It’s about the company. You don’t need to make a big production out of it, or plan any party activities. These are presumably your friends, not a bunch of children who need to be constantly entertained or they’ll start running around and knocking things over. Make sure there’s some food and some booze and the conversation will flow.
I have a coworker that has girl’s nights. From what I understand, they sit around and play board games, eat and talk.
That’s the closest experience I have. My idea of a girl’s night is hanging with my 9 year old daughter.
I never said I expected people to start running around knocking things over like children.
I think what I’ve gotten from some of the recent posts is that girls night in isn’t going to happen in my world. If it just means “invite female friends over and it will all just happen” then I know it won’t. There is nothing magical about having a vagina that just makes an evening fun. My friends all come from different areas. I have my art school friends. I have my podiatry school friends (that I met through my fiancé) and I have my online friend from every possible background… as well as other random friends.
My experience from things like “going out to dinner with a bunch of friends” when it’s mixed gender company but drawn from the same larger pool of friends is that there are a bunch of people talking podiatry stuff and boring the crap out of everyone else, then there are the art people trying to occasionally make some sort of relevant comment that they understand or try to start a conversation relating to a topic that they are interested in… or those of us who are spouses of the other group make rolly-eyes at each other about how boring it all is because we can’t participate in the “natural discussion” that erupts and eventually just concentrating on the food or the drinks and having our own isolated thoughts in our heads, daydreaming about when it will be time to leave.
So given that, I’ve decided that girls night is not in the cards for me. I will have to continue to just have these very small, isolated nights where I have 2 friends over from the same social group and never mix it up with all of my friends.
Oh fucking well. It had sounded like it could have been fun.
Perhaps girls night is not in the cards for that particular mix of people if you have tried it with a mixed group and the group did not flow well together.
Maybe you can find a group of people and you can all sit around and drink and talk about how socially awkward you are and no one understands you and you’ll be happy then…
My point was more along the lines of that if there isn’t some specific expectation of something to do then I think it tends to splinter off into little groups and not mix rather quickly
So don’t just throw them together and expect the witty conversation to flow. Have a purpose, like board games or pedicures or knitting hats for preemie babies, anything that gives everyone something to do. Sharing information among each other as to the task at hand provides a great equalizer, a commonality.
Well according to upthread, planning activities means that I’m treating them like children and being stupid about the whole thing.
There’s an entire thread full of advice, you could maybe pick out the a bit that doesn’t get your panties twisty.
Besides, for an established group, that can be true. But you’re talking about people who don’t have a collective group identity, so it’s different. Plan an activity, preferably one that isn’t so attention intensive that chatter is inhibited, provide food and beverages and have a good time.
Personally, I like a diverse group of people for a party. The conversation is more interesting and it’s a nice break from the day to day.
Your activity can be something as simple as making pizzas or banana splits. I also like to choose “background movies”…the kind of flick you don’t have to concentrate on. For me, unless it’s a sleepover, I think movies kill a party.
It isn’t so much that it gets my pantie twisty, it’s that it is the one that basically says “all the ideas here are crap, you’re a childish idiot for thinking that you should follow any of this advice, yadda yadda.” It’s the one that negates everything else that’s been said and tells me I’m an idiot for having even asked the question.
I’m a fairly fragile and insecure person when it comes to stuff like planning social events, so when I hear that everything else suggested is crap and that I’m stupid to try something, I figure they probably know better than I do, and so I give up.
Does this mean I paid the webcam-access fee for nothing? Not even one pillow fight?
Well I guess if you choose to believe the single negative comment is more important than the many positive ones, it’s your business.
I had a dream, a “Girl’s Night Out”, a Bachelorette Dream. I want to start my own “Chippenwhales troupe”, or go solo as “The Thang”. Me and some of my overweight sexy Guy friends going thongsexy and groovin on some partying ladies. Totally professional, up and up, choreographed, absurd, yet sexy. We’d be like Deja Vu, 5 five fat guys, one packin’ heat.
Well no, if it comes to that it will be a carefully chosen group of…like-mnded female freinds and will go off without a hitch*
*hitch provided at extra charge, of course
Jeez, all I meant was why all the pressure?
There’s nothing wrong with planning activities. My friends and I have had lots of nights where we play poker or trivial pursuit or see a movie or whatever, but the thing is, we don’t really get together for the purpose of poker or trivial pursuit or movies, we get together just to get together, because we enjoy each others’ company. And it’s perfectly okay if over the course of the evening, some people, who are naturally closer or more like-minded than others for whatever reason, gravitate to each other. Large groups tend to form clusters. It’s natural.
If your experience is that your different groups of friends don’t tend to mesh that well, then why try to mesh them? You’re allowed more than one “girls night” in your life.
I don’t actually recall anyone in this thread having suggested anything of the kind.
First, “Friends” was a television show, and a pretty stupid one at that. The lifestyles, and enjoyment thereof, were fictional. Trying to emulate their example is a pretty sterile exercise. Second, other females, a.k.a. girls, are individuals, just like you. They probably vary a lot, y’know, the way humans do. Third, any social event works best if the proposed activities suit the actual participants. If most of your friends are “girly girls” then maybe they’d enjoy facials and french-braiding each others’ hair. I don’t know; they’re your friends. What things do they, and you, really have a blast doing?
Some ideas: plan a giant sleepover. Everybody brings party duds, help each other dress up, admire one another madly then go out clubbing. The designated driver returns everybody to the sleepover to crash, eat popcorn and watch bad SF movies til dawn or whatever. Not the best weather for it but the absolute best chick gathering I ever went to was a bunch of us rented a huge cabin in a park, hiked, threw a frisbee around, made an actually very good meal over a campfire (a cast-iron dutch oven buried in coals was involved) then toasted marshmallows, drank some and just generally sat around the fire chatting, shootin’ the shit and even sang some–mostly a somewhat inebriated contest for the worst brain-worm songs we knew. It was a blast.
Start with what you enjoy. Ask your friends what they’d love to do. Then go from there.
Every adult had different circles of friends. You can not worry that these friends will not get along. You don’t know who will get along with who, people are unique and not just defined by their social circle. Don’t worry about it, most people will expect that that not all the invitees will be like minded. People plan events all the time & invite different groups of friends who may be very different, and for the most part, these go off without a hitch for the most part.
For your wedding or reception, what do you plan, to have all the different social groups in your circle of friends completely sequestered?
If you think your circle is diverse, take mine as a case in diversity. My friends range from 20 to 65 years old and come from very diverse backgrounds. I have punk rock friends who are one step away from being as tattooed as the illustrated man, I have artist friends, lefty radical friends, friends who are quite successful in their careers, friends who still live with their parents in their late 30’s & early 40’s, busker friends, gay friends, nightclubbing raving friends, models, retail clerks, alcoholics, drug addicts, friends who don’t drink, friends who have never done drugs, friends with their own businesses who are rather well off, friends who were born in money and are very well off, friends from small towns who hate the city, friends who think the city we live in is a small town, friends with Phds, friends who only achieved a grade 6 or 7 education, geeky computer science friends, friends from BBS systems, friends who hate computers, friends with religious & right wing leanings, crazy hippy friends, friends from workplaces, friends who have never held a job for more than 2 weeks, and this is just to start. When you get more than one group together it can be amazing who gets along, and who may become friends.
First of all, there never was “why all the pressure” it was merely me asking for what the experiences of others who have done such things had been, so that I could get ideas, having never done them on my own. If asking for ideas is your idea of “major pressure” then wow, you must have a medicine cabinet full of pill bottles or else never ask a question in your life.
Second, the line about “Friends” was quite obviously a joke. That someone took it seriously is just sad.
Third, my friends DO get along and like each other. I’ve simply said that when we have gotten together for things like going out for dinner it ends up being a bunch of people being bored while the podiatry students talk about what they’ve been doing in clinic recently, or discuss people the rest of us have never met. How that translates for you guys into “not getting along” I’m not sure. When we have had parties, everyone has a great time. But we usually have things to do like Rock Band, the pool table, etc, and most people have a significant other along with them, etc.
And yes, at the wedding reception there will be barbed wire dividers keeping people from different groups from mingling.*
I try to start a light-hearted thread asking what kinds of things go on at all-girl gatherings, with the idea that it may give me some ideas, and what I get instead is (after some legitimately helpful people did actually give suggestions–thank you to those people) people assuming that none of my friends get along, people assuming that I’m having some sort of major stress or pressure or hand-wringing over the whole ordeal, and that the TV show “Friends” was my idea of the Gospel according to Christ.
Hell I didn’t even finish reading lexi’s post after the stupid wedding reception comment–I figured I didn’t need too get any more irritated than I already was. Thank you for those who offered useful suggestions and their own experiences–those were fun and I appreciate it, though I’m pretty sure I’m never actually going to do a girls night at this point (historically, about 80% of my friends have been guys, and hanging around with girls gets me lost because I don’t know what they’re talking about. How can you have a 30 minute discussion about shoes??). I think the thread has since run its course since it turned into whatever the hell it turned into, so there isn’t any point in giving more suggestions. Thanks.
*not really. Just like the Friends thing, that was a joke. Apparently I have to label these things.
Well all righty, then…never mind.
I had a post all composed, but any points I tried to make have since been covered, so screw it. I do have to wonder why you open these threads asking for advice, because you don’t seem to actually want it. You shoot down ideas presented for a variety of excuses, then take offense where none was intended, and the thread goes downhill from there. Why bother?