Category: Blog Post

Here’s what we posted on Discord after today’s walk in Central Park. Yes it was 19 degrees, which means we must be getting something of value out of walking cuz it is bloody cold. 🥶

Benjamin Trustman stated in Discord “(Our) Conversation about finding connections in a room full of ‘adults’ was an affirmation as to why I connected with this walk and the original prompt about its intent.”

Ben was telling me how sometimes he comes away from “adult” parties feeling like he had a lot of conversations but didn’t make any authentic connections. He’s not alone in feeling that way.

My reply in Discord: “Yeah, a remarkable thing. That we can want more in the way of deeper friendships and how the culture shies away from that. Glad we keep looking for it anyway. And here we are. I particularly like the part where we’re allowed to say *I don’t always want to talk about deep stuff,* I just don’t want there to be an unspoken prohibition against ever talking about it.”

If continuing to do Walking Talking Men on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with Mark Wiedmann and Benjamin Trustman has taught me anything, it’s that men who want friendship and community are not rare. There are a LOT of us. We just don’t have a simple intentional way of finding each other. Now we have eight men who have shown up. No small thing, that.

I started a walk, and bingo I have new friends a few blocks from my house. They all came to the walks saying, “I already knew I needed to do something about this.” so the intention to create connection is there, understood. But the relative ease of finding these guys is something I never would have guessed possible. Our website is your starting place to begin a walk of your own, where ever you are.

 👍 How do I know this? —-> I have new friends. 

Men I never would have met otherwise, who live in my neighborhood and who showed up ready to share what’s going on for us. All it took was announcing a walk for men ONE TIME on a local social media thread.

My friend Ben’s wife saw my post on Reddit/UpperWestSide last November. 👀 She shared it with him. They had already been talking about this issue.

And while my measurement of success may seem simple (I have a new friend, several actually), the positive impacts men with robust circles of male friendships have on all those in our lives can not be understated. 👏

Lily O’Farrell recently published a comic strip on “The burden of Mankeeping” based in part of a paper co-authored by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, PhD. They explore the impact of socially isolated men on their partners’ well-being and on the well-being of society at large. Here is Lilly’s marvelous comic on Instagram.

And on the issue of #mankeeping, here’s a startling research finding about men who have a primary partner, but no circles of friendships. “In a six year study of 736 middle-aged men, attachment to a single person did not appear to lower the risk of heart attack and fatal coronary heart disease, whereas having close friendships did.” –Niobe Way, Deep Secrets, p. 9

Guys. Being lonely kills you. And why are so many of us alone?

Sadly, by late adolescence, our culture of masculinity trains boys into giving up their close friendships to prove they are not “little kids, girly, or gay” and their suicide rates become four times that of girls their age.
Source: Niobe Way‘s Deep Secrets, Rebels with a Cause

When men have a circle of authentic friendships:

1) We take a huge burden off our life partners.

2) We dramatically improve our mental health and longevity outcomes

3) We reactivate the universally human relational capacities for creating and caring for relationships we had as young boys (Per Judy Chu‘s research in her book When Boys Become Boys.)

Friendship is the holy grail. The rebirth of the crucial part we remember from boyhood that our culture of masculinity systemically breaks. This is what men want and are struggling to find. So, my co-founders and I created a simple mechanism for doing so. 😁

This is how connection, joy, belonging are mended, re-vitalized. Fixed. And lord knows, we men like to fix things so this is big.

ANY MAN CAN START OR JOIN A WALK. Visit: WalkingTalkingMen.org <—— 👍

Here’s the most important thing you’ll find our site:

—> Walking Talking Men is not therapy and we are not therapists. We are not seeking to sell services. We are simply sharing information about how we are creating community for men in our neighborhood. That’s it. ❤️

And what’s in it for me, you might ask? C’mon, you know the answer. The same thing that’s in it for you.

P. S. If you’re in NYC, reach out to join our walk.

Mark Wiedmann and I, along with Ben Trustman, want to create real lasting friendships in our neighborhood and Walking Talking Men is how we’re doing it. We want to see doors in our neighborhood and say, “I have a friend who lives there.” And even I, after nearly twenty years of writing about isolation for boys and men, really had no clue about how to get it done. I struggled for decades with the nagging feeling many men have, of loss, of loneliness. Until now. 

Loneliness in the US is a dangerous epidemic. Cigna reports that nearly 50% of people in the US feel “sometimes or always alone.” The health impact of chronic loneliness is equal to smoking, increasing the likelihood of heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, and even cancer. Cancer metastasizes faster in lonely people. And if it’s doing that to our bodies, imagine what it’s doing to our mental health. And yet, many of the men I meet tell me it’s not easy to make friends. For many of us, the dads at our PTA or the guys at work represent surface level friendships of proximity. Change your kid’s school, drop all those dads and start up with the next ones because all guys are the same, right?

Mark and I started WalkingTalkingMen.org just three months ago. I didn’t know what would happen. I posted once on the Upper West Side subreddit. Men emailed me saying, “Yeah, my wife and I have been talking about this.” “I need to do something about it.” “I’ve been aware of this for a while now.” Men in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s showed up. Now men have started walking in Los Angeles, CA and in Santa Barbara, CA. I hope men who read this, who want real, lasting, local friendships will start a walk wherever they are.

What I learned when the emails started coming is that men want to connect, to walk and talk with friends like we all used to do where we were young, to make room for that in our busy lives. My single Reddit post has changed my life. I didn’t know Ben Trustman three months ago, and may never have known him, but now, he’s a friend who lives just blocks away.

When men walk and talk in our groups, we talk about surface level stuff but we also hold space for what we might be struggling with.

Which brings me to a conversation that has come up more than once with some of the men who have joined us. The fictionalized details in this story are those of a mix of men, me included. But the idea is to give a sense of what happens on our walks. Sharing about this kind of deeper issue isn’t expected or required of anyone. But it happens when men hold space for each other. It really does. 

So, here’s the conversation: We’re walking and talking. It’s cold and windy in Central Park. Other subjects lead up to this moment. And then a man says, “I’ve been getting really angry at my young kids, lately.”

Mark and I, (our kids are in college) remain silent and listen to this man talk about the pressures he’s dealing with and when he is done, we sit with it for a few moments. Then we both say something along the lines of, “You’re not alone in that. We’ve been there with our kids.”

Then I say what arrives for me. “There’s an unspoken rule of parenting that we’re not allowed admit how hard parenting can be. It’s too exhausting, too demanding. Too lonely. It’s supposed to be this joyful calling. Women especially aren’t allowed to admit it’s hard. Too hard sometimes.”

“And as parents we can’t really admit this to our partners, or the other parents at the PTA. But you can share that here. We’ve all been there. You’re not alone, and it’s never good to feel like you have to keep that stuff to yourself. Sometimes just saying it out loud is enough to begin to shift it.”

My wife Salha Bava, who is a Professor of Couple and Family therapy here in New York, calls this “speaking the unspeakable.”

We continued walking along the paths in Central Park. It’s cold and blustery. In the 20s. Dried leaves blow past. There are remnants of snow along the path. Maybe we talk about ways to help. There is a lot of parenting wisdom among the collective dads and although trying to fix things isn’t the primary goal of our walks, we offer help when it seems right to do so. Maybe by asking questions first. “What time of day does things get frustrating? Trying to get out in the morning? Trying to get dinner on? Do they argue with each other? With you?”

We share stories about our kids when they were little. The subject eventually shifts. The rhythm of the walk plays out. This is the crucial thing friends do for each other. We share and hold space for each other’s stories. And any man who wants this in our lives can have it. 

Want to start a walk where you are? Here are our resources: https://walkingtalkingmen.org/resources/

Want to join us in NYC? Email me at walkingtalkingmen (at) gmail (dot) com

Here is our disclaimer: Walking Talking Men is not therapy and we are not therapists. We are not seeking to sell services. We are simply sharing information about how we are creating community for men in our neighborhood. That’s it.

Loneliness is at epidemic levels for men, so my friend Mark Wiedmann and I did a thing. In NYC? You can join us. We’re at WalkingTalkingMen (at) gmail (dot) com. In another city? Start your own walk.

Walking Talking Men is not therapy and we are not therapists. We are not seeking to sell services. We are simply sharing information about how we are creating community for men in our neighborhood. Any man who wants more friendship and local connection in his neighborhood can do this in any community, anywhere. That’s it.

Our website, Walking Talking Men, says this on the home page: 

Who are we? We are a group of men, currently in the NYC Upper West Side area, who get together in Central Park a few times a week and simply walk and talk. 

Our purpose:

To give men a non-judgmental space to talk about what’s going on for us 

To open the door to a community of local friendships with men in a world that often makes that difficult to find/maintain 

We are a non-religious, non politically affiliated group 

We have four rules:

• No political subjects 

• Use “I” statements 

• Resist judgement, and lean into listening to each other 

• All conversations are confidential 

Want to walk? Contact us: walkingtalkingmen (at) gmail (dot) com

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Six weeks ago, my friend Mark Wiedmann and I started Walking Talking Men on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It began when Mark and I first had coffee over two years ago. We were both parents at our sons’ high school (Our sons are in college now) and having coffee was a normal social thing for two dads to do.

But for some reason, we kept it up. We’ve been having a weekly coffee for years now. A hundred times? I don’t know. I’ve lost count. Over the course of time, surface level conversations became a bit deeper. We started talking about more significant stuff going on in our lives. We have become friends who now rely on each other to hold space for even difficult stuff that’s going on. It’s. not always deep stuff. On any given day we might be talking about movies or gaming or whatever else.

As simple as this story of a friendship is, I’m struck by how rare it can be in men’s lives. Hell, it’s been rare in my life. Although I have friends from high school and folks I know in other ways, all of those friendships typically amount to people I talk to once or twice a year. My friendship with Mark is something else entirely. And it exists simply because we have had enough conversations to really get to know each other. 

I told Mark I was thinking about doing this Walking Talking Men thing. It’s not my idea originally. There’s a group of guys called Men Walking and Talking who have been doing something similar in the UK since 2021. But I told Mark I was thinking about it and that I had a lot of doubts about it. He said, “We should do this.” And that was it. His support made doing it a reality. 

In my original post on Reddit inviting guys to join us and walk I wrote this:

“Cigna and other major organizations regularly share research confirming that over 50% of people in the US feel ‘sometimes or always alone.’ Such levels of isolation have health impacts equal to smoking. Lonely people face higher levels of heart disease, neurodegenerative disease, diabetes, cancer and so on. Many men struggle with loneliness even as we are busy working, caring for our kids, dealing with the daily demands of life. But research shows that men with a robust circle of friendships live longer healthier lives, have better marriages and relationships, feel more optimistic and are more successful in our personal and professional lives.” 

Cigna research: https://newsroom.thecignagroup.com/loneliness-in-america

The Harvard Study of Adult Development is another powerful resource for understanding the quality of life impact of connection and friendships. Here’s a quote from a TED Talk by Program Director Robert Waldinger. This is from about 7:15 minutes in.

“Social connections are really good for us and loneliness kills. It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community are happier, they’re physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.”

Seems like something we should care about, yeah?

At this writing, I have only ever posted one time inviting men to walk and talk. That was a month ago. Guys responding often said, “Yeah, this is something I need to do.” Men know we need this. We just don’t know how to get it done.

Walking Talking Men is a simple mechanism to get it done. We have had six walks and the results are already life changing. Men I didn’t know four weeks ago are now part of my life. Men from completely new networks of connection.

For example, just yesterday. Mark and I were getting our weekly coffee in Moca Coffee on Broadway. We’re talking about some stuff, movies, I don’t know, whatever it was, and in walks Ben, a guy who has been joining us on walks.

“Hey I saw you guys in here, mind if I join you?” A friend in our neighborhood, saw us as he was walking down the street, and came in to hang out. Local. Purely accidental. And not accidental at all. The intentional result of taking a risk, walking and talking. Hasn’t happened to me in ten years on the Upper West Side of New York City.

Now it has.

There are a reasons why millions of us men don’t have close friends nearby that we can rely on. These reasons are cultural, social, contextual, driven by a whole lot of factors. But any man who wants to, can join a walk, or start their own. And here’s the most important thing to understand. It’s like exercise. One time changes little. But if you walk and talk enough times with friends, something entirely new emerges. Friendships that transcend the disconnection we all often feel and give us the community and connection we can rely on to help us get through life’s challenges and also celebrate the great stuff that happens.

There’s a lot more about the power of friendships I can talk about. There’s a ton of data and research out there, but I’ll stop here for now. But I’ll leave you with this. Any man who wants to invite men to walk and talk can do this. Just post in your local social media of choice and see who responds. I promise you, it is life changing. 

Questions or comments? You can reach us at walkingtalkingmen (at) gmail (dot) com.Welcome to WordPress! This is your first post. Edit or delete it to take the first step in your blogging journey.