Facts tho.
It’s always the dudes who are only friends with other dudes that have the most issues.
More of a cultural thing than anything, but it’s always good for dudes to have women as friends as well, women are just better at talking about some things. They don’t have the same social hangups as a lot of men.
Shits better than it was, but it’s still weird when people only have friends of their own gender.
I was married for 35 years. In that whole time, my husband had many female friends. It never bothered me at all., because i wasn’t jealous like that. I was never able to have male friends, though. That was always some kind of threat.
I always got along better with guys than women, so I was always turning down outings and ghosting people in favour of my marriage. Now, since we divorced after 35 years., I have no friends at all. He kept his girlfriends from high school (even marrying one within a year of our divorce) and I’m completely alone.
Seems fair.
Same thing with other types of bigotry. The more people you know and/or have to interact with from different ethnicities or backgrounds, the harder it is to blindly hate them. You see this a lot in more diverse places like cities where they tend more progressive and tolerant. And you see the inverse in more remote or rural places that are often more homogenous.
Many women and men do not like their SO having friends of the opposite gender, especially if they are alone together. So that means having a female friend that you can privately confide in is not easy to have or maintain if either party is in a relationship.
The “safest” way to have an opposite gendered friend that you can talk to is one that you only talk to at work during work hours, which isn’t an option for male dominated fields(e.g. construction) and men in those environments are probably the most in need of a female friend to talk to.
The irony is that the people who don’t want their SO having an opposite gendered friend probably need an opposite gendered friend to talk to.
I really don’t understand heterosexual people that are like this. I’m a gay dude. I’m attracted to dudes, I have lots of gay dudes that are platonic friends. It’s possible to be friends with people without boning them lol.
I think the fear isn’t that everyone of the preferred gender wants to bone your partner, but that you have no way of knowing which ones do. The uncertainty is what I think gets to a lot of people.
Still, it’s silly. If one of the core values of your relationship is that you’re exclusive, it’s up to you and your partner to honor that, not up to every other person who comes along. If your partner won’t respect that if a friend offers, then they don’t respect the relationship to begin with and you’re better off finding out.
At least, that’s my take from listening to other people. I’m not a sociologist or anything.
I think that’s part of what’s beautiful about love. The healthiest relationships are those which accept they don’t have control over their partner loving them. It’s like the greatest expression of trust.
I get where you’re coming from but I’ve witness toxicity regarding masculinity from both men and women. Honestly, it’s definitely possible to have healthy relationships with other dudes. All of my best friends are guys and we aren’t afraid to talk about anything, like our feelings. So it’s really the company you keep that really matters, regardless of gender imo
Unfortunately, “my friends and family are all assholes, must be feminists fault” is extremely common and rarely shaken off.
There’s plenty of reasons people night not listen to your problems. Sometimes people just don’t have the space. Sometimes they’re just assholes.
The reasons I’ve seen the most frequently stem from the person trying to talk. They’re oversharing. They never reciprocate. They never take steps to actually address their problems. They’re using their problems to manipulate someone who isn’t falling for it.
But in 40 years of adulthood, I’ve never seen “I’m not going to listen to them solely because they’re a man”.
This. Part of learning to share emotions is learning to accept shared emotions and learning to not share emotions for all the other reasons. Most of my interactions in all women groups don’t really deal much with our feelings aside from bits at the beginning and end or with a “can I vent” warning/request at the beginning (and that’s a sometimes thing). And we take turns talking about what’s going on in our lives or deciding what the conversation is about, actively making space for others to chime in.
If you need to talk a lot about your feelings, especially the deep stuff, talk to a therapist. That’s not brushing you off, it’s what therapy is for.
But also learn to feel your feelings by yourself. Put on a sad movie and cry without shame. Go for a run or a walk or a bike and feel your heart out. That’s part of what women are expected to do as well. I think a lot of men have this idea that we all talk deep about our feelings or wear our hearts on our sleeves rather than learn to independently process our feelings, and provide mutual support where needed which is the healthy thing to do.
But also learn to feel your feelings by yourself.
I agree completely with this stance
If you need to talk a lot about your feelings, especially the deep stuff, talk to a therapist. That’s not brushing you off, it’s what therapy is for.
While I agree that therapy can help a lot in those situations, I don’t think these talks should be limited to a therapist. I try to be somebody you can come to and talk about deep stuff for my friends. With one friend of mine, I mostly talk about deep feelings. It is great to have somebody like her, it’s a different category than therapy. A therapist shouldn’t give you his opinion and rarely shares similar experiences. Sometimes it’s just nice to have someone to talk to in a more symmetric way. For me it’s almost never a burden to listen to the emotions of people I like. I want to hear the deep stuff.
Sure a friend is not a replacement for therapy, but therapy is also not a replacement for a friend with whom you talk about deep emotions.
