Category: Basic Training

How Many Friends Should You Have?

As I continue making the case for 2025 as The Year for Better Male Friendships, let’s look at just how many relationships a man can and should have. In this excerpt from my book, Get Out of Your Man Cave: The Crisis of Male Friendships, I describe the limits of our social network and suggest the optimal number of friends one should have.  We are Designed for Community As human beings, we are designed for relationships. As I stated in my last post, Don’t Be “That Guy”, author and pastor, John Ortberg’s book, Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them explains that for all our quirks, sins, and jagged edges, we need each other. In community, we come together as a group of flawed, abnormal people for life-changing relationships. But how big should your community be?  One of the key parts of my GodBuddy theory is that men need

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Don’t Be “That Guy”

My last post in this series, The Barriers to Male Friendship, continues to make my case for 2025 as The Year for Better Male Friendships. In this next post, I want to remind you that we all have the qualities to be a good friend. You’re fun to hang out with and personable. You are experienced, mature, or even well-connected. You are the kind of person who people want as a friend.  Once they find you have similar interests or hobbies, you’ re on the way to developing a new friendship. However, as you get to know each other better, you may see that guy has one glaring trait that drives you crazy that could make him a lousy friend. But just remember, you also have flaws. In fact, you may be “That Guy” and not even know it! Yes, it’s hard to admit we all have characteristics that may

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The Life-Stages of Friendships

In my opening post of this year, 2025: The Year for Better Male Friendships, I included an interesting video on The Decline of Friendship and encouraged everyone to make better friendships this year. Over the next several posts, I will make my case for why we need better friendships. First, I will describe the various life stages of friendships. In subsequent posts, I’ll provide further evidence about why men (and women for that matter) need better friendships.   “Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget.” – George Wythe Randolph (1818-1867) Virginia lawyer, politician, and Confederate General  What Happened to My Friends? As I explained in Where Did All My Friends Go?, I’ve describe several types of friendships during a man’s life: The circumstances of each life-stage impacts how we make and keep friends. Where we decide to live. Which school we choose or

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