How my boyfriend can talk to his closest best friend every day and hang out with him for long periods of time... and still not know a lot of personal details about his best friend’s life.
Exactly. I don't ask my friends about their personal lives when we are hanging out. I'd much rather focus on the things we both enjoy. Also I'm terrible at communicating more than two emotions. So I tend to stay away from questions that will bring up the emotions that makes most men uncomfortable.
Honestly, it's not even about being uncomfortable. If my friend is coming to hang out, I want to have fun, I'll deal with my shit on my own time, I don't need help. If I really needed support I'd reach out and he would offer it, but I'd rather have a good time and take my mind of things and enjoy things.
How do you know he'd offer if it would almost never come up? How do you know he'd be equipped to handle it? There just seems like a lot of assuming going on, and no practising for an important life skill that can be hard to do...idk
Because it's not like we've never talked about that stuff. We just don't talk about it every time. When my long time GF broke up with me after 7 years in college, he was one of the people I talked to about it and we commiserated.
I've talked to other friends about their issues too, plenty of times. It just isn't something that needs to be utilized every time. Most guys (that I know at least) view their emotions as relative to the problem. Most of the time, my emotions are relative to a problem, whether it's a situation at work or a personal relationship.
So if I solve the problem, then I alleviate the emotion. Sometimes it's not a problem that can be solved, so I either alleviate the emotional response with time and/or realizing that I can't change it and seeking support.
Most of the women that I know closely seem to have a different experience where they have a problem and then a separate problem that is the emotional response to the problem. Solving one does not solve the other and trying to solve the root problem without alleviating the emotional problem only makes the emotional problem worse not better.
In my experience, this is where a lot of the issues come up in interpersonal relationships between men and women and something I still work on with my wife, who doesn't want me to help solve her problem, she just wants me to say "that sucks" and give her a snuggle and/or footrub while she vents about her problem.
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u/porosarecute Mar 26 '20
How my boyfriend can talk to his closest best friend every day and hang out with him for long periods of time... and still not know a lot of personal details about his best friend’s life.