It started as ideas, good and bad, often do: in a bar.
My soccer team—a group of mostly middle-aged dads in suburban New Jersey—was enjoying its weekly pint after the game when we started talking about how much fun it would be to play against a similar team in Mexico City, where several of the players I raised us. The idea gradually gained momentum until suddenly, one day last December, we were buying plane tickets.
But let me back up: A few years ago, I moved to Madison, NJ, after decades in New York. I didn’t know anyone there outside of my family. Busy with work and settling my daughter, I didn’t have much time to think about socializing. As an introvert who works from home, this was never going to be easy. As a 50-something, I had met my closest friends decades earlier. Did I need new ones?
What I wanted to do was bring my football habit with me from the city. Finally, through my neighbor Andrea, who was born in Italy, I found a regular pickup game. The first race was enjoyable and the team seemed nice so I kept showing up.
Mostly expats, my new teammates ranged in age and background, and I loved being exposed to their perspectives. The youngest, Jorge, an elementary school teacher originally from Colombia, was not half my age, and we joked that I adopted him.
As we got to know each other better, we became more of a team — wearing custom “Madison Soccer and Beers” logo jerseys — and activities began to expand. We used to get together to eat or go mountain biking. we even tried paintball. Soon, I was telling the kids how lucky I felt to have found them, and they were saying just as mean things.
After a few months, I started to realize that my hunger to play football was not all about the game. I was looking for a connection. But as the trip to Mexico approached, I began to have some doubts: I had been the oldest man for about 10 years — could I keep going? Did I really want to share an Airbnb with 14 others? And would I be grilled about my extreme sleep routine: eye mask, mouth tape, wall of white noise?
What if it turned out I didn’t like kids that much? What if they didn’t like me?
“All relationships involve risk,” Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, told me when I searched for data on men and friendship. “You always run the risk of being uncomfortable with someone or getting too close to them. If we become so averse to getting to know each other, we miss opportunities for greater intimacy.”
In a study conducted by Dr. Hall, it took 40 to 60 hours together to describe themselves as casual friends and more to become “good” or “close” friends. This kind of time is relatively easy to find for young adults. But for older guys like me, Dr. Hall noted, “it’s not developmentally typical to spend a lot of time with your friends, without partners, without children.”
So how do we cultivate friendships? One way, he told me, is to find a “group of people who share a common interest, who will show up every week to share a hobby.” You may not click equally with everyone, but you fill the pond with potentially deeper friendships.
In my research, I learned that men feel the effects of the “friendship slump” harder than women. And there is some evidence from the travel industry that women travel more than men. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that a men’s trip was juvenile, or that it might carry over into a remake of “The Hangover.”
Taking a trip with the boys (or playing football at all, for that matter) suddenly seemed trivial. But Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University who specializes in the study of loneliness, told me that being more socially connected has clear health benefits, and not just on the football field.
“The more you feel supported by your social network,” said Dr. Holt-Lunstad, “the lower your blood pressure, the lower your resting heart rate.” And that includes casual friendships. “We have different kinds of needs and goals that are fulfilled by different kinds of relationships,” he said.
And so, Mexico.
As it turned out, the trip, carefully arranged by Alberto (whose family still lives in Mexico City), was a success. We walked the streets and museums of the city, ate huge lunches, sang with mariachi in the gondolas on the canals of Xochimilco, cheered for the lucha libre wrestlers and wandered around the ancient site of Teotihuacan.
We played our soccer match at the crowded training ground of Cruz Azul, a professional club, (thanks to our well-connected teammate Victor) and joined our opponents afterward for a lavish barbacoa feast. We gave each other nicknames (Shaun, one of two US-born boys on the trip, was called “Tío Sam” — Uncle Sam — for his light gray hair and goatee).
Were there times when I longed to change the music or return to a quiet hotel room? For sure. But putting 15 of us in an Airbnb – or our rolling disco in a van, driven steadily by Alberto’s uncle Jesús – created a kind of forced familiarity, as well as the need to adapt. Even the moments of inconvenience, like a brief power outage at the Airbnb, added to the fun.
By some metrics – lack of sleep, overeating and drinking – the trip was the unhealthiest thing I’ve done in years. But few things have made me feel better.
At one point, Iñaky, a native Spaniard who runs a construction company, said a friend had seen photos he posted online and asked, “What, are you at a bachelor party or something?” No, we weren’t marking anyone’s transition into a new stage of life. We were just celebrating our own deepest friendship.
We are already planning next year’s trip.
