Very insightful! Giving some prior bad friend experiences some thought after reading this, I realized that the issue of how men and women tend to define friendship may be more problematic than I initially thought.
I (male, tending to have more female friends as I usually seek strong emotional support in those close to me) had a friend (female) I met my first year of college. She would go on about how close we were and how important the friendship was, but we fell out on numerous occasions due to her extremely blatant disregard for my emotions and general disuse of the level of vulnerability I had come to think to be safe with her. I'm a person that believes that we can't be close friends with everyone and that acquaintances are okay and necessary, but something really irked me about the fact that she did not want to believe us to be mere acquaintances- given the obvious disregard for my feelings.
It seems to me that she was quite possibly conditioned to speak of friends in a certain manner and truly did want to think us that close, but in all honesty preferred the company of people who strictly shared similar interests (we met in japanese class so go figure). I understand that people are complex beings and that we have many layers, and I'm not saying that she (or anyone for that matter) is incapable of giving emotional support- but I think it just outlines to me how muddy interactions can get and how blurry intentions can seem with the ever-present influence of gender norms. I, believing that because she's my friend and is a woman, assume that she'll want and will maintain that kind of friendship- and she, given that I'm a male, thinking I would be someone content with not ever really being sensitive to each other's feelings.
One takeaway I've gotten from this whole thing after reading your post is: it's good to analyze our first interactions with a person to potentially gauge what they're looking for in friendship. It's also equally important to recognize that we may want different things, and the solution should simply be to approach each other differently (assuming we favor the person enough to want to keep them around) rather than prioritizing our expectations and getting hurt when the person inevitably disappoints us..
This was a great read, and I hope you sleep well at night knowing your words helped someone find a better way to look at an ugly part of their life.
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Very insightful! Giving some prior bad friend experiences some thought after reading this, I realized that the issue of how men and women tend to define friendship may be more problematic than I initially thought.
I (male, tending to have more female friends as I usually seek strong emotional support in those close to me) had a friend (female) I met my first year of college. She would go on about how close we were and how important the friendship was, but we fell out on numerous occasions due to her extremely blatant disregard for my emotions and general disuse of the level of vulnerability I had come to think to be safe with her. I'm a person that believes that we can't be close friends with everyone and that acquaintances are okay and necessary, but something really irked me about the fact that she did not want to believe us to be mere acquaintances- given the obvious disregard for my feelings.
It seems to me that she was quite possibly conditioned to speak of friends in a certain manner and truly did want to think us that close, but in all honesty preferred the company of people who strictly shared similar interests (we met in japanese class so go figure). I understand that people are complex beings and that we have many layers, and I'm not saying that she (or anyone for that matter) is incapable of giving emotional support- but I think it just outlines to me how muddy interactions can get and how blurry intentions can seem with the ever-present influence of gender norms. I, believing that because she's my friend and is a woman, assume that she'll want and will maintain that kind of friendship- and she, given that I'm a male, thinking I would be someone content with not ever really being sensitive to each other's feelings.
One takeaway I've gotten from this whole thing after reading your post is: it's good to analyze our first interactions with a person to potentially gauge what they're looking for in friendship. It's also equally important to recognize that we may want different things, and the solution should simply be to approach each other differently (assuming we favor the person enough to want to keep them around) rather than prioritizing our expectations and getting hurt when the person inevitably disappoints us..
This was a great read, and I hope you sleep well at night knowing your words helped someone find a better way to look at an ugly part of their life.