I met Aaron A Fortner just about a year ago. We met because of work, had a nice conversation over coffee, then we agreed to something really unusual. Something guys basically never do.
I said, “Hey Aaron, how about we have coffee and just talk about life about once a week, for the entire year? We won’t try and figure out some way to work together. We’ll just talk about life. I think it could be rewarding.”
I was looking to fill my life with more real, authentic, non-facebook, non-work, friendship in my life. Being a full-time father, a husband and a careerist – well that keeps you pretty busy. Time to just hang out with a friend, what’s that?
But more than being busy, the reason for my suggestion ran much deeper.
I know a lot of guys whose every friendship is really just an extension of their work. Their guy friends are co-workers, colleagues, associates, or collaborators. Their friendships happen through work meetings, or mastermind meet-ups. Everyone is viewed as a “friend” but it’s really just “work” that bonds them together. Their circle of friends might as well be called “professional association meet ups.” This is a real guy-thing.
I started noticing this five years back when I left a business I was involved with where I had “friends” all over the world, but the minute we didn’t have work in common, all the friendships dried up overnight.
Nowadays, I seek to fill my life with friends who do not value me through the lense of work. Life’s too short. And I’m clear that friendship isn’t real if it only happens through FB and the occasional meet up where you hug your buddy and say, “How’s it going? What’s up with your work?”
Aaron said yes to my suggestion and our unusual guy-friendship experiment over coffees began.
Could we sustain it?
Would it fizzle quickly without the usual guy-bonding agent of work?
We kept making the time. Kept having coffees. And kept work talk to a minimum. And about 3 months into it, it started to fizzle. We went a month without a coffee meet up, a single text or call.
It was failing, because there was no work to make the guy-bonding thing easy.
Work has urgency. Work has bottom lines. Work is a strong bonding agent for guy “friendship”, like an epoxy. But non-work based conversations, was proving about as bonding as Elmers-glue. Nice but easily dissolvable.
Add to it that we were trying to bond over coffee, not alcohol. Yeah, we were way out on a limb here.
But we picked back up in May and continued on. And then a funny thing started to occur… Life kept happening to each of us, ups and downs, rewards and pains, and we kept sharing the experiences over coffees.
Somedays, I’d walk into the coffeehouse happy and share why. Somedays I’d walk in down and be real about it. Other days, it’d be coffee to mostly hear about Aaron’s tremendous personal breakthrough. And then of course there were days where something was weighing heavy on his mind.
Funny, I barely knew shit about the day to day workings of Aaron’s incredible career, but I came to know the inner workings of his day to day feelings.
At just about 1 year of this friendship developed 95% over coffee conversation, one day as Aaron saw me approaching, I was so completely out of sorts, he took one look at me and said, “Buddy, what’s the matter? Talk to me.” 6 hours later, he’d help me turn around a really shitty day.
So work never became the glue btwn us. Or alcohol. Or adrenaline sports.
We’ve never done a work project together. We’ve never done any J.V. of any kind. We’ve never invested a dime on one another’s endeavors. I don’t believe the guy’s ever seen me speak or stopped by my website.
Instead, it was the consistent sharing of our journey as two people just trying to navigate this crazy thing called life that created a true friendship, an actual one, one that has zip to do with Facebook, until this very post.
The whole thing taught me something about friendship.
True friendship isn’t easily forged. Nowadays the word “friend” is as simple as a button “Accept Request” button, and often just as hollow.
Nowadays, too many men fill their lives with “friends” who are in actuality, just colleagues, and I feel bad for those who confuse the two. They are far from the same thing.
An actual friendship takes a ton of conversations to develop. But is worth every dollar you may spend for coffees.
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