Friday 24 June 2022 11:57 PM MAX DICKINS: Why do so many men have so few friends? How one proposal led to a ... trends now

I’d never thought of myself as the marrying kind. Yet here I am in London’s Hatton Garden, shopping for an engagement ring for my girlfriend, Naomi.

I’ve taken the grown-up decision to surprise her with a proposal, but, like most of the men I can see around me, I’m clueless about the right thing to buy.

Luckily my two former flatmates, Philippa and Hope, are on hand for moral support and expert female advice. ‘Gold or silver?’ ‘Shape of stone?’ ‘Emerald or diamond?’

I had no idea there would be this many questions.

Eighteen shops later we give up and retreat to the pub. ‘So come on,’ says Philippa over a glass of wine. ‘Tell us, then. Who are you thinking of for the best man?’

And for what feels like the hundredth time that day, I have no idea what to say.

That night, home alone in the South London flat I share with Naomi, I make a list of all the guys I might possibly consider as my best man.

I look down the roll call of candidates. I work with half of them, and we have little contact outside of that. The others I haven’t spoken to, in some cases, for years. This can’t be right, I think. I must have forgotten somebody really obvious.

I check my text messages. The last time I sent a message or received one from a friend was two months ago. WhatsApp is similarly barren.

Panicking, I Google the phrase ‘getting married, no best man’. There are 994 million results.

‘I have what people would consider a successful life,’ writes one desperate guy. ‘I have a job, a house and a beautiful partner. We’re getting married after six years together, but I got thinking about a best man.

‘All of a sudden it hit me that I have no real close friends. I just got smacked in the face by loneliness.’

Further Googling tells me this bleak scenario is not unusual. One 2018 survey asking men how many of their friends they could discuss a serious topic such as money, work or health worries with, reveals that just under half could think of no one at all.

I realise that while I might have a few mates — work mates, pub mates — I don’t have any friends. How the hell has this happened to me? I wonder. And what can I do about it? I make it my mission to find out.

‘Why don’t you just text someone?’

Naomi is sitting on the edge of our bed. There’s hair removal cream smothered all over her top lip and down the sides of her mouth, giving her the appearance of a Mexican drug lord.

‘I will,’ I moan.

‘You always say that and then you don’t.’

‘I can’t just text someone. I’ve got nothing to say …’

‘Say: “Do you want to have a drink?” It’s simple.’

‘Sounds like I’m asking them out on a date.’

‘All right, how about: “It would be good to catch up.”’

‘I can’t …’

‘WHY NOT?!’

‘It’s just not what guys do!’

There are lots of unspoken rules in male friendship. A starter for ten: I’ve been with female friends to restaurants, ice-cream parlours, parks — you name it. But if I meet a male friend, it’s always at the pub. A curry house, maybe.

Although we must not meet explicitly ‘for a meal’. We meet ‘for a few beers’ and just happen to go and ‘get food’. No ‘quick coffees’ allowed. And blokes definitely don’t meet ‘for a lovely slice of cake’.

Another rule: don’t be the one who does the reaching out. Let them do the organising, the inviting, the chasing. If you do it, well, that’s a bit needy, isn’t it?

But Naomi was right: if I keep on behaving in the same way, I’ll keep on getting the same result.

I message all the guys on my ‘best man’ shortlist: ‘Hello mate. Would be great to have a pint in the next couple of weeks if you’re free?’

I put my phone down and immediately feel nervous. What if they’ve moved on? Or what if they do what I normally do? They’ll open the message, I’ll see the blue ticks to show they’ve read it … and then they’ll ignore me.

Within minutes, Seb replies. ‘So great to hear from you! How’s things?’

I’m surprised at how excited I am to get his message.

He continues: ‘Listen I’d love to meet up, but I’ve got some news . . .’

I wait for his next missive. Twenty seconds becomes a minute, becomes quarter of an hour. Oh my God, he’s terminally ill! Seconds later a photo of a two-week-old baby arrives.

Seb is one of my oldest friends. Yet the grim truth is that I’d had no idea he and his wife were even thinking of having a baby.

Despite my mountainous ineptitude at friendship, it seems my old pals are pleased I’ve got back in touch. Soon I have a series of meet-ups planned. For the first time in years, my social diary is filling up.

It’s about time I took responsibility for my social life. If men were honest, we often leave that stuff to our wives and girlfriends.

Social scientists have a term for this phenomenon: ‘kin keeper’. Coined in the mid-1980s, ‘kin keeping’ is the act of maintaining and strengthening familial ties. And guess what? Every study shows women shoulder this responsibility a lot more than men.

Without kin keepers, family and friendship groups would fall apart. And, based on the conversations I’ve been having with men these past few months, if it weren’t for their romantic partners, many men wouldn’t have any friends.

When I started going out with Naomi, I gained a new social group. The guys I see most often now are the partners of her girlfriends.

I have not done anything to build that group. I just show up.

Inside the group, I notice the other guys do the same, outsourcing the work involved to the women: keeping on top of when everyone last met, brainstorming ideas for what we might do, the clerical effort of getting everyone organised.

When you take this sort of male free-riding and remove the women from the equation, you can see why men’s friendships can be so dysfunctional.

A married female friend of mine explained it like this: ‘I

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