After rugby games, my team will regularly head out to a bar or gather around a barbecue grill with the team we've just played and do our best to be social.

Admittedly, it's difficult to be affable with someone who not 30 minutes ago attempted to pick you up by the throat, especially when I'm tired. But even by those lowered standards, I have noticed that we are genuinely horrible at mingling.

Typically, this is how things go if you're a man: You walk over to a group of guys, firmly plant your feet, roll back your shoulders, stick out your chest a bit and jam your non-beer-holding hand into your pocket. Occasionally, friendly blokes will add a quick nod of the head.

No words are spoken.

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If life were a nature program, you would hear the British-accented announcer say: "The male has now signalled to the other males that he is open to social interaction. Shortly, the other males will signal their acceptance of this outsider by staring at their cups of beer.

"If the males are lucky, one of them will be wearing a T-shirt with writing on it. This will give the males something to talk about and their attempts at socializing will be a success. In the absence of such stimuli, the males will stare at their cups of beer a bit longer and then break away into other groups to repeat this ritual."

At first I thought it was just us. Then, I noticed that other rugby teams were doing the same thing. And soon I realized that almost all males, to some extent, are utterly horrible when it comes to interacting with other human beings.

Things get even worse when a male attempts to talk to a female. I think this is primarily due to the fact that the male is talking.

Women just aren't captivated by beer-staring, so men are forced to try to use words. Inevitably, those words are going to come out incorrectly. It's just a bad situation, pairing men with words. It's like letting a professional wrestler babysit your child.

It really is a wonder that any of us males have ever succeeded with women. Wanna know how I managed to woo my wife? The two of us worked at a tourist trap where we had to wear cowboy outfits. I would walk over to where she was collecting tickets, firmly plant my feet, roll back my shoulders, stick out my chest a bit and jam my non-gun-twirling hand into my pocket. Occasionally, I would add a quick nod of the head.

How in the great googly-moogly did I succeed? It's like winning a war with handbags. It was pure luck.

Obviously, we have relied on this luck strategy far too long. The male's failure to interact is probably what led to the extinction of the Neanderthals. At some point Neanderthal women probably looked at the men and thought: "You know, big deal if that guy is 8 feet tall and can snap a tree across his knee -- if he's not going to ask me out properly, I'm not going to have anything to do with him."

Thankfully for all of humankind, it appears that modern women are taking the lead when it comes to initiating things. Recently, I overheard a woman explaining to her friend that she had proposed to her husband.

And the other night, my wife and I witnessed a great bit of creativity when two high school girls got the staff of the restaurant we were eating at to deliver a singing invitation to the prom to a couple of boys.

I applaud women who take the lead and ask out men. Clearly this is the way to go. Women are easily the better communicators of the two sexes. And it leaves men free to do what we do best -- stare at our beer.

Chris Cope is married, with no children. His column appears every other Tuesday.