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The Sydney Morning Herald

Malediction of the 30-something single, straight male

If life is a football match, writes Matt Laffan, some men realise they've done their dash well before the half-time whistle.

The time has come for us 30-something single males to pause and think of our current phase in life. And recognise it.

Much is made of maternal instincts and the clock that ticks within our beloved single sisters in the same prime time of living. But we single men also have a sixth sense of the shifting seasons, despite the limitless procreative potential that swims within us.

We are complex heterosexual fellows who deserve neither scorn nor sympathy but understanding.

We spurn the spin doctor's terminology of SNAG. That restrictive title does not accommodate a man retaining his blokeness.

Our wine rack has a selection of fine whites and reds but it is complemented by a sixpack of ordinary beers in the fridge. Our CD collection is eclectic enough to befit any mood a lady might desire, but we are comfortable with the TV switched on to cable sport.

We love entertaining our girlfriends, but revel in having a place to where married mates can just escape.

But the singledom to which we belong, regarded as normal when we were in our 20s, is now viewed somewhat speculatively by partnered friends and family.

The social order we have imagined ourselves to influence is no longer as it seemed. And a primitive calling of time and place is at the heart of it. The hunter is haunted.

When we are boys our aspirations are mostly simple. We want to be heroes based largely on gender-driven story-lines: athletes, actors, astronauts, artists (rock or pop). And it is retained as a fantasy of possibility as we grow up and explore adulthood.

For those of us who follow rugby, for example, we believe in our own Wallaby potential for the better part of our formative years, no matter how talentless we are. It is our daydream security. If you ask us outright, we will acknowledge that we will never be a David Campese, but deep within the reverie of our own minds the flame of hope remains, a guiding light to our fortune.

As we go about our work and pursue everyday tasks there remains a sense of purpose to it all with just a bit of training and luck the green and gold could be ours. But a time comes when that long-nurtured dream is killed off mercilessly. As it was for my buddy, Nobby.

Nobby was playing third-grade rugby in the country. He received a pass from his halfback, got hit in a tackle and was brought harshly to the ground so that he knocked the ball on.

As the referee blew the whistle to award the scrum to the other team, 16 blokes danced all over him. It was in the dark cold of that third-grade ruck on a back paddock that had one barking dog as a spectator that he realised that the flame of hope that he'd be seen by a passing selector and be plucked from obscurity to join the Wallabies was extinguished.

It was over. He was 32.

So where does a man turn at a time when the dream is finally ending?

Many of my married brothers turn to children, renovations and golf. These things become the welcome distraction from the dying dream as the weight of new responsibilities restores the hunter to his former self. But for us single men it is different.

The territory in which we find ourselves is foreign.

It is inhabited by two social groups outside our own. There are the gay men who boast a social scene and style that can make us look brutish or dull.

And there are straight men roughly 15 to 20 years our senior who are grossly wealthy with houses and cars and nests aplenty.

This latter mob doesn't hunt, it gets others to do its catching and killing, and it runs interference in a way that seems unfair.

There is of course no definitive answer to our predicament.

It is a time that carries great potential. Like our sisters, we are proudly doing our thing, our way, in the manner we find it.

But when the sun dips behind the grandstand, casting shadows across the football paddock, be sensitive to what it means for us single 30-something men.

We who are in the stands are considering a redefinition of dreams, and no woman wants to miss out on that.

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