lack of people pairing up into couples and getting married reduces social cohesion in unexpected ways. we got new neighbors. saw the guy outside, said hi. turns out his sister died the day he moved in. obviously, him and i never discussed this. but his wife told my wife - only the two women would communicate that. so my wife got them flowers - and gave them to his wife. now, we’re basically friends overnight. but there’s no way the two men in the situation (him and i) would have done this absent the women. i wouldn’t get a guy flowers (bizarre, to me) and he wouldn’t (from his perspective) dump this information on some random guy he doesn’t know. you begin to understand the complex formalities present in cultures like victorian england or feudal japan that carved clear avenues and back channels for things like this.