This episode is a discussion between hosts Jason and Lauren Vallotton about the importance of deep and fulfilling adult friendships. Inspired by recent events and discussions with others in their community, Jason and Lauren wanted to talk specifically about their own personal journeys in adult friendships as well as the practical things that people can do in order to foster deep and meaningful friendships.
Inheriting a legacy of robust friendships, as exemplified by Lauren's mother, sets the stage for weaving those threads into the fabric of the Vallottons' own lives and marriage. Jason and Lauren talk about weathering the dissolution of old ties and the nurturing of new ones, all while seeking that sweet spot where companionship and friendship intersects with personal growth. Walls are torn down to reveal the stark reality of loneliness, with insights from Barna Research on discipleship and companionship being dissected, alongside sharing intimate anecdotes. Lauren and Jason candidly exchange notes on the power of shared experiences and regular check-ins, showcasing how these small, intentional acts can fortify the bridges between them.
This episode serves as a reflection, a conversation, and an invitation to embrace the profound changes in how success, happiness, and fulfillment are viewed, both in careers and personal lives. It's about setting foundations for friendships that are as solid and enduring as the values held dear, and it's about opening up to the enriching experiences that come from investing in the people around us.
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
This episode is a discussion between hosts Jason and Lauren Vallotton about the importance of deep and fulfilling adult friendships. Inspired by recent events and discussions with others in their community, Jason and Lauren wanted to talk specifically about their own personal journeys in adult friendships as well as the practical things that people can do in order to foster deep and meaningful friendships.
Inheriting a legacy of robust friendships, as exemplified by Lauren's mother, sets the stage for weaving those threads into the fabric of the Vallottons' own lives and marriage. Jason and Lauren talk about weathering the dissolution of old ties and the nurturing of new ones, all while seeking that sweet spot where companionship and friendship intersects with personal growth. Walls are torn down to reveal the stark reality of loneliness, with insights from Barna Research on discipleship and companionship being dissected, alongside sharing intimate anecdotes. Lauren and Jason candidly exchange notes on the power of shared experiences and regular check-ins, showcasing how these small, intentional acts can fortify the bridges between them.
This episode serves as a reflection, a conversation, and an invitation to embrace the profound changes in how success, happiness, and fulfillment are viewed, both in careers and personal lives. It's about setting foundations for friendships that are as solid and enduring as the values held dear, and it's about opening up to the enriching experiences that come from investing in the people around us.
Connect with Lauren:
Instagram
Facebook
Connect with Jason:
Jay’s Instagram
Jay’s Facebook
BraveCo Instagram
www.braveco.org
Welcome back everyone to Dates, Mates and Babies with the Ballotons. We're back with y'all, Excited to be here today. We have a fun conversation and a beautiful, beautiful day.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's true. Yeah, good to be with you guys. We have recently wrapped up our series on sex, which was a big hit.
Speaker 2:It was last week's episode was a Q and a of questions that had been sent in during our series, and man, that was really fun. We'll probably do a couple more series coming up Um. Today, however, we're going to just have a conversation about friendship, which stick with me. Um, you know we love talking about emotional health and relational health things on this podcast and um, I've been stirred recently just on the topic of friendship. I think a few things have come up for me that have got has got this topic kind of at the forefront of my mind. Um actually recorded a podcast with a with my small group last week.
Speaker 2:Um Havilah Cunnington has a podcast called the Havilah show and our small group.
Speaker 2:She interviewed our small group just about the art she's in a series called the art of adult friendship, small group, just about the art she's in a series called the art of adult friendship, and so that is just kind of been rattling in my mind Like, yeah, actually this topic of how to do adult friendships really well, it matters to people and it doesn't come naturally to everyone and it is really important. Then then, just um, last week or two weeks ago we hosted our women's conference here in Reading at Bethel Church and the topic of friendship came up for me in a moment and I was sharing with some of the women at the event about how my mom was amazing at friendship and I feel like I've kind of received an inheritance of friendship to some degree and I think, as an adult, looking at how my mom did friendship all the way through her life I mean at her funeral she had three of her closest friends on planet earth were at her funeral in October and they'd been friends since birth or grade school.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And my parents have kept up their friendships with their college friends, their high school friends, and still are close, like our families are close. I was raised with my parents, friends, kids and we all. They're like cousins. I have like extra cousins because of how my parents did friendship. So at the women's conference I found myself talking a little bit about this inheritance of friendship that I feel like I've been given as an adult, realizing that, you know, sometimes having lifelong friends is it's more and more rare, I think, and I've I run into people a lot who actually desire more deeply fulfilling friendship in life and don't actually know where to begin.
Speaker 2:And then just last night I had a conversation with a friend. We were at a barbecue with a bunch of families and I was talking to a friend who just kind of said that her parents, so we're, we're all we're raising kids together. And she was saying you know, I want to do things. There's so many things my parents did Well, I want to do things so differently.
Speaker 2:Her parents had like seven or eight kids but they had no friends. They did family really well Like they did. They were each other's unit, community. You know, it was like mom, dad and all the kids, but they didn't actually do friendship. And my friend who I was talking to last night was just saying to me I want to do it so different, like raising my kids in community feels so important to me, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, all this to say, the topic of friendship is just come up for me a number of times over the last week, so I thought it would be fun for Jason and I to have a conversation about friendship, um, and maybe even share a little bit about what our story of friendship has been since being married and, um, the importance of having friends, both guys and girls. It's really important to have good, deep, meaningful friendships. And then how to actually be a good friend and find good friends, cause that doesn't come naturally all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true. Um, when we first got married, um, when we first got married, I had I mean, I really had had friends all the way up through high school, actually grade school. Even one of my friends that um was was in our wedding that I was really close to was a school. Uh was a friend from grade school.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there is an interesting dynamic.
Speaker 1:Sometimes that happens when you get married and we can talk about that, but just my own personal story is I had I had a lot of um close friends when we first met and I I grew up in a home where my parents also did lots of um family and life together with other people, so my parents did home groups for 20 years. You know we hosted like football games and I don't know NFL games all the time at our house and my mom would cook and all the guys would get together and hang out.
Speaker 2:Like.
Speaker 1:I grew up going over people's houses. We were such a tight knit community, yeah, and it was so much fun just living life like that. But I think when we got married probably probably three years after we got married, two or three years after that friend group of mine kind of died out. And I remember when we first got married I had a lot, a tight group of friends and you did it.
Speaker 1:And that was really painful because you'd always grown up with, with a friend group, and then mine kind of died out because of I mean, without getting into all the nitty gritty details uh, I had a couple of friends really kind of go off the deep end actually and some hard conversations that we never really recovered from, and so that left a pretty big hole for a while and I think in my yeah, just in my life.
Speaker 1:meanwhile you were building a really cool, close-knit group of girls yeah and it's funny because I've been on a journey, like probably probably the last five years, of replacing some friends and building a new, stronger, uh friend group than what I had before and, um, that was a painful it's always such a painful process when you have friends in your life for a long time that, um, actually two of them went through a divorce and that's kind of what happened. Two of my friends uh went through a divorce and ended up kind of burning a bunch of relationships and friendships and it was a really tough time in my life of rebuilding and having to figure out, like, how do I find friends like that again that I want to do life with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I have so many thoughts Like I can remember back to when we were even engaged and I would say that my framework for deep friendship. There's a difference between having friends and I. We really had a lot of the same. We were going the same direction in life. We were doing, we were on the same track, we were living in different cities but, like we had ambitions that lined up in a way that we could really support each other in the things that were most meaningful. So our relationship with God, our view on family, what you know, our dreams, kind of what we felt like we were on earth to do was really similar. And and those were friendships that I had before I moved to Reading and then, you know I can't.
Speaker 2:I moved out to Reading in 2008 to go to BSSM, but I didn't think I was going to be staying in Reading. So I didn't really build friendships with a long-term mentality. I was building, I was. I had seasonal friends where I was like, oh, I've got my school ministry friends, but I wasn't deeply, deeply investing in building community with people I was going to run with. That wasn't my goal until after I realized, oh, I'm going to marry Jason and I'm going to be in this town now forever and I better figure this out. So it's wild to me that I could have lived in a city for four, almost five years before finding friends that felt like I wanted to really go deep with them.
Speaker 2:And I think I want to say that because, especially when people make big life transitions whether it's marriage or having kids or moving cities or changing, you know, just making big changes there's an ebb and a flow to our relationships and some friends really are just for a season and then some friends are for life. If you can figure out how to do that and I think it always takes longer in big change and in big transition, it always takes a little longer than you think it should in order to build friendships where you feel really seen and known and understood. And I remember when we first got married, the friendships that you're referring to. Um, well, I'm going to say this and then you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that as we grow up, there comes a point in life where you realize, like I have to assess my capacity for relational connection.
Speaker 2:I'm raising a family, I have a marriage that takes up a lot of your relational capacity and our closest friends, especially when we move into that season of, like, those adult friends, those that adult season of life where you're growing a family and you've got a career or whatever, you have a certain amount of margin and I think it becomes so important that the people that we are giving a lot of time and energy to not in a ministry sense, not in a serving sense, but in a, like, mutual, mutually beneficial relationship sense it becomes really important that those people were actually going the same way in certain areas.
Speaker 2:We need to have similar family values. We need to have, you know, I need support. I actually need girls in my life who are going to champion me in the things that I feel like God is calling me to. And I I felt like in your in our early marriage you went through a big transition of realizing like actually needs some really close men in my life that are we don't just have history together, we are going somewhere together, and I think those are sometimes two different kinds of friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's true when, when I was young, um, my my friend that I had all through um grade school, him and I had incredible seasons of doing life together and going the same direction, life together and going the same direction, and, um, as we got older I would his life fell apart, you know, and and we had went through my divorce together and he was a big help in that, um, but he hit a really tough season and never pulled out of it and that was kind of the difference, you know it just it just kept getting worse and worse and worse his life and he didn't really want any feedback and it was just it was got really hard. And so, um, I will say, like another big transition in my life was my divorce, because I had gone through that. You know, when you're married, you share friends, right, you, you have a friend group that is both both of yours. When you get a divorce, it puts everyone in a really tough position because you know what do you do?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Who do you hang out with? And? And so I had. I had gone through that period of divorce. So I lost a decent amount of friend group in that, not because they didn't love me, just because and when you're married, like you have, we have friends. Even now that if I was single or you were single, it changes the dynamic. You wouldn't hang out with them in the same way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I had rebuilt and then kind of rebuilt again. So, yeah, I just I do agree with you 100%, like when you get to a point in life where you only have so much margin, like you're talking about time, effort and energy, and that's where I'm at now a lot time, effort and energy, and that's where I'm at now. A lot. It's where we're both at now is who are the people in our life? That are going to champion and stand behind us and have your back and help you run together.
Speaker 1:And and then how do you make those consistent people in your life? And that's what we've both started to create, to create over the last probably eight years of our life. Is like people that are really moving in that direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's been a game changer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it has been a game changer and I would say, you know, whether somebody is single or in a dating relationship or married is single or in a dating relationship or married, having friendship is such an important thing, like I think about. Um, I mean, you're my best friend and the truth is, is that even marriage like the, the, your marriage is only as good as your friendship is?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you want to be married to your best friend. In order to enjoy friendship in marriage, you have to be a good friend and you have to have found a good friend in your spouse, and so this is a there's this. I think there's a skill set, there's a strength, you know. There's a strength in knowing yourself. There's a lot of practicals, I think, of how you actually go about being a good friend and finding a good friend, whether you're single or, you know, looking to be married. But I think it would be good for us to talk for a second about, just like, the importance of friendship, because I think girls are naturally wired to build kind of a little cluster of hens. Do you know what I mean? Like girls just kind of do that, and I think we just got chickens.
Speaker 1:That's why you said hens.
Speaker 2:It is. Yeah, we did just get chickens. But I do think about that. I'm like, oh, girls just have this. It's common for girls. Well, I guess it could go either way. Truthfully, it goes either way Either. I feel like either girls could go either way. Truthfully, it goes either way Either. I feel like either girls are obsessed with having great friends and girl times a big deal, or girls Sometimes girls actually have a really hard time with other girl relationships. That's also very common. But I think that to talk about the importance of friendship, both for women and for men, we could do that for a second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when you start looking, just even statistically, at the benefits of having friends, you have a 50% less chance at dying early and like health issues, mental health issues, like there's so many. Actually, I was looking at Barna Research the other day which Barna Research is like the foremost research for churches and I was going through all their studies and they say men that are in discipleship actually people that are in discipleship is really what they're looking at have a 78% overall increase of satisfaction.
Speaker 1:In life In life. Wow, and they looked at, uh, seven different categories of their life right, marriage and raising kids, and finances and it just really speaks to the importance of what people do for us. We also know the study that talks about um psychological isolation being alone inside of yourself is more damaging than smoking 11 cigarettes a day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so when you start to look at the studies, like just for your own mental, emotional, physical, spiritual well-being, having a friend group is what we were designed for and it helps you to optimize everything in your life. Like if you're feeling stressed out, you talk to a friend, you come down. If you're feeling overwhelmed, you talk to a friend, they help you solve a problem. If you are looking for you know, optimizing your parenting skills, like you talk to a friend who's done it for a long time, all of a sudden you learn some things and you have skill sets and tools and you get hope where you are hopeless. Like that's what friends do for us.
Speaker 1:And when I look at the state of men right now, if I'm just looking at men, men are the loneliest they have ever been. Men are so isolated and lonely. It's crazy. It really is so overwhelmingly crazy. I have a friend group right now and we meet on a regular basis and it's amazing how many guys are talking to each one of us who are in the friend group saying how do I do that?
Speaker 2:How do?
Speaker 1:I start that how do I have that? Because that's kind of like people used to flex by posting their cars or you know, like Lamborghinis or houses, or I really think the new flex is your friend group.
Speaker 2:Wow Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I honestly do For men. For people Because it's the it's like the highest sought after commodity, and Wow. The hardest to get. Interesting yeah after commodity and wow, the hardest to get interesting. Yeah, because when you really think about it, like you can have awesome house and really good cars and lots of money, like I, I genuinely, honestly know people like that, a lot of people like that, and I'm not just, I'm not just taught like, I'm not, just doesn't just sound good like I know a lot of men in this boat, a lot, and the more I do Braveco, the more men I meet in this boat and they are desperately lonely.
Speaker 1:Interesting and therefore, their life is very unfulfilling. And as soon as you start to plug those guys into groups like I, have several of my friends that before they got into this friend group they were. One of them was a hundred pounds overweight.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't like we're, it wasn't like we're all. Hey, dude, you're a hundred pounds overweight the fruit of being in a friend group.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:Was that he started to go man, I don't want to live like this. I want my life to be better and I don't want to feel like this. And we did a bunch of like in our friend group. We did the foundations of masculinity Brave goes first 12 weeks and then we did the sexual honor relationship. So the second 12 weeks of our, of our course, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's crazy what happened, like from guys marriage is getting better to losing weight to, but the overall satisfaction in the day of just knowing like I have somebody that's thinking about me, like I did a 20-minute workout today because you called me out. You're like, hey, are you going to go work out?
Speaker 1:And actually I'm gone the second half of this week and so I stayed to help with the kids this morning. But I had some time and you're like, hey, you're going to go work out and I was like, well, yeah, I guess I'll go, but just a 20 minute workout. I get to hang out with a friend of mine and then reset and talk about what our day is going to be, what where we're headed, and like it's just this. I have so much momentum in my life right now because of my friends. Yeah, not just because of Brave.
Speaker 1:Girl, but because of my friends. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2:I think you're, I think you're absolutely right and I would say more and more, like you've said, more and more people are hungry for what makes life feel really meaningful, truly meaningful, and I do think that we're edging into a new season where people are going to care a little bit less about what they have or what they do and more about how fulfilling their relationships are.
Speaker 2:And I don't really know what is pushing culture in that direction or what's pushing our community culture in that direction, if it's just local here or if that's actually happening across the board.
Speaker 2:But my guess is that, as there's been a little bit of an awakening over the last, probably like seven to 10 years, but even the last five in particular, I would say, like since COVID it feels like there's been a bit of an awakening of the importance of emotional relational health and taking things to a new standard or a new level where people are just less satisfied with the internal struggles maybe of the past, things that were normalized in past decades or seasons, or even in our parents' generation. We're finding that people are just not satisfied with low level, low level connection, low level intimacy in marriage, low level vulnerability in friendship. People actually want real people want authentic, people want fulfilling, people want meaningful and purposeful, and I think that the way that we're designed to live inside of community and the way that we're designed to live in a network of relationships by God's design, I just think that friendship has become a more important and a more sought after commodity.
Speaker 1:For sure, yeah, it's interesting, Uh, to me, societies is going through all these different metamorphosis with the um, like as the industrial age has led into. What age are we in right now?
Speaker 2:We're in the information and technology age right. I don't know what they're calling it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, when my dad I was thinking about this the other day and I was talking to some friends about it when my dad was my age he came to work at Bethel church and it was so cool because, um, like he was learning how to preach and then pretty soon he was getting invited to go travel and speak. And that was like a big deal right, because if you got invited to go to someone's church and travel and speak, it was like, oh my gosh. And I remember we were all kind of like I don't know, like I mean, this is 25 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We were all like, what's that like? And that was the goal as I was growing up.
Speaker 2:That was kind of the goal for me and that was like the to get good enough at preaching that people would want to fly you somewhere.
Speaker 1:And even for work, like just just I just remember like it kind of society was kind of changing, like if you had a job where you got paid to travel and you got paid to go somewhere and you got to go on an airplane and they paid for your food and you got treated really well. It was like you were like the VIP. Right, it's a VIP experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what happened is fast forward 20 years and we start watching 10 years into my dad traveling and and not just my dad, my, that peer group, my dad's peer group. I'm watching them and it's like at first it's like amazing and incredible and lots of fun. And then you're like, wow, they're really tired and oh you this is wearing their bodies out. You can't eat super good and people own your time, so you go there and like you don't and you're away from your family away from your family and then 20 years in right, 20 years later, I'm looking at it and going the okay back to.
Speaker 1:I'm using this word again. The real flex is can you do what you love to do and not have to leave?
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:Can you do life from your own home and with your own friend group and your own?
Speaker 2:and.
Speaker 1:I'm watching, so I think part of the answer to why people are starting to go oh crap, I'm missing a whole bunch of things is as the information age has has taken us somewhere totally new.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people are. We're chasing happy. Like happy is a job where you get to travel and do all these things and get treated like a VIP and have per diem and speak at other people's churches or whatever. It'd be a businessman on the road. And then you start to realize like well, that actually doesn't produce a bunch of happiness because my family and my friend group, I don't get to spend time at home, I'm not eating what I want to eat, and then you know I don't want to get off too much in the weeds but fast forward, 20 years in, the kids of those people are starting to go like I don't want to reproduce my parents' marriage Totally. I don't want to reproduce their work life. I don't actually want to reproduce what I've seen in the last 30 years.
Speaker 1:Like I was doing a call the other day and um, I was asking there was, uh, I think, 20 women on a um intensive. It was a Friday morning and I said how many of you want to repeat what you saw in your parents' marriage? I didn't. Not one person raised their hand. Not one person in the whole group wanted a, wanted a marriage like their parents' marriage. And I think that's a lot of. What's happening is people are waking up, going I don't want that same life, I don't want that marriage, like your friend that you were talking to last night going.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things that were good, but actually I'm looking at my parents now and it's not super fulfilling. They don't have friends. They don't have friends and they're 70 years old, like if you don't have people that you're doing life with and all you're investing in is your kids, in work time. It's not that you shouldn't invest in kids you should. It's not that you shouldn't invest in work you should but you still need other people, and so I think getting into some real practicals- because I do see a lot of people now starting to go okay, like, how do we do this?
Speaker 1:How do I get into a friend group, how do I start what you have, jay? Or how do we start what what you have, Lauren? Like that's a big question that people have on their mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will say that I think there is a lot of stress sometimes around people's inability to know how to actually develop good friends, and I would say so the one thing that I will say having good friends that feel like deep heart friends takes time. There's nothing that replaces time. But you have to start somewhere or else you won't have the time under your belt. You have to start somewhere.
Speaker 1:So, um, with my closest friends that are here in town now you talk about the girls and I'll talk about what works for guys.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll talk about girls. So with my closest friends that are in my town, which is, I think it's very important to have friends that are local, that you can do daily life with, cause I I still have my best friends from in life are out of town, but they cannot give me what my girlfriends in town can give me. And so when I had to start somewhere, when I got to the spot where I was like, wow, I feel really lonely in friendship in this season. I was a new mom, you know, I was had just gotten married to Jason and I had three stepkids and I was building family and I felt lonely for friends in my season. And so what I did was, with two other friends who I knew pretty well, we decided to start a small group and we did it over a summer and we, what we did was eight weeks, we gathered, we each kind of invited one or two people, so there was eight girls that we started with. We said we're going to do eight girls for eight weeks at eight different houses and it was amazing, we did a Wednesday night and every Wednesday for eight weeks for the summer we went to a different girl's house and whoever was hosting, would put out some yummy snacks and some yummy drinks and we would just kind of share life stories and each person would go a different night. And so by the end of eight weeks we really knew eight women, whether we were going to be best friends with them or not. We knew eight people, we knew their stories, we laughed together, we asked questions together, we cried a little bit together and then it was done and the summer ended and we had done our little eight week thing and then I remember what we did was we sent out a group text and we said, hey, that was really awesome if anybody would be interested in doing this for a more long term. We're going to do every other Wednesday night for the school year and and a few of us who had the capacity and wanted to make that commitment decided, yeah, I'm going to give it a shot.
Speaker 2:So we did nine months and so my point is, I think, to start with something proactive and intentional that has a date on the calendar but that also has an off ramp, is a great place to start, because it you don't know necessarily that you're going to initially connect deeply in a way that you want to do life with somebody right off the bat initially connect deeply in a way that you want to do life with somebody right off the bat. Sometimes it takes a little test drive and it's. It's great. It's for women. I think it's great to have an off ramp or an end date, because that gives people an out. Women are really.
Speaker 2:You know, I think everybody sometimes is afraid of commitment, but women in particular. I think we get a little bit like oh, if I commit to something then I feel guilty, and so if I am threatened with the idea that I might feel trapped or feel guilty about abandoning a group of women, I just won't do it at all because I don't want to find myself in a position to have to quit. And so I think a great model to trial something is to give it a timeframe and an off ramp and then an on ramp for the next group of people, if you want to do it that way. And then I would say you know for the first like five, six, seven years that we ran our small group, cause we've been doing it now for 11 years. For the first five, six or seven there was a lot of transition every year, like women ended up moving away and so obviously, you know, and sometimes we'd be like, wow, two people moved away this year, let's add a couple more girls to the group and see how what that's like. Um, now we're at a place where the five of us that are in our small group right now we've been together for six years. There's been no, no ads, and we're almost at a spot now where it's like we're kind of good for life, in the sense of we all have other friends outside of our small group.
Speaker 2:But the small group has. We've gotten to such a deep place together and we've gone through so many hard things together and we've been through so many different seasons of life and our spouses know each other and our spouses know each other and our kids know each other. That's kind of that is it's our core group now and we don't need to make changes because we're all really powerful to have tons of friends outside of that group. But that is a space where we have on the calendar to predictably come back to every other Wednesday and we know that when we're in that place we're going to be our most open, honest, vulnerable selves and we have women that know us through and through, that are running alongside of us.
Speaker 2:For us it's been important that that core group of women are like some of our core values are, like we really you know, we're really my closest friends are going to love their marriages. My closest friends are going to love their kids. My closest friends are going to do a great job at taking ownership over themselves and their lives. My closest friends are going to be um leaders in their homes and in their communities. It's those, the likeness of that, makes us a great fit for each other. It's really wonderful for us to have a small group of women that are really on the same page in those areas. I think that's been hugely helpful.
Speaker 2:And then we also have, like I said, also have, you know, very different groups outside of our core group that we enjoy. I mean, I'm having dinner with a group of girlfriends tonight that I see about monthly and it's another group of people that have younger kids and that's I get some needs met there of having friends that have toddlers and you know. So all of that. To say, the way that I got started in my adult friendship life in Reading was not out of this organic. Oh, it's just going to happen and be this perfect fit scenario. It was a very intentional, very proactive, very calculated choice to do something and try something with a group of women and then, naturally, inside of that space and inside of that intentionality, I found the women that I was ultimately going to really build and run with I think, um, it it's an.
Speaker 1:That's an incredible model and, honestly, it works well for men to um. The friend group that I'm a part of right now, uh, is the same type of model. So it's every other week and the guys get together, often at a different place, but it started out by doing the foundations of masculinity 12 weeks together. Yeah, and honestly, it was cool because I didn't initiate it. Uh, two of the other guys got together and said, hey, let's um, let's pull a group together and go through, you know, brave coast foundation of masculinity. And I was like, sweet, I can just show up or not show, you know, I'm not having to lead it and teach it. And that worked awesome. Um, and then, from there, when, when Braveco was done, like when that 12 weeks was done, guys just didn't want to quit. They were like let's keep going, let's go through this, and I think there's there's a, there is a core group inside of the core group.
Speaker 1:You know everyone in that in that group has other friends and does other things together, but we also are able to come back every other Wednesday and do that. You know, hang out together and have that partnership, which is massive. The other thing that I think is really important, um, is the. So what's really helped me over the years is I have gotten good at doing a two-minute text to friends and I'm pretty religious about it, honestly. So I spend a good portion of my week when I have a break, which a break could be going to the bathroom, yeah, especially if you're a guy, um but I'll spend the great mysteries of the world yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll spend a bit of time every week touching base with my guy friends. How are you doing? Thinking about you, praying, praying for you? Um, hey, thinking about this hunting trip coming up, and because we all, I think it is more important for guys to have things in common that they like to do. So, I've found that men often rally around hobbies, not just around being a guy being a guy, and so I've seen the lasting power of hey, we all love to hunt and we all love to.
Speaker 1:we're all businessmen um, and we're all dads like that's a friend group that's probably going to stick around for a long time yeah and that's what I've seen work the best.
Speaker 1:Like there's a one or two guys in our group that don't hunt, Um, but I man, the majority of the guys do, and the thing that happens is the more you have in common outside of just the curriculum you're going through, outside of just the small group, the more you have in common, the tighter that link is, the more you have to talk about the more shared experiences you have. And for men, I just find that that's so important, Like those shared experiences of going on hunts together or going fishing together, and and for other, if you're listening to this and you're like I don't hunt and I don't fish, it doesn't matter. Like, what's the thing that you like to do? Do you like to golf? Do you like to play poker? Do you like like that's probably a lot of what your friend group will? That's the glue. Like that's the thing that will keep you guys going. Are you a businessman and you like to strategize about business? Like, start a group with a businessman.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And cause. That will be the thing and then go deeper, like go deeper, but you also have those, those hobbies that keep you linked and glued together. Our friend group is live and active all day long on our chat, like the group chat for guys, for my guys is like all day, all day long.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I give Jay a hard time not a hard time, but I joke with him. I'm like your girlfriends are texting you because, honestly, they talk more than I talk to.
Speaker 1:my girlfriends texting you because honestly, they talk more than I talk to my girlfriends. It's hilarious and we're all working. The thing that here's. The thing is like 60% of it is joking around and but 40% of it throughout the day like 60% jokes, 40% is hey, I'm about to go walk into a meeting. That's really stressful. Hey, I've got this big thing coming up. Hey, my wife and I got into it today. Has anybody from the group got five minutes I can call? Hey, you guys want to grab lunch? I really think the load that men are carrying, especially in my age range, is a lot. It really is a lot, and I know women are carrying a lot, but I'm talking about men. Men are carrying a lot, it's really risky and it's tough.
Speaker 1:I had a friend text me this morning and he said he's given some money to Braveco and he said, hey, this thing that I'm doing, it's either going to completely crash or go great. But I'm so committed to you and I love you and I love what you're doing and building and, like I have one text like that a week where somebody's like, hey, I'm really praying for you and but also like this thing, this business piece that I'm building is really struggling or I don't know, especially with where the economy is at right now and where marriages are at and people are raising young kids, like it's a lot of pressure a lot of pressure, and so that friend group, that chat group, is that's the gold.
Speaker 1:That's like, that's where we live and get courage every day and feel known and cared for. Not known on the deepest level, but like in the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's amazing.
Speaker 2:I know it is amazing when it feels like you have people in your corner.
Speaker 2:And here's the thing too, I think if you're married, it is um tempting to not get your needs met outside of your marriage and I think that is like one of the number one mistakes that married couples make is not investing enough in their friendships outside of their marriage with you know, for the husband with guy friends and for the girl, you know, with girlfriends.
Speaker 2:Because, my gosh, the the margin that Jason comes home with every day for me and the kids, because he's had an outlet in the day to text his guy friends and let them know what's hard or challenging, or ask them to help him problem solve a situation or go and have lunch with so and so like the margin that you have when you come home for me and the kids you're like a hundred percent present, you're not resenting being there, you're not bummed to be there, you feel like you're, you've gotten your marching orders for the day and you're home to do the thing that you're really called to do and you have the courage and the empowerment to do it because your guy friends that are in the same season as you are cheering you on and are helping you a lot Like that is invaluable, invaluable.
Speaker 1:It's true. Yeah, I don't um. I don't know how people do life without it. And it's just, it really is. It's the best thing. It's the best thing in my life besides you and the kids is the friends and what we've built. I think a couple, a couple of things that we should touch on really quick before wrapping up is if you've gone from friend group to friend group to friend group and you've had a really hard time, you might want to look at yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you have. If you have cycles of pain and disappointment in friendship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I know that that could sound really harsh, but at some point you have to ask yourself, like am I being a good friend? Am I? Am I like would I want to hang out with me? Yeah, or am I? It's not just like you're bringing baggage, because everyone brings hard things, yeah, but like am I? So part of what happens, part of what I've seen happen a lot is people have been hurt quite a bit in the past, and so you come in really guarded and, um, and without knowing it, like you push people away and you burn relationships because you're afraid it isn't going to work out well and afraid it isn't going to go well.
Speaker 1:The other thing is like in a friend group, like our friend group is if you don't eventually open up you, you do kind of get pushed to the outside because the whole group is is growing in vulnerability and yeah, the momentum is in the vulnerability and growing in honesty and growing and letting people in, and so if you don't Inviting input, yeah, inviting input.
Speaker 1:If you don't, if you don't grow as the group grows, then actually it feels like a threat to the group because it feels like, oh, you're not doing what? What all of us?
Speaker 2:are doing, you're not participating in the culture of the group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, why not? Why did that?
Speaker 2:feel scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I just think just a little tip, a little pro tip, like really the things that kill momentum in in building friendships are when you don't take ownership for what you're bringing in. And I've had a couple friend friend groups like that in the past where, um, you know they're not taking ownership, they're like victim stuff and and blaming and gossiping too is another big thing. Yeah, that's like that'll kill a friend group faster than anything. So that kind of stuff, just take a look at your life and go am I being a good friend? You know?
Speaker 1:yeah taking ownership of my life. Am I working on the things? I think that's the biggest one. Am I willing to work on the areas of my life that are weak and that are coming up as a problem and take feedback, because? If you can't take feedback. You'll eventually work your way out of the group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, absolutely. I love it. Hey, well, if you're listening and you have questions on this subject, I was just thinking it might be fun to do some questions on this subject because it really does relate to everybody. I mean everybody. Every living person needs and desires deep friendship. So if this conversation stirred any questions up, feel free to DM us on Instagram or you can email us at datesmatesbabies at gmailcom. Yeah, let us know if you have questions.
Speaker 1:We could talk a little bit more about this at some point if you want us to can I say one thing real quick yeah, um, we have our brave co-conference coming up, june 12th through the 14th.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for every man that's listening to this. Honestly, our brave co-conference is not like any other conference you've ever been to, and in fact, like any, other conference you've ever been to. That's true. In fact, every man that comes is in a group of 50.
Speaker 1:You have a team captain and you have a leader and you have co-leaders under you, and then you also have team colors and like a team flag, like we promote so much community. You're sitting with your group of 50 through the whole conference, almost all the ministries, with your group of 50. So you build tons of camaraderie and community. And then we're doing a rite of passage for young men 12 to 18 years old. That, honestly, is going to be so phenomenal.
Speaker 1:It's one thing, men, for you to pour into your son. It's a whole nother thing for the men in the church to pour into your son and welcome him into manhood. And we're also building a battle plan for every man that comes to the conference. So when you leave the conference it's not like you'll go back home and then what do I do? Like you'll literally be working on a plan for your marriage, for your finances, for your kids and being able to execute that. And then we offer discipleship after the conference as well. So June 12th through the 14th, ladies, sign your husbands up. It will be the best investment that you make in his life this year, I promise you a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, y'all have an incredible week. We will see you next week on the podcast.