Transcription
What does friendship look like for you outside of family, your wife, men? Do you have that iron sharpening iron thing? Is it intentional or is it organic?
There is no organic male friendship in America.
Good. I agree. You have. And we suck at it. Women are great at it. We have to be intentional. I don't. I have a. I made a pact when I was 19 with four other men and I have.
Love that.
Uh, we've never violated it.
What was the pact?
Get together every year somewhere in the world and we have every single year since 1989 or something, '88. And, uh, I. We were just at my house on a hunting trip.
Two weeks ago.
Um.
So yes, that will not happen. And you will not have friends as a married man with children by 55 unless you are a psychopath about it. In fact, nothing good will happen unless you're totally dedicated to it.
You know, I'm not disciplined at all personally, but on a few things, I'm disciplined.
Because I care about them.
What are some of the valuable things that that that force on his.
Totally changed my life. And in fact, I had a young male relative get married fairly recently. And the night of the, the day of the dinner, of course, we went fishing and I, uh, trout fishing. And I said, the last thing I said before we got married, I said, "I've given you all kinds of advice. The last piece of advice I'm going to give you is maintain your male friendships. And not because you intend to. Make a conscious verbal agreement to do that because life gets in the way." And the number one thing that wives with small children are not into is the dad leaving for the weekend.
They're just not into it. They're resentful. She'll. She's going to resent you bad. And my wife resented me bad. You know, he's got four little kids and like, where are you going again? I was like, well, you know, with your college roommates, really?
Yep. Have to. And now my wife is like, this is the greatest thing that ever happened. You know, it's like a different time of life. But getting through the period when you have young kids at home, especially if I was always on the road for my job, like traveling everywhere. And so to add another weekend to that, only 52 in a year was really hard. And was true for all the other guys. There are five of us. I'll just say this. I mean, I could. I could write a book about this about this group of men.
Makes makes me emotional. But all five have are married to the same woman.
And they love their wives. All five. All five have at least three kids. And all of their kids respect their fathers. And all their kids are happy. I talked to one of the kids last night at 11:00. She called me from Europe. One of my friends' children. I'm the godfather. We're all godfathers to each other's children. All four of my children have godfathers in this group. All their families are thriving. By the way, this is not even that relevant. All their businesses are thriving. They've all been successful. Like, they've all done what they wanted to do and they succeeded at it. It's crazy. And I often think like five people. We went to totally crappy college. I can't even remember the name of the college we went to. It was not great. They've all.
What are the odds of that?
I think they're really small, actually. Take a cross-section of 56-year-old men.
Yeah.
Five of them. Just pick them out of a phone book. Do they have that? I don't think they do.
So, I think it's had a massive effect. I know it's had a massive effect on all five of us. It's been one of the most important things any of us has done with our lives.
Yeah.
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So many lonely middle-aged men, you know.
Well, they don't talk to other men. And I'm surrounded by women and I love it. I've already said that. I mean, they're like amazing. I never stop being interested.
What are you saying?
It's like fascinating.
No, it's like a never-ending puzzle cuz they have something to tell you. An average man is so dumb and easily frustrated. He's like, "You're crazy. I'm going golfing."
But if you just force yourself to take 20 minutes to realize this woman is trying to tell you something, you don't understand it because you're different sexes. But if you keep going, you will get to something super important. That's all great.
Yeah.
But you need to talk to men. And I've had, you know, of course, quite a rocky life. And.
I can't tell you the number of times I call one of my friends or one of my friends calls me and it's like, "Dude."
Wow.
Sounds like they're breaking.
This is a true story. So, one time there was one period in 43 years where I quit nicotine for 6 months, which I would not recommend, but I did it. And because one of my daughters was way up in my face and I was like, "Okay, I'll quit nicotine." Okay. So, I obviously don't take life advice from children, but I did it and immediately predictably got fat and went crazy. And so, um, but I didn't know it because no one would tell me because I'm like this famous guy and no one ever gets in my face about anything. So, I go out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Would ski there in the springtime. And I'm sitting on the chair lift with one of my college roommates who's a judge in another state. And he goes, "Geez, you're fat." And I was like, "I'm not fat." He goes, "Dude, you are fat." And I was like, "I don't think I'm fat. You're really fat. Get off script." I'm like adjusting my goggles. And I was like, "Why did you call me fat?" He goes, "BECAUSE YOU ARE. Don't you have a mirror in your house?"
It was amazing.
Yeah.
My wife would never. I mean, I would just die of obesity. She would never say a word cuz she's too sweet.
No one who works for me is ever going to say that. None of my producers are ever going to say that. The Fox News producer management is so afraid of me because they think I'm crazy. They're never going to even talk to me. So, I just like die of obesity. And.
That's great. By the way, I got to the bottom of the hill and I bought a tin of Copenhagen and immediately LOST 40 LBS. TOTALLY TRUE STORY.