| One of the things that I’ve noticed this year more than others is that once you are in that dubious territory between being a “single gal” and the elusive state of being happily settled down in wedded bliss, is that you suddenly have a lot less single guy friends. I was playing pool with one of my longest standing besties last night and we were discussing some of the fellows we knew at uni. She asked after a particular fellow who I had been to a performing arts event with a couple of years ago and always got along well with, and I realized I hadn’t heard from him for ages. Our last contact was about a year ago chatting online pretending to be superheroes bent on destroying one another and the world by any means possible – juvenile I know. But I miss the guy although perhaps not the odd conversations so much.
It put me to mind of another friend from my post-grad study who always, always came to my birthday parties until this year. I especially needed him as I had 4 single girls attending and only one single guy.
R informed me that it may have something to do with bringing along a wonderful boyfriend to the party last year. They were probably interested and got scared off.
I’m still not quite accepting of that theory.
Perhaps I’m in denial, because I actually enjoyed many of the friendships I have with these guys! That and I still have a lot of single gal friends so it’s kind of useful to have even numbers on the few occasions I ask every one to come out for dinner (I will clear myself of any attempts at matchmaking here as I know that most of my friends don’t get along with/like each other so I don’t even try).
Anyhow, I shall have to find out if this is a universal principle or it’s just coincidence that I seem to be hearing from my friends less. If it is true, it’s also very confusing as I really got the impression that most of my male friends weren’t interested in that way. Is it really true that men and women can't be friends? | 
• 27/11/2008 - guys
There's nothing platonic about it. We are talking about animal instincts here.