Welcome back to A Man Should Know, a weekly column from Elliot Ackerman about how today’s lost boys can become tomorrow’s good men. This week, Elliot reflects on the blessing of having, and keeping, a friend.

I don’t talk on the phone with one of my closest friends. We hardly ever meet for coffee or a beer. I’m friendly with his wife, and he’s friendly with mine, but the four of us have never sat down to a meal. Yet he is one of my best friends—if not my very best.

For more than 20 years, our friendship has existed mostly within the parameters of a single activity: We run together for an hour or more early in the morning. We do this about once a month, and in those predawn hours we talk about everything. When the run ends, we hug, I tell him I love him, and a couple of weeks later one of us texts the other: “Get a run in?” And we do it again.