but i just think it's it's like playing your social life on hard mode

essentially and and and you're coming out of a period of your life your teens and 20s which was like really playing social life on easy mode in a lot of ways like everything was working in your favor yeah yeah yeah and i think Two other complicating factors I think I would bring up. One is like your job stability during this time. Yeah. This was something I didn't really think of.

Um, until I was talking with my sister about this and my sister, um, has changed jobs a lot, not on her own necessarily. Most of the time it's been like, she, she's a social worker or has been in social work in some capacity. the department gets cut yeah they lay off this whole whatever it is she's had to change jobs quite a bit and like those for especially for this uh period of your life that's a if you're focused on your career and focused on that

That's a big source of connection for you. And if you lose that every few years, those people just kind of fade away. Yeah. So like that. I never thought of that because I've had this job for 11 years. That's a huge one. I think we should come back to that in the next section when we talk about why it's becoming harder to make friends. But yeah, the job stability thing. I mean, I see it.

I forget where. It wasn't in the research for this episode, but I did see somewhere recently that it was some statistic that it was like, you know, a couple generations ago, like our parents' generation, like the average tenure at a job was like... a decade right and i think now it's like 18 months it's less than two years yeah yeah and and it and i see it too like when we hire like resumes come in and it's a new company every every 12 to 18 months and

Yeah, you can't really build a community or like a really stable social life. You can, but it's very hard. Yeah, yeah. It's very hard. We will get into that and some of the complications here. But yeah, just wanted to mention that. The other thing I wanted to bring up, though, too, is like any...

A lot of mental health problems usually develop in this. In your 30s, I know a lot of my therapist friends are like, most people start therapy in their 30s. Interesting. Yeah. And then I have to continue it into their 40s, you know? Yeah. um and so those that comes up and that is that's a factor yeah uh in in making friends uh your mental health whether it's the stigma around it or just

It's kind of a vicious cycle too. If you have mental health problems, you don't feel worthy of having friends. And so you don't go make friends and it gets worse. And this is the time period. I'll add another thing to that. Yeah. Again, when you're in your 20s or a teenager, it's a level playing field. I think I know where you're going. Everybody's broke. Nobody has a career. No major decisions have been made.

Yet, when you get to 40, everybody's made some major decisions and everybody can see the consequences of those decisions. You're wearing them on your sleeve at that point. So it's very... It can be a little bit obvious. You see people who really squandered or really made bad choices or really didn't take care of themselves.

Again, it comes back to that narrowing, right? Like it's the pool of people that you're gonna be interested in being friends with has like slimmed down quite a bit. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, we'll wrap this up then with a later, later adulthood. Yes. Old age. Old age. When you get into your, you know, 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond. All of those obligations are usually taken care of or they start fading away a little bit. Those big life obligations anyway.

your obligations change. Kids are grown up, moved out. Yeah. Probably got maybe retired. Yeah. You've maybe paid the house off or close to it or, or, you know, you've, you might have some financial stability or at least you've gotten used to your financial situation by that point. Right. The people who seem to.

do the best in this, have made some long standing friendships or at least rekindled some from the past that give them some, you know, some kind of a resilient network that they can lean on. Health issues become a point or become a thing at this point that you have to deal with. And so friends and your larger social network become even more important. Yeah. This what I think is interesting, too, right now, you know, there's a lot of people.

There's probably a perception still even that, oh, old people are lonely. Actually, like the highest rates of loneliness are in younger people at this time. Older people are actually doing better. I mean, maybe not. awesome, but they're doing better than a lot of the younger generations right now. And I, but I think really what that is, is that you get to this point and you're like, you realize what's important, right? You realize that these relationships are actually what.

is the most important part of life yeah um and so you start to prioritize them more than you have you've done your career you've you've did what you you've made peace with the things you didn't accomplish sure at this point and you start saying, OK, actually, what it is is relationships. You know, I always think of David Brooks. You know, he's I think he's in his 70s now. And.

Every interview I hear with him or every speech, he always brings up the fact that he's like, I wish I would have spent more time on my relationships. That's the biggest regret he has. And so now he's come back to do that more and more. And I think it's just way more, you know, your mortality.

It's more front of mind. So it's a clarifying event in your mind now. And you start to see that actually, you know, it's my friends and my family and the social ties that I have that are really what's giving me meaning at this point. And so you double down on them. I definitely. I've talked to my mom about this. My mom is living in a retirement community neighborhood. And she's happy as a fucking clam, which is great to see. But it's interesting talking to her about it because it's...

There are a few impressions that I get. One, and you touched briefly on a couple of them, but one I've talked to her about or heard her say is that it's just like you get to your 70, it's like everything's done. You know, so you get to your 70s and you just kind of let go of stuff. You're like, you know what? I just want to play bridge and like... go to movie night you know like i don't really like let's not i'm not going to hold it against this person if you know uh 30 years ago they

yeah made a bad decision or whatever or they've they've been divorced twice you know it's just like let's just play bridge and pizza consistency over intensity exactly it becomes those small little things and you're just you're you're you realize uh how much

connection on just a consistent, even small basis matters at that point. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing that's really apparent too is the importance of that network on just for health reasons. Right. You know, it's just... you know she at any given time she knows people in the neighborhood neighbors friends who are getting surgeries in the hospital cancer diagnosis you know and and she's had to rely on friends and neighbors a lot you know for

for stuff with her as well and it's you you see how important it starts to get at that age yeah um so yeah it's just there seems to be a a more just kind of a more calm positive You know, it's just like, let's just get along. Yeah. I think you're more forgiving of people too at that point. You know, you probably, you probably are at the point where you're more accepting of.

different people i would say at that point anyway yeah you've seen it all yeah you've seen it all yeah i i just want to touch on gender dynamics because it is a thing and it is A bit of a hot-button topic that comes up online quite a bit like it's definitely it gets memed quite a bit in various ways So I guess I'll quickly go over the research

And then we can kind of talk about maybe some of the spicier controversial takes. I don't have a ton to say about it, but we might as well touch on it since we're here. So the thing that is real, there's an old saying that men stand shoulder to shoulder and look out and women stand face to face and look at each other. There's actually quite a bit of evidence that that is true. Men tend to prefer to do something together.

And women tend to talk to each other, face each other and talk to each other. And as a result, and again, this comes back to like why I didn't really like using vulnerability as that third factor. As a result, I think deep male friendships tend to be based around mutual experiences, things that they've gone through together, things that they've done together, challenges that they've faced together, projects that they've done together.

and and i think women for women it tends to be much more about self-disclosure talking about you know their their thoughts their feelings their lives their past their future their dreams everything you know it's it's there's an old joke uh i forget where i heard it or where it originated but it was uh there was like a guy who his friend got divorced and he went and played golf for four hours with him

And then the guy came home and his wife was like, oh my God, how is he? How's he doing? And the husband just kind of shrugged. He's like, yeah, he's doing fine. And she's like, really? Like, what does he think about the divorce? And the husband says. Well, we didn't really talk about it, but the golf game went great. He shot a 74. It was awesome. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, yeah. And I mean...

It is a stereotype. It's a joke because it's a stereotype, but as with a lot of stereotypes, there's some truth to it. Okay, dude, so do you think that that... You kind of already mentioned you're like, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Maybe that's okay. Like women will tend to kind of criticize men for that. Like, oh, you can't open up to each other. You can't connect with each other. And it's like, well.

Yeah. Well, the same way men will criticize women for dumping all their feelings all the time and complaining about every little problem in their life. Right. So it is my take on this is that there's no right or wrong way to have a friendship. Like if there's a friendship and look. I personally like the self-disclose. And I personally, I will say this, that...

My best male friendships are with men who are also comfortable being vulnerable and disclosing. What I generally find is men who don't go there or who can't really disclose much. I can be friends with them, but I'm never going to be very close friends with them. I definitely look for men who are capable of opening up and sharing thoughts and feelings and being vulnerable. But I also don't...

like demand that all the time. You know, like if we just want to play golf, we can just play golf. Like it's not a huge deal. So it is a thing. And the same way, I think there's a lot of women out there who...

want to do things and and they don't want to sit around and talk about their feelings all the time and that's great they should be able to do things uh jess is over here she's cheering she's cheering along um so While it is generally a true thing, there's a wide variation in between. It's a spectrum, right? And it's like men and women are all over that spectrum. And even though maybe the average of men is over here and the average of women is over here.

It takes all types. It takes all types of people. Men also too, maybe you'll get into this, but men also too are much more likely to hang out in groups where women are much more likely to hang out one-on-one if you came across that. um i found this too like in my life i didn't realize just how like how prominent this was in my life too like the male friends i have like it's not that we don't hang out one-on-one but it's like it's very different

vibe and almost a different relationship that I have with a friend when we're in a group versus when we're one-on-one. Yeah. Especially with my male friends. With my female friends, I have much more direct relationships with them. Yeah. So... I don't know what that is necessarily. I agree with you that I'm more I do tend to.

gravitate more towards men who are, that we will self-disclose, but it's more like in a group setting and we're kind of all bouncing it all off, which I've found pretty interesting too. It's interesting. Most of my friendships are one-on-one. You're a one-on-one? Yeah. It's not that I don't have, like I said, it's not that I don't have one-on-one relationships with these, but.

Sometimes it's just kind of like, even like a good friend of mine, I'm like, I'm going to invite him out. I'm like, I should invite the other guys too. Yeah. Cause this has to be a little more, I don't know. It just feels different and there's a different vibe to it. I will say, so this spectrum.

both with the self-disclosure and the activity and i maybe even the group thing like this is very culturally driven as well yeah oh yeah oh yeah so it's there are some cultures that are very very gendered very like for example in brazil like men down there there's a much more social pressure on men down there too

be what is conventionally masculine. To the point that it's funny because when I go down there, sometimes it kind of feels like I'm going back to like that Mad Men. I was just down there like a month ago and it was really funny. We went to... my wife and I went to a dinner party. Really, I think it was like four couples, and it was like a really lovely dinner, an enjoyable night. And as soon as everybody finished dinner, all the women got up and went to the living room to like, I don't know.

gossip and talk about girly things. And then all the men immediately went straight into business and politics. And it's like, okay, the women are gone. We can talk about business and politics now. And it was just, I felt like we should have cigars and scotch and, you know. I should be in a three-piece suit or something. But down there, that's just how it works.

the conversations with women around and is very different than when it's just the guys. Yeah. One tidbit I'll throw in here too. Yeah. And this is something you can't unsee. Uh, but when you, next time you go to a party, you talked about the shoulder to shoulder versus face-to-face communication, you know, men shoulder to shoulder, women face-to-face.

Next time you go to a party, this is like literally true. Yes, you can see it. You can see it. So when men are talking, we're usually at a slight angle or like literally shoulder to shoulder when we talk. When women talk, they're usually face to face. Yeah. And it's like when men.

If you square up to a man when you're talking to him... It feels weird. The immediate thing I think is, are we going to fight or kiss? Like, what is going on here? Are you trying to... What are you trying to do here, right? Dude, it feels weird. It feels so weird. It feels weird. So just do a little... Your own little...

social experiment yeah do an experiment at a party it's pretty crazy the other thing this is completely tangible too but um i heard this a lot like a long time ago and it's actually true too but conversations usually happen in four four timing if you like if you're

sitting around, there's like three or four people. More than that, it's not. They'll be in like four or four time. It's kind of crazy too. So if you try to throw it off and then it gets weird. So yeah, just anyway, sorry. The other thing is that women tend to be much better about touching base, reaching out. um yeah pinging people i mean men in general are are i think they're bad at i would call it like the mechanics of friendship right like it's

It's generally following up with people, asking how they're doing, remembering birthdays. Bringing a gift to a wedding. Bringing a gift to a wedding. There's a lot of social conscientiousness stuff. And it's funny because there's, this has become a bit of a meme online of, you know, there are a lot of women who call it mankeeping, where it's like they, it's basically girlfriends and wives who have to run the man's.

social life and social calendar. Obviously, there's a decent amount of truth to that. It's actually interesting. If you look at rates of depression and suicide after divorce, men are like... five times higher than women. Generally speaking, after a divorce, women bounce back pretty quickly. Men bounce back extremely slowly. And I personally think this is one of the biggest reasons is that women, the social life.

Kind of defaults to the woman's social life and the men just kind of go along with it It's funny because there's a lot of criticism of men online at the moment about this And I feel like I see both sides of this. On the one hand, I do think men kind of suck at this and just need to get better. You need to take some responsibility. Yeah. For sure. Just own it.

develop some basic skills, reach out to your guy friends, invite people to stuff, put birthdays on your calendar. It's not rocket science, right? It's not rocket science. And I think this might actually be a good moment to get into like some very basic tactical things. And these are things that have helped me. And it's funny, I actually have a guy friend who's like, he's like one of these very organized people.

He actually created a CRM system for his friendships. Do you know what a CRM system is? So it's like a customer management system. He's an e-commerce guy, but he realized that he was...

Losing touch with friends or losing track of them. So he like literally created a notion dashboard for his friendship He created a CRM system where basically it reminds him it like if he hasn't seen spoken to somebody in more than a month or two, it pings him, it sends him a notification to reach out to that person.

or invite them to something. And it also, he developed a system where it's like every week he has some sort of activity or event that he can invite people to. Honestly, I laughed about it too, but after he explained it to me. I was jealous. I was like, dude, I would actually pay money for that, to be honest. Especially if you have like a systematizer mind, right? Seriously. And we'll get into my story in a little bit, but like...

I think one of my problems is just like, I don't think about it. I don't think about it until it's too late. I only think about it after I realize like, oh. yeah, I haven't seen Jake in like two months. I wonder what that guy's doing. And then you go on to the next day. And then I'm like, oh shit, I'm late for the podcast. And we can laugh about it, but there's a certain amount of envy there. And look, he told me...

He's like, he said, is this a game changer? He's like, my social life is 10 times better since I started doing this. I think that's maybe too one of the mindsets I might not have, I might have left out was like, don't leave. Stop thinking that just, just.

happens right it's not only an organic process yeah uh necessary it can be some people are really good at that but for a lot of people no it takes some effort and some work and some like some conscious yeah you know uh effort that you have to put in repeatedly yeah

The other thing I'll say about the mankeeping thing, and I say this as a married man with an extremely extroverted wife, I think two things, and again, I'm going to make blanket statements. This does not mean all women or all men, just on average.

I think in general, women tend to be a little bit more extroverted. And I also think women tend to care more about... their social life yes yeah and like i don't mean that i'm not like trying to put down either gender right i think that's just a fact i think women um it's a it's a higher priority for a lot of women more so than it is for men and

So I think I imagine what a lot of men experiences are like, well, she's better at it and she cares more about it. So I'll just let I'll let her take the lead on it and I'll just I'll I'll be support.

essentially and and i can see how like this shows up in marriages and relationships a lot like there's a lot of things if you remove the friendship aspect and like i don't know replace it with um so to use my marriage like and this can go either way right so my wife cares a lot more about cleaning and she's much better at it right so guess who does most of the cleaning in the house and now

And one way you could look at that and say, that's totally unfair, Mark. You should be pulling your load. Yeah, maybe. Or if you look at the relationship as a team and my wife and I each have our own talents. and our own things that we're good at that the other one's not it makes sense to specialize so like i'm very good with numbers and finances and taxes i also

care a lot about finances and numbers and taxes. She fucking her palms start sweating the second she opens the bank website. Right. So guess who does all the finances, deals with all the insurance, does all of our taxes? I do. Yeah. And I could sit here and get mad and be like, that's not fair. She should do 50% of that. But no, that doesn't make sense. It's like, we're a team. She's good at this thing that I'm not good at. I'm good at this thing that she's not good at.

So we should divide, you know, there's division of labor exists for a reason. It's the same thing. It's like if my wife and I started a business, it would be insane to divide everything 50-50. Like anybody who started a business, try dividing everything 50-50 with your co-founder.

that business is going to fail within a month. Like the first thing you do when you start a business with somebody is you say, okay, what are you excellent at that I'm not? And what am I excellent at that you're not? Okay, let's go do those things. And own that domain. in in the business and i think to a certain extent relationships are like that and i think through a combination of of women just prioritizing it more but also men just being bad at it and and not taking responsibility

Women tend to end up owning the social domain. And yeah, to a certain extent, that might be unfair. And I would say if you're a woman listening to this and you totally, your husband is like, or your boyfriend is. just socially completely lost without you, yeah, he should pick up some basic skills and maybe take a little bit of ownership over it.

But I do think this idea that everything's 50-50 and that there should be balance in all things and both people in the relationship should own, like, be responsible for everything in equal proportions. Not only is that unrealistic, but there is also quite a bit of survey data showing that relationships that try to divide every responsibility 50-50.

They fail more often. They are less happy. They have more problems. Just be realistic. Just like look at your partner, look at yourselves, figure out who's good at what, who enjoys what, and be okay with that. A lot of it's going to be 80-20 in different directions for different things. Can men and women be friends? This question comes up.

All the time. Do you want to take a stab at it first? I have a lot of female friends and I always have. So I don't. What is wrong with you, Drew? What is wrong? I never understood this one. Clearly. something is wrong do you see there's all these guys out there who are just like you're friends with women and i'm like what the i don't i you tell me what's what the issue is here because i not only like

Like I was saying, I have more like direct relationships with my female friends too. Like more of a one-on-one. Whereas with my male friends, we kind of have this group that we're typically in. And there's some overlap with other groups and all that, sure. But... Like the female relationships I have, they're not like, I don't like dump things on them necessarily, or they don't use, I don't use them as like an emotional outlet or anything like that. It's just that I just see them as friends. So.

Tell me what the big fuss is about. Seriously. I think there's two reasons why people struggle with this. So first of all, the answer is yes, men and women can totally be friends. But I do think there are complications. Obviously, there are complications that don't exist. Okay, yeah, sure. I get that. Obviously, it's the elephant in the room. There's potentially sexual attraction with one or both people.

That's the elephant in the room. That's what complicates things. And I think there's pretty clear reasons why. So first of all, I think men and women can be friends most... easily if there is no sexual romantic attraction between them, right? Yeah. Or at least no opportunity for it to do. Like, you know, I mean, a lot of my female friends either are married, have.

have partners of their own or you know they're lesbians yeah you know like it so it doesn't matter but yeah yeah going um so i think by removing the the the attraction that simplifies it um I think where a lot of people get stumped on this is because they are friends with somebody that they're attracted to and they kind of wish it was something more. Yeah. And as soon as you get into that.

it becomes transactional. I've had these two, yes. So to come back to Aristotle's framework, like I would argue it's impossible to be friends with somebody you are, like as soon as you become sexually and romantically interested in them, there is some sort of inequality that is introduced into the friendship. And then by nature, it becomes transactional. And as we're going to get to in the next section, transactional friendships.

often become toxic not always but often yeah and uh so i i can see why people have been burned by this before especially i mean it's a trope among young men you know the friend zone the dreaded friend zone it's like the the girl you have a crush on in there yeah we've all been there man uh you know you become her best friend and then for years you just kind of hang around hoping that one day she's

She's going to wake up and realize you were the one all along. I find that a large percentage of people, both men and women, who ask this question, it's the people who are friendzoned.

It's the young man or the young woman who has been friends with the person that they're in love with for years and years and years and they feel overlooked and they feel taken for granted and they feel like they've like... given themselves to this friend, quote unquote, hoping to get something else in return, but not realizing that.

It was transactional. That's not a friendship. It's not a friendship. That's not a friendship. That is not a friendship. The friend zone is not a friendship, interestingly. Ironically, like if you look at the data of how people meet and what predicts the greatest... long-term relationship success if the two people were friends before they started dating that is like that is like the highest predictor

of relationships. So how does that work? Because like you're not attracted to each other at first and then you are or like there is some mild attraction and then not really. And you're like, whatever. And then you become more attracted. Like what? I think I think in most cases what I would guess.

is that it's kind of like you said that there's no opportunity right so okay like they were dating somebody else yeah and this is anecdotal but like just by all the people that i've known in my life and all the fans and audience and people i've who have reached out to me and talked to me. Generally, I think the way it works is like, you know, it was like a work friend who had a boyfriend or a girlfriend for years and then they moved to another office and you stopped seeing them or whatever.

like the jim and pam situation in the office right like i think that's like a pretty prototypical they were friends first and then they yeah they become a very successful relationship so there's like there's some sort of blocker or lack of opportunity. Maybe they live in a different city, but you see them for whatever reason, you see them once or twice a year. And every time you see them, you're like, wow, I really like this person. So I think there's a lot of that going on.

People do change, you know, not to give hope to all the friendzoned listeners out there, but like there are, it's rare, but there are situations where. you know, your friend zone for a long time, a few years go by, maybe you get jacked, maybe you get your shit figured out, maybe you go to therapy, you know, maybe the person you're in love with.

Gets their heart broken and they figure some of their shit out like people do change over time And so I do think some people do evolve into a relationship that wouldn't Harry met Sally, right? Yeah, it's not the norm but And I think it's one of those things like you can't wait around holding out on that. Like the irony with the friend zone is that the only way to get out of it is to give up.

Like as soon as if you get like the only way that person is ever going to look at you seriously as a potential partner is when you stop trying to make them look at you as a potential moved on. And yeah, yeah. Well, ironically, that is very ironic. Yeah. Cool. I would say even. Yeah. Speaking from experience, but yeah. Yeah. You know, the funny thing that complicates this, though, is that there is some research that shows that.

Men tend to vastly overestimate how attracted a woman is to them. I do think that a lot of these friend zone situations are basically due to oblivious think like, yeah, she's totally in.

Right. Like this is totally going to happen. And meanwhile, like the woman's like, oh, he's such a good friend. The other side of that is true too, right? The women underestimate. Yes. Oh, he's just being friendly. Yes. Yeah. He's into you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And there's a weird like evolutionary explanation.

to get into. It's more costly if a man doesn't take the opportunity and it's more costly for a woman to take the opportunity and all that. But yeah. Toxic friendships are, you know, we're not going to go super deep into this because I think there's

you know the cousin of this is toxic romantic relationships which we will probably hit and cover on multiple episodes uh at some point but i do think it's worth going over like you can't have unhealthy friendships you can have bad dynamics within friendships The irony with toxic friendships is that I think they tend to start with a bang. Toxic friendships are fundamentally built on insecurity. And insecure people are...

secretly deep down looking for somebody to save them or show them that they're okay and When they find somebody that they believe can do that for them. It is a very emotionally intense experience And so generally speaking just as with romantic relationships uh the friendships that start very intense and uh get close extremely fast often blow up so let's talk about what's happening psychologically speaking uh from a psycho

like a psychodynamic perspective. Basically, you have two individuals. They're very insecure. They see themselves as somehow unworthy or inferior. And when you are an insecure person, you are constantly measuring yourself.

against others. And the way you're choosing to measure yourself, it really comes down to your personal values or what you personally see as a status indicator or... what a worthwhile person is you know it could be looks it could be money it could be popularity it could be fame it could be whatever being accepted by a certain group

If you're an insecure person, you are constantly in the status game. Everywhere you go, everybody you talk to, you're playing the status game with yourself. Now when two insecure people come together, that spark emerges because they see the other person as a solution to their status game. So there's kind of this complimentary, like, oh, this person makes me feel worthy and worthwhile.

I should spend more time with them and then the other person feels that way too and so it's just this like intense magnetism that happens and brings them together. Now this can happen, I think this can kind of happen in two configurations. One configuration is that Two people have different but complementary.

uh insecurities you know maybe let's say we take two guy friends right maybe one is the really athletic cool jock that all the girls are into and then one is the super brainiac nerd that uh aces every test and can figure everything out right and it's like there's a synergy there of like the jock

feels really dumb and is insecure about his you know ability to get into college or whatever and then the nerd is like wow no girl will ever talk to me but when i hang out hang around this guy i feel cool and um And so sometimes you'll see these kind of dyads play out where it's two friends kind of compensate for each other's flaws or insecurities. And I would say that's probably the... less unhealthy version of a toxic friendship because it's essentially just a very transactional friendship.

each person is getting something out of the friendship out of the relationship and as long as they continue to get that thing out of it it's probably going to be okay where things get dicey is when well people's insecurities can start to get stoked. Like when you're in a friendship like that, you're probably very aware of the dynamic. And so you're probably very aware of how sensitive the other person is.

to the situation, right? So if you're like the tall, handsome jock in that friendship, anytime you get pissed at your buddy,

You know exactly where it's going to hurt him most. You know his buttons, yeah. Yes. You know exactly how to punish him, and you know exactly where he's insecure. And chances are that's going to come out at some point. And vice versa, if you're, you know, say the smart... successful nerd you know exactly where your buddy's insecurities are as well so you can just get a lot of ugliness in friendships like this i think most of these sorts of friendships

probably just have a falling out at some point a big fight over something dumb i know i definitely had some male friendships that were like this and pretty much all of them ended over a stupid fight over something or other, over a trip we were supposed to take or a party we were supposed to throw or a girl that I dated and he wanted to date or like whatever. It's usually something like that, that kind of.

triggers it to fall apart. The second type of toxic friendship is the even less healthy friendship, which I would just call it flat out the codependent friendship, where essentially you have two people, you have one person who let's...

say is uh full of themselves and needs constant validation and approval and needs to be reminded of how great they are all the time and then you have a second person who feels terrible about themselves and one way that they get to kind of like live vicariously through the first insecure person by

constantly following them around and telling them how great they are how amazing they are how much they wish they were like them and so you you get a situation where it's like you know one person needs to always feel superior and then one person however poorly the

first friend treats them, they feel like they deserve it on some level. Going back to like what we talked about earlier about kind of the balance there, though, too. It's like I think there was a word you said in there. We said always. It's always that way. Yeah. There's an unbalance to it because, of course, you want to help your friend out.

when they need help. Yes. But sometimes you need to be helped as well. This is one thing like I've always tried to be the helper. Yes. And so I can kind of wade into this territory, but I'm aware of it and I call it out or like be very aware of it when it does happen. Yeah. And then. There's been times more recently too now. I'm like, okay, I need help from the same people and it balances out. So yeah. Yeah.

Just wanted to point that out. You use the word always when it's always lopsided like that. There's a savior and somebody who needs to be saved. That's the problem. Yeah. I would say the first type of toxic friendship.

the issue is more it's a transactional relationship but it's not transactional over something superficial it's transactional over it's trying to be a virtuous friendship right it's like i admire you uh i wish i was more like you so but instead of just admiring you in a vacuum i'm going to basically follow you around and envy you and hope that some of you rubs off on me and vice versa and like so it it becomes transactional at a self-esteem level and that's

That's just a recipe for disaster because it's like the minute your friend I mean it works fine when both friends are giving each other validation and and helping each other out but like if you build your self-esteem by being around your friend the minute your friend checks out or gets mad at you or wants to maybe

manipulate you or control you or put conditions on something in the friendship, it's going to get very, very ugly very quickly. The second... dynamic is even worse in that it is just complete it's a unidirectional friendship at all times it is one person is always needs more attention and validation and one person is always giving more attention and validation and the irony like

if you're a healthy person you are probably hearing this and you're like why would anybody stay in a friendship like that yeah but the problem is is that if you're a person who feels Really shitty about yourself. You maybe you haven't had many friends throughout your life You have very low self-esteem. You don't see why anybody would like you or hang out with you

That unidirectional, that constant giving to the friend, it feels like an upgrade over loneliness. Because at least you're needed for something. This plays out on a much more dramatic scale at the romantic relationship level where you see a lot of people who will get into bad romantic relationships, codependent romantic relationships, sometimes even abusive romantic relationships.

Simply because they feel so bad about themselves that they're like, well, I'd rather have a shitty toxic relationship than no relationship at all. Because at least somebody wants me around for some reason. It's really fucking... dark and depressing when you put it that way. I'm like, I don't know what to say to that. Because toxic friendships are inherently transactional, they often become very competitive.

so you what you see happen is a a power struggle will emerge within the friendship you'll start getting these arguments over who did more for the other person who is liked more by other people who invited who to more parties who introduced who to their friends who uh helped who the most at school like it's you start getting into these scorecard situations

of like, no, you owe me. And the fact that that, first of all, that conversation shouldn't even exist. In a healthy friendship, that conversation doesn't even exist. In any relationship, yeah. Yeah. But second of all, the fact that that conversation is even happening, the fact that both people see the friendship in that way tells you right off the bat that it is a fundamentally transactional relationship, that there's not any genuine admiration going on.

it's likely some mix of envy and desperation that keeps the two people together. If there's one thing that I really do know about friendship is that that scorecard is... the most toxic thing you can you cannot you you you cannot keep score again it's a subjective thing too like we talked about earlier the balance in a relationship is always subjective but the scorekeeping thing where you're trying to objectify it

just amplifies the toxicity to agree that it's not, you're just not going to recover from that. You can't, there's a saying too in business and I'm sorry because later I'm going to. say why you shouldn't treat your friendships like a business. But there's a saying that, you know, you're never going to capture all the value that you create. Yeah. Right. Like, Mark, you've given away how many.

newsletters over the years how many hundreds thousands ebooks we put out ebooks all the time now and hundreds of pages we've we've literally published advice to millions of people you will never capture quote-unquote capture all the value that you create especially in a friendship it just

drop the scorecard. Yes. There's no, there's no, the balance just isn't ever going to be there the way you think it should be if that's the way you think. Yeah. Yeah. Coincidentally, I do think dropping the scorecard is probably the easiest and first step.

to breaking out of a toxic friendship yeah easiest to notice too yes it's the easiest to notice and it's probably the easiest to stop doing yeah so it's funny and this is true with toxic romantic relationships as well generally speaking if you stop the dynamic and set up a boundary, the relationship will unravel itself. And it's actually pretty crazy how quickly it happens. Like the second, if you're like, let's say we're in a stupid argument over, I don't know, some scorecard situation.

The second one of us is like, you know what, dude, it doesn't matter. I'm just happy we're friends. The other person like. doesn't know what to do anymore and and it's like wait wait a second i can't like pull my lovers and get what i want out of you you're not feeding me you're not feeding yeah you're not validating me you're not giving me the thing that i was here for

Nine times out of 10, they leave on their own. It's just the friendship kind of dies after that. And this is the big difference, I would say, between toxic friendships and toxic romantic relationships and then toxic family. relationships because in both romantic and family relationships you have a very deep emotional investment with the person where even when you do stop the scorecard and stop the drama and stop the games

it's extremely hard to let go. And so there's this constant undertow pulling you back into the drama. because you still deeply care about this person and you really want them to do well and be happy and you really love them and you really want this to work. So you find yourself like. falling back into it over and over again i think generally with toxic friendships because friendships are and i don't mean this in a in a bad way friendships are more expendable they're more replaceable

Generally speaking, as soon as you stop the toxic dynamic, the friendship just kind of falls apart. I'd say nine times out of ten. The only exception is if the friend also notices how fucked up the situation is, and the two of you can kind of address it together.

Uh, I would guess that that's like the rare minority of situations. There's a little nugget in there too. If you're trying to make friends, going back to the make friends thing is the scorecard. If you, if you show up to places and you're like, I did this, this, and this, therefore this person should react in this way when you're meeting people.

That right there is the basis for a toxic relationship. So just stop it right there to begin with. I mean, the scorecard thing is really just... It's huge. It's a nice red flag for everything. I met a guy a while ago who like... i forget what happened anyway i was like doing some crazy work trip or something and uh he kind of like he texted me a few times and i didn't respond yeah and then he like sent like a snide comment about like well

I guess you're too cool to respond to my... And I'm like, okay, we're done. You know, like, this is over. I'm just, dude, I'm 40. I don't have time for this shit. Yeah. So yeah, opping out of the... the scorecards the competitive dynamic the status game is probably the first step i would say off the and out of the drama a lot of times what happens in these sorts of friendships is that the friends will get entangled in each other's

drama and messy life you know so it's um you're you're dating your friends sister's best friend and they live together and you have to see them all the time and oh and you're sharing a car with them like there's a because there's such a lack of boundaries and toxic friendships um there's a lot of kind of Material world things get intermingled. People share living spaces. They share expenses. They give each other rides to places. They end up working together.

um and so there's just a very sometimes there's a very messy disentanglement that has to happen like that can be a very awkward and difficult thing to go through um we are planning to do an episode on boundaries soon i think this is where boundaries really shine is just knowing where to draw the line and and how to express that line and say look like i'm willing to help you with this but like

anything past this threshold you're on your own and then being able to stick to that is is huge and then obviously it's like if this person is not not respecting your boundaries, not dropping the scorecard, continues to try to manipulate you and create drama with you, just opt out of the friendship entirely. We joked earlier about...

it being easier than ever to ghost somebody. It is easier than ever to ghost somebody. I mean, if you need to drop somebody, you can. In some ways, it might even be too easy. I mean, I think the takeaway here is just that toxic relationships are inherently unstable, and they are short-term fixes for what are deep personal emotional wounds.

We did an episode a couple months ago on shame. Generally, people full of a lot of shame find themselves in lots of toxic relationships, friendships included. It is one of those things where you have to kind of get your own shit sorted first.

before you come back to to a friendship and again interestingly like the people that you will attract in the world are generally have a level of security and self-assuredness that is proportional to yourself And so the more right you get with yourself, the more confident you get with yourself, the more secure you are with yourself, the more you will just kind of naturally filter out a lot of the insecure, dramatic people and you'll filter in.

uh a lot of the the healthy secure people into your life yeah we were talking about this and i i don't know what it is i just i don't put up with toxic relationships at all and i've never have never tolerated them yeah and so i don't

it's it's it's hard for me to watch when it does happen i see it yeah i definitely see it in my life and with some of my other friends and their friends but i i just i've never had a tolerance for it and i never understood it and i don't know whether it's because i think it is

i i think i've realized that though you know friends come and go like you were just saying there's an expendability to them they come and go and yeah there's just an underlying security under underneath that that you have to be comfortable with yeah yeah i would say to another you know so we talked about the scorecard we talked about the intermingling of lives um you know it's funny we've talked about proximity and repetition yeah um i would say another calling card of a toxic friendship is

two is two people that feel the need to be together all the time and do things together all the time talk message each other all the time there's a certain emotional dependence there that's probably not entirely healthy. I mean, like, don't get me wrong. It's great to have really close friends that you can see a lot. But if you have a friend that you feel like you are dependent upon, their...

Perspective their validation their approval to do anything in your life Yeah, that that's a huge issue like there's I think I think insecure people have a romantic notion about that of like, well, they're my bestie. Of course, I include them in everything. Of course. Without them. Yeah. Of course, I take them to my job interviews. And of course, I bring them home for Thanksgiving. And of course, I text them at two.

two o'clock on a tuesday night it's like no no that's that's actually not healthy that's that's that's like a level that's that's codependence basically All right, so we've gone through how to make friends, how to keep friends, how to have bad friends, and how to get rid of bad friends. There is this whole loneliness epidemic going on. Quote unquote. There's a lot of scary statistics out these days. There's a lot of crazy technological change that's been happening. Social media, smartphones.

AI. What's going on in the world? We could have spent, we glossed over it pretty quickly in the intro, but we really could have spent a full 10 minutes going over all of the harrowing social statistics that are going on in the world at the moment. People are losing friends. They're losing touch with friends. They are having trouble making friends. They're more lonely than ever before. What the hell is going on?

Well, okay. We could actually kind of approach this in a couple of different ways. There's some external headwinds in the current culture. And then there's kind of, I think some internal, we'll call them internal headwinds or obstacles that we have to overcome. And let's, let's first start with the external ones. Okay.

So just some of the most common things that are cited and in the research as well. Things like, you know, time poverty, our schedules. We just try to pack everything in, especially in places like North America. We're very, very career focused. calendars get kind of you know full very quickly we just don't have time for friends and you know proximity and repetition again two big factors and we just don't have that time for repetition for our friends anymore okay so uh

longer working hours, there's caregiving involved. People spend way more time with their kids now too. Like our generation spends a lot of time with, with their kids. We've seen in time use surveys that that happens. And a lot of times, you know, that's. pretty taxing on friendships. Yeah. It's it's.

It's really hard to fit in. Like I'm a third wheel now. Let me tell you about it. I'm like being like a single guy. My kids have friends and they've incorporated me into all of this. I've been able to kind of navigate that pretty well, but it's definitely a factor or, you know, it's like we don't go.

out and party anymore of course we're gonna go hang out and you know watch uh bluey or whatever it is you know sometimes you just gotta you gotta go for that does it ever bother you that it's like when you hang out with parents with young kids that it's like it's about it's all about the kids

the whole time or do you ever run into that because yes i mean so so what i've found is that okay if the kids aren't there what they like to do is complain about the kids yes at first i was just like guys yeah like like

shut the hell up. And like, you made this decision, blah, blah, blah. What I eventually realized was, oh, this is their time to, they can't do that when their kids are around. Of course. They love their kids. They love being parents, but there's a side of it that they can't, they need to blow off that steam. So I get that.

I think the other side of it, though, too, is I watch them change in front of me. So we talked about how you watch people go through these phases. Yeah. I kind of see it. I've reframed it as this is a privilege. to me to watch this person that I love change into something new and go through these struggles and be able to support them and all that. So I.

i don't know if i'm very that's a very common reaction to it yeah i know some people who's like as soon as somebody has kids in their life they're like i'm not even i'm done they just they don't want kids they don't want anything to do with it you're all you're gonna do is talk about your kid and parenting and how hard it is and i want nothing to do with it yeah i'm not like that but like I kind of get the motivation behind that. Yeah, I think there's a spectrum of parents.

And again, to your point, and the reason I'm even bringing this up is because I do think this is something that is new with our generation. Jonathan Haidt talks about this all the time about how... the expectation that parents have now of what parenting is is like so inflated it is obsessive focus on the kids yeah 24 7. yeah Like the kids could be running up and down the wall. I don't know. Like when I was young.

If my parents were having dinner with friends and I walked in and I started talking and make a bunch of noise, my parents would tell me to shut the fuck up and go to my room. Get the hell out. Get out. Yeah. Get out. Go to your room. Be quiet. Go outside. Adults are talking. Right. And it just it feels like there's a certain.

Like a lot of parents of our generation don't do that. It's like the kid becomes the thing. And putting aside the thing that that teaches the kid, which is not a good thing. It does make it very hard. It makes it hard to have like a real relationship or a friendship with those parents. That said, there are a lot of people who I do think are very good at prioritizing and organizing their time and attention.

you know like they can they can step away from being parents and still be very present and and um you know and have a life outside of parenthood so people working longer hours spending more time with their kids uh what else we are a more mobile society now too right and uh there's a lot more life transitions too right if you think about like i talked about going to grad school and stuff right so i've transitioned i went

of living in a small town middle of nowhere i moved to a city to go to university and then i moved to again to go to grad school and then i move again and then i went and i traveled there was nomad all that all these life transitions maybe don't have that many but they're much much more common now and so again the proximity thing right um that's a lot harder proximity and repetition become a lot harder when we're a more more mobile society

That kind of waxes and wanes throughout economic booms and busts, of course, but it is a thing. I mentioned to my sister, just had a lot of jobs. We already mentioned that too. A lot of people, they just change jobs more frequently. Change careers. Yeah. Remote work. Remote work is a huge one too. That's definitely one that I think is, you know, we've...

especially Americans, the American dream is to have everything kind of self-contained in this little box, your house. Right. And it's your job. You have food delivery. You have all that kind of stuff. Yes. Yeah. So that's, um, that's a huge one. And.

I don't know. I like the remote work thing too. I don't know. It was really funny through the pandemic where more people started working remotely and I've been working remote since 2014, you know, so I was kind of used to it, but it was very, very interesting to see people like.

That was polarizing. Some people hated it. Yes. And some people loved it. Some people thrive and some people really flounder. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people who just let that social contact outside of their homes, whether they had kids or not. that was a really important thing for them so yeah that's that's a big one loss of third places uh you know who was that that was uh rail ray oldenberg a researcher who came up with that cafes libraries um

just going out, you know, is, is much, uh, much less common, but also that's related to, to another one, which is a decline in civic, um, and associational life. So that's the Robert Putnam. And that's been going on for 100 years. He wrote that book back in the 90s, right? And what he noticed was that trend started way back, I think, really in the 50s, but maybe even 20s and 30s. Yeah, I think he found it.

For some things, he found it going all the way back through the 20th century. But I think he was primarily focused on the... the 1940s and 50s through the 90s yeah yeah i mean i think about this in my own life too it definitely like look at the generations in my family my grandparents were very active in all these civic organizations my grandpa was a

veteran of the Korean war. And so he was in the VFW. Uh, my grandmother was in the rotary club. Um, they had a bridge club, they did Elks club and, um, all of that. Like they were, my grandpa was even like, uh, uh, he did some. local government stuff like they were super super engaged their church again uh that's another kind of also third space plus civic engagement place that has is deteriorated

The thing was is that these had these built-in social structures that they could lean on and rely on to some extent. They were also pretty much all free. You know what I mean? Or there was a low fee to be in the Elks Club or whatever, you know. um and now you know i was talking about this the other day with a friend her dad when she was growing up who's who's since passed but when they were growing up he had uh season tickets to the broncos um nfl uh team the broncos and

He was a working class, middle class. They had lived in a middle class neighborhood and whatever. Somebody like him today couldn't even afford that because it's gotten so expensive. Third spaces have become less free and more... They're more luxury. There is more luxury item. I was just going to bring up and shit on Soho House.

Oh, are you trying to be anti-elitist here, Mark? It's not even about elitism. I just think it's a shitty product. I would absolutely agree with that. It's like you guys have taken what used to be free and tried to like... monetize it exactly i mean it's and don't get me wrong the spaces are beautiful and sure they have like cool talks or like yeah you know film premieres and shit like that but like um

I had a bunch of friends in Soho House in New York, and then a good friend of ours here in LA was a member, and so we would go a bunch. And every time I went, I'm like, what is the point of this place? What is the point? I think it's a little bit... It's like a metaphor for the modern age, which is they essentially took what used to be free, a third space, a community-oriented space where people could join a club and meet.

meet up together. And A, they monetized it. But to monetize it, you have to introduce status games. And as soon as you introduce status games, you can't actually have friendships because everybody's there. We just talked about toxic friendships. Seriously. It's like. I remember like having this argument with a friend of mine who was a member and I was, I was like, I was telling her, I'm like, look, if you're paying $3,000 to be in a room.

You cannot actually genuinely have friendships with people in that room because like everybody you talk to is like, oh, well, I better be getting my money's worth here. Like, I hope I make a friend. What do I need to say to make a friend so I can get my money's worth? Like it just it is completely antithetical.

to what creates a friendship. Yeah. So that along with urban design just in general too. So we talked about LA especially. It was funny the last time I was out here. So I have some friends out here in LA that I've known for a very long time. I consider them pretty good friends. um we all went to college together they live in different parts of la they never see each other it's impossible i come into town

And like, we're trying to get together and we're in, it's like a three hour text chain. I'm not joking, trying to triangulate because all of us got to get into a car. It's all going to be around rush hour. We're like using AI to try to figure out where's the best place for us to meet.

like there was just that much friction around it and it's exhausting it is and so yeah there is that like they say in la you know like you were saying if you live on the other side of town what i've noticed too about people who live in la is like you got your neighborhood and you just stay in it yes you don't even leave it you're surrounded by 11 million people

but you're kind of trapped in this little box. It's like 12 small towns. It's not a big city. And that's a jarring realization when you move here. Um, and it's just because like, if you have more walkable spaces and more dense, densely populated areas that aren't built around cars, especially like we like to do that in the United States, especially the newer cities that were settled in the West.

You just have more chance encounters with people face-to-face than the real world. It's as simple as that. And you have the proximity and the repetition, and you're already halfway there. So that's huge. One I want to bring up, though, too, that is, I think, especially relevant is polarization. And we're living more in low trust societies now. This is.

Obviously more recent over the last couple of decades, I would say, but this is a huge thing. I think also too, that the related to another one kind of mental health stuff I want to bring up, but the, like the pandemic kind of, this all ties in together with that as well. What I've noticed anyway, just as an anecdote, when I get on planes now, I don't...

people don't strike up conversations like they used to on planes. It's like, I've really noticed it. I've been flying a lot more lately, but still like I used to probably every other plane ride I'd have, you'd have at least a 15 or 20 minute conversation with somebody. And I generally wasn't the one who started it.

That never happens to me anymore. You know why? And this ties into a broader reason behind all of this is because when you get on a plane now, you have Wi-Fi, you have your podcasts, you have... 200 movies you can choose from you have uh tv shows that you downloaded on your ipad yeah it's

Like I get on a, it's funny because I'm old enough to remember the days when an eight hour flight was a very daunting thing. It was like, oh my God, I'm going to have to sit in a chair for eight hours. This is going to be awful. And like now, now I'll do a 12.

hour flight like it's nothing you're like yeah i gotta catch up on a whole season and you know whatever the three movies a nap and catch up on some work and i'm landing yeah yeah yeah i think that that's it we'll get into a little bit more of that in the technology section that we're going to go um

into but in in general though you know the people just tend to trust other people less okay so when you're out and about you just there's the the unfamiliarity you have with these people you're much much less likely to break that barrier for whatever reason whether it's all the toxicity online around politics and everything like that has, has to do with it. I'm sure road rage has gone up to, you know, we're living in a, like the, the institutions that used to kind of.

provide some trust for us of deteriorated and we're kind of all on our own and it's scary. I think that's part of it as well. I remember last year when I talked to Jonathan Haidt about this and he was, he and I were kind of going country by country and looking at, I mean. it was primarily like the social media and mental health crisis. But we also talked quite a bit about like loneliness and things like that. And he was kind of pointing out which countries seem to be a little bit immune.

to a lot of the poor mental health trends that are going on and then the countries that are getting hit the hardest. And he was saying, he was relating it to individualism, but there were still a bunch of exceptions here and there. And then we talked a little bit further and he started talking about how some cultures just have this baked in community time. You know, it's like everything revolves around big dinners with neighbors and family.

um people take care of each other's kids like there's just much more of a cultural emphasis on on community and face-to-face time and large meals and getting together with people and celebrating holidays together and he was kind of pointing out that

these were the countries were still doing okay. Like they kept their sanity essentially. And I put it out, I was like, that seems to be an inoculation to this. It's not that it like, it's not that they aren't being affected by social media and everything that's going on. It's just that it's. all of those in-person institutions and third places that are maintained through the culture are

inoculating the population to, I think, a lot of the mental health effects that we see in places like the US, the UK, Canada, Australia. Related to that, one of the things, one of the other factors is like... household and demographic changes like more people living alone that's been a big trend for a very long time actually um

But so you see that, you know, there's increased loneliness, say, in the United States and more people are living alone. But you don't see that as much in Sweden. A lot more people live alone in Sweden. Yes. As we saw through the pandemic. Right. We saw we found out this is what we found out about Sweden is, oh, a lot of people live alone there.

and they're doing okay yeah because they have a lot of those very communal yes a very communal mindset that they have and so i think you're right there's that inoculation to it too another thing that jonathan hight uh found and i believe you discussed it with him too was that

conservative kids are doing better mental health-wise than liberal kids. And they're still using social media just as much. They're still not exercising just all of those things. I mean, they might be, there's different activities, but. They're probably forced to go to church a little bit more. You know, they're probably forced to eat dinner together more just because of conservative social life. Probably grew up in larger families or communal.

have parents grandparents yes that sort of thing so i there's an inoculating factor i i totally agree with that yeah um so it and i don't want to just blame technology for all of that i think there is a deeper social uh aspect to it just like we saw in rosetto penn pennsylvania too yes i well and i think this is where putnam's work is really appropriate is is because it's like i remember reading bowling alone for the first time like 12 13 years ago

And like right when kind of the social media stuff was just starting, people were starting to freak out about it. I think that book came out in either 99 or 2000, right? Bowling Alone. It was late 90s, I think. I think, yeah, I think it was around there. So he was kind of ahead of his time there. Well, and the research was done in like 90, 92. Yeah. So it's, he was way ahead of his time. And basically, I just remember it being very eye-opening that this trend.

towards the atomization of society, towards the isolation of people, the breakdown of institutions, the breakdown of third spaces. It's been a long-term, it's been a century-long progression. And similarly too, it's interesting when you look at political polarization and distrust in society, that also predates.

social media in the internet like that goes back into the 80s and 90s it really it really starts with uh kind of the advent of cable television i think um which coincided with like reagan and thatcher and so everybody blames that but it's yeah

Yeah, so I mean, these are multi-generational trends. And it is, I think a lot of things, you know, you can look at social media or TikTok as... i mean it is both a cause and an effect it's hard to say like what is driving this overall yeah yeah um those are basically the the big external

trends though most commonly cited ones most researched ones that we know of anyway to date and so yeah i think just be even just being aware of those a little bit and being like okay how does this affect the proximity the the the repetition and the um kind of reciprocal nature of disclosure that i have with my friends all of those are headwinds that you might have to be aware of there's some internal ones now too and go to some some of these internal frictions

that we can go into more psychological, I guess. One of them we've kind of touched on already, the equality paradox. So people, there are people who expect friendships to feel equal all the time. And like we've already said. that that's just not possible um balance in relationships i really think it you have to give it a long enough time yes line

to balance out, right? You're going to need things from friends sometimes and sometimes they're going to need things from you and it's never perfectly balanced and you just got to be okay with that. Again, the scorecard thing, we've probably hit on it enough, but just want to highlight it again. What I want to circle with that too is just patience because I think one of the things that my wife and I learned...

moving to LA is that we were just impatient. Like we would meet somebody, we'd hang out with somebody a few times, it'd be okay. And then we're like, well, I guess that's not gonna be a friend. But you just, you don't. you don't realize how long it takes sometimes and how patient you have to be with people.

Yeah, you know, there's charismatic people you really like being around, but most of us are more like, well, you need to get to know us for a couple of months before you really start to find a lot of those things. So, yeah. And I think in middle age, too, that becomes more of a factor, right? Because it is... uh you're not you're not really looking for pleasure friendships and utility friendships are pretty obvious

so those virtue friendships like they take time you have you really have to get to know somebody and like when you really know your own values and what your own interests and what you care about yeah there's a certain openness that has to happen i think and i i think some of this too is just also um you know we we live in a culture of immediate gratification you know you people not to get on my old man shakes his fist on at a club but like i do feel like culturally we

We're in a culture of instant gratification. You expect somebody who you show up and you're like, you're not cool. I'm done. Yes. I'm out. Because our whole life is like, yeah, everything's like, yeah, the food's not ready. I'm out. Right. It was like, swipe, swipe, swipe. Yes, exactly. Get on YouTube, watch 10 seconds, like, no, don't like it, next video. You know, like, it's just the entire, our entire lives are like that. And, but people are not. You can't swipe people away.

And you have to give them time. You have you have to let them grow on you. And sometimes like sometimes people will surprise you. Yeah. Yeah. And I go back to the David Brooks thing. The friction is the point. Yes. The friction is a point in relationships in general, but in friendships. overcoming some sort of friction yeah i gotta drive across half of la to go see a friend that's because i value that friendship yeah you know um or

whatever it is. It's like, I value your time and your, your perspective and your friendship enough that I'm going to go through all of this shit and be patient with you up front too and give people a chance a little bit too. Yeah. The tall poppy problem, too. My Australian friends always talk about this. Oh, we have tall poppy syndrome and we don't want to look like we're being arrogant. It's a very real thing. It is. It is. And it can show up in friendships if there is an imbalance there.

in status or something like that. I think this actually got to be more common for a little while, maybe still is to some degree, but you, at least for a while anyway, it was like, you could be friends, you know, you went to college with somebody, you could be friends, they went off to be a doctor and you ended up just kind of being, you know, a little level.

Shoveling shit. Yeah. Yeah. And working on a podcast. Right. Yeah. And so if there is that imbalance and you're that type of person who's like, oh, I don't want to. I don't want to feel like I'm holding this over arrogant or anything like that. And so you're just kind of like, I'm just going to push this one away. Yeah. Uh, that's, that's probably, that's a problem openly celebrating with somebody, you know, it tends to be like a little bit.

faux pas i guess the last one i want i do want to go over um there and we've kind of already mentioned it optimization culture oh and that gets internalized okay um We treat friendship like a market. We, you and I have actually been using some language around what's the ROI on this and what's, you know, look, I'm a capitalist, but it's kind of like invaded every little crevice of our lives. And it's like, what is the return I'm getting on this? So how see this is.

my point drew this is what i was saying i know that's why i wanted to bring it up again though because it often leads to a lot of like performance yes too in in relationships because it's like oh this person needs to get something out of this and i need to be a certain way yeah And that erodes the disclosure, the authentic disclosure part of friendship, right? You're not really being your true self when you're doing these sorts of things.

It's funny, like, one of the reasons I like going down to Brazil is because I can talk freely about American politics. Like, I don't feel free to talk. Isn't that, I can't, yeah. How fucked up is that? I can't even bring it up. That's so fucked up. Yeah.

Especially when you're meeting new people, there's always that kind of awkward moment. Yeah, where it's like somebody will say something a little bit political and you're like, test the waters. Where do I go with this? Yeah, how do I do it? Am I diplomatic about it? Do I say what I really think? Which way do I think they lean? It's really exhausting. And the thing is too, what I find is that most people don't really care that much.

everybody's because there are and there's enough of a minority of people who do care a fucking lot yeah and you never know when you're around one yeah uh that it's just everybody gets kind of uptight and their butthole

puckers up because it's I don't know about you, but like, you know, I've been at dinners and stuff where it's just like somebody loses their fucking mind and like ruins everything for everyone over something very stupid, stupid, just so dumb. Yeah. Yeah. So. I, yeah, and you and I, I don't know, we, I tend to navigate both.

sides you know i like a lot of my family where i come from is more of the conservatives i have a lot of my friends now are more on the liberal side and they everybody knows that i'm more centrist yeah um and They tiptoe around me even still too. So it's, yeah, I hate it. I hate it that it's like that. Yeah. There's a demonization of people that they don't understand that that's really, really toxic. And it's.

I have a neighbor of mine who's, I would call him a friend now too. He over during COVID and all that, he had a big falling out with somebody he's been friends with for like 30 years. Wow. Over. you know vaccine stuff or political stuff or whatever and the funny thing too is that it's not limited to the political conversation because there's all sorts of adjacent conversations that like

hit the hit a political nerve that have like now become associated right it's like the pandemic right if you you're afraid to even talk about the pandemic now because it's you might say this huge collective thing we all went through and we can't even talk right because it's you might you might mention something that somebody

in the room is going to freak out and start raving about. And yeah, I've had the same thing. There's actually a person that you and I both know, a mutual acquaintance, used to be a friend of mine, who I got in a... stupid fucking argument over uh basically something semantic that he took offense to and um yeah he stopped hanging out with me so it's it is it's very obnoxious i think it's it's a it's a subtle tax on

on everybody, like a mental tax on everybody that I think we don't think about. There was, maybe we can close out this section with this, but an interesting research finding I found, and it's not a strong link and hasn't been replicated or anything like that, but... um there was some some data to suggest that uh there's a uh like a correlation between risk taking and loneliness and people who are

Report being more lonely or less likely to take risks. There's like an inverse correlation there. And I think like social risks and stuff like that. It makes sense. It makes total sense. And then not only that, but they can get that kind of dopamine fix instead of taking a risk. They're just.

that you're scrolling. So I think, yeah, it's just, you have to be incredibly conscious about that. Since I've gotten off mostly, mostly gotten off social media, although I'll still find ways around, like I'll still scroll through stuff, whatever it is, and you find ways. um i've i've definitely noticed this though that i do really prefer more hanging out with people and i'm typically the initiator too which i'm fine with um yeah on that but

We need people like you. People like me need people like you. That's another thing I want to point out, too, is that this is a problem. Yes, it's a societal wide problem, but it's solved on an individual basis. Yes.

right and you have it is the the the gandhi quote right be the change you want to see as cheesy as that sounds this is seriously built one relationship at a time and you have to be part of the the solution here and i will say this too so i have a friend here in town named max and he's he's like he's amazing he's like he reaches out to every he plans so many things he invites people to some like i i feel bad sometimes the amount of things he invites me to and i like i don't

reciprocate he's just an amazing connector and i'm i'm so grateful to be friends with him because if i like he he's like single-handedly boosted my social life by probably 30 or 40 so hold onto those people if you are somebody if you can develop this skill set it is so valuable in this day and age if you are the sort of person who can reach out be proactive check in on people invite people to things

It's incredibly valuable these days, and so it's a great skill to have. So obviously technology is a huge factor in all this. What do you think is going on? We live in the most connected time in history, and yet we feel more alone than ever right now, right? It's crazy to think about that paradox. Derek Thompson has this really cool video that he just did a couple of months ago on The Big Think.

and he talks about how technology over the past like probably 100 years ish definitely the last 60 years has progressively kind of privatized social life so he started with a car back in the 60s you know a car kind of like people had cars but it was kind of a luxury thing and then it became

more middle class and everybody had a car starting around the 50s and 60s. That gave rise to the suburbs. We were able to privatize, get away from everybody and move out to the suburbs, have a little more room, privatize our lives a little bit. Then the television came along. we were able to privatize our leisure time that way, right? From the 1960s to the 1990s, Americans gained 300 hours of leisure time per year.

Nearly all of that went into watching television. Wow. Right. OK, so you're sitting out. You're not out and about. You're not interacting with people. You're not making friends. Right. He argues that the smartphone has privatized our attention now.

And what he means by that is you could be sitting on a couch next to somebody, each of you on your devices, and you're alone. Forget that. You could be in a crowded restaurant and be alone. Exactly. You'd be on a bus. You could be surrounded by people and be alone.

with you because your attention is diverted to your device right and so the way i think about this anyway is i go back to our three our three sides of our triangle right proximity repetition and disclosure technology affects all of those now I'm not going to sit here and say that technology is bad and it's the only thing that's eroding those three things. OK, because I think there is a way you can use it where it does leverage it. But if you think about it, proximity.

You don't have to be around people anymore. There's no embodied experience that you necessarily have to have to be in a group or to make a connection with somebody. You don't make that same connection when you're not there anyway. There was this trend too. Derek Thompson points this out in that video. There's this trend called...

Cancelation on TikTok, which is basically kids just doing dances that have like, oh, my friend just canceled this event. Now I get to stay home. Oh, yeah. Cancelation. They're elated that somebody canceled on something, right? That's not. What he points out there, too, that's not loneliness. That's choosing to be alone. He calls it the antisocial epidemic, not necessarily the loneliness epidemic. Interesting.

It's like JOMO, the joy of missing out. The joy of missing out. Yeah, that was kind of a thing, and that's kind of evolved into this now, too. Repetition, too, the digital. Digital interactions, yeah, they can be repeated over time, but more likely you're in a comment section or something like that. It's a one-off interaction. That's why people are such assholes on the internet because there's no stakes there, right? It's a one-time interaction like we saw with a tit for tat.

In single interactions, you're more likely to defect. You're more likely to be an asshole in single interactions than over a repeated time. The disclosure thing too. Okay.

when and if we even do post anymore, which posting is even becoming less common now, right? It's more media than it is social, right? We're incentivized to perform instead of actually... express ourselves genuinely right makes it transactional which makes it transactional exactly so the stakes also can be a lot higher online like we talked about in the shame episode there's you

you just don't even want to express yourself online anymore because for fear of getting canceled or called out or going viral for the wrong reasons it's there forever right so it's maybe you apply for a job in 12 years and that video you made with your friends comes back and bites you in the ass right right so like there's there's really not the incentive or the structure there for you to um have like genuine connections with people yeah now

That's how technology can erode the three sides of the triangle. I think there's ways that it can be used where... it actually bolsters all of those, right? The thing I really liked about the early internet and early social media too, at least how we used it, you remember like Facebook was, where's the party?

Yeah. Right. Like you get on to figure out where the party was and then you would go to the party. It was awesome. It was such an amazing tool. And there's still, there's lots of tools out there like that. Meetups and, you know, yeah. Dating apps even to, you know, use correctly.

You know, I shit on them a lot, but I still think there's a utility to them. Repetition to keeping in touch with people has never been easier. It's low friction. So you like take that into account. You're not going to get the same quality as like an in-person interaction. But.

One of the one of the rules I have now is like when I'm thinking of a friend, I send him a text. Yeah. It was like, hey, I was thinking I haven't seen him in a while or something and I haven't been around them. I need to get better at that. That is it's it's awesome. You're like, hey, I was just thinking about this time, you know.

when we were growing up or when bro remember that thing yeah hey bro remember that thing wasn't that cool we're just thinking of you how you doing yeah you know sounds easy and stupid a little bit even too but it does go a long way yeah with people it will um and then the disclosure as well i mean again i think the incentives can go either way with that but you know technology you can call somebody up still right like and

for free basically anywhere in the world now and and you can have a genuine uh conversation and connection with yeah so it's it's neither good nor bad it's a tool yes okay as i mentioned earlier younger generations are reporting more loneliness And we tend to blame technology for that. And I think that is a part of it, definitely. They're more likely to just stay online and scroll and not connect with people. And they have a harder time connecting with people. Sure, I get all that.

I just think, though, too, that how younger people are socializing is just different. And we're not quite caught up in the research on that. You know my gripe with some of Gene Twenge's work, right?

Don't get me wrong, I like her methods. I just don't agree with all of her interpretations sometimes. One of those is she's like, oh, kids aren't having sex. They're not drinking. They're not all of these, you know, all these things that we used to think of as kind of like rites of passage a little bit. And it's like, is that such, is that? Growing up, is that such a bad thing? I always find this so weird because when we were kids.

All we heard about was the parents screeching about like, oh my god, kids these days, they're listening to loud music, they're doing drugs, they're having sex, we need to save the kids, they're corrupting our kids, and now it's the kids have actually stopped doing those things. And now we're like, do kids need- to have sex and do some drugs, right? And every generation has some version of old kids these days, right? Absolutely. And so I think blaming technology is a little bit lazy.

uh, to just put it on that. I agree that it can be used in a very, uh, poor way that doesn't increase socialization and friends and all of this. But I think if we're, and this is what Derek Thompson, I think where he landed on it too, he's like. If you just kind of do a values check a little bit and start using it in a way that does increase your sociality and your potential to make friends, then it's a great thing.

I think the biggest effect I've seen from technology on my own friendships is just it is eroded at my ability to delay. pleasure and satisfaction, right? Like I do think part of that Jomo thing or that cans elation thing is when you're so easily entertained and comfortable at home. Yeah.

oh yeah okay yeah there's like a joy and trust me i'm guilty of this my my wife and i we joke about this all the time like you know sometimes we'll something will get canceled and we'll just look at each other and be like yes well think about the comparison there right yeah because

Oh, you might go. It might not be a good time. There's going to be traffic. You're not going to find a place to park. Maybe it's going to be some assholes that are going to be awkward. Like, you know, you may do something embarrassing or whatever. Or you can just sit and kind of like. scroll watch netflix dopamine dopamine yeah yeah so it is there is um there's an opportunity cost like i do remember being younger and

sitting around being bored on a Saturday night and being like, man, is anybody doing anything? And like going through my phone and texting every single one of my friends being like, yo, what are you up to tonight? What are you up to tonight? I couldn't tell you the last time I did that. Yeah.

These days it's kind of the opposite. It's kind of like, it's like, God, I'm invited to all this stuff. I kind of just want to like stay home and play a video game. I keep promising that I'm going to go through my LA story. Okay, yeah. This is a good time to do it. Yeah, like we're going to deconstruct my friendship problems. Now that we've been through all that, yeah, let's hear it. So...

I think we've covered almost all the elements at some point or another in this episode so far. So to – most listeners are probably familiar. I moved to LA three and a half years ago from New York.

And I've said for a year or two now that my biggest pain point is my social life. I would say it's okay, not great. I'd give it like a six out of 10. And for a couple of years now, I've said that it's... my highest priority and it is kind of the same so we've talked about a few of the things la is a it's a low proximity environment right so it's you don't

everything's so spread out, you don't really run into the same people super often. On top of that, it is, see, New York, everybody was always busy, but everybody was on top of each other. So you would eventually kind of run into the same people frequently. LA has kind of the worst of both worlds where it's very spread out and everybody's busy. So it's you just you don't get that repetition. So even like the people in my neighborhood.

You don't really get that repetition of running into them frequently. I just learned there's a subway in LA. I had no idea. It doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, I know. Like in New York, you hop on the train, you can be wherever. The reason you've never heard of it is it doesn't actually take... I had no idea. I've been coming out here since 2018. I had no idea.

Anyway, I made the mistake that we talked about earlier. When I moved here, I did what we talked about. I was like, I'm going to sign up for this class. I'm going to take up surfing. I'm going to join this club. I'm going to start taking tennis lessons. And essentially what that did is I met dozens and dozens of random strangers who I never saw again. Looking back, pretty much all my friends I made out here have been somehow through work.

there are business entrepreneurs business owners creators podcasters authors or people who work in that industry or adjacent to those people, people who run agencies, people who run production companies, things like that. So looking back, if I did it again, I would just go straight, like I said earlier.

my obsession is business like that's where i feel stakes in my life i don't have kids um but i've got all sorts of ambitious professional goals that's where the stakes are in my life at the moment so that's where i would invest my my social time i'd probably join a bunch of business groups and try to network and stuff that like i eventually ended up doing but i would have just done it much sooner and then from there from that network i would have looked for people

Basically, the people who have become my friends are essentially people who I've met through the business network who share a mutual interest. So they like watching football or they like to serve or they like to run. So I've gotten there. It's just taken way, way, way longer than it probably should have and I would have expected. I would say another aspect of it, there's definitely the...

The marriage thing is a complicator. The child thing is a complicator. The professional thing is a complicator. Everybody out here in West LA is like super ambitious. So they're like... working crazy schedules. I'm actually, I'm missing a friend's birthday party because we're shooting this fucking Airbnb thing next week. Mark. I know. I know. I can see the anger in your eyes.

You know, if I was the type of guy who had a CRM system for my friend's birthdays, I wouldn't have scheduled the Airbnb thing during his birthday. So... Yeah, that's definitely a big miss. I mean, fortunately, his wife is amazing. So she's like scheduling his birthday before so I can be there. I'm just, as you know, I'm a workaholic. So it's like that's honestly the biggest interference.

Now, there is some there is some research around like CEOs and entrepreneurs and stuff like that, that they do. It's not super solid research that they have, but they do see like, yeah, it's kind of like a high number of.

uh people who own businesses run businesses do report more loneliness yeah so there's that the other thing with you too i think is that uh you know you and and just people who run businesses in general if they're at the top anyway you really you don't have that work environment like

no other like most other people do like 90 of other people do yeah because it's not like you can be buddy buddy with your with all your employees right there's there's a power imbalance there first of all so you never really know like are they hanging out with me

yeah because i'm their boss or you know or maybe they're trying to get a leg up in their company or their you know whatever you do a good job of like being friendly with us and like doing things outside of work with us for sure but i i imagine there's got to be some kind of like

that's gotta be in the back of your mind anyway oh yeah it's funny because so my my dad is a business owner as well and and i remember you know i worked a few summers at his company and and he was really close with his head sales guy and um i remember one time i was

I was hanging out with my dad and I, his sales guy, everybody called him Fish. And his last name was Fishbeck. And I was hanging out with my dad one day and I said like, oh, you know, like you're really good friends with Fishbeck. And my dad kind of laughed and he's like, no, I'm not.

And I was like, what do you mean? You like take them to football games and you guys go out for drinks and you do business trips together and all this stuff. Like you get along great. He's like, no, don't get me wrong. Like Fish is amazing. I really, he's a great guy. He's like. I'm his boss. Yeah. It's not a friendship. There's never going to be. Yeah, it can't. Like, you know, and it took me a long time to kind of understand that dynamic. I would say I believe that. I would say there's.

So you lose kind of the workplace friendships. If you're a CEO, you're probably working insane hours. So you get that on top of it. But I'll say too, it's like... It even bleeds over into your social life. So I am by no means like a celebrity or a super famous person, but like in my industry, I'm.

Yeah, I'm very well known and and and people who work in this industry and work in the creator industry in general or podcasting and like they know who you are very much. And so there is a dynamic, you know, there are certain rooms you go into and people start. kind of buttering you up and kissing your ass, and they're super nice, and it's in the back of your head. You're like, is this genuine? Or does this person want something? And I've noticed that it takes me a...

good amount of time to just trust the intentions of people. I understand that. Which makes me sad. Like it sucks. but um it is and then i would say too there's also what i've noticed too is that even people who have genuine intentions i think worry about coming off that way yeah and so i've noticed that with a lot of my friends that i've made out here it took a good

three or six months. Yeah. Don't want to bother him. Don't look over eager. Don't want to look. Yeah. And I've actually noticed that I get, I do think I get invited to fewer things or, you know, people. will casually text me less often because of that. They're like, well, he's probably like super busy and it's got a lot going on. They don't want to look like a social climber or something, right? Yeah. And I've noticed it too with like friends who like... genuinely have major life problems.

Won't ask won't ask me for help because they're like well you do this for a living So like I don't want to bother you and I'm like dude, you're getting divorced. Yeah, I could we should fucking talk So It's been a learning curve. I would say this... I actually wish we had done an episode like this two years ago. It probably would have saved me like six months of time. It's...

There's not a whole lot in the episode that was illuminating or were things that I didn't know or hadn't figured out. When you put it all together. Yeah, when you put it all together and have the full...

bird's eye view of it, it probably would have saved me some time and some heartache. I will say the thing that I'm fucking terrible at is the... reaching out and following up with people yeah yeah that's the thing i need to get better repetition it's the scaffolding on which friendship is built is that repetition and it's you can't those three things are a triangle you pull one of those out it all crumbles and yeah yeah

I think I'll just make a Notion CRM system. Okay, well, hey, let's try it. Yeah, let's try it, yeah. It's worth a shot. It's worth a shot, yeah.

So before we wrap up here, I just want to remind everybody that there's a PDF guide with everything that we've covered at saltpodcast.com slash friendship. And again, if this is an area of your life that you want to work on and you want to... get it figured out if you want to get it solved let's say we do have a membership that we corsify everything that we're talking about here we break it down into a 30-day challenge it's guaranteed to improve your social life it will

Teach you a lot of the skills and habits and tactics that we're talking about. So go to membership.solvedpodcast.com. You can sign up there. Drew is going to come give a live Q&A webinar. Yeah. It's going to be awesome. 80 20 time um it's funny because this topic it's interesting that this might end up being our longest podcast yet despite how simple it is like we have done so much more research on on other topics

shows. There's been so much more complexity for other shows than this one. Yet, it is a very nuanced and...

It's simple in theory, but very nuanced and contextual in implementation. So in terms of 80-20, I think we both agree the three factors, right, of making friends is... paramount most important right so proximity repetition disclosure making sure you're hitting those things consistently and regularly that is the 20 that's going to drive the 80 of the result on this um i think it's easy to understand that

in the abstract but i think there there's probably some like high leverage strategy or tactics that we went through that are probably worthwhile i would say from my personal experience the developing a habit of reaching out of texting people reconnecting with people pinging people asking them how they're doing just inviting people to things like that is i think that's an 80 20 habit

Right. Like if you're if your default is to just reach out by text, if you're the one who's initiating more often, that's probably going to pay dividends. What would you add to that? Yeah. I mean, I would. I would definitely find, like, you got to find your people too, right? That's the proximity part, I think. And, you know, yes, you can use digital technology. You can use social media and all of that.

get it out into the real world as soon as you can and as much as you can. Use those tools like we were just talking about when we talked about the technology. Use those tools.

to find the people around you that that are going to be your people yeah right whether that is joining a club or a a gym or a volunteer organization whatever it is i i really do think i i and i used to not think this okay i used to think that that's kind of like bad not bad advice but just like kind of empty advice or generic advice but now i see it um actually for for what it is and now that i've done a few of those things what i what i really took from what you said about that too

It doesn't have to be that thing either, right? Like I go to yoga and I meet people who are interested in other things. I'm not really into yoga and the whole woo-woo stuff. And there's plenty of people at this place who aren't either. So it's great. And same thing with CrossFit. It doesn't just have to be with CrossFit. Yeah.

It probably is better if you can find that obsession like you were talking about. But I really think that, you know, if you're start there, if you're a huge like Dungeons and Dragons nerd too or whatever, like.

Is that what it's called? Dungeons and Dragons? Yes, Dungeons and Dragons. I have nerd friends who do this all the time, and I'm just like, God, you guys are nerds. Sorry, we're not all cool like you. Yeah, I think the thing, the big thing that I took away... around this is that it's not the first interest.

that makes it work. It's the second interest, right? And this was the mistake that I made is I went to the CrossFit gym and I signed up for the class and I was like, oh, I'm not making any friends. Take the first interest. find the people. And then once you've found those people, look for the second interest in common. And then I feel like once you have that second interest in common, then that can be the base of a friendship. Yeah, absolutely. And leveraging any existing networks.

however loose they are too. Professional, familial, social, everything. Yeah, everything and anything you can do to tilt the odds in your favor in this area. Again, we did mention it. It's a little bit of a numbers game at some point. Yes. Be patient with it. You're not not going to connect with everybody. You're not. It's going to take a while, too. It's going to take a long time. I can maybe be a little bit more in the disclosure part, but a persistence and just an intentionality around it.

It's not just going to happen by itself. Yes. Right. Like we all kind of understand that when it comes to dating, but we think like friendship should just kind of happen. It's not just gonna happen by itself. I think it's because the first 20 years of our life... It did happen by itself. It does just happen. It does just happen. Why? Because you're in proximity with all of your peers every single day. You have constant repetition of seeing them.

And it's inevitable that you're just going to have a lot of disclosure as you're growing up with people. So it is, I do think it kind of messes with us that we do take friendships for granted when we're young. And we spend all of our time focusing on learning how to date and find a partner. And then when you get older, it turns out that you actually have to put just as much.

work into your friendships as you do your romantic relationships yeah i want to return to the the disruptors that i talked about in the the philosophical section

And I would even add a third to that list that we talked about as well. So the first one is transactional relationships. Transactional relationships are fine as long as it's... you're aware of what you're doing and you're not too attached to the outcome both sides are aware both sides are aware and neither side is too too emotionally invested in the outcome transactional relationships can work but generally speaking like you can't really have a long-term healthy friendship

somebody where there's any sort of transactional thing going on yeah second one is an inequality in the relationship right a power dynamic a status dynamic uh somebody who has authority over the other person like it's just I can say it's impossible, but like it just adds a lot of complication. And then the third one I'm going to say is a lack of stakes. This comes back to what David Brooks talked about, which is, you know, we.

we tend to bond with people that there's some sort of, there's a certain amount of friction or overcoming of something to be with. And the only way that a friendship is going to like really feel valuable is that is that there's something to lose and that there's meaning behind it. There's something that matters to it. And so I think that's why when it comes to the interest thing,

Don't just pick a thing that you're like, oh, well, you know, I played golf once. Maybe I'll play golf again. Like really find something you care about and that matters to you and has some meaning and significance behind it. Because then when you find.

other people who also it carries meaning and significance for um it it does add some stakes to the friendship making friends is inevitably like there are periods of awkwardness and it does get dull at times and people do say things that annoy you and um people show up late and cancel plans and you can't find parking and like all this happens right so there's always going to be friction and the only way you're going to really tolerate that friction

is if you feel like it matters. Yeah, you're invested. Yeah. Yeah, to some degree, for sure. Yeah. becoming more invested. So we'll get to the disclosure part. I think the last part of that triangle that we've talked about, I think it's being, being the one to initiate that and showing a little vulnerability there.

is important. Like we talked about in tit for tat. What's the first line of code in tit for tat? It's cooperate. Yes. If there's ever any question around like, oh, is this person and are we going to get along or something? I'll usually be the one to be like, hey, we should grab a drink. Hey, come over and do this.

Lead with that, I would say. And then just like in the tit for tat too, there's some forgiveness. Like I was talking about, the most successful one is a generous tit for tat. There's a little forgiveness in there too. Forgive them when they... They might mess up or they might say something stupid or annoying, like you said. Yeah. Um, that goes a long way. And, and as a part of this too, I can't emphasize this enough again.

Drop the scorecard. Yes. Just drop it. I don't care what your friend didn't do for you and you did for them. That is just that that is no basis for a friendship at all. You're never going to you're never going to get back what you put into it. You're going to die. You're going to die someday, right? You're going to just be dead as shit. You're not taking anything with you. So stop like accounting for all of it, right? Like, it's just like relationships are way, way more important than that.

And I would count a lot of, you know, we talked a little bit about the political bullshit that's going on. Like, I do see a lot of that as an extension of the scorecard. It's like, oh, you're this type of person. So you owe society this for this and you're this.

privileged because you're this type of whatever orientation and color and ethnicity and whatnot like or your side did this and so we did this yeah but your side did that like talk about like oh how to ruin a social life and as quickly as possible is to start seeing groups in terms of what they owe you and other people like it just

It is completely antithetical. I mean, so I would expand that to just broader, like drop the assumptions about people, drop the assumption that you know what type of person this is, that you know where they come from, you know, oh, like. Yeah, that's not the type of person that I usually like, and I don't like how she acts this way, and those sorts of people are cheesy or weird or whatever. Let the judgments go. Very, very last thing that I'm going to say anyway.

and i guess i already said it but say it again the patience part yes 50 hours to make it like the acquaintance 90 to make a friend 200 to make a close friend yeah that's a lot of time yeah and and That's a, there's a lot of time for error in that too. And a lot of time for you to grow apart a little bit and come back together. You have to be very, very patient. Friendships take a lot of time. Yeah, they do. They do.

All right, trade-offs. I think this one's going to be interesting because I feel like this is an area of your life that you're very strong in, and this is an area of my life I feel like I'm weak in. And so I think it'll be interesting to hear. what sort of trade-offs each of us have made to put ourselves in this situation. Do you want to go first or should I go first? You go first. Mine's easy.

My social life has definitely suffered because I am so focused on work and I'm always busy and I have tons. I'm very... I have lots of goals and I'm very ambitious, which I love about myself, but I do see there's a bit of a thin social life as a side effect of that, for sure. The first thing I would have said was time.

so and that's what you're talking about is that um i i put a lot of time in into friendships now i think like i haven't put that time into my like romantic romantic relationships as much in the recent years at least anyway And so I've kind of been able to compensate with that, like I said, but it does take a lot of time. There is, you know, one time when we were doing the old podcast, we kind of talked about friendship.

I went back like I there was a time where I was staying out here in L.A. and I went back home over that flew back home over the weekend. You flew back for a dinner for a dinner or dinner with friends. The team was an anniversary. The team thought you were crazy, by the way. Yeah.

which maybe you are, but you're definitely a good friend. If you're crazy, you're definitely a good friend. Those are two of my good friends. Those same friends, though, we have dinner like once a week, probably. Something like that. We'll go to their house and have dinner once a week. And it's usually, there's nothing exciting.

happens to it we have some dinner we talk about mundane things but it takes the time away from other things that i do and then i yeah we go on trips we do all that the time thing is is is for real Yeah. And yeah, you got to give up some TV time or some scrolling time or work time to advance in your career. Yeah. Yeah. It's a major, major issue.

I would say marriage and kids is a trade-off. Not to say that you can't have friends if you're married and have kids, but it changes the equation. It changes your social life equation. quite a bit it's your partner becomes a huge factor in your social life and then if you have kids the kids become a huge factor in your social life as well so um i would i would throw that in there as as a trade-off

All of my friends who have kids have definitely said that to me. They're like, we've had friendships that have just gone away since we've had kids. Like I'm still around and our other friends that we still hang out with share, but they're like, there's some people who just aren't around anymore. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

We're at the end of the episode. What was your biggest takeaway from prepping and recording this? Maybe kind of two, I guess. One of them we just kind of talked about, which was, I now feel... more of a personal responsibility actually um to kind of be the initiator and like i'm i'm we were talking about this off camera a little bit i i'm just somebody who kind of makes friends where i go um and i'm very fortunate

that have kind of always been that way. Been able to kind of fit in with different groups and empathize with different people pretty easily, I feel like anyway. What this taught me, because I knew there's a loneliness crisis going on, I knew.

You know, but I kind of have the same as you. It's not, it's easy. It's these three things and this is all you got to do. It's actually much, much harder than that. And I feel more of a responsibility to the people in my community to be like kind of one of those hubs, right. To, to bring people together. I do think.

you know and i i have spare time i have all these privileges that i i can use to help other people out and i feel more of a responsibility for that now for sure i definitely think we talked at lunch about how it was funny like both prepping for this episode and recording this episode, like listening to you talk about how to make friends, it reminds me of like the, like...

the hot girl talking about how to date a guy. It's like, well, clearly this has never been a problem for you. I could just tell you didn't have the context of... of knowing what it was like to not have friends. I was so excited to do this episode and I'm like, oh, shit. Like, I don't really know necessarily what to say. Yeah.

So it's been interesting watching you. I think this is an area that you have like a natural talent or a natural gift. You know, you've been blessed in some way. And so that's been interesting to see. I have not. I mean, I wouldn't say I've... struggled to make friends throughout my life, but I was never amazing at it. It never came super naturally to me. I definitely had to put some effort into it and definitely had my fair share of toxic friendships over the years.

I would say the biggest thing that I took away from this is the patience piece. And again, it wasn't that I didn't know that. It's just like... Prepping for this episode really drove that home of like, especially like the 50 hour, 90 hour, 200 hour. I was like, I was kind of, when I saw that, I was like, okay, how many of my friends in LA have I spent 50 hours with? And I was like, I don't even make maybe two, one.

I've been here three and a half years, you know? So that was just a little bit eye-opening. And then I would say, too, the, you know, just the trade-off, the opportunity cost, like the... the instant gratification piece like it's definitely for me uh you know i will work like a 12-hour day i'll come home i'll get a text message inviting me to something and my first reaction is like dude i don't want to get off this couch

And I've had to consciously put effort into saying yes to those things and making space for those things. And it's something like you have to figure out something that works for you. If it doesn't come naturally, then... You need to create some sort of method. I remember talking to a friend who said that he would like set up recurring calendar reminders to reach out to certain people. And he was like, yeah, half the time it's like I just saw a person. So I just.

delete the reminder or whatever, but he's like, sometimes I go, you know, if I go a month without reaching out to somebody or touching base with them, that reminder is a lifesaver because it like keeps me connected.

So I do feel like as much as I shit on productivity hackers and optimizers, this is an area of my life that... left in my own devices and with like armed with the full knowledge and understanding of what my choices are creating for myself uh it is i've not been able to crack it so maybe the next step is to uh

create that notion dashboard there's going to be a certain person who said oh my god you have to do that like that's you shouldn't have to do that but i i think there's a certain type of person especially if you're a systematizer like i was saying yeah and if your time is scarce as fuck like that's the other thing is it's

It's like one thing I say to my wife all the time. I'm like, if it's on my calendar, it'll get done. If it's not on my calendar, it's never going to get done because there's so little space between, you know, work and very important video games. All right. Well, we made it to the end. We did it. Check out Solve Membership. It's at membership.solvepodcast.com. Join it. Become our friends. Be friends with the people in there.

It's an amazing community. It's an amazing group. And like I said, we courseify the podcast every single month. We give you 30-day challenges, exercises, check-ins, live webinars. Oh my God, I'm getting emotional just talking about it. Please subscribe. Leave a review if you have not. It's the best way for the word to get out about this show. Leave a comment if you enjoyed the episode. And Drew and I will see you next time. Bye, guys.