Why Men have No friends?

Or is it just me?

As men age, mature and bore making room for friends takes effort. The jarring fact that everyday life will happen every day of your life, squeezes friendship into the weary cracks between everything else. 

Adult relationships are mostly admin. Even the most spontaneous of pints is discussed for 2-3 yonks. ‘We must do something soon’ translates into ‘we musn’t do anything ever’. That thing at thingy’s thing is postponed indefinitely, before it’s so much as poned.

Many of my hopeless gender couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery. Although taking into account venue-hire, staffing, and licensing permits, that is easier said than done. 

So that biennial playdate is left up to chance or, more often than not, the relentless competence of femalekind. Dudes settle on befriending the partners of the friends of their partners, out of sheer inaction. So most fading bromances are only topped up with a quarterly hattrick of tired Whatsapp messages.

In moving abroad, my male defriending process has been accelerated by an average of twenty years, three redundancies and two spouses.

I don’t have friends. Not on this landmass at least.

But, I do have friend, plus her boyfriend, now also my friend, and my girlfriend. So, all in all, I’m amassing a pretty bitchin’ posse out here. Nothing that would constitute a friendship circle, but a modest rhombus that keeps loneliness at its edges. 

However, a hundred per cent of my friends I haven’t locked into a romantic and tenancy agreement are possibly moving abroad, a different abroad. There’s nothing aspirationally rhomboidal about that.
 
My girlfriend insists I’ve got to put myself out there - outside. She reasons that sitting in your pants on a sofa all day isn’t going to make you any friends - but that always worked for me in the past. Adult companionship doesn’t just form around you in a pleasing fog of ganja and naivety.

Over thirty, consciously making friends feels worse than having no friends at all. The rejection from chatting up a girl has nothing on the cringe of courting some dull bloke: a rejection of who you are.

After a systematic campaign of gentle encouragement, which all good partners specialise in, my girlfriend had me convinced.

Yeah, maybe I should lay my best moves on the waiter at the pizzeria below our flat - we do come from the same country, don’t we? Now we order in.

My estranged homies carry more wit in their recessive left nuts than half the comedians interviewed by Joe Rogan. What are the chances of meeting a new friend that could hold a candle to the left nuts of my friends? Or could hold a lit cigarette to the left nut of mine, like my friend did?

The webs of nonsense they weave tangle up words into the only conversations I’ve ever invested in. Jokers who doll out the kind of hissing burns, which leave you with no biological response but laughter - and a scabbing teste.

When I see dear pals my cheeks ache, as if those silly muscles have atrophied. Great friends who can read the discrepancy between your words and face - and instantly apprehend.

People of a certain age only need a bus route in common and their BBFs 4 Life - but that’s less of a commitment for them. A perfectly nice person won’t motivate me into my trousers.

Maybe I’ll try and when it fails I can always claim it was actually all research for a piece for my blog, actually, so yeah, I’m fine with it.

Then, give up. Gradually expanding the range of sports I can bare, until my only company is cricket, golf and Formula 1.

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