What happens when two charismatic creatives—and close friends—sit down with Peter McGraw to talk about friendship, love, and the Solo movement? This intimate, funny, and thoughtful conversation with Chester See and Darwyn Metzger explores what it means to live remarkably, forge deep male friendships, and question the default path. A fan favorite, this episode returns for a new wave of listeners.
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Listen to Episode #259 here
I Love You, Man (Again)
Welcome back. I started exploring some men’s issues on the show and in my personal life and even hosting men’s wellness on weekends. I’ve received so much good feedback about this episode, which features two men being supportive and vulnerable about the SOLO project, wellbeing, friendship and love among friends that I’m releasing it to all the new readers who’ve joined the SOLO movement. One more thing, I’m exploring some offerings for a personal finance workshop. Maybe some group coaching or some one-on-one coaching and perhaps even a relationship design workshop.
These will be paid offerings and I’d like to know what you think as I consider them. If you want to find out more or let me know what you’d be interested in. You can send me a note via my contact page at PeterMcGraw.org or you can sign up for the SOLO newsletter to find out more information or join the SOLO Community at PeterMcGraw.org/Solo where I’ll be posting more information. I hope you enjoy this episode. It’s a good one. Let’s get started.
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Welcome, Chester.
Thanks for having me.
Welcome, Darwyn. This is one of my more loosely planned Solo episodes. I did that not because I’ve become lazy but rather, I know not to over plan with the two of you. This feels like there’s a lot of subtexts directed towards Chester. It was a little more Chester-focused. I envisioned this like we’re going to sample from different areas. In many ways, I’m using you two.
I’ve been working through various ideas and I want to get your feedback on it. I don’t have to say this to Darwyn. Don’t hold back. Darwyn has been with me from the early stages of the SOLO project. I’m sure I’ve talked to him about it before I even wrote the one-pager and he has been paying attention. I’ve subjected him to many conversations and looked for his advice.
He wanted to call this Stag.
Originally, it was men only.
Thankfully, I pivoted. The feedback on that has been overwhelmingly positive. Although, we are going to talk about some men’s issues. I have gotten feedback from my followers that they have particularly enjoyed when I’ve gotten a group of guys together to talk and that has happened rarely. You are much more charming than the previous group. No pressure. I want to run through some ideas for you both but beforehand, what are your thoughts? What are the improvements? What are the tweaks? Anything else you want to give me feedback on?
If we talk long enough, will this be a two-part episode? Think about it, Pete.
I feel you’re more equipped to answer that question.
There’s a benefit in having both someone who’s had a lot of exposure and then someone who’s had brief exposure.
I’ll jump in then. What’s happened now is that you have found an audience that believes in this. Whereas in the beginning, you didn’t know the process. You were just experimenting. You were throwing a bunch of different lines out in the water and you see a formula that works. Which is you hone in on a few specific topics that you’re bleeding edge on when it comes to ethical non-monogamy.
You realized that when you lay down that blueprint because there are so few other people talking about this subject in high integrity, high-minded way, it’s clear that you have a product-market fit. I still like the fact that you allow yourself the freedom to explore weird little nooks and crannies. We did an episode where we talked about entrepreneurial-ship.
The thing that is toughest for you is if you’re not the world’s foremost expert, you’re one of the world’s foremost experts on this topic. It’s because this show is often you interviewing somebody, who in the case of me and Chester, have weaker expertise than you do. It’s tough to decide, are you going to showcase our thoughts and you’re just here to serve us layups? Are you going to be the one who’s going to lay out how you see things?
I’m not sure that you have concluded that yet and maybe you don’t need to. Maybe it’s going to be a mix of both but that’s tough. Either it’s a Joe Rogan who knows nothing about the topic. He’s there to ask questions as best as he can or it’s somebody who, this is their world that they live and breathe. You’re the tweener where you’re trying to do both.
I sense that tension. Occasionally, I get feedback like, “I would have liked to hear the guest a bit more.”
You say, “I’m more qualified than that guest.”
Sometimes I’ve done a ton of prep and research. Oftentimes, I’m more prepared than they are. I do a lot of editorializing. I often have a goal like, “I want to make sure these things are covered.” There are times where I feel comfortable taking the more traditional interviewer standpoint with it. It is a real tension and I do sometimes feel guilty that I editorialize a little too much.
Do you feel guilty that you’re wearing shorts now? Do you think your audience would appreciate you wearing shorts on the clock?
I’m embarrassed that people know that I’m wearing shorts, in part because I almost never wear shorts. Only when I’m in the gym or at the beach.
You have good thighs but still, I’d rather you wear pants.
I normally would not do this, but I’m among friends. Middle-aged men should not wear shorts in public. I feel strongly about that.
Am I middle-aged? Are we middle-aged?
This is useful for people to know. You guys are the late 30s.
We’re both 38. Chester is like, “What do you mean late 30s? It doesn’t get much later than 39. That’s much later as we get.”
Personal Feelings On Single Life & The Desire For Family
I had a moment where it dawned on me. I was like, “You’re 40. You’re right there. You relate to what it is you have lived for years.” That blew my mind. I realized I had this thought.
Not really, though, because we don’t have kids.
First of all, you’re on this show. You’re not living the typical 40-year-old’s life. You’re not married. No kids at the moment. From the outside, you’re now on a show that seeks to celebrate and de-stigmatize single living. How do you feel about that?
It’s something that I put a lot of thought into because I am in the late 30s. I am single and I’m not married. At this point, I thought I would be married now and would have kids. That’s always in the background for me. The thought of that was supposed to be where I’m at now. I was talking about this. In general, there’s something about having a wife and kids is a way of supplying a lot of purpose for somebody.
Too much purpose, Chester?
I don’t know about too much purposes. Chester, I think you still want to have a wife and a family.
I do.
Chester and I were similar where we were raised that it’s expected you’re going to get married and have kids. The difference between Chester and where I’m at is I’m open to it, but I still think it is for you in a sense it’s almost like a mission that you do believe in finding your partner and building a family.
I think so, but I do question that. There’s a lot of things that are ingrained in us because of our culture, it’s what you’re told, and it’s what you see everywhere you look. I do question that but I agree. As I’ve questioned it, I do come out the other side of that feeling. I truly do like the idea of having a traditional monogamous relationship with somebody and creating humans and making those humans as fucking great as possible. To be honest with you, sometimes I think that’s the only major last thing in my mind of boxes getting checked. Most of the things like little goals and career goals, a lot of those have been weirdly checked for me.
You’ve had success early on.
Enough success to fulfill my version of those being achieved in my mind, whatever that means to me. It’s an interesting show for me because I’m almost a little bit on the opposite side of it, where I do want a wife.
You’re not on the opposite side. The way that I think about this is every married person was at one point single and many of them will be single again, whether they like it or not. We should create a world in which being single is seen as equal to a married life so that people, A) Don’t feel less than and, B) Don’t feel like they have to do it in order to be worthy in the eyes of others. It ends up being a choice and equal choice in that sense. Your presence here is not at odds with the mission of the show in any way.
Loneliness, Commitment, & The Fear Of Growing Old Alone
I think there’s something about companionship, though. Most people go to a dark place and there is something about having somebody and making a commitment with them that says, “We’re going to make this work. We’re going to be there for each other. We’re going to take care of each other as we grow old.” There’s a fear that I have of growing old and not having somebody around that loves and takes care of me as I become weaker and less capable of taking care of myself. Doing that with somebody is different than doing it alone in my mind. Part of being married and having kids fulfills that. It prevents that from being a fear that I deal with.
What are you waiting for?
It’s the paradox of choice.
Your problem, Chester, is you’re too handsome. You’re going to always have picked up whatever type of woman you want and that makes it harder to walk in on someone.
Chester’s not just handsome but he’s also charismatic and charming. It simultaneously makes it easier and harder. There’s a whole bunch of guys who have the opposite problem, which is they can’t attract someone despite their best efforts because their best efforts aren’t good enough.
To me, the best-kept secret in society is that the bottom 80% of men, there’s not a single woman interested in them. If a woman marries someone that’s in the bottom 80% of men, they are truly settling. If you are Chester and you’re not only in the top 20%, but you’re probably in the top 1% or 5% or whatever. You have 100% of women competing for your attention.
You have simultaneously all these men who nobody desires, and then you have this disproportionate amount of women who are trying to chase down somebody like Chester. I have to imagine that makes it exponentially harder for you to be like, “Whoever I have now is going to be more than enough. Let me double down and dive into this relationship.” You’re like, “There’s maybe some other women that might be interesting coming around the corner soon.”
That’s flattering.
I don’t feel that way.
I feel like we’re in my therapy session now. I should be the one laying down on the couch.
These are big questions. What’s interesting is without even listening to what the words are, your tone changed as you started talking about this topic. It felt weighty.
I don’t know the answer to a lot of this. I was secretly engaged at one point. I never talked about it. No one knows about it and it doesn’t matter. I had reached a point in my mind where I’d found someone and we had thought, “We’re going to do this.”
How long ago was this?
Maybe I shouldn’t say it out of protection. If you know me, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out.
I have a lot of questions for you offline.
We’re engaged and I don’t think since that relationship I’ve dropped my walls back down and have truly let myself even fall for someone. I kid you not, I wrote a song about not saying that I like a girl. I feel like a fourteen-year-old boy using the word, “I like a girl.” I started to like this girl and I didn’t pick up right away that it would be reciprocal necessarily.
I bailed on the pursuit of it. I was protecting myself because it was one of those mantras where I feel like I could potentially start to have feelings and then be victim to that not going the way that I wanted. There is still that lingering inside of me. I’m sure that you can relate, Darwyn. That’s a big portion of it, to be honest with you, over the last few years of finding someone, diving in, and letting go. Letting go is the hard part.
Darwyn, you have a story. You were not so secretly engaged.
There’s probably a lot of similar parallels to what Chester said. My engagement was not a secret and like you, Chester. It was an important relationship that I had gone all-in on. When things didn’t work out, I felt apprehensive about putting myself out there that way. I didn’t get married and you didn’t get married either. Chester, I don’t know if you feel the same way but I’m a divorcee. I know I’m not literally one, but I don’t see what’s so different between me in a relationship that lasted almost nine years from someone who was married for nine years. We live together.
Your lives were entwined.
Fully entwined and to untangling them was exhausting, painful and arduous. This is done under relatively amicable circumstances. If somebody didn’t have amicable circumstances, I can’t imagine what it was like to go through what you and I have gone through. I don’t see why I want to put myself through that unless it gets to the point where I feel so excited and energized by the process, which is why I’m open-minded to finding that partner.
I’m seeing someone now that certainly could go down that road with me but I don’t think I have it as a check-off item any longer. I did check this item off my list and it didn’t work out for me and it didn’t make me happy. I will be happy independent of being married and I don’t think I could ever rely on that relationship to make myself feel fulfilled or happy. By the way, at some point here, Peter, I hope you get to insert 30 seconds of Chester’s I like a girl song.
That would be nice to do.
That would be a nice little freaking moment, Chester. Sorry to put you on the spot, as I like to do.
“I say I don’t like you because I’m scared that it might hurt. If this love is not absorbed, you’ll disappear, so I’ll say I don’t like you because at least I’ll know you’ll stay, just keep a few words to say from your ears. I adore you. I adore you.”
I think the children thing has more weight than marriage.
Would you co-parent with a woman and not marry her?
Again, without naming her. It was not that long ago. I hope my mom is not reading this. She’s like, “My son doesn’t have sex.” I had sex with this real-life woman.
We’re not talking about the metaverse here, folks.
By the way, this is an open-minded show, if it wasn’t a real-life woman.
She made a joke where she was like, “I hope you didn’t get me pregnant.” She was light-hearted. She just made a joke about it. My reaction was like, “If you’re okay with it, then I would be okay with it.” I would be like, “That’s a new chapter of this life.”
Does this part of you think that’s the only way it’s going to happen for you where it just sneaks in?
That’s a strong question. You can see Darwyn’s background in television and news with that question.
Do you think that the only way you’re going to have a kid is if it happens unplanned, there’s no pressure, no agenda, and it just happens?
I don’t know if that’s what I think is the only way that’s going to happen. It’s likely that it happens that way. At this point, it’s more likely that. The girl that I’m thinking of now, even though it matters that the person that I’m thinking of is a well-put-together human being, intelligent, and would be a good mom. Those choices matter. I am a sexually active guy. I would categorize it that way. I don’t think I’d feel this necessarily the same.
This particular connection, the prospect of that happening did not terrify you in the way that it would terrify me. You found it a little bit spicy. I chuckled about when Darwyn was talking, and it might have sounded insensitive. The reason I chuckled as I was remembering how far down the path that he was with his relationship.
To his credit, he was very good at this relationship. They had asked me if I would do the ceremony. I remember being asked and being incredibly flattered by this, and then saying, “You know how I feel about marriage.” I don’t remember exactly the logic but you know as well and I was supportive of it. I was perfectly prepared to do that.
I still have a clear image in my head of exactly what I pictured that day was going to look like and what you were going to look like. I can picture seeing Chester in the crowd and I know exactly what it was going to be. Thank you, by the way, for being gracious and being open to doing that, given your relationship with marriage.
I’m not anti-marriage. I only think it’s overprescribed.
You need Bill Maher on your show.
I would like it if you can help me get him. Let’s do it.
Bill, if you’re reading, if you want to go ahead just tweet Peter.
There’s a whole list of people. I’ve been trying to get Henry Rollins. I’d love to get Whoopi Goldberg. There are a lot of folks. It’s not the 20 or 30-something celebrity crowd. It’s the 40, 50, 60 celebrity crowd that is surprisingly single or solo in that sense.
It makes sense. They’ve either themselves gone through messy divorces or they’ve observed so many unhappy people who may get divorced or even worse, stay unhappily married, and then they realize, “Why did that person have to be married?” I see that.
You’ve already touched on a few of the things that I wanted to go into. Both of you recognized something that is healthy and that is an escalator relationship, as I call it, a traditional relationship. A conventional relationship has great rewards. It’s something that is exciting. To your point, Chester, you have a companion and someone you can lean on, especially when times are difficult or even when times are lean.
Relationship Risks & The Optimism Bias
In your case, Darwyn, there’s a lot of growth. You learn a lot about yourself and you improve as a person because of the good times and the bad times. I can say this comfortably. Darwyn, you’re a much better person in many ways than you were years ago because of that relationship. Not because you needed the beast tamed in a way. That’s more of a Chester thing. You also recognized the risks. In some ways, there’s not enough conversation around the risks of relationship, heartbreak, financial risks, abuse, and so on. It’s not always a rom-com.
It’s probably healthy that people are so optimistic but we know that people are often overly optimistic about their future. There’s a dumb banking commercial. It’s a Fidelity banking commercial. They gave people blue stickers for good things and yellow stickers for bad things. They said, “Walk us through the timeline of your past.” It was 50/50 good things and bad things. They had them go out in the future. “What is your timeline moving forward?” It was just positive things. People realize if they look in hindsight like, “A lot of good and bad happened.” When people think in a forward manner, people most of the time see the positives and they’re not thinking about the negative trade-offs that might happen as well.
This is fascinating. It’s called optimism bias. It’s interesting because it happens at the individual level. People think their future is going to be better but if you ask them about the future, in general, they think it’s going to be worse. “The world’s going to shit but my future is bright.” To your point, Darwyn, the behavioral scientists who studied it called it a bias. I don’t fully see it as a bias. In the following way is it gets us out of bed in the morning.
It’s one of the keys to survival. If you think about generations ago, waking up in the middle of the Ice Age. If you had any idea that life wasn’t going to work out for you, why would you even transfer a day? We survived here because our ancestors were a little bit more optimistic than they needed to be.
Thank you for saying that because I was thinking about all the people that don’t think this way and they’re depressed. People think of their future as, “I don’t want to do that.”
It’s not worth it.
They don’t even try things.
The Taxonomy Of Singles (Conventional, Hopeful, Disinterested, Unconventional)
How many works of art? How many businesses get started? How many families start? To the point earlier, people are like, “I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it well.” I’ve been working on what I call a taxonomy of singles and it needs a better name of course. The idea is that not all singles are alike. First of all, it’s an incredibly diverse group of people. These are 18-year-old college kids to 88-year-old widows and everything in between.
What do you have against 89 and up?
I was trying to be cute. They have different goals and they think of their singleness in different ways. In this taxonomy, I have four types of singles. I haven’t named the different types yet and I welcome ideas for names from you and from the readers, so feel free to message me if you have them.
Whoopi, we know you have some ideas.
I have some ideas.
I’m sorry. I’m talking to my friend Whoopi Goldberg now, Pete. Not you. I know she’s reading and she’s going to want to be a guest. She’s got some great ideas.
She’s either a type 3 or type 4, so we’ll see. There are two dimensions divvy them up but it’s not equal. It’s not a 2×2 in my behavioral science language. The first one is, do you see yourself as incomplete and wanting that other? Do you see yourself as complete as an individual and you might or might not welcome it?
You’re the first one. I’m the second.
You were talking about that you have this list of things that you want to accomplish and you feel like this is the thing you haven’t checked off of it.
In that sense, yes. I don’t feel incomplete as a person that I need another half to necessarily make me better.
Chester, if you were 89 years old. You didn’t get married, never had children, and on your deathbed. Do you feel like, “My life was complete. I did it,” or do you feel like, “I wish I would have had kids and maybe gotten married?”
I don’t know how I’d answer that.
You’re giving him too much credit to make it to 89.
That is true.
That is a solid point.
I’m surprised I made it past 27. I thought I was a better musician than this. This is not a cop-out of an answer but there is a part of me that at least in the last few years, I’ve gotten better at truly being more in the moment, less thinking about the future, and dang fulfilled with what is as a general theme. I don’t know how to necessarily answer that question.
Why don’t I look at the other dimension and we’ll go through it? What we have talked about is the difference between type 1 and type 2 through 4. I would call type 1 a conventional single and 2 through 4 is solos. Most single people at some point in their life, especially early on, probably were type 1s.
One criterion is you do like to be fulfilled. You need to have this relationship. What did you say the second criteria was?
That is how you view what I call the relationship escalator. The relationship escalator is the commonly accepted, highly valued relationship, at least among Western cultures but nearly worldwide. Not completely. There are cultures that deviate from it. We know what that looks like. You date someone and become sexually intimate. You define the relationship and pair off. You merge your lives, identity, living arrangements, finances, lifestyle, etc. Maybe you have some kids and to death do you part. The mark of a successful escalator relationship is someone dies in the relationship.
Clutch in the other one.
Ideally, yes. Type 1s want that. They want to be completed. I would call them hopeless romantics in that sense. Type 2s also want that. I might call them hopeful romantics. They don’t see themselves as incomplete but if the right person came along at the right time, they would be happy to step on the escalator and ride it to the end. To me, hearing you’re 1 or 2 depending on how you define your soloness.
I understand. I’d be lying to myself if I tried to jump into group two. I do enjoy the idea of having that boost.
The two would, too.
It’s not so much that I don’t need it. I do want it.
A big difference between category 1 and category 2 and why, Chester, you’re probably more category 1 is the differences. Category 2, if they don’t get that escalator, say, “No regrets.” Category 1 is where you fit in. If you don’t find that escalator, you might have some fault.
That’s not wrong.
This taxonomy is fluid. There are times in life where you might be a 2, 3 or a 4. Three is disinterested in the escalator. They don’t want to ride it and they don’t want any romantic intimate relationship in general. You might call these people loners. Bella DePaulo, who I had on episode two, calls them single at heart. You might call them solitaires. They are a unit and doing other things with their life.
This could be temporary or it could be forever. We’ve all turned the tap off, so to speak. We’ve all deleted the apps. We’ve all been like, “I need to get through this project.” Many of us have been burned and have had major heartbreak. We’re not interested in a relationship. We’re not interested in seeking it. If it came knocking on the door, we would say, “Thank you but no thanks.” It’s type 3s. It may be acute or chronic, so to speak.
Type 4s, in many ways, are the most interesting ones. You’ve already alluded to this in your opening comments, Darwyn. This is something that we’re having a conversation more and more about. A type 4 is interested in a relationship but they’re going to diverge in some systematic way from the escalator. First of all, there’s an infinite number of possibilities. I’ll give you a few scenarios and this is true of me.
For example, you’re not interested in merging your lives. You don’t want to live with someone. You may have an intimate relationship with someone but they have a separate residence. Sometimes this is called a partner or living apart together. Perhaps it’s one of the hallmarks of an escalator relationship. It’s high status. It is the most important adult-to-adult relationship in your life.
I’m reluctant to do that because I have precious friendships that I don’t want to necessarily subvert for a relationship. It doesn’t diminish the relationship but it doesn’t elevate it, then put it on a pedestal above all others. Perhaps it’s polyamorous. You have multiple romantic interests, not just one. It is either/and consensually non-monogamous. You have multiple sexual intimate partners, so on and so forth. Type 4 is probably the least conventional of the four.
I want to clarify, type 3 is, “I’m going to be single.” That’s the only bone I have to pick so far because it sounds great. I love the way that you’ve categorized these. Number 3 should be number 4 and number 4 should be number 3. Number three is, “This is the opposite end of the spectrum. You’re going to be single.” Number one on the far side of the spectrum is, “I’m definitely going to get in a relationship.” What you’re describing as category 4. It’s the more interesting, aggressive, unconventional version of number two. I think number 4 should be number 3 and number 3 should 4.
That’s a fair point. I have gone back and forth with them. I have kept four as the unconventional solo because it’s more interesting to finish with.
It’s the most complex. I am with you. I had the same reaction to you and you start describing the fourth because you’re setting it up further and there’s pull back.
The way you should describe this moving forward because you’re onto something. I think you’re going to end up doing a TED Talk or other talks about this. You set it up with number one like, “We all know what this looks like.”
“We know this person.”
“This is conventionally looking for their hubby or looking for their wifey.” We know category 4, which is that conventional loner. They’re not going to get with anyone. Maybe they’re a hermit. They’re just doing their own thing. What I’m here to talk with you about are categories 2 and 3. You start with 2 and then 3 becomes your final because it’s the most interesting, elaborate, and nuanced category. I understand it’s also the most exciting to talk about.
It’s a fair note. I believe in talking through things and getting feedback in writing about them. I’m not being defensive. I just want to explain this. I have a friend named Matt. He was a one then became a two but two wasn’t working for him and he thought, “I can’t do it. I need to be a lone wolf.” He met someone who said to him, “Why can’t you have it all?” He has stepped off the relationship escalator with a woman and they have an unconventional by traditional standards. For me, it fits that little bit of story where you don’t have to choose either/or. You can find this in-between.
Let’s set up a poll for the readers.
Do you think 3 should be 4 and 4 should be 3?
I like the way that it’s put together. I don’t know that I would be reaching to try and dissect it anymore.
Is it leaving out any singles?
What you call group four and what Darwyn and I call group three gathers the rest.
The Burning Man crowd fits in the group.
I would assume that people can bounce around the scale. It’s not like you can move around 1 to 4. It encompasses everything. It’s interesting to have a conversation like, “I am number one.”
This is without judgment but it’s important to know.
It isn’t but there’s also something about creating a goal or something that makes you feel like without it, there is an incompleteness. That’s not the most stoic place to be. I would prefer to be in a place where whatever level I would be in is in line with being content with everything that I have now as it is. That’s something I’m trying to get better at, in general.
To your credit and to Darwyn’s point, I believe you can make this happen if you wanted it to. What I feel bad for are the people who are truly hopeless. The people who want it and there’s something about them that either is not appealing enough, which I say that sadly or they lack the right temperament and the ability to do relationships, so their attempts are going to be fraught.
I’m most fascinated by loneliness. As a storyteller, the thing that always grabs me the most is the concept of loneliness. I think about this group of people quite a bit. It sounds like we’re coming from such a privileged place because to no fault of our own, we live in a culture. It’s not off the table for us and it is off the table for a huge group of people.
What I often talk about with my readers or to anyone who listened to me is the value of relationships more generally. In particular, friendships, which brings us to the next platter. I’ve been working on and I’ve talked about in a previous episode called Solo Thoughts 5. This idea of what makes a good life? How should we be thinking about living a good life, living a remarkable life, dare I say? We’ve got categories again. There are two categories with three elements to each of those.
The Foundation Of A Good Life (Health, Wealth, Team/Relationships) & Loneliness
Let me put on my professor hat for a moment. You can think of this as an alternative to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Everybody knows Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s deeply flawed but yet has been a valuable model by which people can think about the goodness of their lives. What it has in common with it is this idea of, “What are the foundational things that we need in order to be able to thrive?” That is one of the most important elements to Maslow.
To me, it’s these three basic concepts. One is your health, to have good health. It’s hard to thrive without good health. To have good wealth, that is to be in a situation where maybe you don’t have to be rich but you have to not be impoverished. The research on this is incredibly clear. Moving people out of extreme poverty has an incredible benefit to the goodness of their life and to their life satisfaction.
The last one, it doesn’t rhyme, unfortunately, is what I would call your team, your relationships, both personal and professional, and how incredibly important those are, even for those loners. I’m a big proponent and anybody who reads to the pod regularly knows how important friendships are in that way. You’re talking about loneliness. We’ll pause there with what I call the foundation. Loneliness is an enormous problem and it is a problem for both singles and non-singles. Loneliness is not about your relationship status, per se. It’s about your desires, and then your ability to meet those desires.
I came across an interesting survey. “Close friends are a great way to combat loneliness.” The data on that is clear. This was a Survey Center on American Life and there are two striking things that I’ve noticed in the literature so far. They’re intertwined, although I’m not sure. One is Americans specifically but people in general, at least in industrial countries, are having less sex than they used to.
The Decline Of Friendship & The Importance Of Platonic Relationships
It’s a tragedy that they’re having less sex because it’s one of the most joyous, pleasurable things that you can do. It seems peculiar that it’s happening because, in some ways, you have more access to it. You certainly have better birth control than ever before. You’ve got these apps that you can connect to people and so on, and yet people are having less sex. The other one is that friendship is on the decline, both with men and women but especially men.
That makes complete sense. From being 38, I grew up and there are no cell phones. You might as well say there was no internet because no one’s using it, not in the same way that it’s being used now. You have to meet people. You have to look people in the eye. You have to create real bonds. Whereas now, you can find a different version of that like staying behind a screen. It would create a false version of that. That doesn’t fulfill you in a real meaningful way. I have friendships. You met Trevor. I have known Trevor since I was six years old. It’s a completely different way of growing up.
I’m going to cite a few things here. This is comparing 1990 to 2021. In 1990, less than 2% of women said they had no close friends. That number is now 10%. A fivefold increase. The same fivefold increase, men was 3% and now 15%. What I don’t know yet is what the breakdown is for single versus married people. Married people have fewer friends than single people. The rates of marriage, if anything, have gone down and not up. You can’t explain it in that way. In my opinion, that is more tragic than the drop in sex.
That makes a lot of sense, too. They’re spending time with their loved ones.
There is a phenomenon that happens. This is disturbing with regard to the men because we know that when men are suffering, they make the world a worse place. Men tend to act aggressively when they’re suffering. They act out against the world. Women tend to act out against themselves. In any case, male or female, it doesn’t matter to me so much. I want to highlight this because all of this push and focus on relationships, on bonding with this one other person ignores this powerful force in our lives, which is friendship. There’s, “I love you, man.” That’s your rom-com equivalent of a friendship story. You create songs. What is your ratio of love songs to friendship songs?
Where’s your bro’s songs?
I have a few friendship songs. I’ll send it to you.
I want to bring this up because you two do friendship incredibly well. I want to get your reaction to this and I also want your best practices because I know it takes work.
Pete, first of all, I agree with you that the drop off in sex, which is unfortunate. I imagine there’s a lot of men and women that’s been unhealthy for. That compared to the worsening chasm of people who feel like they don’t have a close friend is heartbreaking. To think that there are 15% of men and 10% of women who don’t feel like there’s anyone in their life that they’re close to, I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.
It means you could walk down the hallway and every 10th person or 7th person you meet someone has nobody in their life that they feel connected to. To your three categories, I don’t know what the framing was of the categories but I know that I have similar categories which I think for happiness. What you mentioned was health. To me, I think of that as a connection to yourself, whether that’s being mental, spiritual, or physical fitness. That is a healthy connection to the universe or God or even the literal physical environment.
That third group that we’re talking about is connected to other humans because we are a social species. I say that as someone who identifies as an introvert. I do need to have space for myself but I need people like you guys in my life. I’ll let Chester respond to this before we go into best practices. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without strong platonic friendships both with women and especially with men.
I’m not where I am in my life without friends. I’m half the person I am without my friends. I have no doubt in my mind. All the great things that I’ve made or attempted to make don’t happen. My good health, my opportunities, and what I’ve learned. I’ve always seen friends as a cheat code. In some ways, making up for troubles with family and also challenges in my romantic life.
I hate the word privilege. I’m throwing it around so much but I have always felt privileged in this specific thing.
Why were you privileged?
There are enough variables around this where it’s to no fault of my own that I was born a certain way.
Chester, you’re handsome, and charming. You have a high IQ and high EQ. People are going to want to be friends with you. Even before you’ve gone through your path of development. At the get-go, I’m sure people were openly friendly to you.
I look like Howdy Doody when I was a child. No one wanted to be my friend.
You had enough IQ and EQ that you could rise to the occasion and become this fascinating professor, author, and world traveler that celebrities and comedians go out of their way to have drinks with that most men won’t be able to go through that same trajectory or that path. That being self-privilege here is fair.
I take it back. I withdraw my comment.
I only preface it with that because I don’t know that I could truly empathize with and understand what it is to not have friendships and be so accessible. I can see how tragic it would be to not have the safety net. It is the safety net to have as a human being on this planet. I know that if I were to lose everything, all I’d have to do is swallow my ego. I could get a loan from my friend if shit hit the fan.
Here’s what I know about Chester. In this situation where he’s lost everything, I know for a fact that in less than one day, Chester would have a house on the beach that he would get to stay in as long as he wanted to. He would have access to a car. He would have a job given to him. His meals will be taken care of but it’s because he’s given so much to so many people for so long. That’s the beautiful part about these relationships. You have to imagine, if you’re not in the place of privilege as Chester puts it, and you are in dire straits and you haven’t built these great relationships. You must feel exceptionally lonely.
By the way, this is a big part of the work that we do with the homeless. We talk a lot about them. Our brothers and sisters who are living on the streets within our organization, we refer to them as clients. My group is called Miracle Messages. Often, as we have these powerful conversations with them, we will ask them, when did you feel like you were homeless or unhoused? They’ll never say, “It’s when I lost my job or even when I lost my home.”
They’ll say, “It’s when I lost contact with my family, whether it be my father, my mother, my husband or my brother.” It’s what we describe as relational poverty. Chester, what we’re describing that the three of us have in this room is we’re often on the other end of the spectrum, where we have relational riches that put us in that relational 1%.
That’s a great way to put it better. I feel way richer, and it’s a much more important to be rich.
One of my more emotional moments on the show happened when this topic came up once before. I did a series on making remarkable friends. There’s this longitudinal study of men. It’s been around for 50 plus years. One of the questions they ask is, “Do you have someone you can call in the middle of the night if you’re sick or afraid?” That’s a powerful question.
If the answer is no, that person also has other profound problems in their life. Most notably, profound health problems, oftentimes. I want to point out how powerful that question is. It’s not who you can call if you’re sick. It’s who you can call if you’re afraid. That’s already a taboo topic for most men. You’re not allowed to be afraid.
If you can’t talk to someone about being afraid, you are relationally impoverished in that sense. I bring this up because this is something we don’t talk about because men are unpopular, and I don’t think there’s enough discourse to help people. You two do it well. As you see it, what are the basics for someone who goes, “I’m in that 15% and I can’t continue?”
I don’t know that I’m qualified to dissect that one properly because I don’t know what that is like. I’m looking at it from the outside. I can see the tragedy of it, but I don’t know how to deal with it. I wouldn’t know how to. It’s easy to start saying things like, “Start a men’s group,” but how do you do that if you’re somebody that doesn’t necessarily have the social skills? How do you start a men’s group?
This is not static. You’re right, there is a certain percentage. Many years ago, 3% of men had no close friends, but now 15% don’t have one. That’s contextual.
I’m trying to deconstruct what Chester’s doing right and also thinking about the parallels that I do right in my life and Pete, that you do well in your life. If you want to build a great relationship and become a good friend, you have to start with yourself. For starters, if we think about what we all want in a relationship, which is we just want to feel like we belong. The biggest issue that most men in America deal with is they do what they have to do to fit in but they don’t feel like they belong.
If the distinction is to fit in, you do the things that everybody else tells you that you should do. Perhaps in the example of this show, you try to pursue a marriage because that’s what other people told you that you should do to fit in. You should be the person who never admits that you’re afraid because that’s what a man is told to do to fit in.
For someone like me, and this is probably true for both of you as well, to feel like I belong means I have to be some version of my actual authentic self and know that you’re okay with that, warts and all. I then might admit that sometimes I’m sad or afraid or that maybe I don’t know that I want to be married and that you guys are going to be okay with that and still embrace me for who I am.
When I’m trying to envision what are the building blocks to get there, as a human who’s surrounded by other humans who accept you for who you are. First and foremost, you have to stop judging other people. The less you judge other people, the less they’re going to judge you. Number two, you have to take some time out of your day and your week, and learn to give without expecting a single thing in return. Don’t keep a scoreboard in the back of your mind of, “What did I do for Chester? What did Pete do for me? How am I going to make things equal?” That makes things transactional. In a transactional world, there is no real true connection. That’s step number two.
Beyond that, you have to start going out of your way to check in on one another and not make it about you. The more you start to elevate yourself in that way, the greater likelihood you’re going to start to surround yourself with other people who feel the same way. They’re trying to think about one another, not just themselves. The more you build that relationship, the greater likelihood that you’re going to feel like you have someone that you can call when you feel like you’re sad or sick and afraid.
Chester, you’re right. It’s tough to think of the foundational steps if you haven’t already built this platform as a human. How you, all of a sudden, jump in from a place where you felt like you were by yourself to now a place where you have these healthy connections. This is a long marathon people need to undertake.
My hesitancy to respond to that question without feeling like I’m being pedantic.
I appreciate that you have reservations about giving advice.
I’m not saying this is always the case but I would think that one of the major variables if somebody is struggling to build those strong relationships is that. It’s looking inward and working on yourself, and becoming the most authentic version of yourself. Something that I started to see in the last few years observing and understanding, there’s that fun paradox with the idea of like, if you think of how to be cool or what you think is going to be cool is the uncoolest thing you can do.
It’s having an adverse effect because it’s the person that is not thinking about that. That is just being. It’s one of the most attractive traits. To get out of your head and just be yourself is much easier said than done. That becomes easier for you to do as you do work on yourself. Working on yourself comes in all these different forms. That’s a whole other conversation. That is not funneled down to a couple of sentences. I second everything you had said about that. That’s a huge key part of building friendships. You have to start working on yourself as being the best version of yourself and you’ll attract.
The other way to think about this would be, what are the traits of someone who is not going down this path to building healthy relationships? What are they going to look like? Some examples that come to mind is, number one, they’re going to have the same exact opinions and worldview now that they had several years ago. They haven’t changed one bit. They’re going to have a lack of commitment to their physical health. They are going to be quite comfortable with destroying their local environment, whether that being their own personal domicile or the physical environment around them.
These are small examples but these are traits in somebody that is probably going to have broken or fractured relationships. Chester, to the point you’re making. This requires daily exercise. You don’t all of a sudden get to squat 500 pounds emotionally and through a relationship. You have to work up to it. You have to not get tripped up that you don’t have the relationship you want immediately. You have to be okay with slow growth.
You don’t get to read The Untethered Soul or The Power of Now.
Which might help, by the way. Those might be a good step but they’re not the whole journey.
Those are the books that have helped put me on a certain path.
If you’re somebody who doesn’t have close friends, it didn’t happen overnight. I want a second two things that you two have identified. One is, to make friends is an act of vulnerability. It’s not just you have to try but you have to be willing to try and fail. It is only going to work if you are your authentic self. Friends can figure out who’s a phony.
You see right through it.
Even the act of calling someone and saying, “I am scared,” is an act of vulnerability. You can build friendships on these things. I had a friend and we were acquaintances. She called me one day. She’s like, “I got into a car accident. I need a hand.” I was like, “Where are you? I’ll be there in ten minutes.” That kick-started our relationship. Who knows what would have happened? Maybe we would still be as close as we are. She was willing to pick up the phone and call me, and I answered it and jumped on it.
What makes me feel the furthest, the most distanced from people that otherwise would be friends in my life is when I get the opposite of the phone call you described, Pete. When somebody calls me up, “I want to check in. Family’s great. Work’s great. Everything’s great. Okay. I got to go.” I don’t know you at all. I have no idea what you’re going through. If it’s just as pedestrian as you described, I’m happy for you but I doubt that it is. If anything, this tells me you don’t trust me.
The good friends call you with their troubles and their successes. Darwyn, you were talking about what I describe as a correlation. Men who can’t answer yes to that question about a call in the middle of the night have all these health problems. That suggests that the arrow goes in one direction. I suspect the arrow also goes in the other direction.
Paths To Flourishing (Purpose, Engagement, Positive Emotions) & Authentic Intent
If you’re not taking care of yourself, if you’re not trying to, if your house is a pigsty, and if you’re not involved in the community. It’s that much harder to create those connections. There’s the saying, “The best predictor of how good someone is, is the goodness of their five closest friends.” You want people around you who are going to elevate you.
Those ideas are powerful ideas. They start the initial steps for someone to start to try, which is an important thing. The last one, you already identified it, Chester. You got to put down your damn phone. You got to sit across someone. You got to go for a walk or hike with them, share a meal, or pick up the phone and not send a text.
Chester has a great habit and I say this as someone who’s a bit of an introvert. These are a little bit draining for me. Chester does not text you so much as he FaceTime you. He’ll FaceTime you even when he’s out doing something interesting or he might have company or whatever. You do feel like he’s bringing you into that moment, and he’s sharing that energy with you.
FaceTime is significantly better than text.
It’s so much more intimate.
The last habit that more men in America need to adopt, and I learned this from my father who had a healthy relationship with his father. They loved one another. My dad’s biggest regret was that he never told his dad I love you. Even though they knew they loved one another, they didn’t explicitly say it and my dad always regretted that.
My dad, who was this tough, roughneck, former athlete and the truck driver would still go out of his way to tell me that he loves me. This is something that I pass on to my good male friends. Pete and Chester, I’ve told you many times I love you. I want to tell you now. I love both of you. It’s never going to be hard for me to tell you I love you.
I have other friends in my life that the first time I told them or perhaps the first 100 times I told them I love you, it stunned them a little bit. Over time, it feels right to say I believe it 100%. If you say it to a friend that you do authentically love, even if their first reaction is to be like, “That’s different.” Eventually, they’ll come around. I feel like more men should go out of their way to tell their closest male friends I love you.
I love you, too. I know you know that.
I love you too, Darwyn.
We got to get this out.
You can’t drop those three words on us, and not expect it to be reciprocated.
I know I’ve sent you this at least once or twice. In a similar fashion, it’s something that I try to do, and it usually happens when I am a little drunk. You send a random message. If you have thought about somebody, and you have a thought about one of your friends, it’s a good thought. There’s no reason not to send it. I’ve done this a few times with a lot of my friends where I send out like, “That guy’s a great drummer or I want to say how fucking amazing you are at drumming. I just thought I’d send this your way.”
You should text Garrett.
It’s funny because I was thinking that. I have sent that text. That was the example I’m thinking of.
Chester’s friend Garrett is an incredible drummer. We’re both going to text him after this and let him know.
I was thinking of those exact things. I do remember him responding, and letting me know that it was a needed message that day. You never know if it’s needed or not but it’s always appreciated.
Your worst-case scenario is you have made them smile. Your best-case scenario is you may have turned around their week. Why not do it?
I try to do it more. As I said, it usually happens when I’m drunk, but nonetheless. When you’re drunk, you feel less of the awkwardness of it.
That’s a good habit to create.
I’m glad you added that addendum, Darwyn. It’s something that I’ve started doing. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon. The other version of I love you is I will sometimes tell people that I’m thankful I met them. I just say, “I’m so thankful I met you.” Sometimes I say, “I’m very happy I forced my friendship on you.” That’s what I did with Darwyn. I forced my friendship on him.
It felt very natural.
The truth is, the I love you has such a spectrum of meaning for a lot of people.
They’re powerful words. Homophobia is very bad. It’s bad for people who are homosexuals, but it’s also bad for heterosexuals.
If you’re being brutally honest with yourself, we were raised in the ‘80s and ‘90s movies that are riddled with homophobia.
It even goes beyond that. I started rewatching Entourage from the beginning, which is 2007.
It’s not that old.
It’s amazing because you have these four characters who clearly are supposed to love one another but they’re so afraid of giving off any homosexual energy. It is cringe worthy. Please say you love one another. You live in the same house. Your entire lives are tethered. All you’re trying to do is make one another succeed. It’s okay to say you love each other.
My ultimate favorite moment of pure homophobia coming out of the ‘80s movies that we all grew up on was Teen Wolf, Michael J. Fox. He’s in the garage. He’s about to tell Stiles for the first time that he’s a wolf. He’s looking for something in his garage, I forget what. He picks up something and being a little shifty and weird. He uses a word that we can’t use. He’s like, “You’re not gay, are you?” “No, of course not. Are you kidding me? No. I’m a wolf.” I don’t know if he said the wolf.
The point is that they were so scared. This character is so scared of his buddy thinking that he might be gay. That is crazier than his buddy realizing that he’s a werewolf. The ‘80s and ‘90s movies were riddled with this tone. It would be completely disingenuous of me to not acknowledge that’s going to affect my psyche, my thoughts around this. I don’t have any of those real feelings about homosexuality or anything like that. To not acknowledge that there is a massive effect that a culture like that is going to have on an entire generation would be disingenuous. It’s there.
The unintended consequence of that is that men are afraid to be close to one another and afraid to verbalize or communicate that they feel a closeness because of the fear of, “I might come off as being gay,” which is ridiculous but it’s true. It’s there. The undercurrent is there.
The first president of the United States to enter office being pro-same-sex marriage, Donald Trump. People forget when Barack Obama became president, he was against same-sex marriage.
This is a recent flip.
You couldn’t make that political move. You had to be against same-sex marriage to run for office because the nation hadn’t flipped yet. That’s how close we are to this feeling toward it. I know that’s more complicated.
The other side of this is, there was this oppression, which was front and center then there weren’t good role models. I’m flipping through my Rolodex of movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s about detailed close male friendships. These weird action movie things. The one that I came up with is Shawshank Redemption. In many ways, that story is a story of friendship as much as it is a story about revenge and survival.
Timothy Robbins and Morgan Freeman’s characters specifically.
Two people who shouldn’t be friends become friends.
The whole end of the movie is him getting to the point of feeling lonely. Seeing the other guy that was there that committed suicide that was in the apartment, and then finding his friend off in the middle of nowhere.
It’s Ewoks and Naho. We’ve spent a lot of time on the foundational stuff. Let’s talk about the flourishing side of things. I’m eager to talk to both of you because you’re flourishing. There are three ways that you can flourish according to this model. The first one is through purpose. We know this because the pursuit of meaning or achievement is often top of mind when it comes to people who are thriving and are living remarkable lives. The way I think of this is, “Are you doing something bigger than yourself that helps others?” That’s the pursuit of meaning.
The work that Darwyn does with miracle messages, for example, is a meaningful endeavor in his life. Achievement is to do something bigger than yourself but do it for the self. That could be, “I’m going to get a PhD and MBA. I’m going to build a business. I’m going to win gold medals.” Under purpose, meaning or achievement, they could go hand in hand. For example, this is a controversial thing but you could build a business that makes you fabulously wealthy but also makes the world a better place. That’s the first one.
The second one is not about outcomes, which purpose is but rather about the process. This is what I would call engagement. A pursuit of flow, solving problems, and creative endeavors. When you, Chester, write music or work on a screenplay, you’re engaged in a creative process and it can light you up. It can create this flow state, even if you never put the music on Spotify or never sell the screenplay. You do it because it compels you to do this.
The last one is, and this may seem a little bit counterintuitive but the research bears it out, the pursuit of positive emotions. We are living lives that are delightful, filled with laughs, perhaps orgasms, good food, good company, and the goodness of life. That could be amusement, pride, joy and so on. We know that positive emotions help us flourish because they fuel our immune systems and they help us with creativity. They help us be better people in that sense.
What I like about this is there’s no one remarkable life. There are remarkable lives. It’s a matter of it matching up. The other one is, this also is fluid. What made me flourish at age 27 was an achievement. It was about getting a PhD and about playing a sport at an incredibly high level. That has now turned more into purpose, for example, with the SOLO project.
It can change. Someone can have kids. Where meaning it crowds out almost everything else, then they become an empty nester. They decide they’re going to go with their partner and travel the world, go to Tuscany, and eat great food. Suddenly, they’re leaning into the positive emotions. What I’m looking for from you folks are your reactions to these ideas. I’m also curious how you see yourself fitting with these different paths to flourishing.
In talking to a lot of my friends about what it is that they find that provides them with purpose. For one, I don’t think that you necessarily need to know what your purpose is. Sometimes, you don’t.
According to this model, you don’t even need purpose necessarily. That’s just one of the ways to do it, although it’s a common one.
The first three that you listed for me, I get fulfilled with one thing, which is the songwriting part of it. There’s a lot of songs that I’ve written that connect with people in a way. I’ll get messages every single day on a few different songs every few hours where it’s bringing them comfort. I do have the sensation and feeling that is for others. At the same time, I’m feeling fulfilled in achievement because it gives me a sensation of success.
You made something great.
It’s a part of the creative process. I feel like I can tap into a lot of those as a musician that is writing songs. For whatever reason, I ended up connecting with a large group of people and bringing them some versions.
Clearly, when you’re working on a song, you become immersed. You have this what we call flow state. Time melts away and so on. When you’re working on a song, do you know it’s going to hit? Do you know it’s going to be meaningful? Is it something you get to discover later?
What I realized is that it’s always the songs that I’m writing that are for me, so it’s the songs that I’m writing authentically for me that ends up being the one that relates the most for other people. We can sniff through. We know the difference between authenticity and what is not. If I were to sit down and I’m like, “I want to write a song that says this,” for whatever reason. “I want to write a love song now.” It’s different than an intention of saying, “I’ve got to write a song about this girl because it’s killing me. I wish I could say these words to her. How do I convey this to her with this elevated language that is music?”
When I do that with that true intention, that’s when that song ends up being more relatable. The song that I wrote that connected with a lot of people was when I realized I wanted to write a song for my own funeral. If I were going to pass away, after I’m gone, I can’t write the song anymore so I better write it now. I was writing a song that was for my own funeral from that perspective. At this stage, I imagine it has been played at hundreds of funerals.
What’s the name of the song?
It’s powerful. I hope you insert a little excerpt from the song right here because it’s a magical song. It’s a gift to people who are going through this rough time. You’ll get a sense when you listen to it. You could imagine this helping people process and mourn death in a powerful way.
“I’ve lived without reason, and I’ve loved in vain but then I met you and I knew that this world had plans for your name. So I’ll bend my knee, amazed at your grace and I promise if death tries to take you that I’ll take your place. Oh, till the mountains all crumble, till the rains never fall. I will be yours. I’ll be yours through it all. Till the sun never rises and the moon disappears. I will still love you even when I’m not here. Yes, I will still love you even when I’m not here.”
The first thing you had mentioned, what is it called again?
Bigger than yourself for others or bigger than yourself for yourself.
There is a part of me that doesn’t feel like that completely fills that. I’m meeting up with Seth, who is the Founder of Thirst Project, which is an organization that builds wells in parts of the world where they don’t have access to clean drinking water. I was attaching myself to that a few years back and trying to build something around that.
It’s this thing that I know I’ve dropped the ball on. There is something about a more direct line of knowing my actions with intention are directly helping people. That fulfills more so than me writing something for myself. A beneficial outcome is I see that there is a response from others, whether it’s brought them comfort. There’s a different feeling I have for those two things.
I do feel like I’m lacking in that sense. I am living a more remarkable life when I’m balancing these things a little bit better. That happens when I am attached to that. Doing something like helping build wells in parts of the world where they don’t have access to clean drinking water. I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but there’s something about knowing that it is there. There’s a part of me that wonders that it’s almost a cop-out sometimes to say, “Look at the response on these songs. It’s helping people.” It’s different.
Why would you say it’s a cop-out? I don’t understand.
It’s because it’s not attached to the intention. There is something about doing something with intention and knowing that the outcome of the intention is directly going to affect people in a meaningful way. It doesn’t have to be building wells. It could even be doing something for somebody that day for one person like buying a meal for someone that needed or volunteering and spending some time doing some volunteer work. For me, that’s extremely important.
I’m going to do something and my actions are directly linked to an outcome that I can see is making a positive outcome. As we brought up the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs, the reason I attach myself to the wells is that things get complicated as soon as we start saying, “I’m making the world a better place or I’m helping the world or I’m doing something for others,” if we get beyond that lower realm. It gets complicated fast. I don’t know necessarily if my actions are making the world a better place if I’m building a school. It becomes complex.
Are you afraid like, “Am I indoctrinating them? Am I switching?”
I don’t know.
Everybody needs clean water.
Everybody needs food, water and shelter.
There’s no need for somebody to die from dysentery. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve looked at this. We get tricked a lot of times. We think we’re doing something positive for the world. Once it’s too big and it’s too complex, at least for myself, in the past, I have had a tendency to pat myself on the back because I donated money to do a charity or something.
I have no idea where the money went. I don’t even know how much money is going toward the logistics of it. Either the employees are getting paid. What’s happening? What’s the actual outcome of that? That’s the way to turn my head and not truly be connected to my actions as I try to do something that benefits others.
Before we get into yours, Darwyn, I want to ask you a question about what Chester said from your perspective. It sounds to me, Chester, that you’re saying that you may write a song that creates meaning. You might help build a well that creates meaning. It seems to me that you’re seeing those are slightly different. Darwyn, do you think of them as different?
Yes. Version one is helping people in the abstract, which is his creative piece of art that is on a scalable level might help people deal in an abstract way with their life and improve their life. Category two is he’s helping people in a specific, objective, tactile, and concrete way of, “You didn’t have clean water before. Now you have clean water.”
What I hear listening to Chester is where he feels often most fulfilled in serving a mission is where whatever work he has done, it’s with that person at the moment and he gets to see the immediate reaction and benefit from his volunteering or his philanthropy. This makes a lot of sense. I don’t split everything up along those same categories. Help is help.
Chester’s point about when you go above the bottom rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy, I agree that it can become sticky. When I think back about most of my volunteer work, it definitely is with that bottom tier with exception of relationships. Not only a big part of my work with Miracle Messages, but I also mentor, what they call My Little Big Brother Big Sister.
In both of these examples, my job is to build connections. I’m not exactly sure where the hierarchy connection is. I don’t ever do it from the stance of, “I need to change them.” It’s, “I will accept you how you are. You’re going to get to learn who I am. If you see something in my life that interests you and you want help to try to figure out how you could participate in that way in your old life. I’m happy to do that. I have no problem with you being exactly who you are now.”
It’s a coincidence that both of you have a big M with regard to your flourishing. I’m glad you do because we need examples of people who do this. I’ll be honest, the M part of my flourishing is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the early part of my life, I was just in the foundation. I was struggling to take care of myself. I couldn’t even think beyond that.
When I did, it still was self-focused. It was achievement-focused. It’s helpful because a lot of times, the work that people do, the charity work that they do, the good people don’t advertise it. They don’t talk about it and yet, we need to hear that folks are involved in these kinds of things because it can be inspirational.
I’ve always been torn by that. You see people post where they are recording themselves giving somebody money on the street.
They’re tourists. They’re total clowns. I agree with you.
They’re monetizing it. At the end of the day, as I’m analyzing it, the true outcome is if it helps other people reanalyze their own like, “Are they getting back?” It’s probably better that it is shown. The fact that I have this weird and icky feeling is because we can see that it’s not genuine.
The utilitarian in me says, “That was a net positive experience.” The Kantian version of me is cringing.
We’re on the exact same page. I’ve always struggled with that. One of my favorite charities that I always try to join is only every three months. It doesn’t take a few hours. It’s called The Compton Initiative. I drive down to Compton and they tell me what to do for 5 or 6 hours or whatever. A lot of it is painting murals or cleaning up garbage or doing everything. It’s all set up. It’s set up so easily. It’s great. In fact, I’ve gone there and I’ve met people that have said, “I’m here because I saw your post about this.” I’ve had people and friends that reached out to me and go, “What is that thing you’re doing? Please let me know. I would like to go next time.” Before I post, I always have this feeling of, “Am I that douchebag?”
If you have the feeling, you’re not.
You have self-awareness.
If you have the twinge, you’re not.
If you’re excited, you can’t wait to post.
“This is going to get a ton of likes.”
“How many comments am I going to get?”
There’s a spectrum there. You’re not wrong. That is something I’ve always struggled with.
That’s fair to say. For you, Darwyn, how do you flourish?
For me, it starts with the process and my daily work around the flow. I have a lot of freedom and autonomy. Some of the things that I’m going to mention, I understand many people are not going to be able to set their day like this because they have commitments like children or a traditional 9:00 to 5:00. I start my day by waking up when I feel fully rested. Not to an alarm, not to a schedule. I’ve scheduled my day so that all of my meetings or things that have to be done at a certain time are going to happen well after that moment.
Most of my day, I get to eat when I’m hungry. If I need additional rest, I can take it. I get great fitness. All of my personal needs are well taken care of because I do subscribe to the model of, “I can’t put my oxygen mask on anyone else until I have it on my mouth first.” For starters, I have a day that completely fulfills my needs. It’s because of that, I have all of this extra emotional and physical bandwidth to take care of other people. In some ways, that can be contributing to other greater missions or to other greater achievements.
If I don’t take care of those needs first, if I don’t feel fully rested or have good food or good fitness or the other things I need to thrive. I want to get in the fetal position and shy away from diving into other projects. It’s because I feel so good, I have more ability to help elevate other people if that’s what the day or week calls for. That’s the first part.
In terms of achievement and mission, I never get caught up in having a specific concrete goal that’s 5 years or 10 years down the road. I just like seeing progress. For my missions, I want to see that I’m getting closer with my Little. I want to see with my work with Miracle Messages that, as an organization, we are becoming a more important part of the ecosystem of helping reunite families. We can measure that objectively in numbers of families that we’ve reunited or other types of work that we’re doing.
I don’t have this idea of, “I have to do X, Y or Z at a specific time and date. If I didn’t achieve that goal, then my mission work was a failure or my achievements were a failure.” Beyond that, I tend to do interesting things. If that leads to achievement, which it often has, then so be it but I’m not doing it because I’m trying to think of achievement. I don’t need medals. Infamously, my company will not accept any awards. We do not apply for awards and when given the awards, we generally deter.
Your company is called Phantom and it has multiple meanings. It’s almost impossible to figure out what Phantom does. Phantom does not have a publicist and does not do media.
We don’t even have a sales team. We don’t market ourselves. You either know about us or you do not.
Only the cool people know about it.
You didn’t have a website for years. Darwyn labeled something that I had been doing for years called SMonday. A lot of successful people fight what’s called the Sunday Scaries, which is when they kickstart their workweek Sunday late afternoon, early evening. They knock out some emails, and take care of some busywork so that Monday morning, you can do the most important work, the creative work there.
During my time in Los Angeles, Darwyn’s have been kind to let me come over for SMonday and hang out in his apartment. It’s half social, half work time when the two of us are there or more. Sometimes there are 3 or 4 people. It’s fun to see how he works because all of the foundational stuff is clear. What Darwyn likes to do, and I hate to out you for this. He loves to hack things. He’s a professional decoder.
He’s the best of this that I know.
This is not hyperbolic. Darwyn is the most creative person I’ve ever met. Not the smartest but the most creative. It’s not that he’s good at solving problems. He loves solving problems and solving puzzles, and then he uses that knowledge to achieve and help others for any number of things. What lights him up is not the investment he makes or the project that he’s finished. It’s the insights that he’s having.
You have this process to make yourself feel good during the day but then you have this process that pays all these other dividends. It’s the process that lights you up. It’s that engagement side of things. It’s akin to you writing a song. To write a song is to solve 1,000 problems. For you, you have 1,000 problems that you’re solving 1,000 different ways.
A girl isn’t one.
I’ve heard Eminem talk about how he describes his brain as constantly thinking in raps. No matter what the situation is, he starts to think in raps. I bet Chester, in some way, has a similar process where everything he’s doing, he could see the song or the music at that moment. For me, I can’t help but think in terms of marketing, monetization, and decoding. No matter what I’m doing, it’s completely natural. While we’ve had this conversation, I have had 25 separate side conversations with myself about things in your apartment and how I would organize them, ideas I have for Chester, and ideas I have for you for future episodes.
It’s a little Rain Man-like.
I have one for you for this show that popped into my head.
We’ll take care of this after the show.
More bourbon.
I was like, “I might send you some mic stands.” That’s the only thought.
They’re cool. I like them.
I was like, “If they’re not, it’s fine.”
We have seen this up close where Darwyn notices things that other people won’t notice. What’s nice about it is it’s a blessing, not a curse. It makes your world a better place. I’m sure there are times where you want to shut down a little bit and maybe that’s what cannabis is for. It’s to switch off. I have a hard time switching off. It’s an amazing skill to have but it’s one that you’ve cultivated. You give yourself space to be able to notice.
If I was trying to cram as many little tasks into my day as possible, there’s no way that I could take enough time to read, listen or think. It’s one of the reasons why I like SMonday because while we are working, we are doing it at a pace where our brain is able to think in a creative manner. We’re not on a deadline. It’s Sunday, the world is essentially closed.
You don’t have to be doing what you’re doing.
There are not twenty people trying to call you at the same time. Sometimes on Monday, you start sending emails and you get two emails to come in for every email that you responded to. That makes it tough to slow down enough to start to see connections. You’re right, the THC does help slow me down eventually because you can’t do this for too long.
At some point, where my day usually ends during the week, I’m at the end of all these little different dots I’m trying to connect. I’ve solved as many as I can and now, I need to fall asleep. I bet it happens to both of you, whether you realize it or not. What happens to me a lot is while I’m sleeping, all the dots that I could not connect while I was consciously awake. My brain starts to go through the process to connect them. I will wake up from dreams all the time.
I am replaying the same scenario 10 or 20 different times until my mind finds a conclusion that it’s satisfied with. I will wake up and that conclusion will come to me. Most people have something like this that happens to them. It’s because I’ve given myself enough space for this process to unfold, it probably happens to me with greater frequency. If you’re trying to pile on to your day and you didn’t give yourself any rhythm, you’re selling yourself short.
We have different worlds. My struggle has been that I don’t have dots laid out or Ts to cross.
You have so many dots to connect and so many Ts to cross.
With no pressure. There’s no email.
That’s fair enough. There are pressures in my day that Chester does not have.
Even though you have this freedom, you still have deadlines, meetings and business activities. Chester, your life is more that of the pure artist. You have a studio. If you decide not to go to the studio for the day, does anyone notice?
He’s even more untethered than a standard artist because he’s done so well that he could just mail it in if that’s what he wanted to do whereas most artists are starving.
There’s studio time. You would think it sounds great but in the last few years, for lack of a better way of describing it. I feel like I’ve retired. I dive into something artistic or I’ll try to create a goal because I need to. I’ve had moments where I’m calling up friends like, “Let’s go to the batting cages. Let’s go to Mexico.”
They’re like, “It’s Wednesday at 10:00 AM.”
I’m like, “Okay. Alright.”
I’m being facetious here for some people. Do you know what it is that provides that structure?
A life.
A relationship. “This is what I need.”
By the way, that’s not the right reason but I would do it.
It was one of the mistakes I’ve made in that past relationship. I made her the center of my time. She was my purpose in my life and I didn’t even do it well. I’m calling myself out on that relationship. There’s blame to go all around. The way this spirit man points this out, I agree. If you put your actual essence or your purpose on the backburner and you make your relationship about them. It’s the wrong move.
That’s not an attractive trait and I get that now. I don’t think I truly understood that in the past. You want someone to be passionate about something. You want someone to be striving to achieve a goal that they’re passionate about. It’s probably overwhelming if somebody is focusing on you as their number one thing. That sounds romantic when you’re fourteen, but it’s not the same.
Love is a powerful idea, especially this particular form of love. If you also are in a state in life where you’re untethered. You put those two together then it’s easy for that person to become the focus and it’s easy for it to be a little bit much.
That’s a good topic. That should be its own episode, by the way. There’s a lot to unpack there just with the idea on how to deal with that relationship or a relationship.
Especially if you want to maintain some wholeness while with that person. Again, there aren’t good models for relationships in which both people view themselves as whole and complete. It does exist. It’s called friendships but they’re not a good model for romantic relationships. I’ll give you an example of this. I talk about it a lot. This idea of merging is so powerful. You’re supposed to become intertwined. I call it the Bennifercation of a relationship. Not only is it that your lives become intertwined. You live together but your identities are two. You’re not Ben and Jennifer. You’re Bennifer.
What ends up happening for those type fours, for the unconventional folks, people who diverged from the relationship escalator, at best, people respond with curiosity, maybe a tinge of jealousy but most of the time, they judge you negatively. “What do you mean you don’t live with your husband?” The expectation is that you are in mesh with each other. If you don’t do that, at best, you’re a sideshow.
I’ve talked about this on the show. I have two friends and they’re married. Their relationships are healthy and good. They sleep in the same bed. It’s not even like they’re in different beds or different rooms but they use different blankets. It’s because one of them is a hot sleeper and one of them is a cool sleeper. One of their mothers thinks it’s strange that they have different blankets. It’s not even okay that you’re not sharing the same blanket. In some way, that’s a weird indictment of their closeness, their love or whatever.
You think it’d be easy to understand if someone sleeps better when it’s cool.
That’s a sacrifice for the relationship.
Wait until she finds out they wear different underwear.
She could design a half comforter, half sheet thing.
My point is we don’t have good role models. In part because if you live apart together or you sleep in separate rooms, that doesn’t come up at the dinner party. People feel embarrassed and weird about it because it’s unconventional, deviant and strange.
My buddy told me that he sleeps in the other room.
What did you think of that one when he said that?
I heard him snore and I was like, “I get it.” Honestly, at the end of the day, people need to sleep. You can be intimate. I’m a cuddler but I get it if you’re not a cuddler. It’s like, “Don’t touch me. I need to sleep.” I can understand that. I can see that.
“It doesn’t mean I’m not a cuddler. I’m a cuddler up until the moment that I’m going to go to sleep.”
I want the whole time.
My initial reaction if somebody were to tell me they sleep in two different bedrooms is at first, I’m like, “I wonder if everything is okay in their relationship.” What I remind myself of is how many completely unhappy people sleep in the same bed and realize, “That has nothing to do with one another.”
Might they be happier if they slept in different beds?
The weirdest thing about modern society is how hard it is for people to be happy for someone else who is happy in a manner that it’s not how they would feel happy.
We’re always projecting constantly.
Why does it matter so much to us what everyone else is doing if they need privacy?
It’s because we need validation for our interpretation of the way things are. As we walk through this world, I need to know that like, “I’m doing it right.” If I see that you’re doing it differently, I’m going to get a little confused.
We’re too worried about trying to copy one another and then we get mad when we’re not being copied.
There’s a lot of status games being played. This has been a wonderful conversation. We didn’t get all the way through the poo-poo platter, but I’m going to make one request of the two of you. I’m going to leave this in as a teaser. We’re going to wrap this up and I’m going to do a quick little bit of bonus material for the SOLO Slack channel. People can sign up for the community at PeterMcGraw.org/Solo. You get access to this little bit of extra information and we are going to talk for a few minutes about alcohol.
That’s a good teaser.
I’m looking at Chester as I say that. With that, Darwyn, Chester, thank you for doing everything that I asked you to do with this, which was to indulge me as I run some ideas by you.
I don’t understand the whole not-wear-pants thing. You ask, we do.
I asked you to be fun and I also asked you to be authentic. I thank you both for how delightful you were but also how vulnerable both of you were.
My pleasure, Pete. Thank you for having us.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Important Links
- Chester See on YouTube
- Chester See on Instagram
- Chester See on Twitter
- Darwyn Metzger on Instagram
- Darwyn Metzger on Twitter
- The Science of Single Living – Previous Episode
- Solo Thoughts 5 – Previous Episode
- Yes, having more friends is better
- Miracle Messages
- The Untethered Soul
- The Power of Now
- The Unemployable Darwyn Metzger – Previous Episode
- Thirst Project
- Big Brother Big Sister
- The Compton Initiative
- Phantom
- Even Though I’m Gone – YouTube
About Chester See
Chester See has been nominated for 6 Streamy Awards with one win for Best Original Song. He has starred on Broadway as Rock Star Stacee Jaxx in Rock of Ages. He has sold over 2 million downloads of original music without the help of a label, and was one of the first 100 people to gather over a million subscribers on YouTube.
About Darwyn Metzger
A former star of America Now and an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist, Darwyn Metzger is the founder and CEO of Phantom, a digital marketing and social media strategy firm. Darwyn works with Brands, Political campaigns, TV shows, Films & Celebrities including Nike, Trident, DirecTV, AT&T, Fox, and BBC America.