Yes, but you go Dutch with these women, don’t you? And it is transparent to all that it is friendship, no more, no less, isn’t it? That’s the difference with TLB.
Otherwise, your desciption of having such good woman friends felt good to read. Sometimes I despair that friendship between the sexes is truly impossible, and that the word friendship is an euphemism always meaning “a relationship that has yet failed to materialize”.