Women who don't like other women

In My Humble Opinion
61

I don’t think most other girls like me. I have no idea why. I guess they mistake my shyness for snobbishness. Guys tend to talk to me anyway and actually get to know me. I have a boyfriend and I’m not a flirt at all, so any guy who is only talking to me because he wants to sleep with me quickly gets the idea that I’d rather be playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time and once that’s out of the way we can be friends. But I do of course like (some) girls, and when I think a girl actually likes me, I’m really flattered and happy about it. Being a girl, I know how picky we can be, so if I impress one, I must have passed a big test. :wink: Har har. Anyway…

I’m in a situation right now where I met a girl at work who I’d like to be friends with, but then my work contract ended… I have her MSN, I just hope we can get to be better friends. Ahh, I don’t make friends easily, and I get all stressed out about it, like a girl going on a first date.

But I can be wary about girls, too. And I can pick up on which ones to be wary about. For example, friends who would date your ex are almost always bad news. Anyone who places attention from men above all else needs to go out of my life.

There’s a difference, also, between being a guy’s girl (that is, simply getting along better with men - not because you hate women, but just because it turns out that way) and being a girl who wants all the male attention, and only male attention, and all girls can go die. The first is understandable, the second is - to say the least - annoying.

I have a mix of friends, most of them are female and very cool - but they live on the other side of the country. (Though I do have one who wants to date my ex and have all the male attention.) But I love our stereotypically “girly” conversations about makeup and hair as much as I love our stereotypically “guyish” conversations about butts and farts! I have two best friends - one is male (and he’s my ex-boyfriend at that!) and one is female, but I don’t even tend to think of them like that, I don’t talk about different things to them (yes, that does mean he has to listen to me talk about lip gloss sometimes - but he doesn’t mind!), they are just my friends.

This is precisely the kind of woman I don’t like to interact with. Mind you, I don’t think of this as being a behaviour representative of all women.

And this is precisely the kind of woman I do want to interact with!

Hope this post made even a little bit of sense, hehe.

62

It’s not like I’m happy to not get along with women. To the contrary- one of my good friends from high school is a girl and I’d like to give her a call today so we hang out one day. But that task is sitting like a lead ball in my stomach. Meanwhile, I have like five IM conversations going on with my guy friends. I wish I could keep up my friendship with her as easily as I can with a guy friend. I wish I could have as easy conversation with my mom as with my uncle. I wish I could have found a way to be friends with my female roomates in college. You have no idea how much I envied the girls in college who would say stuff like “Oh, I’m going out with my roomate after class.” I can’t imagine what it’s like to have such an easy and familiar relationship with a girl.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if I’m some sort of super-closeted lesbian and I am so uncomfortable with myattraction to women that I get way nervous around them. It’s just like all those “nice guy” threads. Around girls my composure breaks down, doubt creeps in, and I start looking around for a way out. I know intellectually there is no reason that relationships with women have to be different. But they still are.

63

Warning - Freudian perspective ahead - Alert

I think some women who don’t like other women may get that way because their relationship with their mother was competitive and they were both competing to get scarce resources from men. If men were seen the ones with something to offer, and mom wasn’t to be trusted that sets things off in a bad direction. I’ve known more than one woman to fit that pattern.

64

Well I’m 34, and I’m from Canada. I don’t think it’s magical that I know so many women and men who defy the stereotypes about relating. I think it has been an conscious effort to overcome stereotypes in the last 50 years. This is a very good time and place for people to defy stereotypes and not face insurmountable prejudice and consequences. I agree with what Irishgirl says and I think her view is constructive and smart. People are all different, and relate in different ways, sometimes outside that gender stereotype, and that’s natural and positive.

It can be hard to see outside your own experience. We all have our different role models and experiences and I can see how someone might go her whole life in one style, read Men are From Mars, and say, “this is so true!” But people can also be selective in what they notice about people and take different views of the same thing. Like the other day I saw that movie 40 Year Old Virgin. And it is about these guys and their male bonding guy-only crowd, and it was EXACTLY like the girliest girl crowds I’ve ever been in. They don’t bond until they start to talk about their relationships. Then they form a deep connection based on feelings and emotional suppport. One goes on about how he’s not complete without his ex, and one is crying in the other’s arms over how his relationship isn’t working, and they meddle in each other’s affairs, give a makeover, roleplay difficult relationship conversations, contemplate their feelings, analyze and conspire, listen and communicate their deepest feelings and insecurities, and they do an awful lot of it in the workplace. It is exactly the picture of female bonding that everyone puts down. All of the elements of the “girly” female relationship are there. Yet all that’s said about it is that it’s male bonding. It just looked to me the same as female bonding. I didn’t think it was consciously a role-reversal story. The movie was good because it was very funny, but what held it together was that it was a story of the type of same-sex bonding that comes from people feeling safe to be open about feelings where the opposite sex is not there to judge.

Maybe the reason it’s easier to relate to the same sex when it comes to these types of topics, is not that there is a communiation style, but that it’s just safer to tell your heterosexual relationship problems to someone who would never be a prospective partner and who won’t judge your attractiveness.

Another insight I had from the great thinking man’s film, “40 Year Old Virgin” is that some people might obsess on these topics like their looks and their latest fight with the partner, because some people just don’t have other things taking up their resources. In that movie, they are the type of guys who work in retail, like Everybody Loves Raymond and Survivor and play cards and video games for their entertainment. The virgin actually collects dolls, and it’s never even called girly or gay by these guys who call everyone gay. It is shown simply as immature. It seems that ultimately their lives are fulfilled by falling in love and having their own families. These may be the type of person everyone in this thread says they just don’t like or relate to. Maybe it’s that there are more women living in that world. More women do have crappy jobs and a lack of interest in challenging hobbies. I would expect it would be hard for men and women to relate as equals if they are often coming from different circumstances and traditions, but as those things even up, I think that’s why you see so many more women best friends with men and feeling that’s what’s natural.

65

Doesn’t fit me at all. Women were always the “providers” in my family and men wern’t really a large part of family life. Personally, I think it may stem from the fact that I am somewhat emotionally aloof, whereas my mother always expected a very close “best-friend” type relationship with me. The overall effect was somewhat smothering and I think I may have internalized female relationships as having too much potential to get uncomfortably close. Too overwhelming. But the male friendships in my family- with my uncles- were always about going somewhere or doing something. They were about action, not emotional. And that makes me a lot more comfortable.

66

Can I just say, I’m enjoying this thread.

To Crafter_Man - you’ll have noticed from other comments that women don’t often seem to have an easy ‘common ground’ with regards to conversation topics, career stay at home, kids no kids, likes shopping hates shopping … one thing we all have in common is relationships. I guess it is socially acceptable for girls to ‘bitch’ about their partners but in my experience it is often affectionate indulgent (even proud) nit-picking than anything else. Eleanorigby got it right when she said

Also as calm kiwi said, that’s just the way we communicate - after all 'tis a far far better thing that we joke about our partner’s minor quirks with friends than we nag him to distraction about something of only minor importance in the scheme of things.

67

I am the only female in my department and my husband works in an all male environment. From what I have heard and seen men bitch about their wives and gossip just as much as the women I know. They just do it a little differently, but the ball-and-chain, shopping, and my wife spends all my money jokes abound.

I also see men being very competitive in their relationships with each other. Who makes the most, has the biggest whatever. I have male and female friends and I like different things about them, but I choose my friends based on who they are. I agree that some women tend to do annoying stereotypical woman things, and some men do too, so I avoid them both. I don’t like women who play helpless kitten and I don’t like men who beat their chest. I wouldn’t like a women who beat her chest and I wouldn’t like a man who played helpless kitten either!

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This is my reason for preferring males to females as friends.

But to add to that, I have been burned too many times by women who only use other women to boost their own self esteem by either being competitive or needing someone around to listen to their petty drama so you’ll say things like, “No, you’re not fat and unlovable! Don’t be silly!”

Ugh. That’s why my best friend is my husband. I have a few casual friends from H.S. that I see a few times a year. That way, there’s no constant, draining drama. We just get together and catch up.

69

Update:

The woman bitched about in the OP just gave notice. Woo hoo! No more freezer burn in the hallway!

70

sigh

Like crabs in a bucket, you broads…

71

This made me think about the recent thread concerning men who prefer women as friends. Some posters stated that they didn’t like the company of other men because they talked only of “guy stuff” and that women had much more interesting conversations…

Now, I’m wondering if a woman who doesn’t like “girly-type” chats would get along or not with men who don’t like “guy-type” chats.

72

I get aggravated any time I hear people bitching about how they don’t like some group of people, esp. one several billion strong. There are no generalizations that hold true across a vast demographic group like gender. I believe and always will believe that these stereotypes are very shallow, but like a broken clock, every now and then they’re right. I’ve certainly met and worked with women who confirm every heinously typical female competitive bitchy behavior, but for each of them, there’s another who’s not like that.

I’m going to haul off and say it. You’re a woman who doesn’t like other women? That’s fine, but it’s not the female gender that has an issue-- it’s you. I say that not as a judgement on the people in this thread who have asserted their discomfort with women, just as a perspective check. I say the same thing to people who say that all men suck. It just ain’t so.

That said, I do understand why this skewed view of women exists. I went to an all-girl high school and was raised almost exclusively by women, so I got a bit overloaded on all the femininity. This turned me off on the gender when I was a teenager, and I sought out the company of men. Since college, though, things have evened out, and I now have equal numbers of both genders. It is a great relief because I treasure my women friends and don’t think I could have survived my 20’s without them. I think it’s safe to say that I like weird people who defy social norms and expectations, so I could never narrow down my criteria for friendship by gender.

twickster: just remember it’s her problem, not yours, and her loss, plus she’ll be outta there soon anyway!

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But y’know that saying, “women can be catty,” did NOT come out of a vaccuum. :smiley:

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I am only a few years older then you (5) and agree that society has made MAJOR progress in the way males and females DO relate and are expected to relate in the workplace. The workplace is NO place for stereotypes, gender or otherwise. If you are smart you work like they don’t exist. If you are smarter you realise they do (the gender ones) and use them to your advantage.

It takes smarts to treat everyone the same BUT different (it would make Orwell’s pigs proud). Women negotiate in a different way to men, no less tough or thorough, just differently. We can chose the “we are all the same” route but it won’t work in our favour…everyone knows the best time to make a deal with a male is when he is busy doing something else! Women CAN listen to multiple conversations!