About a Boy is a story of two lone wolves, Marcus and Will, moving to build a tribe around them. This project has only started by the end of the narrative (better implied in the movie than the book, I think); here are two snippets from the final chapters:
Ali: Do you still want him to marry your mum?
Marcus: Naah. See, I don’t think that’s the right way. When people pair off it’s more insecure because they’ll split up, or go mad or something.
Will: What if we stay together forever?
Marcus: Fine. Great. Prove it. I just don’t think couples are the future.
Marcus: I feel safer than before, because I know more people.
Marcus’ Dad: They won’t be around forever.
Marcus: Some of them will, some of them won’t. You can find people. It’s like those acrobatic displays. Those ones when you stand on top of loads of people in a pyramid. It doesn’t really matter who they are as long as they’re there and you don’t let them go away without finding someone else.
In the second quote Marcus uses a network perspective: the structure of the system is more important than the elements that make it up.
Tags: marriage, society, urban, urban tribes