How Love Conquered Marriage is worth reading. Or, at the very least, reading newspaper extracts from. The thesis of Marriage: a History. How Love Conquered Marriage appears to be that there is too much emphasis on romantic togetherness within the marital couple, and not enough going out with your mates. Put simply, that married people have no friends. More particularly that married men have no friends.

Men and friends is a strange one. It is a cliche that men congregate round specific tasks and occasions . . . if we can call golf either a task or an occasion. But other tasks and occasions, such as football matches, are not the gathering points for men that they once were. Going to the pub to eat crisps, smoke fags and roar abuse at your favourite team is not the social event it has been in more communal times. Perhaps this is just a Dublin phenomenon but it seems that men are doing more fag smoking and abuse shouting in their own living rooms these days . . . which plays hell with the carpet.

In Marriage: a History. How Love Conquered Marriage there is a dire warning about how this state of affairs leaves men very lonely after divorce (although the more cynical amongst us might say that men tend to be lonely after divorce because they have usually fecked off with a blonde.

This is very sexist and unfair. And often true).

But the saddest part of it all is that this friendless state leaves men . . . and women . . . less than happy within what is otherwise a successful relationship.

We are told so often that we must work at our sexual relationships, spend time with each other, pay attention to our partner, that it seems no one goes out with their mates anymore. Or when they do, someone always brings their bloody husband with them.

This is partly due to sheer exhaustion, with so many people working harder and commuting longer than any previous generation. It is surely due to parenthood being unsupported by the extended family, which is often too many traffic jams away. It must be due to the sheer cost of not only maintaining a household in this extraordinarily expensive country, but to the cost of pretty simple things, like concert tickets and a night in the pub . . .

things that are kind of handy if you are going to meet your mates.

But we have to be honest and admit that it is also due to sheer laziness.

Having landed on the far-flung shore of heterosexual happiness (and homosexual couples seem to be much better at maintaining friendships outside marriage) everyone seems to pull up the drawbridge, at first in order to spend romantic nights in, and later on to watch depressing documentaries.

This places an extraordinary emphasis on the marriage relationship and, argues the author or Marriage: a History. How Love Conquered Marriage, Stephanie Coontz, this ain't good. We were better off before romance hit marriage. We were better off before we believed that we needed just one person to love. We were better off when we had a variety of people to confide in. When we did not demand that our partner had to satisfy us totally, or have to be our soul mate.

Old people had it right all along. It is better to be able to say "Ah, that fella. . ." and stomp off to play bridge, than it is to hang around the kitchen moping about the fact that your husband . . . or wife . . . does not wish to speak to you at this moment in time.

Stephanie Coontz also found that married couples tend to cut themselves off from their single friends, which is madness when you think about it. The single people I know are dependent on their families for a lot of their social and emotional life . . . as I was myself when I was single . . . but this does not augur well for the next generation of singletons, who will be from much smaller families, or only children with no brothers or sisters to provide dinner, company and another house where you can put your feet up while you watch telly.

We had better revive adult friendship before it is too late.