Men often desire more and better friends. A man in his 40s with five kids will have a harder time with this than a man in his 20s who’s a college student, just on the basis of competing priorities and responsibilities.
There’s a reason Billy Baker wrote in The Boston Globe that “the biggest threat facing middle-age men isn’t smoking or obesity. It’s loneliness.” The fraternal connection of the college fraternity turns into an impersonal connection with your supervisor and an adversarial relationship with your teenagers and their need to be driven all over town. Taking the next step toward being and feeling known and loved feels like you have to give less time either to your family or to your work.
Yes. You might have to do that.
Here are some ways to do this that won’t waste your efforts.
RAILS is an acronym that stands for Rhythm, Affinity, Intensity, Longevity, and Spirituality.
These are the ingredients of high-quality friendships. When looking to make friends or increase the quality of your friendships, looking in these five categories for opportunities is the key.
Rhythm
Who do you already see in the flow of your life? It could be a neighbor you regularly bump into, a colleague at work you enjoy seeing at the water cooler, or a fellow dad you see at soccer practice. When your schedule is full, you have to capitalize on the rhythms that are already there.
Another way to consider rhythm—how might you create a rhythm that doesn’t exist with a friend or a group of friends?
Sometimes trying to make plans one at a time is exhausting and annoying. Why not make a batch of plans all at once? A Thursday night soccer league, a Friday morning Bible study, a Tuesday afternoon weightlifting appointment, or a once-a-month poker night are each an activity that, once everyone buys in, is a gift that keeps on giving.
Sometimes the decision to create a new rhythm can change the trajectory of a friendship for the long haul.
Affinity
What do you have in common with some other men? Connecting where there is preexisting overlap is a major blessing. Why not have a friendship that starts out as shared appreciation for the Pittsburgh Steelers, or baking sourdough pizza crust, or watching all of the Oscar-winning movies? Why not connect over the fact that you both have a son and are, thus, facing similar choices and obstacles?
In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis described the beginning of friendship as the moment when one person says to another, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” Sometimes the obscure points of overlap are springboards into a broader mutual appreciation.
Affinity is about laughing and playing together. It’s about enjoying creation together. It’s about being friends like 5-year-olds make friends at the park: “Hey! You wanna play with me?”
Intensity
Intensity has to do with severity—that is, how much in each other’s business you are, your ability to interact on an emotional level. While the other categories here could be mostly understood as “shoulder to shoulder”—that is, doing things together or talking about external things together—intensity is the “face-to-face” aspect of friendship. Unpacking motivations, questioning each other’s assumptions, and facing each other’s darknesses are all the stuff of intensity.
Sometimes intensity is thrust upon us—someone faces a diagnosis, a divorce, or a disruption, and all of a sudden, a friendship that was amicable is forced into intensity by circumstances. It might be awkward, but sometimes intensity is a product of deliberate intentionality: Someone asks another, “I’d like to develop a higher degree of intimacy with the men in my life. Could we go to coffee? I enjoy spending time with you, but I’d like to get to know you and your story in a different and deeper way.”
Longevity
There’s a sign that hangs outside at my grandma’s house: “It takes a long time to grow old friends.” This is the only ingredient of RAILS you can’t just “decide” to have. The other four you could create with good intentions and intentionality in a matter of weeks or months.
At my church I have friends I’ve had since I was in diapers; our mothers were friends. That isn’t something you can control. I have other friends I see weekly I’ve known since middle school and high school.
There’s something grounding about a friend you’ve known since middle school, when you were at your most insecure and awkward. It’s humanizing to have friends that go back further than your résumé.
Some of this is just how the Lord has chosen to write our stories, but some of it is the conscious choice to live within proximity to people who matter to you, the choice to build rhythms that overlap, and the choice to work through our issues instead of avoiding them and starting fresh with new friends on a regular basis.
related
I once met three guys in their 70s who had been friends for 60 years. Back when they were teenagers, they “covenanted” together to be friends for life. They built rhythms, maintained affinities, and have supported one another through tremendous lows and highs. They’ve processed divorce, death, disease, and disaster as brothers truly who were “born for a time of adversity.” They also still laugh at one another’s jokes. The bond they’ve forged over a lifetime was inspiring to me.
I know not where my life will take me, but I know one of the ingredients I’ll consider giving attention to is the reality that old friends cannot be found; they must be made and maintained.
Spirituality
If all men are made in God’s image, then their relationship to God is a driving factor, positively or negatively, in their life. Not only that, but nobody knows you like God, and nobody knows your friends as closely as God does. In fact, there is a form of friendship that God displays to us that necessarily trickles down into the highest quality of friendships we can have.
The central fear of friendship is fear of rejection or abandonment. Pastor Tim Keller said it like this: “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.”
Similarly, he says elsewhere that “prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge.” Because God knows us, and our friends, better than we even know ourselves, prayer—talking to and with God about our friends—is one of the key ways that we’ll actually get to know someone. You can’t really know someone until you begin to see them through God’s eyes and feel for them like God’s heart does. To pray for your friends is a key ingredient in maturing your view of them. To pray with your friends is like pouring gasoline on the fire of friendship.
So, you want to make or improve your friendships?
Find someone you have affinity with and add rhythm or intensity.
Find someone you’ve had intensity with and add affinity.
Find someone you have longevity with and add spirituality.
Find someone you have any connection with and commit to longevity.
Seth Troutt is the teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in the Phoenix metro area. Excerpted from Authentic Masculinity by Seth Troutt (© 2026). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
