Explain this weird friendship dynamic

In My Humble Opinion
1

It appears that one of my groups of friends have a estrogen cap or something. Meaning that they don’t want more than two or three girls around.

Group is mostly guys…when I started hanging out with them a few years ago. It was three girls, me included. There were other girls but they don’t hangout with us on regular basis. Shortly after I started hanging out with these people, one of the girls (girl number 1) started to find the other girl (girl number 2) annoying, and eventually so did her boyfriend. Girl number 2 was sort of a complainer.They stopped inviting her out.

Fast forward a year later, there’s another girl (number 3), who they all love (why, I’m not sure, she seems cool…but I can’t get a read on her) just started hanging out. Also, they started inviting girl number 2 back. However, since girl number 2 and 3 has been around, they’ve stopped inviting me to come out. For no obvious reason, there weren’t any fights, there wasn’t any tension. Nothing, that i know of.

The only thing that I could piece together, is that when the new girl came, they’ve seemed to lose interest in our friendship. It appears to be some sort of pattern, that my friends don’t want a lot of girls around for some reason.

I understand that some people may enjoy their new friends company and may put them at a higher priority…but I feel these friends have pretty much fell off the face of the earth since the new girl has been around. :frowning:

I can’t explain what is REALLY going on. And, no, I am not a complainer at all…I’m totally conflict avoidant. So that couldn’t have been a reason.

Orientations…if anyone’s interested.
The guys: Half are straight, half are gay.
The girls: Girl #1 - bi, Girl #2 - straight, Girl #3 - lesbian, me - lesbian

2

If it’s anything like when one works in a female dominated workplace, the higher the percentage of women in a group, the higher likelihood there is for drama to show up. I’m female, and prefer friend circles that have some females but not mostly females-- I’m not stereotypically feminine, but I do have a lot of “girly” interests in addition to my gender neutral or “manly” interests. Add too many super girly women into the mix and I start feeling like the weird butch girl because I have some guy-oriented interests that frequently get pushed aside in girl-oriented circles, so I can understand the reluctance to steer the friend group to a higher female-to-male ratio than its current state.

3

I don’t think you have enough evidence to conclude that this is a pattern. You’ve only got two cases of a woman being shut out of the group, and you say the first time with Girl #2 (really, it’s easier to just give people names) was because others in the group found her annoying…not because they’d found a new female friend and were over their maximum limit.

It strikes me as more likely that they’re giving you the cold shoulder since the return of Girl #2 because Girl #2 has a problem with you, not because the group has an unspoken rule about never letting in more than three women. It’s also possible that Girl #3 doesn’t like you but has refrained from expressing this openly to you, which might explain why you can’t get a read on her. Or maybe you’ve unintentionally done something that offended another member of the group. I don’t have any way of knowing what’s really going on, but I can think of plenty of explanations more plausible than an “estrogen cap”.

If you want to know what’s up then you’d be better off asking someone from this group rather than us. You’d want to be careful not to seem accusatory or whiny, but if you’re feeling left out then you can bring this up…although you should be prepared to deal with whatever answer you get.

4

It’s probably because they’re afraid this is going to happen.

5

I can’t help but think of that joke (I can’t remember who said it but it was someone fairly famous) “Every group has a friend they talk about. If your group doesn’t have one, it’s you!”. I think you were running in a circle that does that to every member. You knew the dirt on the other girls. What’s to say Girl number 2 was never around when they were bitching about you? They seem shady and not the type of people I’d call friends. You’re better off without them. Trust me, I would tell you if you were being ditched by a good lot. Cut your losses and don’t get too friendly with them when they do come around. Notice how they got friendly with Girl number 2 after giving her the boot. Maybe they can’t suck in more people. Not a group I’d want to be a part of.

6

This is what I thought, too. There are a lot of threads in group dynamics, and we don’t really have enough info to give you a fer shur answer.

7

I don’t think it’s about a higher percentage of women… I’ve been in some teams that were extremely female-dominated (in one of them, the only guy would use the female form of “we” on account of being 1:5) but didn’t have much in the way of “female drama”; the personality problems we had would have identical with a micromanaging guy as they were with a micromanaging woman. All of those groups of mine approached 100% nerd content; in others where we’ve had lots of drama the problem seemed to be more one of personality and interest incompatibility (5 guys, me as the only woman: boss’ favorite hobby was drinking and trying to pick up girls in bars; if you didn’t drink, happened to be a girl, or were not interested in semi-pros, you could simply not be in good terms with him).

Same as what you describe: the problem is not “girls” and “guys”, it’s different interests. The things the “super girly” girls are interested in and the ways in which they manifest it are just alien to you, many of those which interest you are equally alien to them.

As for the OP, seconding “next time just invent names, it’s clearer”, and sometimes what happens is that people assume someone else is your contact person. There have been times when someone told both my brothers about an upcoming activity, each brother assumed the other one would tell me, neither one did. No, I haven’t killed them.

8

I bet it’s not a fixed number, but rather that the guys prefer to outnumber the girls.

In my group of friends, if there are 5 guys and 2 girls, it’s still mostly a guy conversation, tempered a little for the girls. Sports, jokes, bullshitting, etc…

If it’s roughly equal, it’ll be gender neutral.

If there are more girls than guys, it becomes a girl conversation. Lots of gossip and speculation about the people who aren’t there, or others we know. Luckily, the women I know aren’t raving bitches and don’t go overboard, but there’s a huge component of “what’s the latest news (gossip)?” when they get together.

I suspect if your guy friends aren’t interested in that, it would make sense that having a limited number of women around would tend to mitigate having to listen to that stuff.