[00:00:00] Nina: Welcome to Dear or Nina, conversations about Friendship. I’m your host, Nina Batson. The first part of today’s conversation will be a natural continuation of last week’s episode about the benefit of having friends with different points of view, religious, political, or otherwise.

So I guess I inadvertently made a series and in the second half , we will talk about the real work of maintaining a decades long, sometimes challenging friendship and why we should bother. My guest is author Will Schwalbe, whose latest memoir we Should Not Be Friends. The story of a friendship will challenge your assumptions about friendship.

Two of Will’s previous books include Books for Living and the end of Your Life. Book Club, which I know many people out there have loved since we should not be Friends as newer. I’d like to read a short summary of the book before we dive in with Will. Who is patiently waiting? By the time Will was a junior at.

He had already met everyone. He cared to know the theater people, writers, visual artists, and comparative lit majors and various other quirky characters, including the handful of students who shared his own major Ladden and Greek. He also knew exactly who he wanted to avoid the. The jocks wore baseball caps and moved in packs, filling boisterous tables in the dining hall, and on the whole seemed to be another species entirely. All this changed dramatically when Will collided with Chris Maxi known to just about everyone as Maxi, . Maxi was physically imposing loud and a star wrestler who was determined to become a Navy SEAL where he would later serve for six years. Thanks to the strangely liberating circumstances of a little known secret society at Yale, the two forged a bond that would become a mainstay of each other’s lives as they repeatedly lost and found each other and themselves in the years after graduation from New Haven to New York City, from Hong Kong.

Panama to a remarkable school on an island in The Bahamas through marriages and a divorce triumphs and devastating losses. We should not be friends. Tracks an extraordinary friendship over decades of challenge and change. Schwalbe’s marvelous new work. Is at its heart a joyful testament to the miracle of human connection and how if we can just get past our preconceptions, we may find some of our greatest friends.

anybody who listens to this show, if you listen last week or listen any other week, you will know why I devoured this book . Welcome.

[00:02:26] Will: Thank you, Nina. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:28] Nina: So we have something in common that may surprise you even though this first half is about differences. I am also not a big hugger.

[00:02:36] Will: Oh.

[00:02:37] Nina: . And you said something in the book that I cheered out loud. You appreciate the head nod.

[00:02:42] Will: Exactly. I’ve never been a big hugger, and I always think that I would’ve been really happy in Ed Edwardian, England. Where people would tip their hat to each other or give a little head nod. . I don’t begrudge the big huggers.

They’re big hugs. But, I would, borrow the wonderful phrase of Yogi Bar. Uh, wish that they would include me out.

[00:03:01] Nina: That’s so funny. . So let’s get to your story. I love so many of the subtle and less subtle messages, and we should not be friends, and I really saw a double meaning in the title. The most obvious one relates to you and Maxi. We should not be friends because we’re so different.

And then the whole second half of the book is really in my mind. We should not be friends because we’re not doing a great job of keeping in touch or we have all these perceived slights. But let’s start with the first one can you tell my listeners. About this secret society that you were tapped to join at Yale, and then let’s also ground that in history.

You do it so well in the book to weave in exactly where we are in time.

[00:03:40] Will: So, yes, to set the stage a little bit, , I started in college in 1980 at Yale as an out gay kid. , and there really were very few of us at Yale, or really in society, , at that time who were. Out and gay. , just to give some context, this was only a couple years after the assassination of Harvey Milk and Mira Moscon.

This was only a couple of years after a kid who tried to take a boy to his prom, caused national headlines day after day after day. And this was at a time when there were no protections for gay people anywhere except weirdly one law in the state of w.

, so that’s, The deep background to the early eighties, a little more specifically, I had just returned to college after spending a term in Los Angeles working in the motion picture business.

, I had had a taste of life as an adult. , here I was back at school, and I was asked. To join a secret society, this secret society had a remarkable mission. To bring together the 15 most different kids at Yale,

[00:04:53] Nina: It was ahead of its time, kind of. It’s like the real world,

[00:04:56] Will: it was before the real world, but that kind of concepting. And also, , I love this. My British publisher is selling the book as the Real Life, the Breakfast Club.

[00:05:04] Nina: Oh, that’s funny cause I am bringing that up , a friend of mine sent in a question and we are gonna talk about the Breakfast Club. So look at that.

[00:05:10] Will: so, , I was thinking, ah, I don’t need to join this. The other bit of context at the time was, it was when AIDS was just starting and as a out gay young man, , I was fairly convinced and with fairly good reason that I would not live to see the age of 25. So I had very little patience for. Things that I thought would waste my time or be unpleasant.

So I was very skeptical, but I decided to join this club and I should add that, , it’s an extraordinary place. It’s in a. Granite building off campus that we called the tomb or the hall. We had to have dinner with each other twice a week and could never miss. And we had to tell each other the complete story of our life.

It was called the audit. And so I arrived there. There’s 14 other kids, half of them are girls, half of them are boys. Everybody seems kind of cool except this one obnoxious jock named Maxi. And I thought to myself, we should not be.

[00:06:11] Nina: , one thing I wanna stop and say is this sense of ritual is so crucial to developing those deep friendships the fact that you had to go twice a week and into a place. So it’s not just a society that’s a theory or that has a belief system that everybody kind of agrees to.

It’s an actual location that you have to show up. I mean, there’s no better way to bond with people. people you agree with or disagree with than having to show up and be together in a space.

[00:06:40] Will: Oh, I agree. The space was very important. The fact that it. all of our space and none of our space. No one had claimed to it. We weren’t going to someone’s dorm or apartment. The ritual was very important and the fact that you could never miss, the effect of that was we could get in arguments, we could be obnoxious, we could be overly emotional, we could be too revealing one day and two guarded the next, but we knew we would see each other three or four days.

So we could actually really be authentic without the worry that we would never see these people again, and they would be left with whatever the last impression was.

[00:07:16] Nina: what was it about Maxi? A little bit more with some examples that made you assume from the get-go that he would not be your kind of guy because you were already seniors. Just remind listeners,

you already , maybe had seen him around, but you were really not in the same social circle at all.

[00:07:34] Will: He was a legendary athlete. , he famously in the state of Pennsylvania, won the track competition for the state at 10:00 AM One morning in the lacrosse league championship, three o’clock the same day, and he was a wrestler and he traveled in a pack of jocks. And the jocks were genuinely menacing. If you were.

A woman or if you were one of the more feminine gay kids or an out gay kid in any way, you actually were quite wise to steer clear of these people. there was something menacing about the pack of jocks. So when I met this loud, slightly obnoxious, overly boisterous guy, hyper-masculine headed for the Navy Seals, it really did seem to me.

Young out gay theater kid, nerdy activist, classic scholar, that that not only did I not want to be friends with this person, but that in some ways he was a threat.

[00:08:29] Nina: There’s a quote of yours I absolutely loved. It’s about halfway through the book. So we get past, , this fear. You are starting to become friends with Maxi and this part’s a little bit more of a reflection.

You said Maxi had helped me realize that people you don’t like aren’t always who you think they are, even when you are quite sure and what’s more, even if they are, they may want to change.

[00:08:52] Will: I realized quite early that I was wrong about Maxi and it’s. , part of the other rituals of our secret society, and I should add, the Secret Society was totally free. It was paid for by the alumni and endowment. So all of us had different economic backgrounds, but part of the ritual was a weekend retreat where we all had to go away and spend the entire weekend together.

Maxi had ridden up to the retreat on this big motorcycle. The rest of us were crammed into little cars that we had rented, I was hungover. When we had to go back, I didn’t wanna be crammed in a little car and I announced this kind of loudly. And the next thing I know, Maxie is throwing a helmet at me and insisting that I ride back to campus on the back of his motorcycle.

it was a really sweet gesture. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. The whole topic kind of terrified me of having to wrap my arms around this straight dude and, how he might interpret that.

[00:09:46] Nina: Worse than a hug is probably having to be on a motorcycle and have to hold on.

[00:09:49] Will: have to hold on for dear life. But, there was a real sweetness in it. And then another ritual of the Secret Society was each of us in turn had to give a presentation of everything we’d experienced in our entire lives.

And these went anywhere from three to seven hours. , I delivered mine and Maxie was really sweet about it. He wanted to understand me in my life. And then he delivered his. And over the course of him telling me and the group his fears and his anxieties, um, he had lost his father when he was a toddler and been adopted by a wonderful man who he adored and just this humanity of him and his values.

I realized I was probably wrong about this guy, and we had a lot of bumps. We disappointed each other that year and many times since. But the overriding sense I got was that we shared the same values. And one of the things that’s most important to me in this book is I really don’t think we can be friends with every.

I just don’t think that’s the case, and I know you’ve thought deeply about friendship and talked to many people about it, and I think the kind of kumbaya we can all be friends is not true, but

I do think we can be friends with far greater. Swath of people than we might imagine. And that sentence that you read, I’m so happy you read that because Maxi, one of the things I love most and admire about him most, he not only wants to be good and not only is a profoundly good person, but he always wants to be better.

He’s like a learning machine full of empathy, and I never would’ve guessed.

[00:11:30] Nina: What comes across in the book is his humility, so he’s willing. Learn and change a as are you and your humility , by the way, I agree. We cannot be friends with everybody. I, I don’t believe in all the kumbaya stuff. I think we could do a better job of not already thinking we know everything about another person, even people we do.

Share values with, let’s say, you may think you share values with someone because they have the right sign in front of their house and , and they vote for the right person, whatever. But, , Maybe they never, ever, ever call their friend when they’re sick or drop off a meal or it’s like just very easy, I think in this world nowadays to use I guess what we call virtue singles , to show

, oh, I’m a good person cause I have a certain set of beliefs, or I vote a certain way. But it’s like what we do that matters .

[00:12:20] Will: I couldn’t agree more people have asked me, I’ve been on a tour, various cities talking about the book, and when we get on the subject of friendship and values, people have said, how do you know someone shares your values? And for me, the biggest sign is how they treat other people, not how they treat me, not how they treat their friends even, but how they treat strangers whose paths they cross during the normal course of life.

And I think that often tells. , almost everything you need to know about someone.

[00:12:50] Nina: I love that. And then a point that came up in my episode last week is this idea that we actually, I don’t think have to share all values with our friends because we’re not marrying this person. , that’s another thing to answer the question with someone to ask you. You know, how do you know if you share values?

I might even say it’s okay if we don’t share every value because. Thank goodness for friendship. You get to have more than one. They don’t make you choose one and commit to that person for a life. You do get to have more than one. And one thing about your friendship with Maxi and some of the other people that this society put you with, one of the magical things about that is meeting people who aren’t exactly like you, brings out different parts of you.

You would never have known to challenge yourself on or explore if everyone’s exactly like you in all.

[00:13:39] Will: I, I agree. And one of the remarkable things too, of the 15 of. , and as you know from reading the book, one person decided not to return to Yale and and one person very sadly, died. So of the 13 of us who were left, I’m in close contact with 10 of them, which is extraordinary cuz 40 years have gone by. But I want to get back to that question you said about values, because I think to me it depends how you define values.

For me, what I mean are things like honestly. Honesty, and I hope I exhibit this in daily life is a value. I don’t believe I can be friends with someone who is fundamentally dishonest. , empathy is a value. So I’m talking not about individual beliefs or even political affiliations, or I like to sit in my room and read, and Maxi loves to go scuba diving or anything like that.

I’m just talking about those. Fundamental things that are really important to us and, and kind of at the core of our own value system.

[00:14:39] Nina: . . One other question on this subject, and then we’ll move on to our second half. What do you think people are afraid of in terms of being friends with. Someone who’s seemingly different. And Max is a great example of like, when you first met, on the surface he was different. , even though you were wrong about his deeper self on the outside, you weren’t wrong.

I mean, he hung out with people who may have been menacing to you, or if they weren’t, they certainly had capacity to be, , nowadays though, what is it people are so scared of?

[00:15:07] Will: And you’re right to point out too that maxi, I don’t think had ever knowingly met a gay person before and he was perfectly capable of saying stupid things that really hurt my feelings. So I’m not painting him as this kind of saint when I met him. , but I think what people are afraid of is, being betrayed, , and they’re

afraid of having their feelings hurt. And I don’t wanna minimize that. , if you put yourself out there and expose something of your inner core to someone else and they treat it casually or cruelly or dismissively or betray a confidence or belittle you, it’s tough.

I do think, it takes courage to become friends and be a friend to someone who on the surface shares very little with you.

[00:16:04] Nina: I think it does too. And I’m actually gonna skip to the breakfast club question because it really relates more to this. So I have a friend, Rebecca Jacobs in Marilyn. She’s actually been on my podcast before. We’ve never met in person. She’s one of these people I’ve met kind of through the podcast and , You’ll appreciate her cuz you’re an editor and a writer that I had done an episode all about fictional friendships and people’s favorite friendships and novels and memoirs actually.

So not just fictional. And this is before your book was published or this would be in it. I put it out to my listeners on my sub for ideas. She wrote such a beautiful answer with so many examples. I didn’t know her at all. I said, Rebecca, can you just come on the show? I don’t wanna take your ideas.

Let’s just discuss it together. And we’ve been talking about books ever since. This was over a year ago. So she also read your book when I told her, , that you were coming on the show, and she typed in a question that I’m going to read to you, and she says, my overall question is what I’m. The Breakfast Club conundrum.

So in the movie, they all meet in detention and realize how they have more in common than they originally thought. And in this book, with the Secret Club plus the audits, these college students learn how to be vulnerable and how to still show up for each other. They are selected for their differences.

So how in today’s world do we meet people different from us without a secret club, without detention or without being trapped together? Cuz we might be missing out on a lifelong friend like Maxi. And it seems more than ever we are avoiding people who don’t share our pandemic, personal views, political views.

And I know we’ve covered this a little bit, but she’s asking it in a slightly different way, which I know you’re not gonna have the exact answer. I don’t either. Cause people ask me this too. We could just brainstorm for a second. How do you do that in real life now? Because the Secret society

that is what brought you together.

[00:17:45] Will: I’ve been thinking about this question a lot. I’m so glad Rebecca asked it. So I’ll tell you a couple thoughts I’ve had, and see what you think. One realization that I’ve had is that life provides a certain amount of serendipity, but we often ignore it. One example is, , whenever I fly on an airplane, I used to put on a headset and pull out a book and just send out this, do not talk to me vibe.

, sometimes the person sitting next to me is sitting out that vibe and I respect that. But you know, sometimes when you see the person next to you and they seem like they really want to talk, , and you have the choice. To put down your book for a second, take off your headset and engage, or to send out that vibe.

And I, I’m trying now , just to engage with the people that life throws at me. , and sometimes I wish I hadn’t, but actually more often than not, I’m super glad I did and it has led to some genuine friendships.

[00:18:41] Nina: . That’s

a great.

[00:18:43] Will: The other thing is, , this is a kind of funny example, but. Friend that, uh, I haven’t seen for a couple years, but a, a wonderful guy and he had a wonderful marriage and every Valentine’s Day they had a party where they would invite couples who had to bring a single friend.

[00:18:58] Nina: Oh, that’s brilliant.

[00:19:00] Will: , but I’m thinking about more and more how we can create opportunities in our own life to meet the friends of friends or the coworkers of friends or , for, in a book club, to invite someone. Who is not a slam dunk, cuz they’re exactly like the rest of us. I think we can broaden our circles purposefully.

[00:19:18] Nina: I think what I would say too, also, it has to probably be something you want to do and therefore you’re. Like you said, keeping your eye out and putting your phone down, looking up being a little more open and, and then maybe even making a point to show up at things.

There may be events in different cities that have this in mind, , discussion groups and things that are, are around an ideas or as opposed to around, , A commonality that’s more obvious. So as a Jewish person, as I am, if I only keep showing up to things that are for Jewish women, yeah.

That’s the only people I’m gonna meet. You have to show up to other things. You can’t just stick in your little. bubble if you have the desire to meet other people. Not that I have everything uncommon , with Jewish people. I don’t. Then last week’s episode was with a Haredi woman and a totally secular Israeli, and I would place myself right in the middle actually.

So we talked about that a bit. But my point is on the, on the outside, we sort of have things in

[00:20:16] Will: Yeah. There’s one other tip actually, which reminds me of which, , I am trying to employ in my life in New York City, cause I live in New York, there’s a million and a half things going on every night. There are lectures and plays and concerts, and I’m trying at least every couple of weeks to go to something that doesn’t interest me.

I look through the section of what’s around town and I’m like, oh, that doesn’t interest me. And I’ll go , if it someone’s putting it on in New York and a bunch of people show up, it actually may be pretty interesting. I just had prejudged it based on some criteria of what’s interest me in the past, and I think if you go to things that don’t interest you and you’re open to talking to the people who are sitting around you, maybe that’s another way.

[00:20:54] Nina: Well, you could write a whole book about that cuz I think people have a hard time getting out of their house, so go to the things that do interest them and so that’s another layer to go to. Something that doesn’t interest you would be hard and the value of it. It’s just a bigger concept of the value of just being friends with people who don’t always have everything in common with you.

Okay. We’re gonna move on to the second part of what I wanted to talk about, reading the headlines around the book , it’s generally described as a story about a gay man and a straight man and They’re you know, kind of unlikely friendship.

That is totally true. It is about that. But to someone like me who’s completely immersed in discussions about friendship, the bigger story to me was the reality of what it really takes to successfully maintain a nourishing decades long, long distance friendship. Nothing to do with anyone’s background,

, just the reality of everything we all have going on. Because I would not say that Maxi was. Your best friend, reading the book. I thought that’s where it was going. Oh, this is gonna be a story about , these guys were best friends,

and it’s just semantics. It doesn’t really matter. But you weren’t at each other’s weddings. You went whole years without speaking.

[00:22:02] Will: decades. Yeah.

[00:22:04] Nina: Decades. Yes. But I, I love that. I love that that’s where the book went, because that to me is the real deep story here, is that you never fell outta touch completely.

I mean, I mean, you did, but you got back in touch. Kind of like we did before with how you guys met. Can you tell us, , what brought you back together?

[00:22:22] Will: So I will say, I’m so glad you focused on this because one, we weren’t best friends then. We’re not best friends now. my husband and I have two best friends. They live around the corner. We see them three times a week. Maxie has his own. . And also, I’m delighted you said it that way because we got over the gay straight thing, more or less within a.

, that hasn’t been a major feature in the things that kept us apart or brought us back together. The biggest thing is we live in different places. , the first half of our friendship, the first 20 years existed before social media that we rely on today for keeping in touch with people.

Um, maxi and his wife Pam had four kids, which is a handful, and they were engaged in their life and I was engaged in mine and we just fell outta touch again and again. we also did, and this is something that I raise a lot in the book, , allowed little slights or little miscues to. Not fester, but just cause us to, to put the relationship on the back, back, back, back burner.

A kind of classic example of that is Maxi, I mentioned, came to town a couple times in New York City. He didn’t call me. and rather than be brave and say, maxi, I value our friendship. I’m a little hurt. Why is it you came to New York or big joke about it and say, yo, next time you come to town, you know I’ve gotta talk to the mayor and put you in detention unless you gimme a call so we can have a beer.

I just thought, okay, well that’s sort of the end of that. He’s gone on with his life and I’ll get on with mine. One of the keys is we were both friends with a connect. And I, I’m using that almost as a, role term. But one of everyone’s favorite characters in the book is a guy named David Singer, and he’s friends with me and he’s friends with Maxi, and he just insisted we not lose track of each other.

and he would bring us together and he would say, why haven’t you called Maxi? And or he would say, I’m going to visit Maxi. You have to come. I think these connectors in our lives, we can be them and we can treasure them because , they’re the glue

[00:24:28] Nina: Good for David Singer. I, I cheered him on in the book. I’m glad to know he’s other people’s favorite character too. I know it’s funny to talk about real people’s characters, but he, he does something that , this is a very gendered thing to say, but I’m gonna say it anyway cuz I, I’ve been writing about friendship for a long time and most of my guests and most of the people who write to me are women.

And I do think. A lot of women, are quicker to be done, be done with the friendship over things. Certainly things that happen between you and Maxie, like you said, the not calling when you come to visit. , it’s more like people get upset at each other through these acts of omission more than co.

So it’s not like he. Called you and said something obnoxious and did something obnoxious with the not calling that that could be hurtful, it is easy to end a friendship over stuff like that. What David did was he asked something of both of you several times, , come with me to The Bahamas to see Maxie, , Come to the restaurant with us this, asking someone to do something.

I don’t know that women are as good at asking stuff of each other. We do a lot of waiting for people to do for us maybe, and then being insulted that they didn’t. I love that David was like, come on, . And then you would do it and then you would reconnect.

But you had a quote about the not calling, which I really wanted to share cuz this is one of those things I meant when I said there’s some subtle messages in the book you wrote, I briefly wondered if he was mad about my not sending a check and we’ll come back to that cuz that’s about the school he built or about my not being in touch with him or both, even though I hadn’t called or written him, I couldn’t help feeling a bit hurt.

Wasn’t it the responsibility of the person coming to town to call the person who lived there? Wasn’t that just one of the unwritten rules of friendship? I do think we operate a lot on these unwritten rules. We don’t always name them. You actually named it here, which I appreciated. What helped you move beyond some of that.

[00:26:15] Will: Well, one of them and, and I want to, if you don’t mind, my reading moves just one sentence, and it’s actually not one I wrote. It’s from the epigraph. You know, the quotes one puts at the beginning of a book, , and it’s from David White, the British poet, and he said, all friendships of any length are based on a continued mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy, all friendships die.

[00:26:36] Nina: Yes, and I love David White’s work on friendship too.

[00:26:39] Will: so, so great. And so to me, , while there are all of these unwritten rules that we all carry in our head and that we assume other people have the same list in their head, but of course they don’t, they have different ones. , one of my rules must be like, oh, well if you come to New York even for a couple of hours, even if you can’t see me, you’re supposed to give me a call and let me know you’re in town.

Well, that’s just in my head. That doesn’t mean it’s someone else’s rule, but. I will say that when there’s a transgression for me, it causes me to doubt myself. I go to a place like I must have done something to hurt them, which is actually very useful because it doesn’t contain any anger towards them.

Maybe this is how guys are brought up. , I don’t believe in engendered things in a silo, but I do believe that men and women, by and large, are raised very differently. So given the way we’re raised and acculturated,

[00:27:32] Nina: Oh yeah, I mean that too.

[00:27:34] Will: So I, I know that’s what you were talking about, is that, , when someone breaks, one of my weird.

secret, unspoken rules of friendship. I immediately go to a place like, ow, what did I do wrong? , I must have done something.

[00:27:47] Nina: Well that takes humility. It.

[00:27:49] Will: if someone brings us back together, I’m delighted. And, I will say that, I love hearing from old friends, whether it’s a year or 30 years or 40 years or longer. , and for me, If I’ve shared something intense with them and Maxi and I had that incredible intense year, that was the basis of our friendship.

that’s pretty firm bedrock.

singer, one of the great things that he brings to our mutual friendships is a sense of humor. So the fact is Maxie did not invite me to either of his weddings. actually Maxy had three wedding. , you have to read the book to find

out

.

[00:28:23] Will: But he didn’t invite Singer two. So when we get together, we give Maxi a hard time about it. No one’s upset, no one’s heard. We just like rhythm about it.

[00:28:31] Nina: that that makes a

[00:28:33] Will: it makes a big difference. it’s not just what David White says about tolerance and forgiveness.

It’s also bringing a sense of humor and perspective, which I often lose. But I have friends in my life like Singer who helps remind me not to take things quite so serious.

[00:28:49] Nina: A huge goal of my podcast and all of the things I’ve ever written about Friendship is, , benefit of. A lot of my things come down to that. Because almost every letter I get, I can see much more clearly , oh, this person’s just making an assumption. And they’re ready to end a friendship over it.

if we could assume the best, I think that’s probably what Maxi did with you in terms of not donating to the school. Can we talk about that a little bit? my husband was one of three people who started a charter school here in Minneapolis. So I also read that charter school, concept, , with an interesting angle on my end.

[00:29:20] Will: so what happened is, uh, maxi, after serving for six years in the Navy, seals became a high school teacher with one other job in between, and. Had this crazy ambitious plan with his wife to build a high school term abroad school on the island of Eluthra in The Bahamas. Experiential learning also to help educate the local kids and to actually reproduce for American high school students.

Some of the experience that we had. In our secret society, bring different kinds of kids together, have them live for a hundred days together on this island, and really be scientists and take away their phones for a hundred days and make them just experience the earth in each other, and it’s now been going 20 years.

and it’s a transformative place, the island school. But when he was starting it, it just seemed ridiculously ambitious. I honestly didn’t think he and his wife could pull it off because I didn’t think any of us could do anything that ambitious. It just sounded crazy. I hadn’t heard from him in while.

And I got a fundraising letter and it wasn’t a personal letter, it was just a form letter, and they were trying to raise some huge sum, and. Could contribute a hundred or something. And so it just didn’t seem like a personal letter and my sum seemed so insignificant I just kept forgetting to do it.

. it coincided with a time when Maxi and I fell out of. . in my head, I built up this story, and the story in my head was that Maxey was angry at me for not having sent a check to support his school.

And I almost let that story end our friendship, , because I, kept forgetting to send the check. And, uh, I was embarrassed about that. it turned out. . As I would later find out, Maxie had no awareness whether I’d sent a hundred dollars, he would’ve been delighted, had I, he didn’t really care that I didn’t.

I eventually did. He was happy about that, it was all in my head. And so I use that an example of, , when we’re being defensive and too much in our own mind, on our own little unwritten rules of friendship we can actually withdraw from a friendship and assume there’s a problem when there’s really no problem at all.

[00:31:31] Nina: Yes. I want everyone to really read this book and digest that part because it is a beautiful example and we all do it even just on money. Who among us has not, , Deleted the email for the the race that somebody’s doing.

I mean, , you feel shame in your irritation, , or your forgetfulness . And, , we carry this shame about not doing like the quote unquote right thing and.

[00:31:54] Will: and what’s funny on those raise things? What I’m trying to do now, it’s, if I can, I do. And if I can’t, I don’t. And I know if I’m raising money for things, I totally understand. Some people can contribute, some can’t, some wish me well. It, it’s all good. The only bad thing is if you’re not contributing, causes you to avoid the person who’s simply trying to raise money for a good cause.

[00:32:15] Nina: Right.

It’s like we punish the other person for asking

[00:32:18] Will: Punish it. That’s exactly it.

[00:32:20] Nina: , to wrap us up a little bit, I took notes as I was reading the book. I didn’t do it at first. It was the second half of the book when we came upon these little things, like the 10 years of not talking and then, , Not making that a big deal, not ascribing any meaning to it and all that.

I started to make little notes about all the lessons I wish everyone could learn. We’ve talked about some of them. One was donate to the cause, even if it’s a little bit. Cause I actually think it is better. Just even if you’re sending 20 bucks, just you’ll feel better. The other person will feel acknowledged and you could just like let it go.

, the other one was, To look past what you think you know about people, which we spoke a lot at the beginning. I wrote, let Friends Help You, which I feel David Singer did, but also Maxi wanted from you. And we’re gonna mush two together.

Cause another one I wrote was asking. Friends questions and I think those are connected because friends can only help you if you get into like real conversations with people where you let them ask you questions, you ask them questions, you really say what’s going on in your life

[00:33:18] Will: So I, I love that you ended with those, because they’re the most important things to me and I want to, if it’s okay, flip them and take them and kind of reverse order as I smush them together. one of the other. Themes in the book is, , there were things about Max’s life that, that I was curious about and, and I didn’t understand.

And, , I was genuinely curious, but I felt like since he had never volunteered to tell me about them, that he didn’t want to talk about them , so I never asked him, I just never asked him questions about certain things in his life and only we’re 60 year old guys now. We’ve let a lot of stuff go.

We love our friendship. We’re have this relaxed awareness around each other, and I finally felt comfortable to ask him these things and he was genuinely shocked to know that I thought they were things he didn’t want to talk. And he was pleased to tell me about them, and it made me understand him more deeply.

And as it happened, there were things about my life he’d never asked about, and I was really touched that he cared and I answered them. I wouldn’t have had any problem saying that some private maxi, I just, I’m not ready to talk about that. He wouldn’t have had any problem saying that to me. But again, we’d.

The voices in our head, oh, he must not want to talk about it cuz he is never mentioned it be a barrier to a more true, more authentic, more real friendship. Now the final thing, which is the most important takeaway for me is when people read this book, they’ll find out that, , maxi had a very serious illness, and, , I don’t think it’s not much of a spoiler.

He had a brain tumor and he made himself really vulner. and he allowed me to help him. He allowed me to visit him in the hospital, see him when he was just hours out of recovery. , he allowed me to be there for him and he allowed me to be there when he shared his fears about long-term effects , I was so happy and grateful to be able to be there for my friend. But at the time, , I was going through a chronic illness, which I still have, which is a difficult thing to live with. It’s something called small fiber neuropathy. , some of your listeners may have it. , I thought, oh, even though it’s a very difficult life altering, debilitating thing, it’s not a brain tumor.

So I’m just gonna keep that to myself. And I interpreted being a good friend as I’ll be there for Maxi, but I’ll handle my own stuff private. I won’t dump that on him. the great realization that I had took me a lifetime, 60 years to come to is that the greatest gift we can give our friends is allowing them to help us.

It’s not helping them. It’s great to help them, but it’s greater to allow them to help us. our friendship is a million times the stronger

[00:36:02] Nina: that does not surprise me because, there’s a study, I’ll have to link it in the show notes cause I don’t remember the name offhand. But there is some study that when you ask for a favor, It does bring you closer. When you ask for the favor, , and the person does the favor, they feel closer to you. That’s the study. It creates intimacy.

[00:36:20] Will: , I mean obviously there has to be balance. , if you are always asking people and never showing up for them, that may be indicative of a, problem or a character flaw. But coming back to that thing I started with of values, if people share your values , and they’re your friend, it will probably be more reciprocal.

if you allow them to help you when you need it, as opposed to thinking that you’re somehow doing them a favor by not,

[00:36:43] Nina: That’s a great, great message to end on unless there’s anything else you wanna add before we say goodbye.

[00:36:48] Will: there really is only one thing I would love to add, I hope also that my book will cause people to reflect on their long-term and unlikely friendships, and I hope just the very idea that will inspire someone to just pick up the phone and call an old friend and say, Hey.

[00:37:04] Nina: I am glad you brought that up as the final message. I also love hearing from old friends. And it doesn’t mean that if you reach out, now you have to have lunch every week. I think that’s the.

Fear some people have is I don’t have room in my life. It’s like a system reset on the computer now instead of it being 20 years since we’ve been in touch. It’s been two days and it feels good.

[00:37:21] Will: Thank you so much for having me on. I love talking about friendship with you, and I love the podcast and, following you and, the work you’re doing.

[00:37:28] Nina: . Thank you so much, will. It was really an honor to talk to you and, and it was such a great conversation. . Have a , great rest of your book tour.

[00:37:34] Will: Thank you, Nina.

[00:37:36] Nina: Listeners come back next week when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around.

Bye.