Recently I’ve been thinking about “men” and “men’s work”.  I had a great interview with Ken Solin about his book – The Key to the Men’s Room:  What Men Talk About When Women Aren’t Around.  Ken and I talked about men’s pride and pain, hopes and fears, failures and triumphs, in the service of learning how to be better men.

As I thought about Ken’s ideas on how men can support each other, I noticed how different my closeness to men is compared to my relationships with women.  When I have the rare crisis in my life the three top-of-my-list people I’m most likely to call are all women.  I have a half-a-dozen or more men that I consider close friends, but the conversations with them happen after I’ve talked it out with my “best” friends.

I think a lot of men are like me in this. What with our “father wound” and our “be-a-man training”, a lot of us guys have a life-long history of superficial associations with each other.   Maybe we played on teams together or were Boy Scouts together, but by the time adulthood arrives, a lot of men have learned to bring their deepest feelings to women.  It’s as if we men think that women can teach us to be better men – which is probably true, and also not really possible.  (I wonder how different it is for gay men?  And I can’t help but notice that even my gay friends often have closer friendships with women.)

Thinking about all this has me reaching out to my men friends a bit more, looking for some joyful male bonding.  And I’m appreciating the women in my life who help me be a better man and I’m appreciating the men in my life who help me be a better man.