Having more male friends than female friends

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

OY!

I have more male friends than female friends, I always have.

The strange thing is, now that I am hitting 32, most of them are married, have kids and other responsibilities that I don’t worry about.

The thing that sucks is I feel weird if I ask my male friends to do things with me. Today one of my best friends and is helping me choose the final outcome of my glasses. He’s not married but is living with his girlfriend.

I have invited a couple of my male Doper buddies to go to a Broncos football game (one married, the other living with girlfriend). But there’s always this underlying feeling that because I am inviting a male friend to do something innocent that somehow I am breaking the rules.

Any of my other female Dopers have the same issues?

2

I’m young yet, but I know what you’re talking about. About 75 percent of my best friends are guys.
That’s no problem, until I want to do something with them.
Most of my guy friends are single, but I have a boyfriend. I always feel like if I do something with my guy friends, I’m sending the wrong message to them AND my boyfriend.
Makes me feel bad.
So usually, I just do things in a big group.

3

I’m with ya techie! Kind of on the opposite end though. One of my best friends is a guy named Terrance. Our friendship has caused problems in our romantic relationships throughout the years. We’ve never been anything more than platonic friends but some of our significant others have had a hard time dealing with our friendship. My fiancee is cool with it though. He knew Terrance a long time ago (My fiancee’s grandpa lived with Terrance’s mom a long time ago) so he’s o.k. with us being friends. My ex-husband had a real problem with it though. He didn’t like it when Terrance called for me or when he’d ask me to do stuff with him. It really sucked.

Hopefully your male friends girlfriends/wives understand that you’re not trying to take their man away from them and that you’re just friends. Do you hang out with the guys when they’re with their girlfriends or wives?

4

Most of my friends are guys. Always have been. Not that I don’t have female friends (I do) but I tend to have more male friends and I like 'em better. Seems that I’m always having to watch what I say around the women.

If I ask a male friend to do something, and he has a wife/girlfriend, I always make sure to invite her, too. Occasionally, it’s an issue. Mars’s (thanks, Swiddles, for the nifty name for almost-Mr. Athena) best friend is married to a woman that Mars and I affectionately refer to as “the Beast.” We find that we don’t often do stuff with him, because we’re always afraid he’ll bring the Beast along. He’s gone so far as to tell Mars that he thinks that the Beast (OK, he uses her real name) should hang out with me more since he thinks I could be a good influence on her. Uh-uh. Not interested.

5

I was going to agree wholeheartedly, when I realized that it’s balanced out some in college. Hmm. Interesting. But, yeah, it IS awkward having most of your good friends be of the opposite sex. We tend(ed) to do stuff in bigger groups, but it was hard for me to ask - much easier to be invited.

6

Techie, I’ve always had guy buddies. Guys bullshit, women gossip. Guys do fun things, the women I know don’t.

My hubby is pretty understanding about it and my hanging out with my guy buddies does not cause much friction. I go to breakfast every Sunday with my friend Andy, and we usually go shopping afterwards. We love to cruise Home Depot or Lowes, or whatever planning home improvement projects, and we trade work on each other’s ongoing projects.

Guys go shooting, go on desert trips, go 4wheeling, work with dogs, and like to make things. Well, I do too, so it fits a lot better for me than to try and hang out while females talk about babies and family stuff. I don’t care for curtain discussions either, and if one more lady tries to talk me into going to a Tupperware or Home Beautiful party, I’m gonna throw up. Another thing is I smoke pot, enough to put most men under the table. Not too many girls in that crowd, so ALL but one of my friends that partake are guys.

SO, no nothing wierd about guy friends in my book.

7

I don’t like girls. :slight_smile: Seriously, I have one female friend. That’s it. The rest are guys. The real kicker is, I’ve actually lost boyfriends because of it. Two actually. I’ve been labeled a slut because of it. (Not anymore. That was in the town I lived in previous to this one.) I just get along with guys better.

8

I almost always friends with the girlfriends/wives. There are a few that don’t know me though.

My guess is, my dad always gave me a hard time when I was in high school. “Why do you hang out with these guys? They can’t have anything but bad intentions.” etc.

I was dating a guy who was three years older than me, my senior year in high school (asshole also was my fiance) and became good friends with all his friends. Asshole went to college for a while then came back to town then went to bootcamp for the Coast Guard.

During that time, his friends and I hung out a lot. One of them became one of my best friends at the time. Mike was an awesome guy.

We both took classes at the community college and we would literally spend three hours after class talking. I would go and drink and smoke dope with him and the guys. We went to the Pikes Peak Hill Climb (me and four guys) etc.

Later, after I left Asshole and came back to town Mike and I would party a lot. He even slept in my bed with me (we were drunk) but neither one of us laid a hand on the other – he pushed me on a tricycle I will always remember that. I would watch and help him work on his race car etc. A purely platonic friendship.

Anyhow, I wonder if my odd feelings stem from my father giving me a hard time.

9

oooooh, how 'bout this phenomena? You go do something with a guy and his girlfriend/wife/whatever. You’re more interested in what the guys are talking about, since the women are dull. Everybody’s conversing, and the guys start talking about something that’s pretty interesting, but could be construed to be “guy talk”. Like what they did on the last camping trip, or something happening at work. You’re listening to the conversation, and liking it. In the middle of it, the other woman turns to you, and starts a completely different conversation about something girly. Like - “You should see the cute shorts I got for the camping trip! We went to 3 different stores blah blah blah…”

I can’t tell you how often this happens to me. I want to just shake the woman and say “Can’t you HEAR?!? There’s already a conversation going on! I wanna listen to THAT conversation, not your mindless drivel!”

10

Most of my friends are women; I seem to get along better with them, although I have male friends too. Fortunately, I also have an extremely solid and trusting marriage, so it’s never been an issue.

If you spend your time worrying about what others think, you’ll never have any left for yourself, to be just you. And if your SO has an issue with it, then it needs to be rooted out and goten rid of, *especially/i prior to marriage.

11

Athena,

I have the same problem with the women in my family.

At a family gathering they are all in the kitchen gossiping and talking about religion, shopping, blah, blah, blah. Me on the other hand, hangs out with the men watching sports talking about a bad hit or a fumble or the car that just crashed in the wall.

My dad, step-bro and I ended up leaving my dad’s house to go to my brother’s house to watch the end of the hockey game because the other women in the house were yacking about whatever in the hell they were yacking about. My dad who is a closet smoker, brother and I enjoyed a cig outside and a beer while we watched the rest of the game.

No offense to my female friends on the board but I am just not a girly girl. I don’t care about my outfit. I don’t like to sit around gossiping about other women.

12

I have always tended to have more male friends than female friends as well. My best friend all through junior high and high school was a guy. He was like part of my family and probably one of the best friends I’ll ever have. Unfortunately, he married a woman who didn’t agree with him having close female friends and he didn’t argue with her. The first thing she did when they moved in together was throw out the Sesame Street sheets I had given him for his birthday the year we turned 16.

The last time I saw him was at my mom’s funeral. I stood in shock when I saw him and started to cry. He told me that he would never have let me down. We run into each other once in a while and occasionally he will call to see how I am, but he still doesn’t have the courage to tell his wife that he wants to maintain our friendship.

I have some close girlfriends as well, but I’m not into head games, pity parties or the constant cattiness that sometimes goes on. I was a daddy’s girl. We went to football and hockey games together, and talked about the wars. I just don’t fit into tupperware parties and coffee clatches.

13

My close friends are all men. I have some females who I am friendly with, but the real friends I have are men. Not that that I have dozens of close friends or anything…

That said, I tend to be exclusively attracted to the type of woman whose best friends are men. They tend to be less bitchy, moody, pain in the ass, whatever you want to call it. They tend to be the type of girl who is a lot less likely to expect you to read their mind and just tell you what’s on their mind.

They also tend to be the no-bullshit kind of girls who I can trust to hang out with whomever they please without giving a second thought.

I don’t feel threatened by their male friends. If they wanted to be having sex with guys they knew long before I met them, I probably wouldn’t have met them.

I don’t know if I’m totally clear here, but if you’re reading this thread, you probably understand what I mean.

14

I figured out that I simply don’t like guys. Maybe I mis-stated that. I don’t care about guys. They are irrelevent to my existence. I have some guyish interests, but don’t like sports much so that wrecks most conversations.

I have always preferred the company of women. Maybe it was because I had three brothers and no sisters and women-folk seemed so exotic. Maybe it was because I also have girly interests and it was nice to have somebody to talk about them with. Because I can sew and cook some I have always joked that I was my mother’s only daughter.

Which leaves me open to somebody suggesting I’m a “latent homosexual.” Sorry to disappoint them, but no, I’m straight. It’s just that I like women for reasons in addition to their being “sex objects.”

15

I mostly fit this mold, too.

For most of my life my best friends have been women. This caused problems early on with my first wife, but I learned to deal with it.

The first thing that I learned is to ask, “who is more important? My wife or my friend?” If the answer was “my friend”, I knew that the problem was mine.

Since remarrying, I’ve been extremely open with my wife about my women friends. Sometimes too much so. But it’s put me in a position to never HAVE to ask myself who is more important.

16

I know exactly where you’re coming from, techchick. I have a ton of close guy friends and two women friends. I just can’t tolerate most women for more than ten minutes at a stretch. I hate to bring up stereotypes, but most women really are illogical, flighty creatures who are more interested in what someone is wearing than what they’re doing. For me, it’s always been the doing that was interesting. I love camping, hiking, and skiing, and hockey games are endlessly entertaining to me. I also really enjoy having discussions with other people - especially when we disagree on the topic. Most women can’t handle that. They’d prefer to have everyone get along and/or simply agree with whatever it is they say. Also, as dropzone and you pointed out, family life tends to have an effect. I have eight older sisters and three older brothers (from various and sundry marriages). My brothers and I have always been close, but my sisters make me nuts.

17

Story of my life!

As a little girl, I was usually more interested in boy-type toys. I did have dolls, but my favorites were my erector sets and building blocks. I was the only girl in the neighborhood with an erector set and an electric train. Didn’t relate well to other little girls.

As a teen, it did cause problems with boyfriends. Caused problems with girls, too, because I competed with them for boys’ amorous attention on an entirely different level - and I had/have a very active libido.

Over the years, I’ve found several women (who are pretty much like me) with whom I’ve developed good friendships. But overall, I get along better with men.

At parties, I gravitate toward the men because they are more likely to be talking about things that interest me.

But it seems to me that things are changing. I meet more and more women at parties, etc. who fit my interests - generally they’re younger than I. Perhaps its that more women have entered careers that were male dominated when I was coming up.

Maybe there’s hope for you young’ns.

18

There are many reasons I think that I tend to have more long-term friendships with men than with women. Some of it is what the other women have talked about: having guy-like interests, being a tomboy. I played with Tonka trucks and Hot Wheels when I was growing up, and I’m still less girly than most of the chicks I know.

Sometimes, I think it is even more basic than that: you can tell when a man finds you interesting. They are more likely to pursue a friendship through it’s ups and downs. Women take offense, or fall out of favor, or split for various reasons. I’ve had guys call me up after not talking for months, and there are no recriminations: “And why haven’t you called me?” With guys, I think sometimes it’s an initial attraction that keeps them coming around, but then, once they get to know you, if they decide they like you, they are pretty hard to get rid of. I like loyalty. It’s a trait I find lacking in female friends. I can’t tell you the stupid stuff that women have walked away from a friendship with me over, but the guys, they hang tough.

Also, I grew up in an all-female household, and I think that I am still trying to fathom the male mystery in a way that women with uncles and brothers and fathers have already relaxed about. Men are an enduring source of fascination for me, and I never have gotten entirely comfortable with them, not like I am with my women friends, so it’s more stimulating to be around them.

It’s not like I don’t have female friends, I do. And I do value my female friends highly. There are some that I’ve been friends with forever, and they are all remarkable, strong women with great spirits. I actually find that lots of my male friends are the kind with lots of female buddies, and I think I can understand why men value their female friends so highly. Ladies, we are pretty darn cool.

The downside is, that it can cause problems in relationships with others who can’t understand, (or even sometimes with those who understand all too well). Many boyfriends have commented on a certain friendship of mine, which is going strong after 12 years, saying sooner or later I’m going to end up with this guy. Well, he’s a good friend, but he’s the biggest dog that ever lived and if I didn’t know him so long, I probably wouldn’t be able to stand him. I’m not going to end up falling in love with this guy after 12 years. Some people don’t understand that if you know someone that well and you aren’t together, you probably won’t ever be.

19

Right now, my best friend online is probably a girl. My friends offline are mostly guys, basically because they’re all in my academic team and the one female there is married.

Online, I’d say 90 percent of my buddy list is female. I enjoy talking to guys, but I don’t care much to talk to them online.

20

Another female with predominantly male friends checking in. It’s not that I like men better than women, it’s just that the women I tend to run into want to talk about their relationships ALL THE TIME. And they ask me about mine, which I cannot stand, being a private person. Their conversation always seems to be personal. I like people who can talk about science, history, politics, food, whatever, and cannot stand people whose conversation is limited to boyfriends/husbands/babies and fashion. Also, the people around me need to have thick skins, because I like to recreationally insult people(affectionately, of course). Men seem to have thicker skins.