Fraternity

Perhaps it is my extroverted personality, but I've always enjoyed being around friends. Unfortunately, I have come to realize that it is hard to find friends as a guy, particularly due to my religious beliefs (i.e. it is easy to find drinking buddies). I mean women in the church have their book clubs and stuff that strengthen their sororitorial (yes, I made that word up) bonds, but if you don't like the ironic fist fights, cussing, and bench warming that bear their ugly heads during church basketball, you are really at a loss for male bonding. This is particularly true for men, like myself, who move away from their hometowns.

I have been trying to rack my brain about why it is so hard for guys to make friends, especially when as teenagers we always roamed in large packs. One thing I have come up with was that as teenagers, we always talked about girls and were thus never at a loss for discussion topics. Now happily married, I am not going to get together with guys to talk about girls, so that puts us behind from the start.

Many men seem quite content and/or are too busy for the brotherhood, but I know that there are others out there like me. Here is some advice for these three categories:

To those who are content, quit playing your video games by yourself, and realize that making friends (aka networking) is good for your career. You have more chances at boosting your income, thus making your wife happier, which in turn makes you happier.

To those who are too busy, same networking thing. You also can always have kid friendly get togethers, allowing your wife a break, thus the happy thing again.

To those who want to form friendships, plan activities that would energize the other two groups. And don't wait for someone else to initiate, or you'll still be sitting at home.

Else we are forever destined to be occasional dinner friends with the spouses of our wives' friends (I only have one wife, you know what I meant).

To get you going, here are some possible activities/places to go to get you started:

• Playing sports other than basketball (tennis, flag football, controlled rugby, broom hockey, dodge ball,volleyball, tug-o-wars, golf, cycling, boating, all the stuff you used to think was fun)
• Shooting range (ok, this can go in the sports category, but I just wanted to highlight it)
• Sports to watch (try something new like going to an Irish Pub to watch rugby, horse races, what the rest of the world calls football)
  
• Game night, to include board games and/or video games (if done in couples, invite more than just one couple)
• Of course movie nights
• Taking kids to park or restaurants (at the park play some father-kid games, perhaps something like kickball)
  
• BBQ (probably should be coed, but doesn't have to be. Some Costco's have root beer kegs)

In the comment section feel free to add more potential activities.