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I hope most of us have had this formative experience in some flavor:

It's 1995, I'm 15 years old, and I'm at a daily brink of collapse from the isolating pressure and loneliness of being in high school:

• I care painfully about what my peers think of me
• I don't have any close friends
• My Catholic high school condemns every single thing I think is awesome
• I'm freaking out studying for the SATs so I don't fuck up the rest of my life
• My parents seem to hate me
• I don't fit right anywhere, and
• I feel like an ugly loser almost all the time

But this is top secret! Because I am the only person who feels like this.

Everyone I've ever met has their shit together. I am the dork of the world.

But one Saturday night in the first quarter of sophomore year, I sleep over at my geometry-class-acquaintance Meg's house.

We're awake at the witching hour (2am): the time of night that if we were 6 or so years older, we'd be crashing out of bars together shouting lyrics to pop musicals and shrieking with laughter.

2am does something super-special to the human brain even before you're old enough to drink, though. While Meg and I sit on the floor leaning against the bed, one of us says something shockingly funny and honest and, to paraphrase MTV's The Real World, we stop being polite and start getting real.

We're suddenly chatting in intimate detail about everything that's ever been private - no question or answer feels taboo. Each sparkling new bite of I can trust you with this intel is thrilling.

Time stops - I'm not sure how long we're talking and dying laughing, but it feels like both 15 minutes and forever.

Everything else in life falls away and it's just us, the only two people in the world that understand anything at all.

She gets it! I feel so understood!

And I get her too - I had no idea how hilariously bold she is with what she's done and what she's about. We're the same person!

I'm playing strip poker with my new best bud, but look, ma - no cards! Each time I show MY hand, she unbuckles something new. She keeps upping the ante with "you think that's crazy" secret stories until both of us have sailed well past the everyday borders of TMI.

You feel like this too?

And you did WHAT with him?!

What did it feel like?

We're new to strip poker and maybe suck at it, which is probably why the BVDs are coming off so eagerly. You show me yours, and I'll show you mine.

What a relief! This feeling of closeness is amazing!

I'm about to argue why these secret 1:1 conversations are some of the most important snapshots in time you'll ever have in your short and lonesome human life - and that sleepover talks don't need to be confined only to your 10th-grade best bud's messy bedroom.

Sleepover talks in adulthood, and especially the ones with your copilots in the busyness of midlife, are critical to human happiness in America in 2022 - we'll come back to that in a minute.

Some groundwork: if this, then that

One unexpectedly philosophical day that same school year, Mr. Letiziano, a theology teacher I really liked - he was hilariously frank, prickly, and smoked Newports out the side door of my high school's main building during the school day - took off on an unprompted tangent about how he would handle a magic genie that gave him only one wish.

"I would wish for...happiness," he said, seeming wistful and far away. "Everything you chase in life - money, love, power, closeness to God - all that is supposed to lead to happiness. And sometimes it doesn't work. I would skip the middleman and wish for what everyone actually wants."

Friendly, down-to-earth teachers who treated the students like intelligent, trustworthy, and competent people were memorable and precious to me because it seemed like the grown-ups got it even less than my peers did.

Another teacher like that, Mr. Uhlenbracht, talked to us often about strategies for how to win at life, a skillset which he thought was way more important than his economics curriculum.

I just loved him. He treated us like interesting people worth knowing.

Mr. U's primary argument throughout that whole school year was that the only aspect of adult life that would actually make you fulfilled, happy, and whole was good relationships.

He wrote this in my yearbook when he released his class of '98 hatchlings out into the real world:

If happiness is what you should shoot for, and good relationships are the only substantive and reliable way to be happy - then good relationships should be your white whale for a decent life.

Got it.

So how does a person even figure out how to do that?

My buds Mark and Cheeks

​Mark Manson, one of my favorite authors, has not one but two germane ideas to throw in here. The first is his criteria for a good relationship (of any kind):

MM also wrote an awesome short piece about the one rule for a good and moral life. I thought the burrito metaphor he wrote for this was smart and spot-on, and I hope you take a look at it, but here's the headline:

Manson translated an Immanuel Kant idea (the “formula for humanity" from 1788's The Critique of Practical Reason) into something useable for those of us in the 21st century:

So far so good, right? Exchange trust, respect, and affection, and don't use people.

And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - pronounced "me HIGH? Cheeks SEND me high!" (relatable) - is a recently-departed psychologist who was so influential he's been mentioned on every single episode of every psychology podcast I've ever listened to.

Cheeks was world-renowned for his work studying happiness and creativity - and most famous for architecting the concept of flow.

Flow is hopefully familiar to you even if you didn't have a name for it - a divine state in which you are 100% absorbed in a task that's precisely the right amount of challenging but doable.

On a good day, I hit the flow state writing this newsletter or laboring in Photoshop to get these white cat whiskers just right for a meme a given friend would find very hilarious.

You know how you'll get deep into an activity and look up to notice it's dark out because six hours have passed and you forgot to eat dinner?

Hell yeah! That's flow!

Stitching together the concert-tee quilt

Mutual respect, trust, and affection: 1 person per elevator

United-States culture under capitalism is not friendly to deep 1:1 connections. We're brainwashed by politicians and corporations (they're the same people) into this practical illusion that we have to compete with our peer groups for all sustaining resources.

So how do you get mutual respect, trust, and affection with and from someone you think is an active threat?

You don't!

On the other hand, at best, groups of folks can be in place to support you and ALSO keep you on your prosocial best behavior.

But even benevolent groups of people aren't ideal for feeling deeply understood and connected - they have rules, customs, and hierarchies there that are mandatory to maintain group harmony, most of which are blanket policies.

Your weird fucking quirks and strong opinions will not necessarily be welcome!

Staying in their good graces often means they might not ever get to know the real you at all, just the lactose-free Facebook version of you.

And! As I learned in my adolescence, in the Venn diagram of these two social types, they overlap quite a bit! Horrific!

So groups ain't it! Those three bullets for good relationships can really only germinate in a 1:1 setting.

Genuine and mutual trust, respect, and affection is going to almost always be between you and one other brave, honest person - and sleepover strip poker fast-tracks that.

Your buddy is the end and not means to an end

I didn't have anything materially or socially tangible to gain from Meg - she was kind of an outcast, too - and she didn't want anything from me other than to just hang out and crack up at each others' nakedly self-deprecating stories.

Our brief and intense friendship came to an abrupt end when she turned 16, got her driver's license and a job at Ross, and started spending time exclusively with her new coworker friends.

Her bailing on me was my first real heartbreak. I only wanted her company, not anything she could do for me. I didn't set out for her to be the means to anything at all, but my end wound up being now I know how to do this.

That cherry-pop of being a completely open book with both lyrical and ugly private, taboo thoughts and experiences influenced me going after more sleepover conversations with new people throughout the rest of my life, no matter how long they hung around.

There's certainly a thrillseeking element of challenge, risk, and adventure in pursuing those close connections, too - which is something that very much speaks to me and always has.

What a gift she gave me!

The guidance of this sense memory has colored all of my adult relationships, and they've perpetually been better for it - so I'm a pretty happy person most of the time.

You were right, Mr. U!

The flow state with another person

That hang where you just click together and vibe, that flow state of being completely absorbed in something pleasant that requires your entire focus - that's the whole goal if you want to have the time of your life. If you're doing it right, the world stops turning for both of you for a few hours and everything else goes dark.

Omg, is it sunrise already?

Hours pass unnoticed, other people exist only as plot devices, and you're completely in the moment.

Entering flow with someone you think is great is what the best fun of all time looks like.

A love letter to your best friend, written in disappearing ink

Sleepover conversations are fresh-cut flowers and lightning bugs in jars. None of those are meant to last - just enjoyed while they're wild and alive and captive for the briefest second.

Memorable quotes later become inside jokes and nicknames, and just last week I made a lockscreen graphic using a gift of a soundbite my buddy gave me in a recent text-based sleepover conversation. But scurrying to inorganically lock in these hangs in broader ways yields brown, disintegrating flowers in dirty water and dead bugs in jars.

The last time I saw her, Meg was a Jesus-freak missionary with a pastor husband (a far cry from our obnoxious high-school atheism), a hairstylist day job, and a pet skunk that she fed avocados.

I don't know the first thing about her inner life now. We couldn't have recreated those deep dives we had in 1995 because my vulnerable trust in her was just gone.

We press on, separately.

Another thing learned from her is not just how to open wide but to make note that that extreme closeness might have a shelf life that's more limited than forever - so you have to appreciate and honor it, hold it loosely in your hand like a tiny bird, and make your peace with knowing it could fly away at any time.

You'll have a variety of different best buddies, some of those maybe even as ephemeral as a few hours. I had a sleepover conversation once with a total stranger at an airport gate while we waited to board a delayed flight - right around 2am!

I know now to appreciate the fleeting nature of temporary airtight bestie-hood and just enjoy the winking lightning bugs while they're still alive.

Islands in the stream

In middle age, most of us are exactly as isolated and lonely as we were when we teenagers - if not more so, because we typically don't have sleepovers except when we're blackout drunk.

Existential loneliness from living in a silo is just how it is, especially in an individualistic, every-man-for-themselves culture like ours.

To add relativity to that, our connections on Instagram look so tidy with their cool food, sweet vacations, beautiful and funny children, genius pets, and gorgeous home/garden.

They really have it all figured out! What's wrong with me?

It's not you! That kind of performing to a wide audience is just a digital iteration of something innate and primal about us. Superficial, don't-come-any-closer approval/acceptance from a big social group is how we've survived as a species and avoided dying alone of exposure or starvation.

What's missing is those dig-deep-and-be-brave-because-it's-FUN chats with one other person as often as you can actively create conditions for it.

In midlife, we have jobs, and in-laws, and children, and houses or apartments to care for, and laundry, and obligatory social events that are not designed to be fun, and all of us are oversubscribed to life-consuming responsibilities.

I'm arguing that those of us in our late 30s and early 40s especially need to make space for sleepover conversations - however you can make them fit - because keeping up appearances and laboring under capitalism on your own every single day of your fucking life is tedious, exhausting, and horrendously isolating.

It's totally counter to how social animals dying for tight relationships actually are!

The case for playing strip poker with more people

I am begging you to hook up some 1:1 strip poker and whip out your dearest wishes and wildest stories with someone you think is fun as soon as you realistically can.

We as Americans - without a a safety net or sense of meaningful social support - have a collective need to know we're not the only dork of the world, and moments of deep connection are in short supply for almost all of us.

We need a vacation from capitalists exploiting all our time for labor (we're their means!) and from having our guards up all the time to stay safe.

It's lonely and boring, and those assholes don't care if we live or die! Go chill with someone who actually does!

And please don't wait for a special occasion. Those are social constructs anyway, and they're almost always centered around groups!

Link up for a road trip, a sisters' weekend at a beach house, a deep-sea fishing adventure - or just a 1:1 hang with a favorite over brunch or a few cold ones.

I can't overstate how critical these heart-to-hearts are - even as one-offs, they're how you:

• Support growth of mutual trust, respect, and affection
• Invite your buddy to be your end in a society that treats them as means to an end
• Enter and sustain a tandem divine flow state
• Build good relationships, and
• Leverage these close connections to scaffold a deliciously fulfilling life connected to other individuals who know you well

What a gift to give yourself - and your buddy!

You can learn surprising things about yourself, have the time of your life for free, and vibe deep with another person for a few hours as those t-shirts and tighty-whities come flying off.

What! You have an outie? Same!

Ha, I get razor burn there too!

My God! You're so exciting. You're just like me.

Music I spun while I wrote this

• Love Kills Joy: Hold On (2022)
• Frank Turner: FTHC (2022)
• Hot Water Music: Feel the Void (2022)
• Mike & the Nerve: Watershed Drive (2021)
• The Lawrence Arms: Skeleton Coast (2020)
• The Menzingers: Hold On, Dodge (2009)
• The Lawrence Arms: Buttsweat and Tears (2009)
• Dead to Me: Cuban Ballerina (2006)
• Strike Anywhere: Dead FM (2006)

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