Good dad, decent husband, bad friend

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I write letters to my newborn son, Myles, sharing my journey as a first-time dad and spreading the love I didn't experience myself. If you’ve been here before — thank you for coming back. If you’re new here, here are some good places to start.

• They Say When Man Makes a Plan, God Laughs

• I Never Knew Grief Could Be a Place

Dear Myles,

I don’t know if I am a good dad or if the bar is just really low. If this were baseball, where the three pitches were named Dad, Husband, and Friend, I would probably at least bunt at the Dad pitch.

The jury is still out on whether I am a good husband. When you have a son, you can be amazing parents and great roommates, but the husband-and-wife part sometimes takes a back seat. Do you know what’s driving at 90 mph the wrong way down a one-way street every single day of your life when you are a parent? Fatigue.

But I am striking out hard on the Friend pitch. (Clearly, we have been watching a lot of baseball lately).

Something changes when you have a child. All of a sudden you’re late to everything, you can’t remember anything, and you do things that don’t make sense. At least twice a week your mother walks into the room and says something like, “Why is this [random item] in this [random place where it has no business being]?” Like a game of Mad Libs, my last one was yogurt in the spice cabinet. But I can live with that. It’s not like I forgot the fork in the microwave. Although once, when your mother made broccoli, I couldn’t remember if I had eaten it or packed it. Lo and behold, a week later, moldy broccoli spawned from the cabinet. I don’t know if this started when you were born, or if my inability to remember anything and everything was always there, and having you in the picture just makes everything feel like I’m cooking in the bathroom.

Here’s what else has changed—my friendships. I used to be the strong friend, the one you could call when you just needed to talk and shoot the poop. The one you could bet a million dollars on to answer the phone. But now—please don’t call me. Even if you did, you wouldn’t get any richer, because I have a son, and somewhere along the way, I became the bad friend.

Someone should’ve sent the memo that when you become a parent, everything changes. You can’t just call friends to talk anymore; you have to schedule a freaking phone call. One of my friends and I have a monthly Thursday call on our calendars. It went well for the first four months, but now it’s just taking up a spot. Back in the day, those were the feral times, the wild ones, when we could just call each other and talk. It was easy, and normal, we just talked on the phone while doing nothing. But now, parenting is like running a business. If it’s not life or death—even if there’s a chance we could all be millionaires—it still needs to be scheduled.

wild times

Or there were days when I didn’t really need an app to tell me my friends’ birthdays. Fun fact: I’ve stopped using social media for months now so I can be more present with you—and I forgot my best friend’s birthday. Check out this text she sent:

It was a week after her birthday, and she had to remind me that I forgot. I made an excuse—with typos, of course—and finally apologized. I love my friend so much. She loves that I’m a father, but she doesn’t allow me to use fatherhood as an excuse for being a bad friend. I know missing birthdays doesn’t make me a bad friend, but this was the second year in a row. And missing two best friend birthdays in a row doesn’t make me a bad friend, but friendship and love need to be reciprocated. You can’t just keep taking from people without investing back. Like, what if friendship was a savings account? Worse than an overdraft fee, you eventually just lost someone you cared about because you never made a deposit, never checked the balance, never showed up when it mattered. The truth is, maybe a kid makes you do things like store yogurt in the spice cabinet, but maybe I’m just a bad friend.

I’ve been meaning to schedule a call with another dad for weeks now—just so we can talk. But sometimes your mother and I are so tired that after we put you to bed, we barely want to talk to each other. We just want to relish in the silence of central air, crickets, and not having to worry about the thousand ways you could hurt yourself in the last two hours we have before sleep. Honestly, after a long day, we all sometimes just need space—and some of us clearly just need more hours in a day just so we can shower.

The dad I need to call this week.

It’s been about three weeks now, and I still haven’t called him back, but I hope he got a chance to take a shower.

Your mother tells me that friendship and true intimacy are birthed in the inconvenience—when you’re too tired or don’t feel like doing something, but you show up anyway. I want to ask her if she and I are parenting the same kid, but she’s right. Being tired and having a kid is no excuse for not showing up for people. It’s not some free “get out of jail” card called the toddler excuse. Trust and believe, I played that card way too often, and each time, I realized skipping out cost me more than just a few hours; it cost me connection.

Me using the toddler card for the 65345 times.

Recently, I missed your God mother’s anniversary even though it was on my calendar. By the time I realized, I felt so guilty, because I’m tired of apologizing for being a bad friend. I just avoided it altogether. There’s more proof I’m a bad friend. Maybe I’m just a bad person.

Years ago, I read a tweet from my good friend

NJ Fiction

, who I’ve known since high school, that keeps coming back to me now. It went something like: “Some people say they want community, but in truth, they just want a kingdom. They want everyone to invest in them, but they themselves don’t want to invest in people or other relationships—they want relationships to center around them.”

And I know that wasn’t a subtweet, but damn—it sure felt like a submarine in my side. I don’t want a kingdom; I want community. I want to be better to my community. I don’t want to be just a good dad, a decent husband, and a bad friend. I’m tired of apologizing to the people I love saying over and over again, “I’m sorry I didn’t call back, I’m sorry I missed your anniversary, I’m sorry I missed your birthday.” I’m tired of them giving me grace, loving me, and understanding that things are different now because I’m a parent. Maybe they understand because they are parents too, or maybe they aren’t, but truthfully, you shouldn’t be the scapegoat. I want to be a better friend, but I just don’t know how.

I’m afraid one day the forgiveness will stop and the “lol” will too, and one day I’ll be left on read. I’m afraid I’ll be a good dad, a decent husband, with no friends. I’m afraid I’ll be the best dad, but I’ll be lonely. That when I die, I’ll be survived by the memories of “Marc and I used to be good friends,” and all the memories will be in past tense—not because I’m gone, but because the only memories my friends will have to share are all old ones. Well, that got dark really quickly.

Hey, if you’re my friend and you’re reading this, I want you to know I love you, and thank you for loving me. Truthfully, I struggle with loving myself sometimes. Maybe that’s why I love being a dad and husband, because every day, even when I don’t feel it, I have a family that reminds me I’m worth loving. Myles, when you are able to read this and wonder why I have no friends, I want you to know it wasn’t your fault. I think I just didn’t know how to be a good friend.

But today, I’m declaring something new: I’ll be a better friend to my friends, and after reading this over and over again, it looks like I can start by being a better friend to myself.

I love ya’ll and there's nothing you can do about it.

Love,

Good dad, decent husband, and a friend in progress.

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And if you are on Substack, please restack this letter and recommend it so I can share this love with the world.

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Let me know your thoughts:

1. How do I be a better friend?

2. Have you ever missed an important date—birthday, anniversary—and how did you handle it?

3. What’s the strangest place you’ve ever found an everyday item—like yogurt in the spice cabinet?

4. Do you feel like some people want community, or just a “kingdom” where everything revolves around them?

5. How do you balance loving others with loving yourself?

6. Have you ever felt like you were surviving on grace from others more than showing up for them?

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Want more of Myles’ Letters?

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• A video about beautiful backgrounds: Tell Them Where You're From.

• Read about My Wife’s Love Affair - It’s exactly what you don’t think

• Have you ever been Cooking in the Bathroom kind of tired?

• Check out Carrying the Gift, Holding the Love