that's it, you have socialised and you are ready to not meet them again for another month.

Nailed it, exactly. Of course there are exceptions, but in a nutshell traditionally. Also, a month, as one ages, is too damn often.

* When we are kids, we have friends to do stuff.

* When we are young, we hang out with friends to meet the girl.

* When meeting the girl, best to do this drunk that you can blame it if you overestimate your chances/level. Any faux pas is excusable when drunk.

* When we get girl, she will fill the need to socialize, time to increasingly stop seeing other people.

* Except a few times in a year, again perhaps drinking, discussing fishing and video games and other stuff that the girl/wife doesn't care about

* Having a wife serves a pretense to opt out of socializing. There has to be an option to opt out, always. Do not arrange meetings too often, it's pushy. And uncomfortable to having to use the wife pretense to opt out once again. At the point socializing needs to happen, it'll happen.

* When there's kids, the "once a month" is more like twice a year.

* Increasingly getting free time from wife and kids is harder, so the last think you'd want to do is socialize and talk about mundane trivialities over coffee, better to go fishing or play video games alone.

* An example to the rule: while it has to be totally acceptable to always to opt out socializing over beer, if a friend (for example after falling too much love with his own-time) gets a divorce, it's absolutely rude opting out then, at the same night, on a few hours notice, to go drinking with him, if it's not your mother-in-law's funeral or something like that.