My personal belief is that a man should have close female friends as it makes him a better more complete man and your female friends will also benefit from your friendship and respect you all the more for it.
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Should a man have close female friends? I think there may be two questions there.
Should a man have close female friends because he gets on well with them or should a man not have close female friends because it upsets his partner?
I believe if we have a partner who disproves of us having close female friends then that partner doesn’t trust us and that will filter into other aspects of our relationship and make it not so healthy.
There is a different dynamic with a female friend than a male friend.
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For me, I am the eldest of three and I have two sisters. As we were growing up they were always my annoying younger sisters and although I loved them and minded them, I had no interest in being friends with them particularly. As we grew older our relationship changed and we are all close friends now and even run a business together with no fur flying.
However I now have many close female friends who I find invaluable. There is a different dynamic with a female friend than a male friend. We talk about different things and I find female friends to be far more interested in a broader range of subjects than simply who scored the first goal last night. I can ring one of them up and suggest a walk on the beach, whereas if I attempted that with some male friends they would think there’s something wrong with me and why doesn’t he want to just have a beer and watch the game.
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I think us men are very uncomfortable showing our true selves to one another for fear of being branded “weak” or “needy”.
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We all need friends of the same sex to have banter with, I’m sure my female friends talk about stuff with their girlfriends that they wouldn’t dream of discussing with me and likewise me with my male friends but for me, life is to be enjoyed and experienced, and one of the best ways of doing that is to experience it with a wide variety of people from all backgrounds and you definitely get a different interpretation of life from a female point of view to a male. There is generally more depth to the discussion and I find that it could go off on a completely different tangent to what it started out as and not even realise it.
My personal belief is that a man should have close female friends as it makes him a better more complete man and your female friends will also benefit from your friendship and respect you all the more for it.
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In many ways women are so much stronger than men and I find if you have a problem it will be dissected and digested and they will help you to find a solution and really think about the issue at hand rather than to get a quick synopsis over a beer and be told” sure it’ll be grand” like is possible with a male friend. I think us men are very uncomfortable showing our true selves to one another for fear of being branded “weak” or “needy”.
Society as a whole I think also needs to change so that if someone sees a man and a woman they know separately and see them together without their respective partners that it’s not automatically assumed that there is something not right going on or that they are having an illicit affair.
My personal belief is that a man should have close female friends as it makes him a better more complete man and your female friends will also benefit from your friendship and respect you all the more for it.
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Never knew just how much I was missing out on until I made my first lesbian friend. A relationship where you have free access to another gender’s perspective but still commiserate about dating woes or moon over photos of Kate Upton is something special.
Not that a straight man can’t simply be friends with a straight woman! Friends are, and are like investments: you benefit from a diverse portfolio.
I think us men are very uncomfortable showing our true selves to one another for fear of being branded “weak” or “needy”. Need to find better friends, guy. Yours seem a bit toxic, which may be why you come away with the belief that women are stronger then men. Could be how things are in Ireland, but here in the US? My friends are closer then family. and we’ve always been the “go to guy” for each other, no matter the issue. I don’t remember ever specifically seeking out a woman for advice, because I always had those that I… Read more »