difference between how women & men view friends?

[zdrastvootya]

I''ve read a few postings by women here describing bad things that their friends have done to them. Some things are really not very nice.

It has me (a man) wondering whether women define "friends" differently than men do. I can''t imagine people I consider "friends" doing such things to me. If they were doing these things or capable of, they wouldn''t be my friends. Is this a gender difference, or just isolated cases? Opinions?

I''ve read something about some people having a lot of friends, and other having only a few "close" friends. Had to do with personality type, I think.

Z.

 

[fire&ice]

I have alot of acquaintances - wouldn''t call them friends. But, I''m one of those who has only a few very best of friends.

Women tend to be closer to their friends than men. We tend to devulge more, etc. I think women tend to be more competitive. Also, I think women are more sensitive. Guys don''t give some things a second thought.

 

[Caribou]

I have friends whom I know will be my friends forever.....even if we don''t talk for awhile, I know I can call them up one day and it''ll be like we didn''t have that 2 month lull.

My work friends are different, I know, that when the time comes for one of us to no longer work together our friendship will slowly end. I will always have fond memories of them but we are more acquaintances than friends.

Women are way more emotional than guys are. A guy friend can ask their male friend how his day was and he''ll say ''fine''. A female can ask her female friend the same question and you''ll be talking for hours about their day.

I think that guys let things go a lot easier than girls but at the same time, guys don''t put up with as much as a girl would.

 

[bookworm21]

I''m one of those women who has only a few close friends and consider the rest acquaintances. I''m also the type of person who is a very loyal friend, and it takes quite a bit before I realize that someone is not worth being friends with because of her catty behavior or competitiveness.

What I''ve noticed, and forgive me if I''m wrong here, is that many women are competitive, to the point of being extremely catty to each other. Left handed compliments are made, and sometimes, they''re made so slyly that the other person doesn''t know what to make of it.

Women tend to hold grudges for a long time and they won''t ever forget about it. Men, on the other hand, duke it out via fisticuffs and are able to laugh about the fight over a beer later. There''s are several interesting books about the difference in friendship dynamics between the genders. Apparently, girls learn to be competitive from an early age, and the "popular" ones can make other girls'' lives miserable. These growing up years tend to affect women later on in life. Some women are unable to face their high school tormentors even after ten years.

So yes, I think friendship dynamics are different for the genders, but I don''t think that women define friends differently than men. Friends are people you can rely on when you really need them and are there for you without question. Do men have a different definition than that?

 

[Dancing Fire]

the big difference.... women gossip about each other all day long.

 

[bookworm21]

Date: 12/19/2005 2:43:10 PM
Author: Dancing Fire
the big difference.... women gossip about each other all day long.

Sad. But in most cases, it is true.

 

[Momoftwo]

That sounds like what men say, but the truth is according to something I heard recently, men gossip too and just as much as women. The difference is what they gossip about.

See this: http://www.sirc.org/publik/gossip.shtml

and this: http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/06/15/wgoss15.xml


I too have a few good friends, the rest are just acquaintances. My best friends I''ve had since I was 13 and 15 and I''m 45 now. I can call either one for anything anytime. People get in trouble by trusting people they hardly know, but call friends and sharing things that probably are no one else''s business. Men and women do that. I think some of the things that friends do to each other are because one of them thinks they are closer than they really are. I''m also very careful of friendships at work because some people will use any info to advance in their job and it may be at the other person''s expense. Some people think they need "dirt" on their "friends" to control or stay a step ahead. You can give up too much control by sharing too much. My absolute best most trusted friend is my DH and he is the one I can gossip with to my heart''s content because I know it will go no further and will never be used against me.

 

[strmrdr]

Well you see there are several hundred categories of friends.

Well there is God then there is:

The top class is hunting buddy
second is fishing buddy - gotta trust your fishing buddy not to nark on your tall tales bout the one that got away.
third - is a war buddy - someone ya have been to hell and back with.
fourth - is a shooting buddy.. hard to find someone ya trust to witness that one in a billion shot.
Fifth would be a car buddy
sixth - well that would be the old lady (im toast now i let the secret out)
seventh would be a drinkin buddy.
eigth would be people you can stand to be around for more than 20 min.
and ninth down would be anyone else that matters.
10th down would be 99.99999999999999999999999999999% of the people the average man comes in contact with on any given month who he dont give a rats fanny bout :}

Now if the old lady happens to be a shooting or fishing or hunting buddy too then she moves up to the very top of the pack right close to God :}

 

[monarch64]

This is a very interesting thread! Momoftwo, I enjoyed your links, they were very enlightening! I think that men do gossip just as much as women, if not more, but in different ways. In our circle of friends, it is the men who are on their cell phones, and I hear gossip first from my husband, who has heard it from the males in our group! When I say I think men and women''s gossip styles are different, I mean men are way less detailed about "stories" and women go into far greater detail. For example: the guys we know will just say, hey, guess who''s engaged/married/pregnant, etc., but the females will say...."OMG, are you sitting down? Remember so-and-so? Well, they''ve been up to (whatever) the past five years, and then I was talking to (so-and-so) and they told me THIS, and guess what! Now they''re engaged/married/pregnant, blah blah blah! It''s hysterical. I myself (a female) always feel it makes a better story if you give a lot of background details! LOL. I also consider myself more of a listener than a spreader of stories...I am much more an observer than I am an instigator in gossip. But I do tell my share of harmless gossip, mainly to my husband, who I can share anything with about the rest of our circle, and know it won''t go any farther.

I do have this to say about email gossip in general, you know, those forwards you get about scams, religious stuff, etc. I have one good friend who used to bombard me with those emails, she''s the same person who will fall for any scam or door-to-door salesperson (i.e. selling magazine subscriptions for a trip to Europe, or fire alarms for $75). She''s somewhat of a naive young lady. I finally started sending her the links to all these crazy emails from truthorfiction.com. Almost every forward she sent me was listed on that site as fiction. I didn''t want to be impolite about it, but I felt someone needed to clue her in, as her husband had been pretty upset with her a few times when she wrote someone a personal check for whatever they were scamming her for.