The Thinning Address Book

Editor's note: this is a sample article. The text is placeholder copy and the byline is fictional; it is here to show how articles appear on the site.

On my fiftieth birthday I counted the people I could ring at two in the morning. It did not take long.

I had not fallen out with anyone. That is the unsettling part. Friendships I assumed were permanent had simply stopped being renewed — first by children, then by work, then by the habit of not calling.

How it happens

Men of my generation were good at friendships that came with an activity attached. We played football, or worked a shift together, or drank in the same pub. When the activity ended, we discovered that we had never learned to arrange the friendship without it.

Small repairs

I started with a rule: one message a week to someone I had not spoken to in a year. Most replied within the hour. Several said they had been meaning to do the same. Other things followed:

• A standing walk on Sunday mornings.
• A shared list of films, watched separately and argued about afterwards.
• Saying, out loud, “I have missed you.”

None of this is profound. I mention it because, for a long time, I believed that needing friends was something a man grew out of. I was wrong, and I suspect I am not the only one.¹