Friendships: Those Between Women & Men & Women & Women & Men & Men
There was one point in my life when I believed that women and men could not develop a meaningful or satisfying friendship. It was my opinion, that if there even was an element of sexual attraction, or interest present, the power of the genitals would overcome the gentleness of the heart. Today, I do not feel that way anymore, but I do believe, that friendship between the sexes differs. As a woman, I can only talk from my own perspective, and it is truly the case that men and women, for the most part make different types of friends. Certainly, I do have some wonderful male friends, who are up to par, if not better friends to me than women, but my generalization stands for the most part.
What is a friend, you may ask, and what do we expect from them? To me, a friend is someone who cares for you unconditionally. Someone who is there for you during the good times, the mediocre ones, and the difficult times as well. In my personal experience, it is the case that most men, not all, tend to run away from difficulties, either because of the inability or disability in being able to handle pain and be a source of true comfort. So tomatoes are not thrown at me, I do have male friends who are the most compassionate and loving people, and it is the case that 9 out of 10 of them are gay men! Do gay men make better friends then straight men? Yes, in my personal experience, although I do have one male friend who is not gay and is a beautiful friend.
My friends who are lesbians are amazing friends, but it may be the case it is so, because they are women, period. Perhaps, the reality is that I have the same expectations from my male friends as my female ones, and that is a mistake on my part.
Here are my questions of the day: Do you think it is possible for men and women to be true friends? Are men different types of friends than women? If so, how? Do you have different expectations from friends of the same sex than of the opposite sex? Would you like your male friends to be the same as your female friends? Are your female friends better friends than your male friends? Does sexual orientation factor into the definition of what constitutes a good friend, and if so, why?
These are questions that I am pondering for the moment. As many of you know, I am dealing with a very difficult situation here at home, and it has made me think along these lines, with these types of questions.
Thank you for your minds.
What is a friend, you may ask, and what do we expect from them? To me, a friend is someone who cares for you unconditionally. Someone who is there for you during the good times, the mediocre ones, and the difficult times as well. In my personal experience, it is the case that most men, not all, tend to run away from difficulties, either because of the inability or disability in being able to handle pain and be a source of true comfort. So tomatoes are not thrown at me, I do have male friends who are the most compassionate and loving people, and it is the case that 9 out of 10 of them are gay men! Do gay men make better friends then straight men? Yes, in my personal experience, although I do have one male friend who is not gay and is a beautiful friend.
My friends who are lesbians are amazing friends, but it may be the case it is so, because they are women, period. Perhaps, the reality is that I have the same expectations from my male friends as my female ones, and that is a mistake on my part.
Here are my questions of the day: Do you think it is possible for men and women to be true friends? Are men different types of friends than women? If so, how? Do you have different expectations from friends of the same sex than of the opposite sex? Would you like your male friends to be the same as your female friends? Are your female friends better friends than your male friends? Does sexual orientation factor into the definition of what constitutes a good friend, and if so, why?
These are questions that I am pondering for the moment. As many of you know, I am dealing with a very difficult situation here at home, and it has made me think along these lines, with these types of questions.
Thank you for your minds.
18 Comments:
Not sure if it is the gay thing or not, but I have always been closer with women, even as a child my friends were usually older women. Today I have many straight male friends, and I really enjoy that because it tends to help me see my own masculinity better,, especially when the men are secure in themselves and are positive people. Women and I connect deeply though and I can become a friend to a woman much quicker than with a man,, gay or straight. Funny, but I have very few gay male friends. Most people say that it is because women feel safe around gay men, but I think that the spiritual connections are more prevelent at least in my own experience.
Hope things are going better for your daughter,, and you. Blessings to your family.
I absolutely believe that men can be best friends with women. It's not hard for me personally, and I'm very lucky to have such amazing friends who are women.
I've never had different expectations, so maybe that's why it's easy for me?
Yes I think men and women can be true friends.....and be true to themselves at the same time...that they are just friends...I think every friend is different rather male or female....so it's just a different relationship with each one....I wouldn't change a thing about any of them...I treasure them all!!!
Have a great day!!
WOW! Thats a question that I have pondered for years. I work in a mans world. I have known others who have worked in male dominated jobs too. The experiences vary vastly. I think that my relationships with customers and coworkers has been easy and relaxed. Others would not relate the same experience. The success for me I think has been growing up close to my brothers and being something of an Amazon. I have a feeling if I had been a perky 5'2" and more fem that I would have had a different experience.
I have a coworker that for years has had a friendship with female coworkers that has worked well. I think they are comfortable with him because he is VERY married and relaxed about it
my 2 cents
Just to pick up on one angle of your post:
I've found that if circumstances get really tough, few people of either gender are up to being with you. I think it's more than my own experience. "In sickness and in health" doesn't apply to most relationships, maybe not most marriages if the health situation is protracted or severe enough.
Early in my career as a school counselor, I returned from summer vacation to find that the hospitalized boy I'd been counseling was dying. I told his mom I had no experience with counseling someone who was dying - was she sure she wanted me to be seeing him at that point?
Her answer was an emphatic yes. She explained that as his condition deteriorated, visitors had become few and far between. And when I resumed counseling, it was very clear that indeed this little boy was no longer the popular child on the ward that he had been a few months earlier.
A person's sexual orientation, it seems, is not a factor in defining friendship as much as whether there may be the presence of sexual tension between individuals, i.e. man v. man, womena v. man or woman v. woman.
I think Paul has made an excellent point, and that is that most of the time, people, in general, are unable to deal with misfortune or grief in the lives of others. We are not equiped, as a society, nor trained adequetly to handle these matters, and more often than not, people do nothing in response. I have one close friend, a male, who is not gay, who I can count on most of the time when I am in pain. When I am fine, he keeps a low profile.
Most of my closest friends today started as romantic relationships... But now we're just close friends...
I have a few women friends where romance wasn't the initial flicker...
I find meeting new friends is just as hard as meeting potential dates...
I guess you hit a certain age and....
To me friendship is about trust, and trust is built slowly over time. Easy come, easy go. I can establish a great rapport with someone in 5 minutes, but we're not Friends-capital-F (as I define it) until a good deal of time has passed.
The ultimate test of a real friendship is whether it survives the first big conflict. I've had too many relationships with women (and I blame myself for this, because I chose them) that weren't really friendships but more like unspoken contracts to never take each other to task for bad behavior. Correction: I was taken to task frequently, but I wasn't supposed to call out THEIR crap. When I finally did, that was the end of the "friendship." That's a conditional friendship -- you'll be friends with me as long as I pretend you're perfect.
For that reason, I've probably had more true friendships with men than with women, because I've found that men don't mind being confronted with their foibles like women do. (The women I've known, anyway.) And men don't usually hold grudges (again, the ones I've known). I do have a few women friends with whom I've had conflicts, and the fact that we meet each other halfway and say, "Okay, we were both being jerks, let's move forward from here" means everything to me. I cherish those friendships because they're pretty rare.
I think women do each other a huge disservice when we construct our friendships with the expectation that all interaction must be supportive and sweet. We are bound to piss each other off, and if the rule of the relationship is never to call one another on our behavior, we're just going to end up talking behind each other's backs. I can't stand that.
I think what I'm looking for in female friendships is sisterly behavior. We fight and bitch, but we love each other without question. I've had that with men, perhaps because I grew up with brothers (and no sisters). I suppose that too is why I cherish those open, authentic female friendships so much. They supply something I never had.
I think men and women can be friends, sure. There might be fleeting moments of attraction (as in a friendship between gay men or lesbians), but that's not such a big deal as long as you're both mature and don't act on it!
Men make different friends, yes. Most of my male friends have a harder time opening up, I think. Probably cultural.
Most of my friends are male, with perhaps only a couple of close female friends.
This certainly wasn`t through choice, as I feel that women naturally relate to each others problems better.
Like Mallory, I work in a largely male dominated industry, and, as I got older, and my female friends had children,they tended to gravitate to the company of other women who also had children.
While this was understandable, I always considered it to be a loss.
Both types of friendships have enriched my life, with all friends being there for both the good times and the bad times.
Friendship is a rare and valuable gift.
Hope your daughter is feeling a bit better. Look after yourselves.
Oh this is an excellent post. This is something I've struggled with over the years.
I think it all depends on the mix of the people involved. In my case, I've never been able to develop a satisfying friendship with a guy because I'm attractive, perhaps (no, I'm not bragging; I have nothing to do with my own genetic engineering and I am certainly no better than anyone else).
I've often felt sad about it, because I sometimes have more in common with men than women. But I've learned to keep my male friends at a distance because they make it obvious they'd like more. I have lesbian friends too, but the same applies to them.
For years I didn't have any close female friends, but when I look back at it I was too involved in my (then) marriage to nurture anything outside of it and my husband was very clingy.
Now I am so very lucky to have a couple close female friends. I have also learned that men come and go, but women remain. I would drop anything to help them, and would give them anything in my power if they needed it.
My dad, however, looks like Sean Connery. He is handsome, but rather reserved and mildly eccentric. He has been able to maintain a friendship with a woman from their college days. My mom is OK with it because they are still wildly devoted to each other and very honest in their relationship. There are no secrets.
However, as my dad points out, this woman is as attractive as a pug dog. And, one has to ask: is (or was) she attracted to my dad? Was the relationship pure from both perspectives?
for me, finding friends in itself is difficult with either gender. if straight women, they might be afraid i'm attracted to them -- same with straight men -- same with lesbian and bi-women -- gay men friends don't have much interest in getting into deep or "girlie" topics. i do enjoy womens friendships best -- maybe because i like the "girlie" stuff. in the past though i've had male best friends and female best friends, but they've all faded (every one is human it seems). also, i don't find most people that i meet wanting to be friends without something sexual -- and it's quite disappointing for me. don't know if any of that answered your question ??? hope some part of it did.
True friendship knows no gender, or sexual orientation, nor will it desert you in time of, as Paul put it, "sickness or health". My life is a prime example of that. So if a person deserts you in your time of need, they weren’t your friend to begin with.
However, I have found the company of gay males and lesbians to be most enjoyable because they are more open, and less restrictive in their thinking.
Whereas I believe in the totality of sisterhood, I also embrace brotherhood when it is offered. I think a good balance between the two enhances our lives, individually and collectively.
This is such an interesting topic B!
First of all, it's been awhile and I'm sorry to learn you're going through rough times. Hope all is "okay" with you.
As to the friendship thing - the older I've gotten, the more difficult it is to make new friends, but as I look back on my earlier history of friendships, most of the people I could truly count on were the male friends. The female friends were marvelous for certain needs - (i.e. comparing notes on our romantic relationships, on our physical attributes, etc) - but when push came to shove, it was usually a male friend who would come to my emotional rescue in times of need.
The handful of gay or lesbian friends I've had through my life were precious indeed because it opened up an entirely new world for me - gave me new perspective on things, etc. I did find, however, that they seemed a tiny bit more "true" to their own ilk; more dedicated.
I think I've become more choosey in friendships as I've aged ... but I also feel that others have too.
I do believe as winterwheat stated, it's largely a question of trust, which takes a long time to build.
I feel males and females CAN be close friends without sexual interference, but that sort of relationship can take years to ripen and reach perfection, and it's probably more rare than common.
For me, it has always been easier to find genuine friendship with women. For some reason, I can trust them, and feel most comfortable opening up to them on a personal level.
That being said, I have also found that some women can more readily call themselves friends, and disappear in times of needs, or be present in their own way if they want to do something with you which benefits themselves. LP is spot on when she concludes that genuine friendship is truly genderless, and those individuals who call themselves friends, whether male or female, are there for us to bitch, cry, smile, laugh, shop, have fun and on and on. Expectation does have much to do with how we define friendship, and in some ways, it should not. I have learned from this post that it should not since a friend is someone who loves you unconditionally and is present in your life at alltimes.
Well, My best friends are women. I have a few friends that are men but they are not "best" friends. Those men friends I know from church and work with them on church projects. I don't talk about personal things with these men. I have seen too many marriages break up because of "men-women" friendships that got too emotional. My husband and I do not want to put this kind of a strain on our marriage. Why put the temptation there? He has men friends and I have women friends.
I do have three or four women I can call "best" friends. We can share anything and we don't worry about hurting each others feelings. We can talk openly and we are there for each other if needed. We can cry on each others shoulder and laugh each other under the table. We know each others kids and grandkids and they know us. I have no desire to have that kind of friendship with a man. My husband is my best male friend.
This doens not mean that I don't have some male friends, but they are more or less aquaintences. I have male friends who are friends with both me and my husband.
I prefer female friends because I just generally prefer the company of women to that of men (my husband and son are the exceptions to the rule).
Maybe it's because I don't have brothers? I have 2 sisters so I guess I just feel more comfortable with women. I even enjoy all the gossip, the pettiness and backstabbing that often go along with women's freindships. Weird but true! :-) Some men are called "a man's man" (meaning he prefers to hang out with his male buddies). Other's are a "lady's man". I'm just a "woman's woman" I guess. I have more fun with women and feel more relaxed.
Also, as others have said: when I have been friends with men they have *always* tried to hit on me at some point. As a married person, I'm not looking for that. When I was single I was fine with it, and I suppose I had more male friends then, but the line between friendships and dating were more blurred, if that makes any sense?
I also feel that men, in general, treat me in a very slightly condescending manner that annoys me. With women I can be goofy and silly and yet I know they see that I also have a more serious side and am intelligent. If I act goofy and silly with men, I think they then see me as "childlike". Prob also because I'm short. Then if I start to have a more serious discussion about politics or something, they get all paternalistic and smug.
These are just generalizations of course.
I think that it is possible to be friends with the opposite sex but that some of it depends on your status.
In particular if you are both single it is not unusual for there to be thoughts of something more between you.
As for who makes a better friend, that is a people issue and not gender related.
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