The Second Question

For about two years there was a guy in my Tuesday morning group who answered every check in the same way.

“Good. Busy.”

Every week. Good, busy. Business was good. Kids were busy. Golf game was terrible, but that was a joke, and we laughed. He showed up. He was sharp. He gave good advice to the other guys. If you’d asked me to name the most solid man in the room, I might’ve named him.

Then one Tuesday he didn’t show up. Or the next. When he finally came back, he sat down, looked at the table, and told us his wife had moved out two months earlier. They’d been fighting for over a year. He’d been sleeping on the couch since spring. He’d been drinking more than he wanted to admit, mostly alone, mostly after ten.

And the whole time, every single Tuesday, he’d said “good, busy.”

The room was quiet for a long time. Then one of the older guys said something I’ve never forgotten.

“We asked you how you were. We never asked twice.”

He was right. We’d asked the first question every week. We’d accepted the first answer every week. And none of us, me included, ever looked across the table and said, “No. How are you actually doing?”

You know the first answer. You’ve given it a thousand times.

“Good.” “Fine.” “Busy.” “Can’t complain.” “Living the dream.” “Hanging in there.”

It’s not a lie, exactly. It’s a door. It’s polite and it closes the subject, and both men are relieved. The guy asking doesn’t have to deal with anything heavy. The guy answering doesn’t have to admit anything. Everybody moves on to talk about the game.

Most of the time, that’s fine. Not every hello needs to turn into a therapy session.

But some of the time, the guy saying “good, busy” is carrying something heavy. And the only thing standing between him and putting it down is one more question that nobody asks.

This isn’t just a feeling. Men’s friendships have been shrinking for decades.

The Survey Center on American Life found that 15 percent of men now say they have no close friends at all. That’s a fivefold jump since 1990. Back then, 55 percent of men said they had six or more close friends. Now it’s 27 percent.

And the way men handle problems has changed too. In 1990, almost half of young men said they’d turn to a friend first with a personal problem. Now it’s about one in five.

Think about what that means. A lot of men are walking around with a full contact list and nobody they’d actually call at 2am. They have buddies. They have golf partners, work friends, the guys from the gym. What they don’t have is anybody who knows what’s actually going on.

That’s what Movember is about, underneath the mustaches. It started as a men’s health campaign, and over the years a big part of it has become this: men talking to each other about the stuff they don’t talk about.

The mustache is the easy part. Anybody can stop shaving. The second question is the part that takes guts.

I’ve thought a lot about why we stop at the first answer. I think there are three reasons.

We don’t want to pry. It feels intrusive. He said he’s fine. Who am I to push? But asking twice isn’t prying. It’s telling a man you actually want to know. Most guys don’t get asked that even once a year.

We don’t know what to do with the answer. This is the big one. If he tells me something heavy, then what? I’m not a counselor. I can’t fix his marriage. So it’s easier not to open the door.

Here’s the thing I had to learn. You don’t have to fix it. You almost never can. Your job isn’t to solve his problem. Your job is to make sure he’s not carrying it by himself.

We’d have to answer it ourselves. If I ask you how you’re really doing, you might turn around and ask me. And then I’d have to decide whether to tell you the truth. That’s the part that keeps most of us quiet. As long as nobody asks twice, nobody has to answer honestly.

It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It doesn’t need a speech. Here’s what it sounds like.

He says, “Good, busy.”

You say, “Yeah? How are you actually doing, though?”

Then you stop talking.

That’s the hardest part. The silence. Most men will fill it with another “good” or a joke. Let them. Don’t rescue the moment. Just keep looking at him like you actually want the answer, because you do.

Sometimes he’ll say “I’m good, really,” and he’ll mean it. Great. You’ve lost nothing.

Sometimes he’ll pause. And then he’ll say something like, “Honestly? It’s been a rough few months.” That pause is the door opening. Don’t slam it with advice.

A few things that help once he starts talking:

Ask, don’t fix. “What’s been going on?” “How long has it been like that?” “What’s the hardest part?” Questions keep him talking. Solutions shut it down.

Don’t top it. When a guy tells you he’s struggling, resist the urge to say, “Man, I know exactly what you mean, last year I...” This isn’t your turn.

Don’t minimize. “At least you’ve still got the business” might be true. It doesn’t help. Let it be heavy for a minute.

Say thank you. “Thanks for telling me that” is one of the most underrated things one man can say to another. It tells him he didn’t make a mistake by opening up.

Here’s something I’ve noticed about men. We talk better shoulder to shoulder than face to face.

Put two guys across a table and tell them to share their feelings, and you’ll get a lot of staring at the menu. Put the same two guys in a truck for a two hour drive, or in a boat, or on a long walk, or working on a project in the garage, and the stuff starts coming out on its own.

There’s no eye contact to manage. There’s something to do with your hands. And the silence feels normal instead of awkward.

So if there’s a friend you’re worried about, don’t invite him to “talk.” Invite him to do something. Help him move a couch. Go fishing. Take a long drive to look at a piece of equipment. Walk the dog together. Then, somewhere in the middle, ask the second question.

Now the part that’s on you.

If you want the men in your life to tell you the truth, somebody has to go first. And if you’re the one who’s been reading this thinking about a friend, you might be the one who needs to.

The fastest way to get a real answer out of another man is to give one yourself.

“Honestly, I’ve been running on fumes since summer. Work’s been a lot, and I haven’t been sleeping. How about you, how are you really doing?”

That one sentence changes the whole conversation. It tells him the door is open, and it’s safe to walk through. You don’t have to share everything. Just one true thing.

I’ll tell you what happened when I started doing this. Not every conversation went deep. But more of them did than I expected. And I found out that a bunch of the guys I thought had it all together were carrying the same kinds of things I was. Money stress. A kid who’s struggling. A marriage that’s gone quiet. A parent who’s slipping. A business that looks great from the outside and keeps them up at night.

We’d all been saying “good, busy” to each other for years.

Maybe you read the opening of this and didn’t think of a friend. Maybe you thought of yourself.

If that’s you, here’s what I’d want somebody to tell me.

You don’t need a crisis to earn the right to talk. You don’t have to wait until the marriage is over, or the business is underwater, or the drinking is out of hand. “I’m not doing great and I don’t totally know why” is enough of a reason.

Pick one man. Not the whole group. One guy you trust, who’s kept his mouth shut before. Text him today and ask him to grab breakfast this week. When he asks how you’re doing, skip the first answer and give him the second one.

And if it’s heavier than a friend can carry, see a professional. A good counselor isn’t a sign that you’re broken. It’s a sign you take your own head as seriously as you take your truck’s engine. You’d never let a check engine light stay on for two years. Don’t do it to yourself.

The strongest men I know aren’t the ones who never struggle. They’re the ones who say so out loud, to the right person, early.

Sometimes a man won’t say anything, even when you ask twice. So it helps to know what to look for.

He goes quiet. The guy who used to text the group thread every day suddenly doesn’t.

He cancels. Once is life. Three times in a row is a pattern.

His habits change. Drinking more. Sleeping a lot more or a lot less. Not working out. Gaining or losing weight fast.

He jokes about not being around. Or about things not mattering. Or about everybody being better off without him.

That last one isn’t a joke. If a friend ever says something like that, ask him directly whether he’s thinking about hurting himself. Asking doesn’t plant the idea. It gives him permission to tell the truth. And if the answer is yes, or you’re not sure, stay with him and call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, together. You don’t need the right words. You just need to not leave.

Movember runs all of November. Whether or not you grow anything on your face, here’s what I’d ask you to do with it.

Make a list of five men. Friends, brothers, a father, a business partner, the guy on your crew who’s been off lately. Men you’d be wrecked to lose.

Ask each of them the second question this month. Not by text, if you can help it. In person, or on the phone, or side by side in a truck.

Go first at least once. Pick one of those five and tell him one true thing about how you’re actually doing.

Follow up. If somebody opens up, check back a few days later. “Been thinking about what you told me. How’s it going?” That second check in is what tells a man you meant it.

The guy from my group is doing better now. It took a while. He went to counseling. He and his wife didn’t make it, but they figured out how to be good parents from two houses. He stopped drinking alone. He still comes on Tuesdays.

And now, every week, when somebody says “good, busy,” he’s the one who leans in and says, “Okay. And how are you actually doing?”

He learned it the hard way. You don’t have to.

Somewhere in your phone there’s a guy who’s been saying “good, busy” for a long time. You probably already know who it is. Call him this week. Ask the first question. Then ask the second one, and wait.

Refined. Relentless. Unapologetic.

Marcus