The Way Men (and Women) Hang.

In one of my favorite movie scenes, Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner play best friends who are having a hard heart-to-heart conversation.  Reiner tells Crystal that he’s getting a divorce. Crystal is a caring friend who genuinely feels sad.  He says all the right things and tries to cheer his friend up.  But while they talk they both stare straight ahead, their eyes never connecting.  You see, Reiner tells his friend his bad news while they are sitting in Giants Stadium surrounded by 60,000 screaming fans watching a pro football game and doing the wave. 

Ask any guy you know and he will tell you that this is the way men talk.  C. S. Lewis even described the difference in male and female friendship in similar way.  He said that while women become friends talking face to face, men become friends while talking over a chess board.

In my own life this had proved to be truer than I want to admit.  As a pastor, I am actually pretty good and talking face to face.  I literally spend all day every day that I am not studying, writing or praying, talking with people face to face.  But my closest friendships have usually been formed by talking while we looked at some thing in common: hiking on trails, riding on bikes, fishing in streams, sitting on ski lifts, running on roads, sitting next to someone while watching a ball game, or even driving to one of these experiences.  Some of the very best spiritual conversations that have most formed my soul occurred with a genuine “spiritual friend” who I wasn’t even looking at.

For a long time, I have thought that this was a particularly male trait.  But, my wife swears that women who become friends later in life (like after college when you don't have the time for all-night gab fests) use this same “looking at something in common” technique as men.  Whether it is talking while watching their kids at the playground or play sports or taking walks.  Women today also use this same technique.  (She should know, she’s a therapist.  But IMHO, a lot more women “go out to lunch” with their friends then men do.  And when we “do lunch” it’s usually about business things not friendships.)

All of this is meant to be another way of talking about the kind of hanging out that we need to do more often.  As a pastor, it makes me want to encourage more people to spend more time being together doing the things they like.  It also makes me keenly aware of how when I get too busy, these activities that are so enriching to me both body and soul are the first to go.  It’s almost a cliché these days to say that too often we get caught up in what we do rather than who we are.  More than one person has pointed out that we are supposed to be human beings, not human doings.  But maybe the key to becoming a truly good human being, is making a priority and taking full advantage of that which can be found in the doing.

Comments

[Mark]

Tod:
I agree with what you say here.

In fact, I try to build that sort of "looking at other things" hang time into my schedule as a pastor. I used to regard it as self-indulgence to arrange to go to a ball game with a guy from the congregation, for example. Now, I see the vital pastoral function I'm playing when I do this. Besides, it's fun and it strengthens friendships, something we all need in the Church, this fellowship of recovering sinners.

But even apart from pastoral "hang time" (and more importantly), I totally identify with what you say. All of my longstanding male friendships--and my best friends still include high school chums--have developed as we focused on other things. Developing relationships in this way--in the midst of doing other things, puts less pressure on them.

Imagine, for example, if you agreed to meet somebody for the sole purpose of seeing if you were compatible for friendship. Not too many relationships would develop. John Lennon's line about life applies equally to friendship, it seems, it's "what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

One last thing: I absolutely agree with your wife that once women leave the school life, they too bond like men...side by side, rather than face to face.

By the way, thanks for linking my blog to your site. If I could figure out how to do that, I would have reciprocated a long time ago!

[David Wayne]

Tod - I remember one time my wife told me I needed to take this guy out to lunch and become friends. I told her I wouldn't mind taking him out to lunch, but that wouldn't make us friends. Similar to what you are saying here I told her that my best friends have always been guys I sweat with - working or playing together.