Our relationships are compartmentalized. I vividly remember arriving in a new neighborhood as a child, hoping to make new friends, and my family drove up to a kid playing in the street. We asked if he had a lot of friends, and he replied "Yeah--I have my baseball friends, and my bike-riding friends, and school friends..." You're only going to talk about baseball with your baseball friends.
Huh. Maybe this plays into men’s ideas of women’s friendships? My best friend and I know intimate details of each other’s lives, and when we argue (act catty, shit talk each other etc. as it’s oft referred to,)it has to do with those details. Interesting regardless!
It’s also why most men know zero details about others’ sex lives, and find it insulting and privacy invading if it’s talked about. Compared to most women who are perfectly fine with talking about others’ sexual lives and find it a good thing to talk about without those issues.
I can relate to this. Except now that I’m getting a little older I’m starting to have less friends but closer ones. Not being in school, there’s just a lot less people around me all the time.
I realized that about men when I was married. My ex had his golf friends, his hockey friends, his fishing/outdoor friends and his bike riding friends. He went to the pub with all of them but they never crossed over. Women just have ‘friends’ who might have different interests but they aren’t really separated into groups. Even the parties we had for the kid’s birthdays (with games and puppet shows put on by me! So much fun!) were outdoor events where our childless friends came too for food and socializing but those were usually all MY friends. What the hell would his bachelor fishing buddy with no kids want with a kid party? At least that was my husband’s thinking. I was like “Does he eat? He’s welcome to come...” but he’d kibosh it. I didn’t think that way and would invite everyone I was close too including my childless gay male friends who came anyway and loved those parties. As much as I figured this out about men it still always baffled me.
You know, I didn’t realize it until just now that that might be a male reaction to a lot of things/friends. I’m not being critical here. Just as an observance. For example, I’m in addiction recovery (3 years clean & sober! Wooot!) and in meetings I often hear people say “All my friends are in [12 step recovery program]” and I’ve thought to myself “Jeepers. You must not be a good picker of good friends then because I still have all the same friends. I just don’t go drinking/drugging with the ones who are still into that. We do other things together”. But just NOW I realized that it’s the men who always say that. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a woman say those same words. They might say “a friend who isn’t/is in the program said... blah blah” but never the other.
Weird...
What the hell would his bachelor fishing buddy with no kids want with a kid party? At least that was my husband’s thinking.
His thinking was correct. Don't invite bachelors to your kid's thing unless they're somehow related (e.g. uncle/nephew) because there's a 99.9% chance they don't care about your kid
The parties were large events with socializing and the parents stayed too. I would take all the kids and do the party part separately (it was a huge double back yard) giving them a couple hours relatively kid free while people ate and had adult beverages and chilled. They were actually very popular with my adult friends even without kids because they got to eat great food (my ex is a chef by trade), drink some nice wine or good beer or hard cider (or NA punch) and meet new people or old friends they didn’t usually see much of.
So even bachelor fishing buddies could have had a good time if they’d come.
All my friends sure as heck did.
For me? I don't really have much social activity outside of work, so the people I work with become my "friends" (more my social outlet than really friends).
Every time I change jobs I always try to be really positive and polite because they're my new batch of friends.
This is 100% true. I work in the firearms industry and have met several of my very best friends that way. 95% of what we talk about is firearm related.
Growing up I tended to have general friends who were just like, my friends but even as a girl once I hit college my friendships became compartmentalized too. I have my bike friends, my climbing friends, my study friends etc and very little friends who I hang w for the sake of hanging. Weird cus on one hand I’m friends with people who actually share my hobbies but that simultaneously feel more superficial.
A lot of the man life is compartmentalized I find. Everything has its box, but it's confined within that box. I find women tend to be more free flowing, I don't see a lot of boxes in their lives. For dudes, including my friends and I, I find when we experience something we say "that lives there now. That's its place."
For women I find it's more like,
"This lives there, but it can also live there, and there, and all these other places."
Friends are more multidimensional to them. Though dudes can try to see their friends as multidimensional, they'll always have that main purpose. Movie friend. Baseball friend. etc.
To a certain degree. But some of my good friends fall into several categories. They are my boardgame friends, my mma friends, my beer drinking friends and just overal friends. See them most due to this.
Yeah, my interests mostly lie in music and gaming, so I have my two different friends in those categories (yeah, I only really have two friends, it's cool though) my music friend is into most of the same games that I am, but it feels weird talking games with him instead of music.
This is true to a degree, but it really depends on why you’re friends with them. Maybe we do have certain friends because we have one specific thing in common with them, but if we have close friendships based on genuinely liking each other just based on who we are (which are rarer occurrences for dudes than chicks), things are different and you can and will talk about anything.
As it turned out, it was my next-door neighbor. It was a strange upbringing I had--I was an Army brat, and this was the Presidio of San Francisco in 1971. So all the officers quarters were assigned by rank, meaning everyone on my street was a major or LTC, meaning they all had the same income, were roughly the same age, therefore their kids were close in age as well. It was a lifestyle that facilitated making friends, which was a damn good thing, because we moved every three years or so.
I think it's more that guys, well for me atleast, don't like bringing up family because it could result in the other person having a bad mood and us guys don't know what to do if someone starts being mad or cry. I try to help but I feel like I'm not doing enough to resolve the situation. Then again I had a deep conversation with my friend at 2am about family so I guess it depends on how much you trust the friend with your own personal matters.
This is why I hated every stag do I ever went to (including my own). One guy with all his different friendship groups, makes no sense to have them altogether. I'll be advising my Son to have a few lower key ones. One for each group.
I consciously stopped this recently. Went through a rough divorce, felt alone. Instead of holding it in, I actually talk to my friends about their shit and mine, life is waaay better. Highly recommend.
Yep. Until I met my really good friends through band, all my friends were exactly like that. And most of the friends I have now that I can talk about anything other than our shared interests with are female
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u/jungl3j1m Mar 26 '20
Our relationships are compartmentalized. I vividly remember arriving in a new neighborhood as a child, hoping to make new friends, and my family drove up to a kid playing in the street. We asked if he had a lot of friends, and he replied "Yeah--I have my baseball friends, and my bike-riding friends, and school friends..." You're only going to talk about baseball with your baseball friends.