He considered taking them to the driving range, but he had never played golf. Taking a cue from some sitcoms he’d seen, he’d ask people to get coffee. He realized there was a guy he had chatted with casually in church a few times, and he asked him out for drinks. Now they get drinks every Thursday.

Along the way, he had some surprising insights about friendship conventions—the kinds of breakthroughs you have when you’re performing an otherwise ordinary human skill for the first time in four decades. For example, if you invited someone to do something one time, and they don’t invite you back for a while, it’s okay to invite them again. In other words, just because you don’t alternate the role of initiator doesn’t mean you aren’t really friends. Todd realized that in the past, he had let a lot of friendships lapse simply because he made plans twice in a row, and he figured he shouldn’t make the effort a third time.

He also had to find a balance between seeing people in person and keeping in touch between in-person get-togethers—something I immediately realized I myself completely don’t do. “Like how often do people spend time with friends, and how often do they contact their friends, and what do they contact them about?” he asked me. (It was rhetorical, but I had literally no idea. When my friends call me I assume someone has died, and I spend the phone call getting progressively more confused about the purpose of the call as it slowly dawns on me that there has been no death, and they are simply in line at Trader Joe’s.) But this seems like an important element of friendship. In his study, Hall found that “keeping abreast of friends’ daily lives by catclehing up and joking around” brings friends closer together, even if they don’t spend extra time with one another.

Todd created a reminder on his phone that says, “Text a guy friend and ask them how their day is,” which sounds like something a serial killer would do, but frankly, it has worked for Todd. “I’m learning to be a human being,” Todd explained.

He estimates he now has about five or six “good friends,” up from maybe one a few years ago. It’s not quite Dunbar’s number, but he considers it a clear improvement on his life before. When he’s struggling with a friendship situation, he asks his wife, a true social butterfly, for advice.

Within these friendships, he’s deviated from his past role as an amateur anthropologist. He opens up on occasion. Once, a new friend, a fellow dad from his son’s daycare, told Todd, “I’m sorry if I’m off, but my wife and I are having problems.”