‘I LOOK AT MY WIFE’S BUZZING PHONE WITH A SENSE OF ENVY’
Harry de Quetteville, 44
‘Why are you so crap?” is something my wife says to me from time to time. I smile. I know it’s no insult. She doesn’t mean it generally. Not really. She means it specifically, if I’m moping about. As in: “Why are you so crap at having friends?”
Then again, she does mean it generally in a way. The “you” in her question is not just me, but all men. I understand what she means. We don’t call. We don’t write.
Naturally, I would pack her off to re-education camp for making such broad gender-based assumptions – but for the ghastly, yawning chasm it would leave in my social life (now organised entirely by her).
My wife, on the other hand, would be getting to know all the others in the camp, sharing stories and swapping numbers, and on her return would have even more friends to add to the countless hordes already in her address book – whom she manages to keep up and empathise with, and whose children’s names she manages to remember. All while holding down a job and co-raising our family.
Where does she get the energy? It’s a superpower I don’t have, I’m afraid.
I used to have friends. I used to go out to parties and meet fun people and be invited out to other parties and socialise and, and, and – that’s how I met my wife after all.
But somehow, recently, not so much. It’s as though my social race is run. Some might put it down to pure laziness. But I feel it’s something deeper, akin to your genes’ attitude to you once you have had children, which is: “It’s fine to carry on living if you like but frankly your task here is done so it’s all the same to us.”
So, my (anti-)social brain says: “It’s fine to carry on going out and making an effort if you like but you’re married and you’ve got one or two old friends so what more do you need?”
Well, a bit more, actually. I hanker after a broader support network, fancy bigger dollops of uncomplicated ease and understanding that male friendship brings. I look at my wife’s buzzing phone with envy. The only problem, of course, is that I’m crap. So crap in fact, that it’s hard just staying in touch with the small number of friends I already have.
This is partly, of course, because they are men too, and thus also crap. We can’t just call and say hello. There has to be a reason to see one another. So we have developed entirely artificial mechanisms for doing so. My oldest friend Phil is known to my children as “Walking Phil” because twice a year we head off together to walk long-distance routes. Walking is great because you can chat, or just potter along lost in your own thoughts. No pressure.
Another friend might as well be called “Tasting menu Ben” because he is a gastronome and we meet up generally to try out some new restaurant. These are both mere subterfuges, of course, strategies originally developed to make sure I stayed in touch with UK-based friends when I lived abroad. Now I live here, and have done for a decade. But if anything we see less of each other. So strategies remain crucial.
Given that it is this hard to keep seeing old friends, I sometimes ask myself, why bother making new ones?
But there’s not much difference. All friendships need nurturing. My wife is the master of the quick email/WhatsApp/note apropos of not a lot. Men, needing that excuse, build so many friendships around football – that weekly cover to meet or ring for a chat.
Perhaps it’s time for men to shed the social beard. When I lived in Greece I discovered that there is a word for this: parea. It means a circle of friends. It also means that to meet one person is to meet many, with each of whom you can be very close or not so much; you can see lots of a reliable pal or a little of one loathsome but amusing. It’s a marvellous, joyous pack which instils curiosity and tolerance, and fun. I had it once. I need to get it back, one – long-distance walking – step at a time.
‘Some might say its pure laziness. But it runs deeper than that’