The most important relationship missing from your life

I have a question for you: 

How would you rate the quality of male friendship in your life? I’m talking about really good friends. The kinds of guys that you can really open up with and be honest with about EVERYTHING. 

The quality of our most important peer to peer relationships is so essential that I dedicated an entire chapter on it in Black Belt Husband AND Go Next-Level. It’s that important to reaching your goals and maximizing the success in your life. We need an inner circle of trusted guys in our lives. 

Deciding you want meaningful male friendship that is rooted in authenticity and honesty will be the biggest gift you ever give yourself. Because without it, you are painfully stuck and imprisoned in your isolation. Most times surrounded by people everywhere, but totally alone at the same time.

When we were kids, friendship was easy. Now it’s really hard for most guys, but the need hasn’t gone away.

When we look at our experiences as kids, we can easily see that the most treasured times during our youth were when we banded together with our childhood pals. Being with our friends when we were young made us feel ALIVE. 

But as we get older, we’re told that we need to be responsible, pay the bills, and buckle down into the seriousness of life. With this survival, scarcity, and utilitarian mindset, it’s no surprise that most guys are isolated, anxious, and depressed as a collective group. 

Recently I was talking to a client about the friends in his life and he looked at me with the most sincere and genuine pause and asked, “Quentin, do guys my age have friends?” He genuinely didn’t know if it was okay for him to have friends. Real friends. 

The question was heart-breaking, but the truth is that it’s a question many guys ask. 

It’s a question that I asked too for a lot of years. 

For most of my adult life, my definition of male friendship centered around some shared hobby, interest, or sporting thing. The idea of having a true male friend, someone with whom I could be vulnerable with in a sincere and honest way, wasn’t something that I experienced until I was in my thirties. 

My client’s question broke my heart because I could feel his pain living such an isolated life – I had lived it once too. 

To be so isolated and cut off from real male friendship is a very painful place. Yet most guys experience life this way. The question he asked said a lot about why his life wasn’t working.

So I sent him on a mission to develop his inner circle. 

Having genuine male friendship is essential to our personal well-being. We need a band of brothers for support, camaraderie, and accountability when we’re veering astray to keep us on the right path. 

How can any of us be successful in life without these types of relationships? It’s rarely possible. 

And worse, when guys don’t have a deeply connected band of brothers, they often unconsciously look to their wives to be the sole providers of their self-worth. They treat their wives like their mommy’s. Always looking for their approval and affirmation and validation.

When men rely on their wives this way, they give them too much power and influence over their well-being and they inevitably end up resenting her because she can’t meet this too big of a need. 

Wherever you’re at in your life, take stock of your inner circle. Do you have a tribe of guys that can call you out on your bullshit, but also appropriately support and encourage you too?

Do you have a tribe of men in your life that you’ve been really honest with about your deepest fears and insecurities? You might trick all your buddies at the golf course that life is going swimmingly, but you can’t trick an inner circle. And worse, you can’t trick the man in the mirror.

We need this in our lives, desperately, if you want to go to higher and better places.

I was told a long time ago that I’m not supposed to mix personal with the professional and that I can’t be friends with my clients. But I said f**k that and I consider all my clients my friends. Let’s hang out together inside my community. 

If you’re a high-performing mission-driven man that wants to connect with other like-minded mission-driven men, I want to invite you to join my private community, where we are all doing this journey together. 

Cheers to high-performing men getting out of isolation!