I have a hard time maintaining male friendships these days. The older I get, the less time I have for the sorts of activities stereotypical American males enjoy: sporting events, competitive binge drinking and collecting rare coins in a dark basement. OK, maybe that last thing isn’t nearly as common anymore, but what is common (if you believe various trend pieces in newspapers and magazines) is the increasing rarity of long-lasting male friendships. Most of my guy friends keep in touch with me through group chats or the occasional solo check-in text. I have, by my count, at least 10 group chats with different circles of friends. All of them are organized around a unifying theme – Star Trek, movie industry gossip, the Los Angeles Dodgers, hating that one guy who wore flip-flops to my wedding. My whole social life revolves around screens now. I watch a show or a baseball game and then immediately retreat into my other, smaller screen to discuss what I just witnessed with people I almost never see in real life. I will give myself credit for at least trying to be social in between working and taking my son to karate lessons, but it is, in fact, the bare minimum effort that I’m exerting. It’s almost like a welfare check, these text messages: “He responded, therefore he is not dead or in a Salvadorian supermax prison awaiting a trial that will never happen.”
Maybe this is a superior way of maintaining relationships, though. By only seeing my friends on very rare occasions, I can’t get sick of their personality quirks, their peculiar habits or their need to wear flip-flops to black-tie events. Seriously, no one wants to see your toes at a wedding, man. Cut it out.
