This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. What's up? Episode number 58, the Durable Dad Podcast. Hope you are doing well today.
Speaker 1:
I am just looking at my wall and noticing that there's a stink bug on my wall and I don't know if it's the same one that scared the shit out of my daughter this morning, but these things I'd say one a day show up in our house and not sure how the heck they're getting in. But once I'm done recording, I'll get him. He doesn't move too quickly. I'll keep my eye on him, don't worry out there Today what I want to talk about.
Speaker 1:
I talk a lot about relationships on this podcast and usually we're talking about our relationships with our wife or our kids, and today I want to talk about our relationship with other men. There's a lot of talk about men being isolated, men being lonely, especially after the pandemic and everything that happened when we went working remote and were quarantined, and I do believe that our relationship with other men is very important, and I mean good relationships. We're going to talk about fellowship. We're going to talk about friendship today and starting to nurture those relationships with other men men. It makes you more powerful, it makes you more sound, just like any structure. If you have more support, then you're going to be stronger, and basically support means you have guys that have your back. You know you can rely on them and not all men have that.
Speaker 1:
I was at my buddy's 40th birthday party last year and I was catching up with his brother and I was just telling him about life and what's going on. He just stopped me and he was like you keep saying your buddies, like how do you have buddies? We're 40 years old and we're not in college and high school anymore. I don't have any buddies and I think that's a good question because the guys that I played football with and baseball with in high school and in college, that fellowship, that friendship, was really easy to build and I still talk to those guys a couple times a year. We'll hop on a Zoom call once in a while, but it's not enough when it's only a couple times of the year. So if you're there, if you're like I could use some more buddies in my life.
Speaker 1:
The first step is what we're going to call fellowship, and I got this framework of fellowship versus friendship from this guy, jeff Giza. He's in a writing group that Brenda's in and he posted this article about friendship versus fellowship. And fellowship is going to be the people that you see on a regular basis and these are in-person relationships. You know, I think of my dad. He goes to the dog park every day and he sees the same people and they say, hey, what's up, tim? And he knows all their names.
Speaker 1:
It's kind of like that cheers vibe without the bar. That's what fellowship feels like. It feels comfortable, it feels familiar. When you're there, you feel welcomed, like you belong. That's fellowship.
Speaker 1:
And if you don't have many buddies, you can find a place that creates more fellowship, like sports. I know a couple guys that have gotten back into sports that they used to play. There's the physical part of it, but there's also the connecting with other guys and you don't know them right away. So it might feel like a strange barrier because you don't feel comfortable right away. But you go to a couple of practices, you go to a couple of games and you start to see the familiar faces and you start joking around and you start to have fellowship. So it could be hockey, it could be soccer, maybe there's some softball leagues you can get into. Sports are an awesome outlet to find some fellowship.
Speaker 1:
Another one are gyms. I mean Brenda was a part of a kind of a community gym here where we live called the Vault and she got into it and it's all community-based classes and they had one when we lived in Vail also. That one was called the Goat and I think these are pretty popular right now. So you might want to look wherever you live to a community-based gym. So all the classes are group classes and if you go to the same class every week at the same time, you're going to start to see familiar faces and you walk in. Maybe they call you by name. Go to the same class every week at the same time. You're going to start to see familiar faces and you walk in, maybe they call you by name. You smile, you laugh, you banter a little bit. It feels good and that's how you know if you have fellowship. It's a good feeling and you walk away kind of smiling and happier after you have connected with people.
Speaker 1:
All right, I also want to talk about friendship. Friendship is the step up from fellowship and this is when you have a friend that you can call on, whether it's to help you move a couch or it's to grab a beer, because you have some stuff going on in your marriage that you need to unload. I mean, for me, brenda and I are going to Texas in a couple days with the girls and we're going to hang out with their birth moms and it's a emotionally big trip and it's also logistically long because there's a lot of driving and a lot of flying, but it's going to be emotionally packed and I'm anxious about it. And I have a buddy that I was able to call and we're having a chat at 4.30 today and I'm just going to kind of talk to him about what's going on and he's going to listen and that's I don't know. I feel like I'm really lucky that I have him and men having that type of support, it really does make you stronger. Another thing that a friend is going to do is he's going to call you out in a loving way, right, if he notices that there's warning signs that you're not doing what you need to be doing as a husband or as a father, or you're drinking too much. He's going to call it out because he knows you well enough to see those warning signs and he cares enough about you to say something.
Speaker 1:
So friendships can be a game changer in life for men. If you don't have those deep friendships, yes, it's going to take some intention, it's going to take some uncomfortable conversations and meetings and putting yourself in new situations, but you start with fellowship. You start by finding a place where you can hang out with other people on a regular basis and start to feel more familiar with them and then you can start stepping into the friendship realm. So for me, I'm part of a workout group called F3. There's the fitness side of it. You get out there, you start working out. It creates the fellowship because you're bantering out there.
Speaker 1:
You get to know each other and I'd say, since I've been part of this group over the last three years, I have built some solid friendships and right now I'm focused on being intentional about even I mean I would take it to a deeper level than a friendship as a brotherhood, as a bond, and in F3, it's called a shield lock and we meet every other week and we sit there together and we talk about the shit that's going on in our life and we celebrate our accomplishments and if you know that you're feeling a little isolated, that you're feeling a little alone. One you're not the only one that feels that way. A lot of men out there are feeling isolated. And two, you don't have to be. You don't have to be isolated, you don't have to be alone.
Speaker 1:
There are a ton of groups, ton of organizations out there that will welcome you in, and there's a little discomfort to it. But Google, go on Facebook, go on Meetup, do something weird, do something cheesy and put yourself out there and start connecting with other people. Get some fellowship, create some friendship in your life. All right, men, that's what I got for you this week. Have a good one and I'll catch you next time.