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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:20
Let's get into it. One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin.
1:25
But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, Proverbs 1824.
1:30
So today, guys, we're going to be talking about friendship.
1:33
So there's a lot of things on the docket.
1:35
As you can imagine, whenever, like I've said before, the three-part series on race in America,
1:40
I had a lot of interviews that I did to make sure that I could give ample time and attention
1:44
to our new baby son and to my wife.
1:47
And a lot of things happen, and there's still a lot of things that I want to talk about.
1:50
So over the next several weeks, we're going to be talking about, certainly talking about COVID-19.
1:55
I definitely want to spend some time talking about Ravi Zacharias and the impact that he had,
1:59
because he obviously passed away this summer. And there's a Supreme Court, there's all these
2:02
things. And I'm not sure when I'm going to get to which particular topics. And there's always
2:06
seemingly things that come up. And one thing, just to kind of give you a little peek behind the
2:10
curtain when it comes to this podcast, is I very typically are a very, it's very non-typical,
2:15
I guess, for me to come out of order, right? So in the three years or so that we've been doing this
2:20
podcast, there hasn't been very many episodes that haven't been released on a Thursday. I make sure
2:25
that these are released every Thursday at minimum, but every now and then there's something that comes
2:28
up, terrorist attack, you know, some sort of big thing in the news, and I have to hit it right then.
2:32
But aside from that, I like to kind of stay in terms of what's going on and what I'm seeing.
2:36
But the other thing about it is, is even if I have the best laid plans, because I did have
2:40
a plan for this week, and it just kind of, I just pushed it aside, because I feel like,
2:44
as I'm going through things, and as I'm experiencing things in life, that I feel like I could pass a
2:49
little bit of wisdom along or a little bit of understanding, or maybe just a little bit of
2:54
extra consideration to something that a lot of guys that are maybe wired like me or you
2:59
don't give consideration to, that's why I do that. And there was something that came up here recently
3:03
that has to do with the subject matter of friendships and of long-term friendships. And I think it's
3:07
pertinent to kind of where we're at today, because you guys have heard me talk about a foxhole all
3:11
time. You've heard me talk about having those types of guys in your life. You hear me talk about
3:14
my guys on Sunday night that get together, read books and train jujitsu, and support one another.
3:18
So friendships are obviously very, very important. But I want to kind of give you an idea of as
3:23
something that I've experienced here recently with an old group of friends that I think is
3:27
pertinent to kind of what we're going through today. I'll leave their names out if some of them do
3:29
listen to this show. But essentially what happened is, we've got this group of friends, we're all
3:35
college buddies. I mean, at the low end, we've known each other for like 15, 16 years, but some of these
3:40
guys, their relationships go all the way back to elementary school. And so this is a group of guys
3:45
that's been around each other for a long time, a lot of understanding of one another, a lot of
3:49
time spent with their families. And you know, we're kind of we all love everybody. That's kind of how
3:52
the group goes. But as with a lot of guys, we have a group text. And most of the time, the things on
3:57
that group text have to do with, you know, football or, you know, something that's going on over here,
4:02
some of that's going over there. But then here recently, obviously the hot topics for everybody,
4:06
including your college buddies, it might be things like COVID-19, it might be things like race in
4:10
America, it might be a myriad of different things. So to kind of give you the nuts and bolts of what
4:16
happened here, this was around the time, so this seems like a million years ago, but this was around
4:21
the time when Drew Brees came under fire for having the gall to say that he would refuse to ever
4:27
kneel for the national anthem, because he thought it would be disrespectful to his family members
4:31
that fought in World War II. He was decried as a horrible racist for saying such a completely
4:37
insensitive and crazy thing like he would stand for the national anthem of the United States of
4:42
America with his hand over his heart. And then he tried to come out and give an apology. His wife
4:47
had to do a small apology tour. And now he's hated by both sides of people that love the national
4:51
anthem and think you should stand before the flag. They hate him. And then the people that think
4:55
that this is the worst country since since ever and 1619 was a year that we were founded and we
5:00
were founded because of slavery and we need to be ripped out, you know, from branch to stem,
5:04
those people were about it as well. So something came up, I don't know if it was Barstool or another
5:09
thing on Instagram. And so I basically took a screenshot of it and I sent it to the group and
5:13
it's like, you know, I can't even remember the context of exactly what I said, but it's like,
5:16
you know, welcome to 2020 where you can't defend the national anthem and, uh, you know, without
5:21
fearing being canceled or something along those lines. And one of the guys in the group,
5:25
he responds with this very, very long message. And he even said at the very, very top of the message
5:30
that he had had this discussion in another group text with a different group of people. And he
5:34
basically just copied and pasted it and put it into our group message. And he kind of had arguments
5:39
that he broke out and he's going into, you know, what Drew Brees said and what races like in America
5:45
and what he's experienced in his personal life and all these different things. And the thing was is
5:49
that text message is not really the right way to go about having a discussion like that.
5:54
And I responded to his initial message and I basically answered all the different points that he was
6:00
making with counterpoints and then ended by saying, dude, you know that this isn't the best way to
6:05
have this conversation. I mean, if you ever want to come and talk about this, like, I'm all ears,
6:09
like, let's, let's have a whiskey on the back porch and have a good time with it. And then
6:13
there were also some discussions that went on with this guy with some other guys in a group where I
6:17
guess they had some disagreements around COVID and around how serious we should take it versus how
6:22
seriously we are taking it. And so the thing about it was is most of the disagreements from
6:27
what I can tell, and I wasn't, you know, a party to the other conversations that were had in this
6:31
group with this same guy, they were they were pretty benign, right? I mean, no one was calling names.
6:38
It's like, Hey, this is a situation that we're in. Hey, how about you come over? We can talk about
6:41
it. You know, you'll probably end up spending 30 to 45 minutes talking about that. And then an
6:45
hour or two hours talking about something completely unrelated and not important, like golf or
6:49
fantasy football or whatever nonsense. But at the, at the same time, this, this guy didn't have that,
6:55
that viewpoint as to what's going on in this situation. There were a lot of other things that
7:00
were attached to this, but essentially this guy made a unilateral decision to completely
7:05
take it, take himself out of this group of people. This is a group of six college friends that
7:09
known each other and talk to each other all the time and have for years. There's usually a lake trip
7:14
that we all go on every year, we bring our entire families, and it's kind of one of those deals.
7:18
And for the first time, and since I've been going to the lake with these people since college,
7:21
he didn't make it. He made up some sort of excuse that he had to go, you know, hang out with a family
7:26
member or something like that. And then he's been given everybody else in the group the cold
7:31
shoulder because they're reaching out to him. Hey, man, how's it going? How about you come over?
7:34
Let's, let's go grab a burger. Let's go do this. And he's basically just completely disinterested
7:38
in everything. So I just start calling him last week, which is not something that he and I have.
7:43
You know, you have guys that you call and guys that you text and you know, whatever,
7:45
he, we aren't like call phone call people. So I called him and left him some messages saying,
7:50
Hey, let's chat something like that. Send him some text messages. But this guy is out. He doesn't
7:54
want to respond to anything. I don't know if he looks at the group as a package deal and he has
7:59
issues with each one of us in certain different ways. But this is a guy that has decided that he
8:04
doesn't really want to be friends with this group of people anymore. And the thing that's so interesting
8:09
about this group is the other four guys in the group. So not me and this guy, but the other four
8:14
guys in this group, they seem to be lamenting this. And they don't agree with how he's carrying
8:20
himself and how he's responding to people basically pushing back on his opinions, you know, basically
8:25
like a child would like, Oh my gosh, you don't like my opinion. And you're actually going to push back
8:29
like, it reminds me of people like in college that are 18 and 19 years old and you push back
8:33
on some of their ridiculous ideas. And then they just crumble and they just want to scream at the sky.
8:37
But with this guy, he's made the decision. And I've accepted his decision.
8:43
Because from my point of view, I'm not going to beg a grown man to be my buddy.
8:48
And if this guy has taken everything into account and he and I have been friends longer than we
8:54
haven't been friends in terms of years, and if he's willing to throw that away along with all the
8:59
family relationships and all of the other people in the group, for me, I'm like, Hey, I did my part.
9:04
I did what I could. I invited him to a conversation. Everybody else seemingly invited him into a
9:09
conversation where you could get a deeper understanding with one another. But he made his decision.
9:13
But the other guys in the group, they just can't seem to come to grips with that. Like,
9:18
they're, they're going to try to do everything they can. And they're going to bend over backwards
9:21
for this guy who I'm starting to believe is just a narcissist that likes to be pursued. But
9:26
that what this all got me thinking is they were disagreeing with my point of view that, Hey,
9:31
if he doesn't want to be buddies with us, screw him, like, just just move on. Like,
9:34
there's seven billion people on the planet. You're not all of them are going to like you and be your
9:38
best friend for life. And it just seemingly they can't get that through their head or they just
9:43
disagree. And what this caused for me is just to really think in a macro sense about friendships in
9:48
general and friendships for men. And specifically, even beyond that, just Christian men in general,
9:55
right? And there were two hard truths that just came to mind and they kept coming to mind. And
10:00
that's why I wanted to share them with you today. I just needed to lay the groundwork with a little
10:03
bit of context. Is there's two hard truths for Christian men as it pertains to friendship?
10:07
And the first one is friendships are essential. And the second is friendships are always changing
10:12
and sometimes cease to exist. So in the first one, friendships are essential. Guys, we know this.
10:19
You don't have to do a very detailed Google search to figure out that men don't have friends.
10:23
I mean, there there's a lot of, you know, I even just recently was looking at stuff and like
10:28
Huffington Post and variety. And it's all these things written by leftist women who are basically
10:32
saying that conservative men are don't have any friends or just men in general toxic masculinity
10:38
has caused men to not seek out friendships with other men because they think it's gay. You know,
10:42
whatever the situation is, and however they decide to argue with it, which is usually
10:45
not a very good or well thought out point of view. But even the social scientists and even
10:52
psychologists and all these other individuals, they know that this is true. That men, adult age men
10:59
out of every other group or type of person in the world, they don't really have friends as much
11:04
as other groups do, adult women, teenage women, teenage boys, toddlers, whatever the situation is,
11:08
they just don't have a lot of friends. Okay. And the thing about it is, is most men just think
11:14
that friendships just happen. And the reason why they have that point of view is because for most
11:19
of their life, that's exactly how it was in elementary school and junior high and high school,
11:24
even if you were maybe not the most social individual or maybe didn't have a ton of friends, you kind
11:29
of had your crew have just about everybody has their people, right? And if you are a little bit
11:34
more on the outside of the social circle, you might have to go out of your way a little bit more in
11:38
order to make friends. But for most people, especially growing up and maybe through college,
11:43
it's easy to make friends. But at some point, whether after high school or after they get out of,
11:48
you know, four years in the military or something like that, you're in your mid to late 20s. And
11:53
you're not just surrounded by people that might think like you, maybe you're single, maybe,
11:58
maybe you are married, but all your wife's friends, husbands are kind of lame and you don't want to
12:04
be around them. And you go to work and those really aren't your people, you just kind of work with
12:07
them, whatever the situation may be. But with these individuals, and I'm talking about the guys that
12:13
are struggling to find friendships, they just feel like it's just supposed to happen. Like,
12:16
they're just supposed to wake up and they're going to have all these friends that are just
12:19
there for them, no matter what. And then what a lot of people do, and I have, you know, people in my
12:23
family, like my dad's kind of a shut in, he doesn't really have a lot of friends. When you go through
12:27
tough times in life, it's hard because you're depending on so few people and there's so few
12:32
people that can provide you support. It's because you've spent most of your life and a lot of these
12:36
people are in the same boat, most of their life not cultivating those friendships, because they
12:40
just don't really think they're essential. And the second hard truth for Christian men, as I said
12:43
before, is friendships are always changing and sometimes they cease to exist. I feel like I'm
12:50
surrounded currently by guys, but I've been surrounded by other people that just, they look back on
12:54
these relationships and they think there's something more than they were, or they don't realize that
12:58
their circumstances today are different. Because the reality is, guys, people get busy, like,
13:04
legitimately busy, not like, oh, I'm an American and I have a job, so I'm busy, like, legitimately
13:08
busy. People move, they leave the town or they leave the state, they leave the country, right?
13:13
They have people that get different jobs, so maybe this was a guy that you saw five days a week for
13:17
years and now he's taking a different job or you've taken a different job and you're just not really
13:21
as tight as you were. You know, people choose different priorities. You know, they go in different
13:25
directions. People make different life decisions. You know, people [inaudible] you off, people cross you,
13:30
there's all these different situations where friendships could kind of end. And I've said this
13:35
before and I've described it before and I don't do it to throw anybody under the bus. It's just a
13:39
description of essentially where we're at in the world and where we're at in friendships.
13:44
As I got married, when I was 22 years old and I had four groomsmen or, you know, three groomsmen,
13:49
one best man. So my best man and I, you know, we're in a text string, so we're talking throughout,
13:55
you know, throughout the day, most days in this little group text that we have. But beyond that,
13:59
this is a human being that I might see in person three or four times a year. And me and this guy,
14:04
like we've, we've kind of grown apart, not in a bad way, like, oh, I don't like you anymore. But
14:08
it's just like his life decisions and the direction that he's going doesn't necessarily match my life
14:13
decisions in the direction that mine's going. And I'm not saying his is bad or mine's better. That's
14:17
not what I'm saying. I'm just saying they're different paths. And then the other three guys,
14:20
there's one guy who is a big time listener of this podcast. And this is a guy that I love to get
14:26
text messages from and we talk back and forth. But we might see each other in person once or twice a
14:30
year, you know, so he's not as consequential in my life as he was in college where we saw each other
14:34
basically every day. There's another guy that I might see once or twice a year and I might hear
14:39
from him two or three times total in a year. And then my other grooms, men, my last guy that I'm
14:44
going to talk about here, I have not seen or heard a thing about this guy in almost a decade.
14:49
But when I got married in 2009, he was one of the most important people in my life.
14:58
And so this isn't a reflection on him or me necessarily that we're not friends anymore. It's just,
15:02
you know, he got a job where he left the country and he married a girl that no one really liked
15:07
or wanted to be around. And he kind of he had kids early and you know, he kind of went on his own
15:11
way. I frankly don't even know where he lives. It's not that I wouldn't like to. It's just the
15:16
point I'm trying to make here is people change circumstances change. And the friendships that
15:22
you have right now, even if they're long standing, they're forever changing. Sometimes they just cease
15:28
to exist. And it's okay for that to happen. But then I also got to thinking about the different
15:33
types of friends, right? There's kind of the fringe that you have. And then there's the friends
15:37
that you need. And so I think that this is important to go through to kind of give you an idea so that
15:41
whenever you're looking around looking for a particular type of friend that I'm going to describe
15:45
before you here in just a second, that it's easier to do that. So let's talk about the friends that
15:49
you have. Okay, there are several different types. There's acquaintances. So these are people maybe
15:53
you knew them a long time ago. Maybe you worked together for like six months. This is somebody that
15:57
if you see them in public, you're maybe not going to go out of your way to say hello. If y'all walk
16:02
past each other and never make eye contact, you know, it just kind of is what it is. But even if
16:06
you do, it's going to be a very cursory two or three minute. Hey, how's it going? You know,
16:09
where you working now, blah, blah. Hey, great to see you're looking great. And then you kind of move
16:13
on. Then you've got family friends. So these are people that, you know, maybe you're not the main
16:17
friend of this person. Maybe they're good friends with your sister or with your uncle or something
16:21
like that. They're just constantly around. Okay. Again, these people aren't consequential to your life.
16:26
In any way, shape or form, they're just kind of around. Then you got your work friends. That
16:30
one's obviously pretty basic. If you're a nine to five type person or, you know, these are the
16:34
people that are maybe in the next cubicle to you or you sit together at lunch. Or if you run a
16:39
business, maybe they run a similar business and you kind of throw some referrals back and forth.
16:43
Those are just kind of your work friends. Then you've got your high school friends. Okay, so that
16:46
this could be similar to acquaintances. These are people that maybe you saw in a lot of your classes
16:50
in high school. Maybe you played sports with them. But you know, after college, maybe you never saw
16:54
them again, except for on Facebook, those are just kind of your high school friends. The same thing
16:58
can be said for college. It's the same exact thing, but it's just four years later. And then the last
17:02
thing in terms of the friends you have, these are your six p.m. friends. So what is a six p.m.
17:08
friend? This is somebody that you can call up until about six p.m. every day. And they'll likely be
17:16
there to hook you up with something that you need or to help you out. There's six p.m. friend. And
17:22
that yes, that's just an arbitrary time. There's nothing magical about that time. But basically,
17:26
after dinner, these people aren't really available to you. You know, for whatever reason, maybe they're
17:31
super disciplined with their phone. And you know, after dinner, they turn their phones off and they
17:34
don't turn them back on into the morning. Or these are just people that they do their own thing,
17:39
you know, they're going to help you out during the day. But you know, maybe it's family time now,
17:42
or maybe they don't even have a family. They just don't have time for you. Those are the friends
17:45
you have. So acquaintances, family friends, work friends, high school friends, college friends,
17:48
and six p.m. friends. But then we need to talk about the friends that you need. Because guys,
17:54
if we're going to believe that from the top of this podcast, that friendships are essential,
17:57
then we need to make sure that we're identifying the types of people that we need to have in our
18:01
lives as friends. So as kind of a counter to the six p.m. friends, there's your three a.m. friends.
18:07
That's a different guy than your six p.m. friend. So this is the guy again, another arbitrary time
18:14
that at three a.m. You can call them, and they're going to be available to you. And guys, even some
18:21
of your closest friends maybe aren't going to be three a.m. friends. These aren't people that always
18:24
have their phones on, and they're always ready to go. But you know what a lot of three a.m. friends
18:29
are. They're the next category, which is I'm on my way, friends. So what is an I'm on my way,
18:37
friend? So let's just combine these two. You call someone at three o'clock in the morning. And
18:41
I don't know, maybe there's a plumbing issue in your house and you're not really that adept
18:46
at plumbing and they are. So I would I would consider myself in that situation. I don't know a whole
18:50
lot about plumbing. And so as you're describing the issue to them as to what they're doing and
18:56
what you're hoping to get is for them to describe over the phone, or maybe over FaceTime kind of
19:01
what you should be doing. In the middle of you explaining what's going on, you can hear them
19:05
rustling around. It's because they're getting their pants on, they're grabbing their keys,
19:09
and they're on their way. You know, maybe you're in the hospital, right? And you know, this happened
19:14
with with me and I talked about on the podcast where, you know, our son James was having some
19:18
major emergency type issues had to have surgery. And it was one of those things I had guys that
19:23
called me and said, I'm on my way to your house to take care of the dogs. Just tell me how to get
19:29
in the house. And I basically had to tell them, Hey, I've already, you know, coordinated what we're
19:33
going to do with the dogs, neighbors are going to take care of them, blah, blah, blah. But they're
19:36
I'm on my way, friends. They're not waiting for me to ask for a favor. They're on the way. They're
19:41
ready to go. And the last one, and again, these are all kind of interconnected in terms of friends
19:46
that you need. And that's Foxhole friends. This is what you want. Because a lot of your
19:51
Foxhole friends are going to be, you know, you're all I'm on the way friends and your three AM
19:55
friends. And guys, just so I don't, you know, belabor too many points that I've made before,
19:59
go back to episode 104 of this podcast. It's still one of the most listened to episodes that we've
20:03
done, which kind of leads me to believe that there's a lot more work that we need to do in
20:07
this area. And by we, I mean, on Daunted Life, but episode 104 is called your foxhole. And that's
20:12
where I go into grave detail in terms of what you need to be looking for. And the first thing
20:17
about a foxhole guy, because you kind of have an idea as to what that looks like. Now, I kind of
20:20
told you how to identify a foxhole guy. And I gave you some parameters and I gave you seven of them.
20:25
And so I'll just list them here. And then you can go to episode 104. Again, I definitely highly
20:29
recommend that you listen to that if you haven't before. And certainly if you have already, you
20:32
know, get a get a refresher. But how do I identify a foxhole guy? One, a guy that you see often,
20:37
you have to see them a lot. Number two, a guy that is available. Three, a guy that you've watched
20:42
make improvements in their life. Four, a guy that seems to always be striving. Five, a guy that
20:47
quickly identifies mistakes he has made and moves to remedy them. Six, a guy that doesn't mind
20:52
confronting you or others or seven, a guy that voraciously loves their woman. Okay, again, you've
20:58
got to be in a relationship to voraciously love your woman. But most of the guys that are in your
21:01
foxhole do have a relationship like that. That's how you identify a foxhole guy. Okay, but then
21:05
in counter to that, I specifically showed you what a foxhole guy isn't. So these are types of people
21:11
that if they're in your life, maybe you can slide them to a different category. One of those maybe
21:16
friends that you have categories, but specifically a foxhole guy is not, you know, seven things. One,
21:21
a pussy to a complainer, three, an excuse maker for a settler, five, an addict, six, a womanizer,
21:28
seven, a bum. And again, go back to episode 104 to get a much deeper view about what this is.
21:34
But guys, if friendships are going to be important, and if it's something that is integral to your
21:38
life as a Christian man to build community, whether in your church or in your home group
21:42
or something like that in your foxhole that you're creating in your jujitsu academy, whatever the
21:46
situation may be, those are different things that you need to be looking for. Because you know what
21:52
you don't need in your life, you don't need more acquaintances. Because those people aren't going
21:56
to really be there for you, they make you feel good. You know, there's maybe a few hundred of
22:00
those that you've added to your Facebook profile over the last several years. But they're not going
22:04
to be there for you guys. And if you don't know what a three a.m. friend looks like,
22:10
or an I'm on my way friend looks like our foxhole friend looks like. I feel bad for you to a degree,
22:16
but also to another degree, I got to tell you, that's probably a little bit your fault,
22:21
not saying it's complete your fault. But that's something that you need to focus on.
22:24
And if you don't focus on it, you shouldn't expect it to just happen. And as we kind of
22:30
wrap up here, I want to talk about how to think about friendships in a healthy way. So as a Christian
22:35
man, I know that there's a lot of, I don't really know the best way to say it, but you know,
22:41
maybe it's your pastor, maybe it's a sub pastor at your church, or maybe it's a leader of a Bible
22:46
study that you've looked at. There's a lot of people that think that if you're a Christian man,
22:50
and you have a friendship that ends, that you've maybe done something wrong biblically,
22:54
biblically, right? Maybe you've pushed someone away. Maybe it wasn't, you know, the message you
22:58
were giving them that they didn't like the gospel. It was you, the giver of it that they didn't like,
23:03
whatever the situation is there. And in some of those situations, there might be merit to that.
23:07
But I think that's important to look at when we're looking at how to look at friendships and
23:13
how to think about friendships in a healthy way. So I have four things here for you, and then
23:16
we'll get out of here. Okay. The first thing is this. Sometimes friends reveal their true colors
23:21
and cannot be relied upon. And that's okay. I've talked about this on the podcast before,
23:28
and I know there are people listening to this that are that are privy to stories like this.
23:32
But for me personally, I'm maybe not always going to be the first guy in line when you think about,
23:38
oh, who my best friend is or whatever the situation may be. And the reason is, is because I'm a pusher.
23:44
Like I will push people. And so I'm not always everyone's favorite. Because I expect a lot
23:50
of the people around me. If you tell me you're going to get me this project done by five o'clock
23:54
today, I expected them by five 50 or four 59 at the latest, right? If you're going to tell me that
23:59
I'm going to be there, I expect you to be there. If you're going to tell me that you're going to do
24:02
this workout, I expect you to give me full effort. And that's not always going to make you everybody's
24:06
favorite. However, I'm the most loyal friend that you can have. And I give out loyalty without
24:13
most people having to earn it. Like I'll be loyal and dedicated and truthful and defending of somebody,
24:18
even if I haven't seen that they deserve it. I'm not one of those guys that, you know, I'm like,
24:22
you know, tough nut to crack. Take six months before I, you know, basically call you my buddy.
24:26
I'm not one of those guys. I will give you the benefit of doubt from the beginning. But, but if
24:31
you cross me, if you do something that you said you weren't going to do, and it had a negative impact
24:38
on me or people that I care about and love, that's a big issue for me. And it goes back to the thing
24:43
that I talked about from the beginning, which is there are seven billion people on this planet.
24:46
Not all of them can be your friend. And certainly not all of them will be your friend for life.
24:51
And so it's one of those situations where that's where I'm going to start putting distance between
24:56
me and you distance between you and somebody else. Because if somebody reveals their true colors,
25:01
that doesn't mean that you cut them off entirely. Again, I'm sure some of you are thinking about,
25:05
you know, that the parable about, you know, leaving the rest of the the sheep to go get the one,
25:09
you know, you've kind of thinking about that. That's not what I'm talking about here in this
25:13
situation. I'm talking about people that become a suck on your life. They suck your energy out,
25:19
they suck your attention. And there's nothing positive that comes out of that for you or for
25:24
the kingdom. Because the reality is this guy's sometimes friends reveal their true colors
25:28
and cannot be relied upon. And that's okay. And the thing is, is if they work their way back
25:32
into your good graces, let them in. If they attempt to right the wrongs that they've done in the past
25:37
and they're asking for, you know, they're repenting from their ways and they're asking for forgiveness,
25:41
give it to them, right? But just keep that in mind. The next thing here is sometimes we're
25:47
calling the good times is all you have left of a friendship. And that's okay. So going back
25:55
to this situation that I talked about from the top of the episode today, this is a relationship
25:59
that I'm assuming for the rest of my life is no longer going to be there. It's a friendship
26:03
that's just no longer going to be there. You know, if I see them in public, it seems like he's just
26:08
going to walk by and pretend like I'm a ghost. And he's going to do the same thing to four other
26:12
people and their entire families. That's kind of where we're at. And if that's where it stays,
26:16
and all I have left are all the good times that we had from college until now, that's fine.
26:23
You know, I would consider myself better for having had that relationship in my life
26:29
for the couple of decades that I had it. That's fine by me. I really don't have an issue with that.
26:35
And so it's when people start lamenting the fact that they don't have that. And then they
26:41
start to romanticize the friendship and what it was. And you guys, you've probably experienced this
26:45
before that, you know, maybe you're with a girl now, maybe you're dating her, maybe you're even
26:50
married. But when you and your girl are fighting, you'll think, you know, I've heard a lot of guys
26:55
talk about this. They'll think about their last relationship or maybe their first serious girlfriend
27:00
or even their first love in junior high or high school. And then they start getting the creative
27:04
juices flowing about, you know, what if I had married her? You know, what if she wasn't insane?
27:09
What if we didn't break up? What if that other guy didn't come along? What if I didn't mean
27:12
my spouse? You know, would things be different? Would my life just be peachy? Would my kids not be
27:16
terrible? Would I have a better job? Like would my car be better? Like they just run all these different
27:20
scenarios. And what they're doing is they're romanticizing a life that wasn't for them.
27:25
And guys, maybe that life had been better with that other gal or that person from summer camp
27:30
that they had to say bye at the end of the summer, like the wonder years and it was the worst thing
27:34
possible. But at the same time, these are individuals that are now romanticizing things that weren't real.
27:40
The depth of the relationship that they had is all that they had. And so that's my encouragement
27:46
to some of you guys that have had relationships with friends that have ended. If all you can do is
27:51
look and see and all the good times that you had together, then that's a plus. That's fine.
27:55
This idea that you have to have friends, you know, from high school and college that are
28:00
at your funeral. If you have those, that's fantastic. But you're not going to have a whole lot of that.
28:06
For a lot of the reasons I was talking about earlier in terms of there's a lot of times that
28:10
you're not going to be able to keep those relationships going for forever. If you never move out of your
28:14
hometown, if you never move off the street that you've lived on in your entire life and you die
28:19
in that house, that same house, and so does your buddy across the street, well, then that may happen
28:23
for you. But again, I think guys put too much pressure on themselves in certain types of friendships
28:28
and they don't try to go out and cultivate new ones or make those new ones that they have better.
28:33
Another way that it should be healthy in terms of thinking about friendships is this is that
28:38
sometimes friendships come to an end and that's okay. And this, you know, obviously connects to the
28:43
last one that if you look back on those friendships and that's all you had, then that's fine. But
28:48
then there's one other way I want to talk about this. And that's, there's a lot of friendships
28:52
that you have in your life that need to end. And I talk about ways to do that in episode 104 of
28:58
this podcast, your foxhole. But there's a lot of guys that you need to cut off. These are guys that
29:04
you've kept around because of, you know, what they mean to you or what you think that they mean to
29:09
you. Maybe these are guys that are really rough around the edges, you know, only you understand
29:14
them or what do you tell whatever you tell yourself about this person. And cutting them off might be
29:19
the best thing for them. And it's certainly likely the best thing for you. We all have
29:22
relationships like that. And I know as I'm describing this, some of you guys have someone that comes
29:26
to mind. There's somebody that immediately came to mind or maybe it's a group of somebody that
29:30
is just like, man, these just aren't my people anymore. You know, 10 years ago when we were all
29:35
in the police academy, those were my people. But man, there's not my people anymore.
29:38
Or yeah, you know, we all hung out in high school and we got high together and we drank and we
29:42
drove fast and chase girls and all that. And that was really cool. But now we're in our 40s.
29:46
And some of those guys are still doing that stuff. They never grew up. They're Peter Pan.
29:52
And these are people that when you're around them, you're tempted to do all those stupid things that
29:57
you did back in the day that you've settled down away from that you've distanced yourself from.
30:02
And those are relationships that should probably end. And that's probably okay, potentially the
30:08
best thing that could possibly happen to them and to you. And the last thing here is that sometimes
30:13
we convince ourselves that we don't need friends anyway. And that's not okay.
30:18
As I mentioned, there's some very important people in my life that don't have a lot of friends and
30:24
it's sad for me whenever I look at some of these individuals that I want them to have healthy
30:29
friendships. I want them to have a bunch of people at their funeral. I want them to have a bunch of
30:32
people that will miss them if they're gone. And I don't mean like necessarily gone from this world,
30:36
but just like miss them if they left for a few months to go on a, you know, an excursion somewhere,
30:41
like, you know, it's good to be missed sometimes. But a lot of guys that I've talked to,
30:47
they've embraced this lone wolf idea. Maybe they got real deep into what Lieutenant Dave
30:52
Grossman was talking about. Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman was talking about with the sheepdog
30:55
thing. And all of a sudden they've added the word lone sheepdog into that, like that they're just
31:00
going to kind of do their own thing. And no one really understands me and that society doesn't
31:04
either. And I'm, you know, I'm going to be outside of all this and I'm going to like distance myself
31:08
from everybody and everything. Every one of us knows guys like that. They're just bitter.
31:11
They're bitter at the world. They're [inaudible] off. They just, they just don't understand why the world
31:16
has dealt them the cards that they've dealt them or why they've ended up in the way that they are.
31:19
And you know what got started? I don't need friends anyway. And these people can be any wrong,
31:24
any more wrong. Sorry. But these people that when time, the time comes that they need help,
31:32
there's nobody available. And so they have to look internally at themselves again.
31:36
These are people that aren't typically very spiritually adept. These are people that don't
31:40
have deep relationships that they can have with other strong men where they can
31:45
basically be iron sharpening iron in those situations. They don't have that. And then when they go
31:51
through a tough time, when someone in their family maybe tragically died or maybe they've lost their
31:58
job or maybe they've gotten sick or whatever the situation is there, they're running out of options
32:03
and they're running out of options very, very quickly. Because guys are going to be honest with
32:07
you. If something's really, really bad is going on in my life, something that is just too big for
32:12
me. It's something that's too worrisome. I used to not really tell anybody. And I think back on the
32:17
podcast where I talked about how my wife and I lost two babies in the womb, the first time I
32:21
didn't tell anybody in the second time, I like over told I told as many people as I could tell
32:25
because it's like, man, that that feeling of being alone after we lost our first child was so
32:30
incredibly damaging. It just it just hurt and it hurt way more than it needed to. And the same
32:38
situation is true on the other side where it's when I started telling a lot of people in my life,
32:42
I felt a tremendous amount of love and support. But it's still something that I have to practice.
32:46
So we have this big group message with all the guys that usually train on our Sunday nights. And
32:51
I just got to be honest, I there are times and I'm like, man, I don't want to say this because it's,
32:56
you know, Kyle, get your life together. And this is another prayer request and all that. But
33:03
it's almost like I'm just putting in the reps. Like, you know, if I stub my toe, I'm not going to
33:07
send a message to the group. Like, please, please pray for healing or something like that. That's not
33:10
really something I feel like that's important. But when these huge things come up with health issues
33:15
with my son or maybe issues within my marriage or it's I'm just, you know, thinking of different,
33:20
you know, maybe it's issues with your extended family or there's there's there's any number of
33:24
things that you can send to a group. But you have to make sure there's a group to send them to.
33:28
You have to make sure that there's other guys in your life that you've cultivated these
33:32
relationships and friendships with that can take some of the weight off your shoulders,
33:36
that can shoulder a part of your birth and that can get up under the bar and lift some of the weight
33:39
for you. For all you guys, I obviously talk about cultivating mainly resilience all the time.
33:46
Part of that is learning how to let people help you. But not too much. You need to be able to
33:51
push yourself to a degree that you never thought possible. We usually see that in the physical space.
33:56
You know, you were going to run three miles, but you know, your coach gets you to run three and a
34:00
half. You were going to be able to lift, you know, 225 for one rep, but you know, he manages to get
34:05
help you get that second rep up. But you did it on your own. It's whatever the situation might be.
34:09
But at the same time, you don't have those relationships unless you cultivate them.
34:13
And guys, it's not okay. So if you're sitting there right now and you don't have a foxhole,
34:20
you don't have three guys, you don't have, I'm on my way, guys, go find some. Go be that to somebody
34:27
else. It's not going to be the perfect match. And in your group, it's not going to look like my
34:31
group and it's going to have a different feel and you're maybe you're in the different part of the
34:34
world. I know a lot of people from around the world listen to this podcast. It's going to be
34:38
different for everybody, but it's still something that you have to cultivate. Okay. A couple of
34:42
quick things here, and then we'll get out of here. Again, as I said from the beginning, one who has
34:47
unreliable friends soon comes to ruin. But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother Proverbs
34:52
1824. And then this, a friend loves at all times. And a brother is born for a time of adversity,
35:00
Proverbs 1717. Guys, before we let you go, we will do a quick resilience boost. As you know,
35:05
by now, we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating manly resilience. Specifically,
35:09
we do that by providing content like this podcast that helps you forge spiritual mental and physical
35:14
toughness. So for today, I've shared this before, but I'm sharing the book by Stephen Mansfield.
35:18
It's building your band of brothers. So this is a very short paperback book that can get on Amazon
35:22
or on his website. I've got the Amazon link for you here. But this is a very important book.
35:26
If you're looking to branch out and build that band of brothers or as I call it, your foxhole,
35:30
this is a great resource to help you do that. Guys, thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
35:34
I really do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on Apple podcast, iTunes, Spotify,
35:39
Google podcast, or Stitcher and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media.
35:43
Guys, if we deserve a five star review, please leave us one and let us know with a few sentences
35:48
letting us know exactly why you like the content. I'm currently booking speaking engagements for
35:52
the remainder of 2020 in the beginning of 2021. So if you want me to come speak at your men's event,
35:56
at your retreat, at your business, at your team, whatever, hit me up, email info at undaunted.life.
36:01
Again, that's I N F O at undaunted.life. Our website is www.undaunted.life. You can follow us on
36:07
Instagram and Twitter at undaunted life or Facebook.com backslash undaunted life. Check out our free
36:12
devotionals on the U version Bible app. Just search undaunted life under plans. And as always,
36:16
we want to thank the band, August Burns read for allowing us to use their entire music library for
36:20
our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is their song defender, which is off their latest
36:24
record entitled guardians. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
36:29
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
36:35
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
36:59
[Music]