wolf in second hand clothing brought up something interesting in the thread about relationship red flags. To quote:
This is interesting to me. I do find it a little odd when girls go on about how much they hate other girls and like guys…but I hadn’t thought of it from this point of view.
In my own experience, I’ve got friends who are guys and who are girls…the degree to which I relate to them changes depending on the friend. I do find that often it’s a lot easier to confide in members of the opposite sex but I’m not sure if that has to do with the explanation given above. Another friend of mine theorized that maybe it’s more about trusting the opposite sex since (in many cases) they’re the ones we have sexual relationships with, etc.
So what do you guys think of women who claim that they can’t get on with other women?
I tend to get along better with guys than girls. Not that I can’t talk to women, or that I have absolutely no female friends, but given a choice between a guy and a girl, I’ll probably talk to the guy. It may just be that I feel girls my age are more shallow or judgemental or something. And I don’t have any interest in stereotypical girl things like shopping or clothes or dating.
IME, women who hate other women (or at least don’t hang out with them) are usually very insecure and see same-sex relationships as competitions that they can’t win. Quite sad, really, when women can have so much to offer each other, and the haters are just cheating themselves of that. When women sit and chitchat or otherwise engage pleasantly, it stimulates the bonding hormone oxytocin, and I can sometimes literally feel it coursing through my body. It feels good, and I’d hate to miss out on that.
SOME women just plain feel more comfortable around guys. My oldest, closest pal is a gay guy (so it’s not like he’s in love with me ). I think I feel more at ease around men because growing up I tagged along with my brother a lot, rather than playing with other little girls. Now it feels weird to me to be very close to a female. I do admire a lot of other women and can make friendly small talk but don’t really seek out close friendships with them.
My boyfriend, in return, mostly has female friends. I like it because I think he is better able to understand the female POV than a lot of guys are because of it.
I really wish that it was more common for men and women to be normal friends without the frequent dramas over unrequited love that such situations seem to frequently end up becoming.
I hate to say this, but I think it’s an age thing. When all your friends are married, watch and see how many guy friends you hang out with. It’s not impossible to be friends with a married man if you’re a single woman (or a married one), but (in suburbia at least) things get a bit more circumspect and decorous. I have very few male friends willing to be seen in town with just me and not their wife as well. People talk and they talk a lot of crap. Nuf said.
I just don’t see how any person can claim to not like or be friends with an entire gender–either male or female. That strikes me as odd and not a good thing. If you think that women=shopping etc, you either haven’t been around a large amount of women(where do you live, Boy’s Town?) or you’re just seeing what you want to see.
I am 34 and married with two kids and I do it. I have always had lots of female friends and I don’t really relate to other males much. Lunches, walks, whatever is fine all around. I would be more than happy to do something with a female friend without my wife. She travels a lot (she is getting home from Paris in an hour) and she goes out to dinner with men and or women of all ages. I don’t see the problem.
They get my viewpoint and perspective on pretty much everything with a lot less effort. They tend to like the same kind of things I do, for the same reasons I do. Being friends with a woman is like work.
And yet every time I am around a group of them, I feel like I’m on some other planet where nothing makes sense. I can deal with it as if I am visiting another country and getting some exposure to the other culture, but I’m always happy to go home and be with people who understand me.
Every time I am on planet female, there is at least one discussion of shopping, babies, Oprah, or some other girly topic that I give two shits about. Also, anyone who ever utters the ‘us girls have to stick together’ sentiment makes me want to rip their intestines out with my bare hands.
I’m gettin to the point where most of my friends are married, and it’s still always me and the guys. It’s a group and I’m in it and there’s ‘guys night’ and that’s where I am. One guy’s girlfriend once expressed a problem with this arrangement and invited herself to guys night. She was told by the other guys that she was not welcome, pretty bluntly.
I have, and there really just aren’t that many women out there who think like I do. It’s not just one thing, it’s everything. I get pretty much one feeling from being around a big group of women, and that feeling is ‘I don’t belong here.’ Take a group of men and a group of women who are discussing the exact same topic and I will gravitate automatically to the men every time. Not necessarily agree with their opinion, but just feel more normal discussing it with them.
I’ve known several women with male-only friends, and they typically tended towards the tomboyish side of the spectrum in terms of preferred activities and interests, and had little interest in clothes shopping, gossip-oriented conversation, makeup comparisons, and so on. And the “competition” thing which some people mentioned is probably a valid reason for these women to avoid other women who try to “one-up” each other all the time.
Then again perhaps they just enjoyed being the center of their own solar system, without any other suns to block their light. One called her group of guys her “Hism” (a la a harem)…
I agree with this so much I’m wondering if my name is Green Bean.
I find myself saying “I’m not into girly things” sometimes, and then I quickly catch myself. What’s so wrong with liking girly things? If I’m not a “girl”, what am I?
Personally, I don’t trust women who don’t like other women. These people see what they want to see. If they see guys talking shit about each other, they’re just kidding around. But when women do it, they’re being catty. Guys can talk about sports 24/7, but women are silly if they talk about what they saw on Oprah. They’ll let out the fakest guffaw for a male-oriented joke but roll their eyes if a woman tries to be humorous.
I really think women who make friends only with guys just like being the center of male attention. Being in a gaggle of girls doesn’t give them the same special tingly feeling. I’ve also noticed that women who don’t form female friendships tend to believe that other women naturally don’t like them. They’re often the “They’re jealous of me” type. When people assume I don’t like them when I don’t even know them, they basically fulfill their prophecy.
The thing is, I would be sad if I couldn’t get along with women. But a lot of times, when a woman claims to have no female friends, she says it with pride. That’s not a good thing.
I’ve always been a tomboy, and yet I have always had a diverse set of female friends. I don’t like make-up or enjoy shopping, but I do like going out to eat and watching movies and talking about random things. Just like 90% of adults of both genders do.
Whenever a group is dominated by one gender, you will find stupid conversations. I admit that girls can get carried away with subjects that only they care about (like menstruation), but so can guys. Shopping, babies, and Oprah drive you nuts. Well, sports, sex, and dick jokes make me sick after awhile, and that’s what guys talk about when they get together. That’s why I don’t choose to hang around multiple guys anymore.
But I still befriend individual guys, because individuals always act differently than groups. Insipidity isn’t a trait of females. Rather, it’s an emergent property of all single-gender groups.
I believe my IQ dropped a several points when I worked only with guys. When they weren’t talking about chicks that wanted to “bang”, they were reciting lines from The Office (“That’s what she said…”) If that’s what you like, more power to ya.
I have the ability to get along with other women, but no desire to. It is easier to talk to men because I really don’t have to explain everything.
Nothing, really. Though there is no obligation for me to pretend to like ‘girly’ things because I happen to have a vagina. I will never like Oprah or her book club or Martha Stewart or her everything matches home decorator line. It’s just not me.
Just because you actually like girly stuff and feel the need to hide it does not mean that someone else who says ‘I don’t like Lifetime TV and shopping for curtains.’ doesn’t actually mean it.
I’m interested in sports and not what’s on Oprah, so I’d rather hear 24/7 sports than 24/7 Oprah. Though they can leave out baseball and golf, because those don’t interest me. And tennis. I don’t like tennis.
Believe or not, I’m laughing for real. It’s not fake. There are a couple of women comedians who have made me laugh. Lisa Lampinelli and Wendy Liebman come to mind. I much prefer, however, the stylings of Bill Hicks, Robert Schimmel, and George Carlin, among others.
There’s no tingly feeling. I don’t feel like the center of attention around the guys. I’m not the center of attention around the guys. That is the space where I can just chill out and be me and not worry about what kind of attention I’m getting.
I’ll usually go out with the guys to eat because the conversation will be about things I have interest in, and I’ll tend to go with them to the movies because they’ve got the same taste in movies I do. I realize women like movies, but they tend to like movies like ‘The Notebook’ and I tend to like movies like ‘War’.
catsix, I don’t have a problem with women who have more in common with guys than women.
My problem is with women who believe they are somehow better than other women and use that as an excuse for only hanging out with guys.
I don’t wear make-up. I don’t dress up. I don’t go shopping or get my hair “done”. Don’t plan to have babies or get married. Most times I feel like I’m dead-center on the feminine-masculine spectrum. But that doesn’t mean I think I’m better than more “girly” woman. Just different.
Maybe I did when I was a kid (“wearing a dress is STOOOPID!!”), but not now.
For me it’s just been circumstance. In undergrad I had mostly girlfriends and in gradschool I had mostly guyfriends. I don’t know why.
I don’t get along with the stereotypical gaggle of girls chattering about OMG SHOES, but then again I don’t get along with the stereotypical pack of guys grunting about “doing chicks” either. I get along with people who are like me, funnily enough.
And as an aside, not every girl who wears makeup and likes getting their hair done is a stereotypical girly-girl. I wear makeup every day and manage to talk about There Will Be Blood and the politics without injecting the word “like” after every other word. Really.
I hang around mostly guys. My best friend is a guy and my only true girl friend is another woman just like me who doesn’t have any other girl friends. I had best girl friends growing up, and then they moved away.
But I wouldn’t say I hate/distrust/look down on other women. I have plenty of good fun when I go to parties and I talk to other women. I guess I just have not had the opportunity to become close with a lot of women and have always been able to make good friends with guys.
FWIW I am also very tomboy-ish and happen to not be in to shopping, babies or Oprah. As I get older I find that most other women I mingle with aren’t into that sort of thing either. My sister-in-law and her sisters are about the girliest girls I can handle, and I find them to be pretty cool.
). I think I feel more at ease around men because growing up I tagged along with my brother a lot, rather than playing with other little girls. Now it feels weird to me to be very close to a female. I do admire a lot of other women and can make friendly small talk but don’t really seek out close friendships with them.