Richard Dorment

MH: So what happened? Its early fall, youre minding your own business, covering the biggest political news in a generation, and...

CM: I had gone to a couple of urologists and had gotten a physical exam. They'd done my PSA [prostate-specific antigen] number, and it had risen from around five to higher than seven. I was told that the number wasnt quite as important as the hike, or the rise, of the number, and my doctors were concerned.

MH: So you got the PSA results and saw an alarming hike. Then what?

CM: Alarming may be overdoing it. But concerning. I think I had a physical exam. Then I had an MRI. Then I had a biopsy. What they do there is they superimpose the results of the MRI, looking for the trouble spots there, and then they overlay that with the biopsy results and they can really locate the problem areas. They found one that was particularly concerning that had a Gleason score of 9, with containment in the organ.

MH: Which is great news. All things considered.

CM: It was a pretty easy decision to go for surgery rather than radiation or some other treatment. It made sense. The surgery was at the National Institutes of Health, and they did it on October 7. I stayed in the hospital from Monday to Friday, and went back in for three checks in the next seven days. Eight days later, I went in to have the catheter removed. Which was a day. And I've been fine ever since. They said I was clear of all other problems. [The cancer] was getting close to the periphery, but they were able to fully remove the problem. I was out of work for two weeks.

MH: That's not a lot of recovery time.

CM: It's a long time if you work in this business. It wasn't one of those things where you had to explore options. I think it's pretty clear that if I hadn't done anything, I'd be facing a five-year situation.

MH: That clarifies things pretty quickly.

CM: I never thought of it that way. I just thought of it as another deadline to deal with in life. And you just have to make a decision. Like going on a TV show every night. You gotta do it. I wouldn't even consider this a particularly bad situation. One thing I was struck with was how other people's problems are really pretty dramatic. And in some cases awful. Mine wasn't. I've been very lucky in my life.

MH: So much of approaching situations like cancer is how you approach it mentally. A lot of peopleparticularly when they hear "You have cancer"experience a lot of stress.

CM: To be honest, what I heard was: You've got a situation you gotta deal with.

MH: But were there any moments when you sort of had to take a deep breath?

CM: I didn't have any stress. I got up that morning. Kathleen, my wife, drove me over there, went over there with me. It was one of those things in life, like taking the SATs or GREs. It's a thing you have to go through. I didn't see it as frightening. These doctors are good.

MH: Was there a moment when you thought, I don't have time for this. I'm about to enter another impeachment cycle nearly 20 years since the last time I covered an impeachment on Hardball?

CM: My bosses are very understanding here at NBC. I had malaria once. I got three weeks off for that, because my doctor said, "Take another week." All you have to do is tell your bosses what your doctor says, and they honor it.

MH: But you're not the type of guy who goes to work because thats what his bosses expect. You go because youre driven. Was there a part of you that felt like you were missing something?

CM: I'm not crazy. I can take off. I love Saturday morning. It's my favorite time of the week. And one of the parts I like about it is reading the paper. Because I don't have to read it. But I read it because I love it. I do like to decompress. There are times I say, "I need the day off."

Chris Matthews Plays Hardball with Prostate Cancer

MH: What's the secret to your energy levels at age 73?

CM: M&amp;Ms? I got over that habit, but that was a bad habitwhole saddlebags of M&amp;Ms. Now, about 4:30, 5:00, I will feel the day getting long. That'll get to me. So I'll take a ten-minuteand I mean ten-minutenap. You know, all my heroesKennedy and Johnsonall those presidents had that afternoon-nap habit. They really did.

MH: This fall marks the 20th anniversary of your nightly show, and just like in the early days of Hardball, youre covering a potential presidential impeachment. How are you preparing yourself mentally and physically and journalistically for the next 18 months?

CM: I've been following elections since I was a kid, since I was six. I'll tell you something. I have one unique advantage. Interest. I'm interested in this topic of politics. It's my great life gift. That I care. And I'm not saying that I'm more patriotic than anyone else. I'm more fascinated than most people I know about how this thing works.

MH: It gets you on the air at 7:00.

CM: Remember in the movies, they'd say, "Break down the front pagethis story is gonna break this town wide open." Well that happens almost every night. Something happens at 6:30. The Times, The Post, Daily Beast, Politico, The Journalsomebody posts a story and it's bigger than anything I've been working on. And so we go with it. And that's the best nights we get around here. Our best nights.

For 20 years, political junkies of all persuasions have been tuning in five nights a week to watch Chris Matthews grill the days top troublemakers on MSNBCs Hardball. But it wasnt until he was missing from the anchor chair for a few nights this fall that his fans learned why hed gone MIA: The network announced that Matthews was one of the more than 174,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer every year, and he had undergone surgery to take care of it. Here, Matthews talks with Mens Health abou...

Somehow men and friendships had become a whole thing, and to understand how and why it had become a whole thing, you need to look at the most famous and widely circulated data on the subject. It comes from something called the <a href="https://gss.norc.org/" id="ab2f2b5b-4181-3df0-ac57-51e9f6d0dab5"> General Social Survey </a> , which polled more than a thousand Americans back in 2004 and presented two distressing trends: The social networks of men and women had each shrunk by about a third since 1985, with both genders saying they had about two close friends; and there was a huge increase in social isolation, particularly among young white men.

Men Aren't Lonely. Stop No-Friend-Shaming Us.

Social isolation is no joke, with <a href="https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/social-isolation-loneliness-older-people-pose-health-risks" id="d9a1d9dd-4e4f-3996-a374-724fab61a5e4"> countless studies linking it </a> to higher mortality rates, higher risks of dementia, and higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. (A <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25910392" id="cfb0dd1c-f615-31c6-aafd-ece05d6152d3"> 2015 study out of Brigham Young University </a> found that lonely and isolated people could see their life expectancy fall by about 30 percent.) It is, quite literally, a killer, and Ive made myself especially vulnerable. Ive moved towns twice in the past two years, each time starting fresh without knowing a single person, and Ive spent a lot of quiet nights home aloneor, like, grocery shopping or watching way too much Netflixwondering what people in my new town, the ones with actual friends, were doing. (Having fun together, probably. Or at least not feeling lonely.) Ive lost count of how many times Ive stood on the periphery of a group of guys bullshitting effortlessly, the way that real friends do, and cursing myself for being so shy and awkward around new people. See? Sad! And also potentially fatal.

So I did what any rational, sane, not-at-all-worried-about-dying-sooner-and-alone person would do. I interviewed a dozen sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and bona fide authorities about what it means to make and keep a friend today. I read hundreds of pages of studies, reports, and academic papers on how guys build and maintain their social networks. And then I commissioned my very own online survey to assess what kind of friend I am. I randomly selected about 70 people from my contact list, sent them ten multiple-choice questions from Survey Monkey, and promised them total anonymity in exchange for some brutally honest feedback. Id met all of them through work or school or just being a sentient, social human being, and I started with a simple questionDo you consider me a friend?and went a little deeper from there. (Given the anonymity, I dont know who answered and what they said, but more than one contact friend?emailed me right back with some combination of WTF and Are you okay? Do you need to talk?)

Through all my poking and prodding and surveying, I learned a lot about how men (including me, and probably you) make and keep friends. Like: All that stuff about men having no friends and being more socially isolated than women? Mostly wrong. And: You probably shouldnt consider your wife your best friend, and our wives and girlfriends and partners maybe didnt really mean it when they asked us to share our hopes and dreams and frustrations and fears with them. And: Friends are great, and therapists are great, but theyre not the same thing. And maybe most important: Theres no one right way to make or keep or be a friend, and like everything else in our lives, its probably something that most of us could get a little better at.

THERE'S SOME GOOD news/bad news going on here. Yes, one out of four people who call me a friend right now say its probably not going to last through the Ivanka Trump administration, which sort of makes me sad. But then, when I see that Ive made half of all my current friends in the past ten years, Im reminded that friends are a renewable resource. Things change, people change, and friends will fall in and out of your life. And the only thing stopping you from making new ones is you.

So how can I (or any of us) make new friends, or improve our existing friendships, moving forward? I can start by doing what Ive heard many single people refer to as putting myself out thereby signaling and telling others that I want to be their friend. Its hard for men to pick up the phone or send a text and say, Hey, I want to see you. It's a little embarrassing to want someone else in that way, says Schwartz. But then I look back on how I made friends as a kidand how I see my nine-year-old son doing it nowand it usually all starts with a simple question: Do you want to play? It really doesnt have to get more complicated than that, guys.

Once youve made those connections, make plans, and then make more plans, and then keep making plans, and, most important, do not bail. Basketball games. Book clubs. Running clubs. Anything that brings you together with someone(s) on a semi-regular basis. Rather than just assuming that you will get together with a friend, you need to plan it, says Schwartz. Thats the biggest change that people can make that can make friendships flourish. If you have a regular way of doing something together and have it become an automatic part of your life, that will grow and grow rich connections. There is something important and powerful about that.

And when youre hanging out, if you want to talk about something heavy or serious, be mindful of how much youre divulging and what youre expecting from the other person. Read the room and share accordingly. If we all have a couple of relationships in which we feel we are actually known by the other person, says Schwartz, we all feel better.

And for the love of Joey and Ross and Chandler, avoid the temptation to treat the other person as your therapistits not their job to solve your problems or help you deal with your stuff. We should all aim for that sweet spot where we enjoy close relationships without getting too weighed down by taking on other people's problems too strongly, says Rose. Their job, and your job, is simple: to be a friend.

THERE IS SOMETHING a little sad about an almost-middle-aged man spending the better part of his summer thinking about whether he has any friends. Okay: Its a lot sad, but a few months ago, after my social-media feeds started filling up with posts and takes on a crisis in mens friendship <a href="https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a27259689/toxic-masculinity-male-friendships-emotional-labor-men-rely-on-women/" id="68010a75-3e70-3683-a803-4ccc7dc5472d"> men have ...

Men Don’t Need More Friends. They Might Just Need Therapy.

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Richard Dorment

Articles written by the author

Chris Matthews Plays Hardball with Prostate Cancer

Men Don’t Need More Friends. They Might Just Need Therapy.