New Friends and the Search for Love

In the November 2008 issue of GQ magazine (yes I read it for the articles as much as straight men read Playboy for the provocative writing.), Devin Friedman, senior correspondent, composed an article titled "Will you be my black friend?". While the article deals with how racially heterogeneous our friends tend to be as we get older -- and in his case, all but two are white.

One part of lengthy article struck me the most:

"[I]t's hard for men to make new friends, period, as life proceeds and one is no longer 23 years old and no longer has roommates named Jay and Sean and Josh. All new friends come prepackaged. All new friends are couple friends. MattAndChloe, SethAndSusan, ElizabethAndMichael. I can't say exactly why. I have a theory that men get more bearlike as they age, increasingly taciturn, hairy, prone to long spells of slumber, prone to growly solitary rummaging. The man can get unsocialized as he ages...the more isolated he becomes, the more rarefied his world is, the more other humans seem to be accerlerating away from him...."

I'm now in my mid-life. I'm no longer attached to an academic institution nor have I taken a class outside of my gym. Most of the people I meet are through work and the significant others of people I already know; I rarely meet single friends of friends. I'm still single. And there is the rub!

How will I ever meet a single, eligible bachelor if I'm not into the bar scene or other seedy places the modern gay man meets other gay men for hook-ups and possibly more?

In fact an attached friend of mine and I got into this conversation the other day. He observed that I have a lot of friends who are couples. And it's true! Most of these guys, I've known since they were single. And through the years, they've slowly found the one -- gay or straight. Some have gotten married, others are engages, and a few have simply set up house together. And me, I'm single, and since finding the one has not been a priority, I'll probably continue so into the foreseeable future.

The question my audience is: Where does a single, eligible gay man who is not "ovulating" go to meet another single man if all his friends are attached or soon to be so? Discuss!