No Man is an Island- A Peninsula, Perhaps

You would think that as you progress in life you would accumulate friends, but this does not seem to be the case for many men I know. With a career comes the 40+ hours of work a week until the gold watch arrives. When men marry, it is not unusual for female friends to go by the wayside (often at the wife's insistence). With the arrival of children, what little time a man has away from work is generally spent "with the family." With a house comes an increase in the "honey-do" list as well as never-ending domestic projects. The result is that men tend to cocoon, involved with work, family, projects, and barcolounger, with little time or energy to cultivate a circle of friends. Yes, women are right that for them, children bring incredible time pressures and energy drains, but the children grow up, and I think that women tend to be more social animals than men anyway.

Men may retain a few friends from high school or college and perhaps develop a few "friends of circumstance" like work colleagues or neighbors, usually to participate in the rare male recreation/sports activities, but the "inner circle" tends to be quite small. Yes, life tends to separate friends and they can drift away, and a lot of men aren't the most social of sorts to start with, but the message here for you young adults, particularly men, is to work at balance in your life and don't give up friends easily. The guy who said that if on your deathbed you can look back and count fivc true friends you have lived a successful life knew what he was talking about.