A Question Worth Asking Out Loud
Most men can name their college roommate, a couple of work friends, and a brother-in-law they tolerate. Far fewer can name three men who know the messiness of their lives and have stayed close for decades. In this segment of The Vitality Journey Podcast, Dave Rodriguez and Dimitri Snowden sit with three friends, Steve Hudson, Gary Mayes, and Bob Thomas, who have done exactly that for 35 years, never once living in the same city.
Dave opens with the Harvard Study of the Good Life, the longest study on human happiness ever conducted. After tracking lives for generations, it lands on a single answer for what makes us happier as we age: relationships. So Dave asks the obvious follow up to the men who have proven it. What has actually kept the four of you together this long? This post is drawn from our latest episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast. Watch the segment here.
It Did Not Start Deep
The origin is almost ordinary. They met through shared work, enjoyed each other, and quickly discovered that none of them took any one of them too seriously. The mocking came early and never left. What is easy to miss is the decision underneath the fun. As pastors, they had been warned not to get too close to people, because transparency could be used against them later. They watched older men live that way and end up isolated, and they decided they did not want the same future. So they chose, on purpose, to build the kind of friendship most men only wish they had.
The Three Things That Actually Held
A few clear principles surface in the conversation, and they are worth naming because they are repeatable.
- No judgment, and nothing off limits. Steve Hudson describes the rule that makes the whole thing work: no topic is out of bounds, and whatever you say is never held against you. That kind of safety is rare, and it is the precondition for everything else. Without it, men perform instead of connect.
- Vulnerability that gets met, not just tolerated. Gary Mayes admits he did not grow up knowing how to build a real friendship. His early friends were in the moment, then gone. What changed him was tasting what it is like to share your struggles with someone who does not pull back but actually moves toward you. As he puts it, the power of our failures happens when they stay ours alone. Carrying the mess home is survivable when someone else knows and has met it with grace.
“We mock and we love and it’s truly safe, and you just can’t buy that.” — Gary Mayes
- A rhythm they refused to renegotiate. Early on, they committed to a fixed pattern: arrive Sunday, leave Thursday, once a year. Gary makes a sharp point about why that matters. Because the rhythm is settled, they spend their energy being together rather than recreating the plan every time. They showed up when they did not feel like it, because they trusted it would pay off later. Dimitri Snowden summarizes the whole formula in three words: intention, safety, and vulnerability. Gary adds a fourth truth most people skip: expect to not want to do it sometimes.
How to Build This Yourself
You do not need 35 years of history to start. You need a few deliberate moves.
- Pick your people and name them. Decide who your two or three are, rather than waiting for friendship to happen by accident.
- Set a rhythm and protect it. A standing date you do not renegotiate beats a flexible plan you always postpone. Put it on the calendar a year out.
- Make it safe on purpose. Agree, even if only in your own conduct, that nothing shared gets weaponized later. Safety is what lets people stop performing.
- Show up when you do not feel like it. The investment compounds, and the times you would rather hide are often the times it matters most.
The Honest Catch
The men are clear that aging changes the form, not the commitment. They used to play golf for days on end, and now they manage two rounds a trip. They openly discuss what happens when one of them can no longer travel, or when one of them is gone. Dave does not dress it up. He grieves it. But that honesty is the point. They are adjusting the activity while protecting the relationship, which is exactly the muscle most friendships never develop.
The Takeaway
The friendship these men describe is not luck and it is not chemistry. It is a series of decisions, repeated for decades: choose your people, build safety, keep a rhythm, and stay even when it is inconvenient. Dave’s closing instruction is as practical as it gets. Find your guys, embed yourself in the relationship, and stay with it.
Watch the full conversation on The Vitality Journey Podcast, and if you want a guided path through purpose and whole life well being, explore The Calling Quilt™ coaching at https://www.destiny-works.com/the-vitality-journey/.
Full Transcript
Dave: Let me touch on a related subject. I want to talk about relationships, especially male friendships. I quote this a lot on the podcast: the Harvard Study of the Good Life, the longest study on human happiness ever done. They boiled everything down to what makes you happy as you get older, and it comes down to one thing: relationships. So let me get personal with the four of us. What do you suppose has kept us getting together these past 35 years?
Steve: It started with shared interest. We had a lot of commonality in the ministry work we were involved in. But then we enjoyed each other’s company, and we realized none of us took any one of us too seriously. We were always open to harassing each other. You don’t always have friends like that. Back in that era we heard as pastors that you couldn’t have close friends inside your church, because getting transparent could come back to bite you. So we realized we needed those kinds of friendships, and we’d watched people ahead of us who didn’t have them. We thought, we don’t want to keep doing this into our 40s, 50s, and 60s without those friendships. What started as common interests and enjoying each other morphed into being there to process the different junctures in our marriages, our ministries, our jobs, and our health. And there’s never been any judgment. No topic is off limits, and whatever you say isn’t held against you. That is rare.
Gary: Just as a backdrop, we’ve never lived in the same area. It’s always a plane flight to be together. It’s not as if circumstances made it easy. I didn’t grow up understanding what it takes to build a good friendship. I had in the moment friends, then they were gone and I didn’t look back. When you start to taste what it’s like to share your own struggles and hardships with someone who not only doesn’t judge but actually moves toward you in those moments, that changes things. The power of our failures happens when they stay ours alone. So many times I’ve shared the messiness of my life with these guys, then gone home to live in that messiness, but knowing I’m not alone in it. Someone else knows, and someone else has met it with grace and love. That’s as near the core as I can get to why I push past everything that would cause me to not stay connected.
Gary: You asked us to think ahead about this, Dave, and I wrestled with it. There’s a secret sauce, but I’m not sure any of us were smart enough to create the recipe. We stumbled into it. So I’ll add two words. One is the safety Steve and Bob talked about. There’s a deep mutual respect. I couldn’t be more impressed with these three guys, and there’s nothing they could do that would make me unimpressed. That lives among us. We mock and we love and it’s truly safe, and you just can’t buy that. The other thing is that really early we chose a rhythm. We come in on a Sunday and go home on a Thursday, once a year. There’s power in committing to a rhythm. We chose to do it when we didn’t need to, because we knew it would pay off later, and we chose to do it when we needed to and would rather have hidden. Having a predictable rhythm means we put our energy into being together, not into recreating the space every time.
Dimitri: So in summary, what I hear is intention, safety, and vulnerability. And a lot of mocking.
Gary: If we were smart, we would have said those three things. And add one more: expect to not want to do it sometimes.
Steve: As we’ve gotten older, that’s where the intentionality still has to happen. We used to play 36, 36, 36, and on the morning we left we’d try to get another 18 in. Now it’s two 18s for the whole trip. There’s a rhythm, but within it we adjust as our bodies adjust and as we look at what financially works, because it’s a plane flight. We’ve also had to ask, what happens when one of us can’t golf anymore? Do we still get together, and what does that look like? In the last few years we’ve had more and more of those discussions as we change and age.
Dave: There’s going to be a last day to jump, a last day to walk, a last day to hold a cup. So how do we move around that? I grieve it. We’ve brought it up the last couple of years: what happens when one of us is gone. We’ve talked about that realistically. You realize we met in our 30s, and now we’re in our 70s.
Dimitri: You’ve known each other longer than I’ve been alive. That’s extraordinary.
Dave: We as a group have been a sermon illustration many times in my preaching, because I feel so strongly that this dynamic has maintained a sense of sanity in my life. I tell younger people, find your guys, embed yourself in the relationship, and stay with it.