Category: Basic Training

The Life-Stages of Friendships

January 13, 2025 No Comments

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

2025: The Year for Better Male Friendships

January 6, 2025 No Comments

In my last post with Reflections on Year 6 of this blog, I stated that too many men still fail in school, at work, and in their families. The increase in loneliness and isolation has created a culture that enables guys to hide behind a mask, which keeps others from knowing them well enough to know when they struggle. So this year, I want to double down on my theory that men need deeper, authentic friendships. This post kicks off the new year with an interesting video about the decline of friendship in America. It also includes facts about loneliness and why we must help connect young males in relationships with more mature men. With a renewed focus on having better friendships, our boys and men, our girls and women, and our families, can all do better. Men Struggle with Stress and Loneliness According to recent studies, around 57%

The Effects of Being Overly-Bonded with Mom

December 16, 2024 No Comments

My last post, The Pain of An Absent Father, suggests ways to heal from the wound of not having a physically present and emotionally engaged dad. Another reason I believe we have a Crisis of Fatherlessness in America today is one many guys must resolve: their relationship with their mother. In this post, I describe the “Overly-Bonded with Mother” wound since it can impact his marriage, his children, and his friendships. The “Enmeshed with Mom” Affect Also known as enmeshment or emotional entanglement, this wound is an unhealthy relationship that frequently lingers into adulthood. It develops when a boy becomes overly bonded with his mother as they share an intense emotional connection that blurs healthy boundaries into adulthood. This condition often starts with an absent or distant father but is inflicted by needy and hurting moms. It is also caused by “unwilling to release” types of moms, “fill in