The Lost Art of the Boys’ Weekend

At some point, “we should all get away for a weekend” becomes one of those things you say every six months without anybody actually booking anything. Everyone means it. Everyone wants to do it. And somehow another year passes.

Male friendships can be remarkably low maintenance. Two friends can go months without speaking, meet for a drink and continue the conversation as though they last saw each other on Tuesday. There is something rather lovely about that, but there is a downside too: low-maintenance friendships can eventually become barely maintained friendships.

Life gets busy. Careers become more demanding, relationships become serious, children arrive, people move away and suddenly getting four friends into the same pub on the same Saturday requires the logistical planning of a small military operation. A weekend away? You might as well attempt to organise the Olympics.

So the messages continue instead. “We definitely need to sort something.” “Let’s get something in the diary.” “We should do a golf weekend.” Everyone agrees enthusiastically, nobody suggests an actual date and the conversation disappears until somebody resurrects it four months later.

Perhaps it’s time to bring back the boys’ weekend.

Friendships stop happening automatically

One of the biggest differences between friendships when we’re younger and friendships in adulthood is proximity. At school, university or in our first jobs, we often saw friends without making any particular effort. You lived nearby, went to the same places and had fewer responsibilities competing for your time.

Adult friendship is different. You may live an hour away from somebody you once saw every day. One person has children, another works weekends, somebody travels constantly and another has somehow committed every Saturday between now and Christmas to children’s football.

Friendship therefore has to become more deliberate. That’s the bit we sometimes miss.

We assume that because a friendship is strong, it doesn’t require much maintenance. And while genuine friendships can certainly survive periods apart, relationships still benefit from actually spending time together.

You don’t need to speak every day.

But eventually, you probably do need to be in the same room.

“We should do something” isn’t a plan

There is an enormous difference between wanting to see your friends and actually arranging to see them.

A plan requires a date.

This is where boys’ weekends frequently die. Somebody suggests golf in Scotland, a weekend in Spain, a fishing trip, a city break or simply renting somewhere for a couple of nights. Everyone loves the idea, and then the group chat enters negotiations.

One person can’t do September. Another needs to check October. Someone says November might work except for the second and third weekends. Another person disappears from the conversation entirely before returning three weeks later with “Sorry lads, just seen this.”

Eventually everyone gives up. The solution may be less democracy.

Choose two or three dates. Work out which one suits most people. Book it. There may never be a weekend that works perfectly for everybody, and waiting for one can mean waiting forever.

Sometimes somebody won’t be able to come. They can come next time.

It doesn’t need to involve Ibiza

The phrase “boys’ weekend” can conjure up images of airports, matching T-shirts and somebody making catastrophic decisions at 3am.

It really doesn’t need to look like that.

Rent a cottage. Play golf. Go fishing. Watch football somewhere different. Find a great restaurant. Go hiking. Book tickets for a match. Spend a weekend gaming. Go camping. Find a city none of you has visited. Hire somewhere with a barbecue and very little planned.

You don’t even necessarily need to leave your own town. The point isn’t how impressive the trip looks on social media.

It’s uninterrupted time together.

A normal evening with friends can disappear incredibly quickly. Somebody arrives at seven, everyone eats, has a couple of drinks and by eleven people are thinking about taxis home. A weekend creates something we increasingly lack in adult friendships: time with nowhere else you immediately need to be.

Men don’t always sit down specifically to talk

There is a stereotype that men don’t talk about anything meaningful with their friends. That’s obviously far too simplistic. Plenty of men have close, emotionally open friendships.

But conversations don’t always happen in the same way.

Sometimes the important stuff comes out while driving somewhere. Or walking around a golf course. Sitting beside a barbecue. Fishing. Watching a match. Having breakfast the morning after everyone stayed up too late.

Nobody announces that it’s time for a meaningful conversation. One person mentions something, somebody asks another question and suddenly you’re talking about work, relationships, children, parents, money or something that’s been bothering you for months.

That space matters. You may discover that the friend who appears completely fine has actually had a rotten few months. Or that somebody else has been worrying about exactly the same thing as you.

Sometimes friendship is support without anybody formally calling it support.

You need new stories together

Long friendships are partly built from shared history.

Remember that holiday? Remember when you did that ridiculous thing? Remember that awful hotel? Remember when we got completely lost?

The problem is that if you stop doing things together, eventually all your stories are old ones.

You meet and reminisce about what happened when you were 22 because you haven’t created nearly as many shared experiences at 42.

There is nothing wrong with nostalgia. Retelling old stories, usually with increasingly questionable accuracy, is one of the great pleasures of long friendship.

But it’s nice to make some new ones too.

A weekend away creates memories that have nothing to do with work, household jobs, school runs or the everyday responsibilities that dominate adult life.

You get to temporarily be the people you are when none of those things requires your immediate attention.

Put the phones away occasionally

There is little point travelling somewhere together only for four people to spend the weekend sitting beside one another looking at separate screens.

You don’t need a dramatic digital detox or ceremonial phone-locking box. People have families and responsibilities, and sometimes they genuinely need to be contactable.

But there can be periods when the phones disappear.

Leave them behind while you go for a walk. Put them away during dinner. Don’t spend the entire evening individually scrolling through things you could have looked at from your own sofa.

And perhaps leave the work email alone.

If you’ve managed to coordinate four adult diaries, arrange childcare, book somewhere and physically transport everybody there, it seems a shame to spend Saturday afternoon answering emails.

Don’t wait until life becomes less busy

This is probably the biggest trap.

We’ll organise something when work calms down.

When the children are a little older.

When this project finishes.

When everyone’s schedules aren’t so ridiculous.

The problem is that one busy period tends to be replaced by another. The children get older but develop different commitments. Work changes but doesn’t necessarily become quieter. Parents age. Responsibilities shift. There is always something.

If friendships only receive whatever time is left after everything else has been dealt with, they can end up receiving very little.

Sometimes you have to put the weekend in the diary first and allow everything else to arrange itself around it.

It doesn’t have to be the same group forever

Adult friendships change, and that’s normal too.

Some friendships last for decades. Others belong to particular periods of our lives. New people appear through work, parenthood, sport, neighbours or shared interests.

A boys’ weekend doesn’t need to involve exactly the same six people you’ve known since school.

Invite the mate you’ve recently started playing golf with. The dad you always end up talking to at football. The old colleague you still get on brilliantly with. The friend you haven’t seen properly in two years.

Friendship doesn’t have an age limit, and neither does making new friends.

Someone has to actually book it

Every friendship group appears to have one person who eventually becomes unofficial social secretary. If that’s you, accept your fate.

Open the group chat. Suggest the weekend. Give everybody a deadline. Find somewhere. Take the deposit.

Because there is a decent chance that everyone genuinely does want to go. They’re simply busy adults trying to coordinate lives containing jobs, partners, children, appointments and obligations.

Sometimes friendship needs somebody willing to turn “we should” into “we are.”

And when the weekend finally arrives, there will probably be terrible jokes, somebody snoring, at least one disagreement about where to eat and repeated stories everyone has heard 40 times before.

Perfect.

Your friendships deserve space in the diary too

We put work meetings in calendars months ahead. We schedule appointments, children’s activities, deadlines, conferences and family commitments. Yet seeing friends is often treated as something we’ll somehow squeeze into whatever space remains.

Perhaps it deserves a little more priority than that.

You don’t need a huge friendship group. You don’t need to see your mates every week. And you certainly don’t need an expensive trip abroad to prove that you’re close.

But every now and then, get everyone together.

Go somewhere. Do something. Stay up too late. Laugh at things nobody else would understand. Ask how people actually are. Create some new stories to go alongside the old ones.

And when somebody inevitably says, “We need to do this more often,” don’t just agree.

Get the next one in the diary.

Keep looking after you

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