How is it, I wonder, how friendship is so different for men and women? It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately due to a number of “problems” with friends! When a guy meets another guy, unless there is a major problem or a history there, they nearly automatically become friends! My husband meets someone once and would go out for a drink with them. With women, they always wonder what ulterior motive the other one has. For example, two couples meet who haven’t met before. The men get on like a house on fire, chatting about everything from football to music. The women are like two dogs sniffing each other out. Looking for signs. Can I trust her? Will she make a play for my husband? If I tell her things will she keep them private? Will she make out she’s my friend but talk about me to everyone else? Is this a woman’s naturally skeptical nature? Why can’t we take people at face value? It drives me insane but having said that, I’m certainly guilty of it myself.
I would hate to presume that women are more devious than men are and I have plenty of extremely trustworthy friends but on a whole, it is hard for women to befriend other women easily. We tend to have the same friends for a long time, which is a good thing, but sometimes can be very slow to open up to other women, whilst easily making friends with men! Maybe it is the fact we tend to tell too much about ourselves, that we are choosier who we tell it too. We seem to always have deep and meaningfuls. Those we chat to about pointless information, we don’t particularly count as our friends as such. We like them but still have a wall built up around us, letting only tit-bits leek out-unless we have a few drinks on us! Then we may tell too much and regret it in the morning-or so we think!
Women are complicated creatures—and I’ll be the first to admit it. What I hate to admit is maybe, just maybe, we need to take a leaf out of the men’s books and just chill out a bit! I think if this happened, we would all have a lot more friends, Maybe to curb our enthusiasm of gossip would be a good start, and to stop over-analyzing everything! Having said that, this is exactly what I’m guilty of in this piece! I will obviously never learn. (Sigh) I think I need to accept this is human nature! Sure I’ll keep trying, but I can’t help the way I am—just like men can’t help leaving the toilet seat up!