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No Ties to Bind - Single Man Forgotten by Married Buddies
by Collins Yearwood
I can't recall exactly when it began to happen, but it occurs to me that virtually the entire "crew" from my teen years has been married off. My now-married friends used to contact me occasionally, but lately I haven't heard from them. Has it been a month, maybe? Two months? Six?

It seems that after the wedding bells stop ringing and the rice has been swept up, single friends of the newlyweds often find themselves as much a part of the past as the engraved swizzle sticks and the personalized matchbooks.

There are good reasons. After all, there are only 24 hours in a day. The life of the Black urban professional couple is very demanding. So free time is a precious commodity, and I am not entitled to any of it, apparently. When a baby enters the equation, I know I am doomed.

I probably should have smelled trouble early. I recall trying to line up a bowling partner or maybe just wanting to hang out. And behold, my married buddies had other things to do. Things that I always took for granted--like the ticket to the ball game I assumed would be purchased for me--were no longer available. (When did she become a sports fan, anyway?)

For some reason the disappearing married friend seems to be mostly a male problem. It's hard to discern why. My guess is that women can better sustain their relationships with one another by phone. Men seem to need more face-to-face contact. Those ancient male-bonding rituals periodically need to be reenacted. There really isn't a substitute for old-fashioned masculine competition, brotherhood and sweat. It's not that my buddies' wives don't want to go shoot hoops with us; they simply know that they're not going to be chosen by either side. And most men don't want someone boxing out their sweethearts anyway.

Just as women have very intimate friendships with their female friends, males have their equivalent. Even the most raw, uninhibited moments between a man and his wife don't approach the brutal honesty of the locker room. These are the things at which a sensible woman turns up her nose, and rightly so.

However, I believe I've found myself on the outside looking in for a more sinister reason: mistrust. As a single male, I represent wanton, unbridled lust. The dire consequences of it notwithstanding, my sexual freedom strikes mortal terror into the hearts of my friends' spouses. Their wives feat that their husbands will try to match me girlfriend for girlfriend. I am perceived to be a bad influence. It doesn't matter that my old running partner was twice as wild as I ever was.

Every now and then I get an invitation to dinner. And there are times when I'm even invited to come by and see the house. I think they're waiting for that eons-old mating instinct to surface within me. Almost like worried parents, they expectantly wait for me to present a nice, well-scrubbed young woman for their inspection. Then, and only then, will I be joyously welcomed back into the fold.

I remember feeling a strange displaced sense of guilt on some of these occasions, as if my stubborn refusal to settle down were an act of hostility. Perhaps I should have been more consistent in my choice of companion. But ever the rebel, I changed the women at my side with clocklike regularity.

Now I stand alone as the spouseless maverick. The treatment I've received from my friends' loving wives has ranged from grudging tolerance to excommunication. Recently I have even dared to revel in being single, taking full advantage of the boundless choices that belong to a young, reasonably attractive, gainfully employed Black male. And in the realm of sexual politics, the highly eligible Black man rules. So wives don't want their husbands to be reminded of the lives they led before marriage, especially during those inevitable rocky periods.

Should men be forced to choose between their wives and their friends? Theoretically they shouldn't, for we all see the unfortunate circumstances of making such a choice. There is the wife who is totally neglected by a husband who is constantly "out with the boys." On the other hand, there is the hen-pecked husband who loses the respect of both his wife and his friends. Some of my newly betrothed friends dwell in what seems absolute anonymity, resurfacing only in the form of an impersonal Christmas card--or, if I'm lucky, in a chance encounter on the street.

Nevertheless, I am not discouraged. Common sense tells me that one person cannot be your all. A wife may be a man's best friend, but probably not his drinking buddy or shopping partner. Commitment to one's new spouse should double one's stimulation, not halve it. I'm sure my married friends will eventually be more communicative.

I don't think they have abandoned me; they're just keeping me at a safe distance.

Collins Yearwood is happily single and working in corporate public relations in New York City


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