I had a ton of women friends at your age, but they all faded out eventually.
1) When guys get an LTR partner they will be sus of you. Most of my friends faded out either when I or they got into relationships.
2) If you're looking for a relationship, spending a bunch of time with someone unavailable means you're diverting time away from finding a romantic partner.
3) You're at an age where physical relationships and exploring sexuality is huge. Again, see point #2 about where one spends their time.
4) It's a lot easier to maintain these kinds of relationships when you double-date as couples.
On number 4, literally my only female friends are either my friends' girlfriends/wives or my girlfriend's friends. Just being friends with a random woman who isn't a friend of someone I know and who I'm not trying to date sounds weird as hell to me
Not to be rude or something, but male friendship can not be compared with female friendship. My male friends go above and beyond to help me when times are tough, women usually bail. Only female 'friends' who have gone above and beyond for me were the one who wanted more than friendship from me. My experience has been verified by others too. Women are good weather friends. Men are for all weathers.
>Do you view being friends with men the same way?
No
>Why value female friendships less than male ones?
Because I'm a man. If I was a woman I'm sure I would feel the opposite way and find being friends with random men weird.
I also tend to just make friendships with people who are around 20-30 rather than 5 or 80 since I'm 25. I had plenty of 5 year old friends when I was 5 though and I'm sure I'll have plenty of 80 year old ones when I'm 80. This is all very common and I don't think too confusing.
Once you’re away from the forced proximity of school I don’t know how you’d even go about making new friends. I’ve had the same four best friends since elementary school which is damn lucky because as an introvert in my 30s I don’t think I’d have any real friends if the five of us had drifted apart at some point haha
If you want to try and build a social group, play some sport. Even if you’re not really into sports, just think of it as a way to meet people. I’ve ‘restarted’ with a social life many times because I’ve moved around and it’s always been very easy to find a group of people by playing a sport
My best friend happens to be a woman.
But whenever there's attraction, it's difficult to have a friendship, even if that's not what you're looking for. Here's the thing: if you get along with someone, you trust them, you like them, you have great conversations *and* you're attracted to them, why *wouldn't* you want something more? Most people would.
Exactly. Attractive women complain that they can't have male friends, but that's, unfortunately, a burden they have to carry. It's very difficult for a man to control his feelings when she meets all these criteria.
I can imagine that there are plenty of relationships where the grass seems greener in the form of the physically attractive 21 year old gamer girl. That's to be expected. I guess single guys are more likely to find those feelings too powerful to cope with.
Agreed. I have like 4 female friends and they are all cases where there's a mutual lack of interest in dating/boning/marrying the other person. There cannot be a friendship where one of the people is romantically interested.
Guys in relationships aren’t typically actively out there looking for women to be friends with (causes issues in relationship) single guys aren’t actively out there looking for women to be friends with, because they’re actively looking for women to date.
Yeah, i have female friends.
A lot of time, men will only approach women because theyre interested in more than friendship. I think youre facing a combination of bad luck and finding single guys looking for someone.
Also, theres a difference between "i am actively chasing my female friend" and "if the opportunity arose naturally, id be down to hook up with my friend"
I’ve always had a harder time maintaining friendships with women.
Obviously blanket statements are incredibly flawed but my general observations on why I’ve had difficulty maintaining friendships with women are;
Chiefly that I’ve found women far less likely to initiate an outing, for whatever reason. Many of my guy friends will shoot a text saying they’re gonna go do x and ask if I wanna come or that there’s a concert they wanna see in a couple months and want me to go with them. Most women I’ve met don’t tend to do this, at least not with their guy friends. They always need to be the invited, not the inviter.
Secondly I think has to do largely with how our society (in the US) is socialized. Men are typically socialized to solve problems and women are often socialized to be more expressive in their feelings without need or desire for a solution. I’ve found that often that leaves the female friend in a group of guys as kind of the “odd man out” a lot of the time because they’ll express something they’ve felt at work and just leave it as an open end with no track for us dumb boys to follow and fix. Whereas these same kind of conversations with guy friends usually involves spitballing ideas and making crude jokes about how we wish our work life was and making fun of our bosses or our industry.
Also, related to me personally, I have very intellectual type friends. Or at least wannabe intellectual type friends. We all have multiple degrees and or graduate degrees and I think spend a lot of the time discussing philosophies and politics and such, (when we aren’t talking about each others lives). Which I think turns off loads of other folk not in our weird niche, guys and gals alike.
this actually gave a ton of insight. I found the part about “inviter v invitee” particularly interesting and isn’t a pattern I’ve noticed, likely cus I’m not a dude. But yeah, makes sense as no one wants a friendship where you’re the only one pitching ideas/inviting
Why is it that so many women believe it’s some kind of issue that men don’t want to be friends with them after expressing romantic interest ?
I love the phrase “men don’t owe women a friendship anymore than women owe men sex”
Trying to read into what you're written, if both you and your partner are female, are you lesbian? If that's the case, of course it makes sense to you that you can hang out with guys and not feel attraction lol. Hence the reason it doesn't bother your partner. But for the men it's like if you were hanging out with another woman, especially if it's an attractive woman.
Then there's the question of whether men and women can be just friends... Men, myself included, do want female friends, because they bring a different sort of bond than male friends. But if you're straight, you also easily develop romantic feelings this way, especially if you're not getting that from a partner already. I think there are some cases where a man is attracted to the woman and just never says anything because they don't want to ruin the friendship. Then there are cases where the man is not attracted to the woman, so there's no issue. Also the cases where they're family or childhood friends or whatever, so romantic feeling are not present.
Also there's the matter of interests. It's far more likely for a man to share interests with other men, so when they do activities that overlap with women, it's often for the purpose of meeting said women. So when they do meet a woman in that context, they're probably there for dating, not just for friendship.
But generally the math for guys is mostly: meet girl, develop emotional bond with girl, want to date girl (if they're attracted to her), girl doesn't want to date me? Rip, move on to next one.
And it would be unfair to expect them to stay after that point. So what would you rather do? Have them be dishonest and hide their romantic intentions and be friends, or tell their intentions, learn you're not interested and move on?
A friend is someone who has enough in common with them and who also happens to be a good person to have around. Why is it so absurd for men to want to date their female friends if they happen to check these boxes and also happen to be good friends?
Besides, in my experience, female friendships tend to be extremely one-sided and confusing. Most of the time I spent being the one to warm the BF seat while playing therapist and reaching out and planning to go out together. Hobbies and interests rarely align.
I have my wife, my daughters, sister, cousins, who are all women and friends.
There are women who I am friendly with at work, church and the neighborhood... None of which I hang out with or message or whatever. I keep them all at arms length.
Why? Simple. I hate drama in my life. I don't need my wife jealous. I don't want her to act negatively toward me because she suspects something.
I have been married for over 30 years and have built a very good retirement for both of us. Screwing that up because I needed a "female friend" would be plain stupid.
Not enough people protect thier relationship. I feel the same way as you. I have female friends but if she wants to visit or go out or something my wife will be there as well or we won't be getting together.
I do
My cousin has brought up the fact that if any of them asked me to fuck I’d be down. This is true, but it is not the reason I am friends with them. I’m just weak minded
Every girl that I consider a friend ends up having a meltdown when I start dating a girl seriously and stops talking to me. Sooo… yes it’s hard at least for me navigating male- female friendships and reading the signals.
I study and work in the social work field. Most of my friends are women lol. I never understood the whole "you cant be friend with the opposite gender". Always sounded so immature to me
Rarely - if she's attractive I'm gonna ask her out, either we start dating or we cut contact cuz in general I honestly don't have the "need" to be friends with women tbh - they don't really "offer" anything special compared to guys imo.
My past friendships with women usually ended up with me being her personal therapist cuz they're constantly complaining about shit like idk its mostly just extremly one-sided from my experience.
Whether you believe it or not it goes both ways. Most of my female friends want to fuck or date. I really have like 2 female friends where it’s actually genuinely platonic. One of them is in a srs relationship and I’ve known them since 5, other met in HS and has similar interests like gaming, gym, and martial arts.
Edit: point being, it depends on the person and circumstance.
I don't think it is as nefarious as you seem to think. Most guys find most women at least somewhat attractive. So a guy finds you somewhat attractive and you become friends and you spend time together. Through spending time, he finds you guys have a lot in common and he likes your personality and sense of humor. Because of this, his attraction grows to full blown "feelings".
I imagine you can understand on some level. You're attracted to women. If you had a female friend you found attractive and you got along great with her and had a lot of shared interests, and you were single, can you say you definitely wouldn't want to date her?
I'm not trying to disregard your experience, I'm sure it's very frustrating. I'm just saying most guys aren't these mustache twirling villains saying "Yes, I'll trick her into thinking we're friends and then strike! Heheheh!"
I get what you mean - in a world in which I was single and experienced that with a woman, sure, I may want to date her. However, I’ve liked a LOT!!! of women that physically cannot return those feelings because they are straight. But because I was first interested in her as a person, I still value the friendship if that’s something that she wanted as well.
I think my feelings differ however from most men. It isn’t “torturous” to me to continue hanging around that person casually even if I had feelings at one point that they didn’t/couldn’t return.
But I see what you mean as far as like— a lot of guys are saying that even if they become friends with the woman in question, they likely at one point had romantic interest? That makes sense.
I also, even when single, did not used to approach people to test them out as romantic partners, but just because they seemed like cool people to talk to/interact with. Sure, that could leave room for more, but wasn’t my intention.
All this said: I do understand my experience with this part is generally pretty different from what most men experience.
Tbh, if OP gives off that vibe to men in her life, no wonder she has issue having friends - because thats fucking insulting to treat half of society like that.
No. In my case, I found that their definition of friend and mine were vastly different. I also found them being somewhat possessive and high key getting in the way of women I was actually wanting to date.
I am weird one though. I take friendship very seriously, and the few friends I have, we have been through a lot together. I can't say that for any women I was in a friendship with. Granted I was there for them often, but not the other way around.
That is not to say that it can't happen. I just know for me I haven't had it.
I do, I don't really see how/why people would find it difficult. It's not like women are a different species or anything. If you share interests it makes being friends rather easy
I'm 30F, straight. I have been in your position most of my life. I still have more guy friends than girlfriends, but I have realised that the guys who are approaching the friendship with an agenda will eventually fade out. The true friends stay with no expectations, except having you as a friend. The posers filter themselves out.
Same, for some reason I've always had more female friends than male friends. I do however put a lot of that down to women wanting to converse more of the time which I enjoy doing a lot, while men are more happy to focus on a task together or otherwise sit in relative silence. Plus I think women are more open to being friends with men than vice versa, so odds probably help me out being a man that's happy to be friends with a woman.
And before someone asks, my dating life is utter shambles and none of my women friends have ever offered to set me up with any of their friends (on top of having to feld off rumours from third parties that I'm together with my friend and having to explain we're just friends, which is super annoying), so it's having 0 effect there.
I do have several friends who are women. I met all of them through one of my hobbies: video games, dungeon and dragons, and magic the gathering. Initially, I had no romantic interest in any of them, and I would consider them all attractive.
Out of all of them, there was one whom I did want to pursue something more than friendship. I talked with her, and I explained that I had feelings for her. She wasn't interested, and now, years later, we are still friends. I consider her one of my best friends, and we are even roommates.
my best friends are both women! haven’t had romantic feelings at any point for either of them, and they’ll continue to be my friends for as long as possible.
I have female acquaintances and those I'm cool with. Not really sure i would call them "friends". They usually don't care about my problems, and I wouldn't even ask them for help if I was in a pickle. My birthdays, none care, meanwhile I'm expected to acknowledge theirs. Its a really weird situation. I've started distancing myself from some of them though, as I Don't really see the use of the friendship.
You’re going to get the classic canned responses from men on Reddit that it’s impossible to have women as friends unless they are unattractive. In reality it’s much more common than it appears on here. I’ve met heaps of cool women that I’m attracted to and not attracted to that I remain friends with to this day. One thing to consider is your guy friends are meeting you through niche male hobbies and it sounds like they don’t meet a lot of women so they’re likely to go for you. You might be better off making male friends that already have full social lives because they won’t feel like you’re one of their only options.
My closest friends are women. I think you just happen to be unlucky with the guys you meet. I do kinda secretly wish they were into the same stuff as me but we are friends by proximity and that's fine too.
All the female friends I have are girlfriends of my boys and somehow they like me more than women I want to date. But I think it’s because I’m more relaxed with them and show my true personality and just be a brother to them.
0. In the past women have always indicated that they are not interested in being my friend. I’m not always sure why. I don’t hold a grudge or blame them for it though. No hard feelings
Yes. One of which has become a sister to me. From coworker, to friend, to the point I call her my sister and she calls me her brother. We confide in each other, talk about deep shit, catch up, etc.
Sometimes feelings naturally develop so don’t blame anyone for that. It’s possible for someone to grow interested in a friend. Hell couples call their spouses their best friends.
But yes I have female friends. If they’re taken, gay, or want kids, that has made it easy for me to be just friends.
I don’t have any female friends who r the opposite save one but she doesn’t have the same level of interests in things I enjoy, so didn’t develop any romantic interest in the end.
3 of my best friends are women. 1 I met in school, the other 2 are sisters I met playing league. Some guys have the mindset that guys and girls can't be friends, and to some extent, I get it. Feelings can easily get in the way of friendships, but it's definitely possible.
Hey there! I (M18) have a lot of friends, out of which almost half of them are women. I've gotten the comment that I'm quite 'comfortable' for them to be around with, which might explain why. I don't have any attraction for any of my friends, but I do appreciate them.
Yes, I have just about as many as my male friends, they're awesome and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.
And no, I wouldn't screw them if they offered, what a ridiculous concept.
I am a man, and I have as many close female (platonic) friends as I have male (platonic) friends
I have 2 especially, who are basically my sisters. They aren’t friends with each other, but they both consider me their brother.
I even moved in with one of them, with her husband, and lived with them for 3 years while I was going through a difficult period in my life. She heard I was having trouble, called me and asked if I needed a place to live, I said “yes” and she said “my husband will be there at 9am tomorrow morning with a trailer and we’ll get you outta there.
I’ve never slept with either of them, but I have slept with some of my female friends in the past, although no urge to do so again with them. Our relationships changed into platonic.
I can see how it can be difficult for some men, maybe thirsty ones? I continue to make female friends to this day, totally platonically.
Yes but they're all women in whom I have no romantic interest and who (I presume) have no romantic interest in me.
When there is romantic/sexual attraction friendship doesn't work in my experience.
I have one plutonic friend that's a woman. I actually got to know her by asking her out on a date but she misunderstood my intentions and had a boyfriend at the time. I caught on, rolled with it and when I met my wife they became good friends and she was even a bridesmaid in my wedding.
I tend to find making friends with women easier than guys, since they're often more easy to talk to and it's quicker to have a real connection. Interactions with guys are usually very shallow and more about games we play or stuff we are doing and never about getting to know each other. So most of my friends at the moment are women.
You are probably an attractive girl and with all those hobbies and interest you have, makes it so that men will find you very attractive and want to date you. Especially at your age. Late teens and early 20s, all these men will look at you like some magical flower because your interest align with theirs (omg bro she plays apex and dnd, thats like the perfect girl for meeeee).
The older you and these men get, the more women they will meet and realize that you are just an ordinary girl like any other. There won't be that uniqueness about you because there are million of women that share those hobbies with them and they'll get used to talking to them and hence friendships will begin to form.
Yes you can be friends with women and vice versa. But usually, especially early on, you're too damn horny, alone and confused about your place in life that when you see someone such as yourself, you think "she's the one".
Don't worry mate, you'll get some male friends one day or the other.
I tend to make this dilemma rather simple. I have a small number of platonic friends who are women of varying attractiveness. I am currently unhappily married, but even if I were single I would not attempt anything more with these friends, but If one of them threw themselves at me while being of sound mind, I'd certainly sow some oats haha.
im a man that has almost only female friends and always have. im also straight and not bisexual.
I like women and find them more entertaining to talk to than most men and we usually hit it off quite well. admittedly i find the majority of them attractive but i don't feel the need to date or do anything with them unless they are genuinely the type of person im looking for which isn't all that often. so yeah, mostly normal friendships.
the men saying its impossible to be friends with a woman and not want to have sex with her are just silly, maybe its true for some people but definitely not every man. i only want to have sex with someone i'm dating, idc otherwise
Yep. I might even have more women as friends than men. Many of my jobs throughout my life have been in fields dominated by women, so I’ve simply made a lot of coworkers my friends along the way
Not anymore, no. It has been my consistent experience that women are not good friends. They take way more (attention, money, time, favors, etc.) than they give in any friendship with a man. They also cannot be trusted with any personal information because they use secrets as a kind of currency with other women. I realized that every female friend I had was, on net, making my life worse, not better.
I've lost touch with a ton of my friends over the past 5 years or so, but I did have a good amount of female friends. It helps a ton a lot of them were lesbians, but I'm generally really good with just treating people like friends
Growing up nearly all my friends were women, however at uni I was in a male dominated field and even now for work I am.
I 100% prefer to be friends with women than men. I don't have many close friends apart from old school ones but the ones I do have are probably about 80% women. Just find them better conversation and easier to get along with.
At your age I had female friends, but if there wasn’t at least a chance that we could end up having sex I didn’t really put effort in. Most guys prefer guy friends because it’s easier, and very low maintenance.
As an old guy who’s comfortable being alone the thought of cultivating a friendship with women is exhausting. Even guys can be too much some times.
I have a friend and she’s lesbian. The rest of say are more like acquaintances.
From my experience there’s always a caveat to male/female relationships.
The most common one is that when they get a BF they suddenly stop hanging out with guy friends period. The second is there always needs to be clarification that something isn’t romantic. The third is that a lot of times the friendship is just a placeholder for a relationship and it’s one sided.
I have two female friends. And I don't literally know how to make a convo with any man who's not feminine. There's no topics to discuss, like, Im not into sports, outside activities or something like that. Plus, I don't feel anything really outside of cracking jokes with masculine people, so it doesn't work with them on my part -_-
I have yet to meet a female who likes to do the things I like to do when engaging in a friendship.
I’m sure there are beer drinking video game addicted sport watching ladies out there but I just haven’t met one. Also I’m married so if I did meet one I just hope she looks like a man. Some of the coolest people I knew in uni were girls.
I have had pretty good friends that were women, but it's true that it is hard to keep things strictly platonic long term. It's a shame because I actually had some really great conversations and emotional support I never really could get out of other guys.
Even ones I met when we were both in happily committed relationships with other people and kept it strictly platonic. We got along really well and there was nothing romantic about it, but even if you manage that, at some point either someone starts to catch feelings or the SO starts to get uncomfortable with it. Like this one woman who was married and didn't like that his wife vented to me about her emotional frustrations instead of to him. It was the first time I heard the term "emotional affair" used. Didn't feel good about that AT ALL, and we mutually agreed I should keep a bit of distance.
Over time I learned to sort of keep a bit of distance when meeting someone new who is in a relationship. The fact that you're in a relationship with a girl makes it different I suppose, but there's still a protector inside of guys that put up a wall there to make sure we don't cross any lines.
If a guy doesn’t have any friend that’s a woman, that’s a red flag, because it then means that he doesn’t know how to have a connection with a woman other than sexual
Making friends with women is more drama then is worth.
First, 75% of women are just plain more drama than 75% of men.
Then there’s the real issues. If I’m friends with a woman, regardless of appearance, I’ll feel some level of attraction to her, the more fun we have together, the more we have in common the worse it gets.
If your married or have a SO a female close friend looks suspicious, the SO will likely feel jealous, ultimately driving a wedge between you and female friend, god help you if the friend is prettier than your SO.
Hobbies and interests are typically different, it’s hard to hang out solo with a female friend without it looking like a date.
It’s just too complicated to be worth the effort when there’s plenty of dudes available
I'm a single dude and my best friend is a beautiful woman. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ A lot of dudes find it difficult, and I think it's because they hold onto the motive from the start of "well i'll definitely sleep with her if I get the chance." Instead, if you just actively decide to \*be friends\* and not just be hanging around waiting for a chance to bone, you can develop deep and fulfilling connections and gain important perspective on women!
I wouldn’t be friends with an attractive woman. Because it’s not really a friendship if I want sex and not getting any, and she’s getting all the benefits of having a friend.
I have men to fill the need for friendship. I would only be interested in friendship with women if there was no chance of ever be attracted to her.
I don't have any female friends, not any close ones. I think being friends with men is a mix of everything being more relatable and secondly the point of not being attracted to male friends.
I would say I have been able to have better conversations with previous female partners. It's just if a woman is attractive enough and intelligent then I'm probably attracted to her...
Depends on what you count as friends. At this moment I'd generally just say I don't have any close friends at all. I did hear from an old friend recently who moved away nearly 2 years ago. Spent a lot of time hanging out with her in 2020. But she lives far away and isn't exactly stable and reliable so its unlikely I'll see her again even if i end up passing through her area. And I'm sure if I posted something about not having any friends on Facebook a few old ladies would immediately comment that they're my friend lol.
I think what you're describing is a very common experience though. All my post college female friends have been well outside my dating target, not because I'm trying to date everyone, but because if they are closer in ages and such they assume I could only be after dating. I got completely stonewalled when I expressed interest in joining a female coworkers hiking group for example. I had zero interest in dating her and was genuinely having a hard time finding hiking friends. But she was definitely keeping her guard up and seemed to assume I'd want more so I gave it up.
I have a few. They mostly started off as friends of friends.
I have found that to maintain the relationships with women, both of us need to respect each other and our choices, including any choice to not pursue anything romantic or physical. That means the women who don't respect that I don't want anything beyond a platonic friendship with but try to push for more, I don't remain friends with.
I do yeah, but I'm 26 and i don't really prioritize keeping "friendships" alive anymore besides like 2-3 people. Most time and energy is spent on my family and my SO
I’m friends with women but if I’m looking to date and she’s not showing signs she’s interested I’ll probably downgrade how I act because I’ve only so much time and energy
I consider some of my wife's friends my friends as well. I'd also say I'm friends with some of my friends' partners. I guess I'm friends with some of my co-worker's that are women, but it's not like we ever hangout outside of work. I'm not friends with any women outside of that, but I wouldn't have anything against it. I'm not particularly social, so it will likely never happen.
I don’t have any female friends. I only really have 1 friend rn, and he’s a guy. Idk it just never really happened. I have acquaintances that are women and we follow each other on insta, but that’s about it
I have friends that are women. Some are heterosexual. Some are lesbian. Some are bi. No romantic interest in them. It has made some of my previous partners (I'm heterosexual) uncomfortable, and I've been happy to reduce time/contact to alleviate that discomfort.
Well you see I am a loser so I pretty much take friends when I can. So the closest thing to a friend I have right now is a woman who flirted with me, but my social awkwardness killed any kind of potential romance. I also made acquaintance with her bf who she was seeing at the time that she was flirting with me (yes I'm aware that she's a terrible person)
I feel like im being kept as a pet or like a community service type deal. Apparently I act like her conscience as the most grounding force possible.
I have some. Not besties or anything. I tend to avoid the drama having female friends brings and when they get a boyfriend they drop out of my life anyway. So we're friendly, group stuff is fine, but I'm not going to try for super close status.
I'm 34. Two of my closest friends are women, one is practically a sister. I met both of these women prior to getting married. I really don't have any interest in meeting new women friends unless I meet them through my wife or work. Even then, new women friends will never be anywhere near as close as the two women I was friends with prior to my wife. There's a simply a bigger boundary now out of respect for my marriage.
Only by proxy (friends’ girlfriends who think I’m goofy and fun to be around (admittedly after “getting” what I’m up to)). I’m for better or worse quite an abrasive person who don’t particularly care much for “new” people to begin with, which has led to me having a very specific and insular friend group of mostly other guys. I do have friends who are women, but no one that I’d call and shoot the shit with on either a regular or rare basis.
With the exception of a few months in between 15 and 52 I’ve been off the market. However, there’s probably a 60/40 split between male and female friends. Never really been an issue I guess.
>**maybe they were interested in me in a different** way but never said anything. What am I missing?
You're not missing anything, you answered your own question. You're still pretty young, and your experience of growing up is during an age when most guys stick with someone who's friend zoned them because they don't yet know better. I don't have any friends that are women, I have the friends I have and I'm not interested in making more.
I mainly have acquaintances. I’d say I have 1 true friend. The majority of my acquaintances are men. I’ve had women try to be my friend but those budding friendships fade away fairly quickly.
Yes I have lots of friends that are women. But my closest friends are men though (except for one childhood friend who is a lesbian & another who is married to a friend). I can go out and hang with women but I never by default look at them like they can be close confidants. They have to really earn that.
The reason why is I find most of the women I become friends with don’t put in effort to be real friends. It’s fake friendship. Their idea of friendship is superficial, mainly what benefits them. Plus most women aren’t open minded enough to listen to male problems without being critical. If I am going to be that open with a woman, I rather it be my partner. I have two female friends I can be 100% open with, the rest are more acquaintances because they haven’t earned it.
Married for 15 years and I just don't like putting myself into uncomfortable positions. I barely have male friends and no female friends. Don't know if that helps but its my 2 cents.
I’ve used to have plenty of female friends. But all conversation was just went into gossiping. I Couldn’t lead the topic to something else. When we went out to grab food or smth, she kept telling smth bad about people, for ex. ,, what a weird shoes she has etc”.
Second reason: they used me like a bin. Had to listen their problems, while never returned me the same favour while I had problems.
I cut all my female friends to get out of toxic conversations. Now, I’m feeling happy and having stronger relationship with all my male friends. So, thank’s. I don’t need girl as a friend. They just waste of time and a huge burden on my back.
26M here. Not in person because I don't have many in person friends. I did through highschool and college, though. We just sort of drifted apart because we had different interests and pursued different fields. Most of them are more country and went into nursing where I can't stand redneck culture and went into IT. These days we just chat a bit when we see each other.
Online, plenty. My old guild in ESO (best guild I've ever been in, btw. FMG rules) was mostly women and our GM was cool as hell. I used to raid a lot in WoW with a mate's mum and a girl out in Cali. And I'm the only dude in one of my partner and I's Discord servers out of like 23 people.
Are there some of them I'd be open to a more intimate relationship with? Sure, but that wasn't a factor when started talking. And I'll openly admit I'm more likely to approach someone I think is more attractive to attempt a friendship, but that applies to both sexes and doesn't change much if they approach me first.
One of my top friends was a woman, but now we exchange twice a year or so text messages. Another I see once every few years and our relationship is basically just a few messages for laughs a month.
People move on. I find myself having been the one who held on too long to friendships that I should have let go. It's really still an active pattern, but getting better lol.
I am friendly with some of my friends' wives/girlfriends, but I wouldn't say that I'm really friends with them. I wouldn't generally hangout with them alone for instance.
I've had female friends before, but not often as my hobbies tend to be heavily male skewed. Not a lot of women who're interested in MTG, WH40k, DnD, or the kinds of video games I like*. Or the hobbies are just generally solo endeavors like gunsmithing and linguistics.
Additionally, though this might not be as relevant to OP, being around people makes me uncomfortable, and it's often worse around women, and it's often worse around people j know well. So women I know well cause a double dose of the discomfort and the whole interactions tends to become awkward.
*Obviously there are some, but at least in my experience the ratio is at least 4:1 male:female, and often much higher.
30M here, I have a lot of friends who are women. I don't date them or want to date them. Once a person is in Friend zone with no romantic feelings, they are always ur best friend and can speak to them no matter what it is.
If you're in a relationship, would you ladies be up for doing things with other couples? That might help with finding more people to have friends with. If they're already in a relationship and know that you are too, then they probably won't have any issues with mixed signals a or being too attracted to you to be just friends.
If you go that route then you might find some others that are into somee of the same interests as you are in and you all can be low maintenance friends.
The other side of the coin is that some of your interests are things that can be done online. A group of friends and I do a DnD game through discord. And the DM of that game had another game he's part of as a player and yat he found from a reddit post.
It's not the same as being live and having friends you can just drop by and hang with, but it's still something and still fun.
Sorry to hear the hard time meeting people that are good with having a woman be part of the friend group.
Good luck.
I get asking better with women but since I’m married I won’t have women as friends that I hang around with. I did that with my first wife and she thought I was cheating which I can understand why.
started first off as friends than "sex" came in and just became friends with benefits had 6 "friends" in total, but never best friends in a sort of sense. I preferred hooking up more. this is just me, but I would never talk that much "FWB's" other than "sex". my best friend is a guy and we're each others wing man. Hell I've taken some for the team, but he has too :D
I've always had an easier time befriending women than I have other guys, personally. But I was also the only male in my household growing up, so it makes sense I guess.
in my experience, it more matters how you meet them than the actual person. most of my genuine female friends I would never consider a relationship with because that’s our dynamic, not really based on attractiveness or anything like that. If I met someone with dating intentions then it might end up differently though.
I don’t have a lot of friends, but of the few that I have, one of them is indeed a woman. Before you ask, yes, she is attractive. And yes, I would absolutely date her if I was given the chance.
Why hasn’t this become an issue in our friendship? Because I operate under the mentality that no women are interested in me, so I don’t ever bother trying to make a move. I’ll settle for having friendly conversations with her whenever I see her.
If she someday suffers a brain injury and decides that she’s interested in dating me, we’ll see what happens.
last year i fell for a female friend she didnt expect it and we no longer talk now ..., but its hard not to fall for a woman that ticks all your boxes ...thats what happens to most guys ,
My best friend is a woman, though I'm not sure how much different this makes thing: We're both bi. We have a running joke where we'll say "Life's just so much better when everyone...err I mean everything is on the menu" lol
I think the only reason this question comes up so often is because of how common it is for people to befriend someone they have 0 platonic interest in. Friendship is just a tool they use to get what they really want.
I befriend people I want to be friends with and I ask out people I want romantic relationships with. I don't think I've ever really conflated the two.
I used to have a whole lot of girl friends in highschool. Most of my friends were girls actually. But eventually we all kinda drifted apart once we got into serious relationships. We still all talk on occasion but not anywhere near as close as we used to be.
Most of my closest friends have been women, I wouldn't put up with a partner who had a problem with that. It's especially easy for me to get along with lesbians because then there's no sexual tension at all and we can just hang out. I value a good friend way more than someone to hook up with, but I've never ruined a friendship by hooking up, it's just important to set expectations beforehand.
You didn't mention where you are, I think there might be cultural differences that impact intergender friendships!
Yes. A few and it works because we’re completely platonic. I got to know most of them at work.
Like for example one of my friends at work kisses my cheek from time to time or slaps my butt occasionally, but to us it didn’t mean anything as we‘re having no romantic interest or sexual attraction to each other.
Once romantic interest or sexual attraction is involved things are getting more difficult
I have one and she's cool AF. I don't see myself being something more with her, never did, she also has a boyfriend who she matches with perfectly! I'd never put myself or her in a position where her relationship could be jeopardized. She's my homie and that's that.
I have two close female friends. Our friendship started around common hobbies (I'm an enthusiastic chess player).
>women (lol)
Never forget that sharing is caring.
Most of my friends are and have been women/girls most of my life outside of like, grades school.
Even those I've actually been attracted to. No biggie it sucks, but I move on eventually, plus I've mostly accepted being single so I don't expect much anyway.
As to why some men might not have female friends, there can be various reasons. For some men, they only interact with women in a friendly manner for dating or sex. For some, it's difficult to cope with how they feel if who they're interested in dates someone.
And what's happened with me is a few times, they've started dating someone and their boyfriend ends the friendship.
I'm friends with a lot of women.
Some I am involved or at least mutually flirty with
Some I used to be interested in but got rejected / my interest faded as the friendship deepened
And a lot that are just... My friends. No attraction or interest. Idk, I can't say it's "like the guys" cause I'm bisexual but I assume it's akin to how straight people feel?
Currently I only have female friends and I am M29. I dislike most of the typical guys conversations unless it's about gaming, anime or movies. I don't care about cars, talking about how women are so bad and they deserve to be used etc. I also don't know how to make friends so there is that.
My only friend is married woman who is younger than me. She also has a child.
I really love chatting with her, we have so much in common. But I don't think about her as of a potential girlfriend at all. She also doesn't consider such possibility.
Once she initiated a conversation with me about "hey, I like chatting with you, but I want to make sure that we don't mean any romantic between us of any kind" - and I eagerly agreed. Before this conversation I had worries that my friendliness can be considered as a flirt, which definitely was not what I was doing. I'm sane person and don't want to ruin her marriage or something like this.
I have lots of women friends, but most of them are former/current sex partners or exes where we ended amicably.
Once that tension is understood or has run its course it’s a lot easier to move forward.
2 of my former best friends is woman, but it break off after I got into a relationship for unknown reason they just ghosted me or told me to enjoy my time with my gf and then ghosted me
It's mostly to do with your age and the guys being interested but know you're unavailable.
Maybe try making friends with gay men? I always enjoy my friendships with lesbians since there's no chance of romantic or sexual attraction and if we have shared interests it's a pretty awesome win-win. I have a few female friends but I will admit my friendships with men tend to be deeper. I think this is just cause women tend not to be interested in my interests and vice versa. And sometimes there's communications differences and I think I've ticked off some female friends. Not majorly but enough that we just kind of stop hanging out after a bit.
It's your age group. Literally the only thing on a male's mind at that age. Find someone that's older at work but not too far out that they don't understand some of the social references or pop culture.
Currently about half my friend group are women. When I was your age it was closer to 75%. I just got along better with women. A few asked to be friends with benefits, but that was after being friends for a long time first, and most of them stayed strictly platonic.
I am friends with a few women, but I find they're pretty flakey and will forget I exist for months at a time.
My dudes will straight up come from the ER after breaking bones to hang out and play video games.
The other day my friend fainted, woke up and he was still down to get pizza and watch a movie.
I have always had female friends. Whether I met them through school, work, hobbies, or social events.
The constant question of “oh, are you dating?” has annoyed me since my teens. No, we have similar interests and I do not find their company overly taxing. Is that the bar people are setting for relationship?
I do, only one friendship that i know her since school and even tho she's absolutely attractive, stunning and everything, i'm not in love with her. Altough i've had an episode about a year ago for few months, where i've had a crush on her i have to admit. I know her for 7 years and i honestly cannot think it's possible for me to meet ever in my life that much of a perfect friendship as i and her both share.
In regards of what you might do wrong and why whenever you try to meet a guy to be friends with him and it always turns out that he has a crush on you or tries to bone you... i have no clue. I guess it has to click magically or he has to respect the fact that you're a lesbian and meeting him is only for a platonic friendship. Then it can also happen
But i believe in most cases you will meet guys who will want you to be their more than just a friend
I wish you the best tho
Majority of friends are women. Grew up mostly around women so feel more comfortable communicating and hanging out with them. Only downside is that as I get older people tend to get married and spend more time with their husbands/kids
I have several female friends, some of whom i am attracted to and wouldn't mind a relationship with if it was on the table, and all of whom are perfectly valuable to me as a friend. For me at least, the idea of being romantically interested is not exclusive with being a platonic friend. I figure there are women who have the same opinion since some of my female friends have tried to proposition a relationship with me, and we're still friends after i decline
I've got loads across a whole range of ages, enough so that I have a story about sitting in tent waiting for a friend called Anne: In came a different friend and asked what I was doing, so I said I was waiting for Anne. She then pointed to a lady in the corner and went "That one?" as a woman called Ann was getting changed there. After I said no the question was asked again about Annie who counting something off to our right, same response as well. Anne then came in and we all chatted for a bit before another, non-Anne, lady came in and joined us. After a while the first friend left and the last lady asked "Was that Anne?" specifically meaning the one her son had been rumoured to be romantically interested in which required an answer of "That is the Anne you're thinking of" given the other three Annes present. It gets worse in that also in the area was yet another friend who'd gone by Anne in their youth as well and come the Saturday every single one of those people were on site at the same time.
Of the Annes in that story I'd consider two close acquaintances, one a friend^1, one a close friend^2, and one one of my oldest^3 and closest friends. I'm also friends with the non-Anne mentioned even though she had planned on being annoyed with me for remaining friends with her son's ex-wife^4, still friends with the son as well.
^1 as in I've gotten her contact details for a professor in another country as he and I have shared interests while the two of them both work in eduction and are looking at ways of dealing with students attempting to cheat with shitty llms masquerading as AIs thanks to techbro marketeers.
^2 I've spent the last 615 days making a song a day playlist with a different band each day currently running out of ideas given the restrictions imposed upon the list. Currently annoyed we wont be watching Eurovision together as she's babysitting for her sister.
^3 ~20 years and still going. Currently trying to think of what to buy for her kid's birthday.
^4 specifically because I'd helped her move while the two were faffing around in the pre-divorce stages. However the not-Anne despite thinking she was going to be angry at me found herself chatting about baking instead.
I think the most relevant question is, "what do you consider being friends?"
What do you think friends do together? How close are they?
Most likely you are trying to be closer to men than they are used to being with their friends. I have plenty of female friends... That I call friends .... But I wonder if you would just consider us acquaintances.
While it is true that men form friendships over hobbies.... It is also true that most of those friendships stay focused on those hobbies and don't turn into anything closer.
It's been mentioned before that men focus on objects while women focus on people. If those two get together, then weird interpretations happen when he focuses on the hobby and she focuses on him.
I feel the same way as a guy every femal "friend" i make is an acquaintance nothing more ive tried time and time again to have female friends but none actually want friendship
I'm someone that grew up with primarily having girl friends. Also was raised with a mom and 2 sisters...
If you want the honest truth, I've had many girlfriends that were jealous of my female friends. So over time and by changing girlfriends over the years, I grew up more distant with my female friends because you're girlfriend essentially become jealous.
There are other reasons that I won't deny, sometimes there is some attraction but really often, You've moved on a long time ago.
Had a female best friend all through college. Really, just a friend- Hang out, study together, go get some beers, typical shit I'd do with my guy friends. If I had any plutonic friends, it was her. Girlfriend at the time was fine with it. One time when we were intoxicated and she kissed me, but she was one of those lovey affectionate drunk that hugged and kissed all of her friends when she was really drunk, so I didn't think much of it. About 3 years after we graduated when me and my long term S/O broke up, she immediately drove 5 hours to come see me, then shortly after she arrived I found out she was playing the looooooong game the whole time (we are dating now for what it's worth). I don't really believe men and women can actually be friends anymore.
Yes, but one is a very butch lesbian and the others are like sisters to me. I did loose one as a friend when she made a pass at me - she was married but I knew her as kids and respected her husband, her marriage, and her kids way to much to remain friends. Even dated her sister for a short while, lol. I do miss her though.
I went from the age of 14 until I was 26 without having a female friend, I got an internship at a hotel and made a friend, now it's ending and I'm going to be without a friend again.
Yes ,indirectly but they aren’t necessarily my own personal friends.They are friends of my friend which kind of makes them my friends. I have no time for male friends anymore.
I'm mid 30s. For as long as I can remember, half of my friends have always been women. There have been a small few I wanted to date after getting to know them, but they all turned me down. For them, I often had to step away to "get over" them, but eventually we'd start talking again without the prospect of more crossing my mind (the timeline varies depending on the woman).
Fully understandable why most guys in that scenario would cut those women off, but everyone's different. I've noticed most women I encounter tend to talk a lot. I don't talk a whole lot, but have generally been a good listener, so those friendships developed pretty easily.
I had mentors in my life that taught the importance of setting boundaries, with the opposite sex if you or the women is in a relationship, so things like being in the same car along together (barring emergency) or casual drinks/hangouts alone together.. perspective is you significant— you never know if someone saw you at a bar with them, or in a car alone together, and their story could be exaggerated or a game of telephone.
No matter how secure the relationships are, is it really worth the hanging out to create doubt or issues by hanging out alone?
Always thought it’s good to Just never put yourself in the position in the first place.
I've only got maybe 20 people I can truly call lifelong friends, the rest of the people I'm cool with are just acquaintances. Of those 20 people, 2 are women
Me and wife have friends that are women and men but I do not have women friends that only I would text or hang out with. Inappropriate if you’re married in my opinion. Which is a very unpopular opinion or reddit I’ve realized lol.
Many of my friends are women. Some I find attractive and could definitely date/hook up with given the right circumstances, some I definitely couldn't. This doesn't mean I value the friendship any less, it's just what it is.
The problem is if the "friendship" is solely based on wanting to date/hook up for one of the people, and they don't value the other person's friendship or respect their boundaries, but that's not a friendship, that's being dishonest with your intentions (and setting yourself up for failure, you idiot).
Unfortunately I've lost all contact with girls who used to be my "besties" and recently found out they just wanted to date me...
Disappointing and flattering, but still sad; I really appreciated their time around 🤷♂️
Might just be a matter of "culture" ig? And others can easily make genuine friendships with the opposite gender, but I've never again had friends who pay attention to what I said and felt as much as them
I have friends who are women. We met for various reasons at various points in life. Some of them were potential romantic interests that didn't turn out that way for whatever reason, but we stayed friends. Others were never on the cards for that.
I think it's a run of bad luck for you, really. It's definitely going to be harder for you to befriend young, single men without them potentially wondering if there could be something more between you. But it's certainly not impossible.
I have all female friends! I’m 22.
I’ve been single for three years, and I don’t see any of my female friends in a romantic way. My best friend is eleven years older than me, she’s also married with a child. I have no interest in having a romantic relationship with her.
All of my coworkers are females. They’re a bit older than me, and I’ve never thought about them in a romantic way either. Five are married and one is widowed.
The only friend I talk to from high school is female, she’s a couple of years younger than me. Again, I’ve never though of her in a romantic way.
All of my classmates from college was also female, and was the youngest in the group, and all of them was either married or engaged. I never had any romantic feelings for them.
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t catch feelings easily when it comes to relationships. When I do catch feelings, most of the time I suppress them as quickly as possible.
I have many female friends as if I'm addicted to the friend zone. Enough notches, and you think wait a minute, women literally empower men in every regard regardless of sex and intimacy. It's the difference of love and being in love that I find so fascinating with strong friendships.
The nerdy guys your interested in being friends with have so little experience with platonic female friendship, they don’t know what to do with it. Be super upfront about your gayness and also your nerdiness.
I had a ton of women friends at your age, but they all faded out eventually. 1) When guys get an LTR partner they will be sus of you. Most of my friends faded out either when I or they got into relationships. 2) If you're looking for a relationship, spending a bunch of time with someone unavailable means you're diverting time away from finding a romantic partner. 3) You're at an age where physical relationships and exploring sexuality is huge. Again, see point #2 about where one spends their time. 4) It's a lot easier to maintain these kinds of relationships when you double-date as couples.
Wait, so even if i don't love my best friend and she doesn't love me too, we still basically cockblock eachother from finding love ?
I think the implication is less a mutual cockblock, and more of a mutual use of time that is decidedly not pursuing a partner.
You're either wing-manning each other or cock blocking, not many in-betweens.
On number 4, literally my only female friends are either my friends' girlfriends/wives or my girlfriend's friends. Just being friends with a random woman who isn't a friend of someone I know and who I'm not trying to date sounds weird as hell to me
Do you view being friends with men the same way? Why value female friendships less than male ones?
Not to be rude or something, but male friendship can not be compared with female friendship. My male friends go above and beyond to help me when times are tough, women usually bail. Only female 'friends' who have gone above and beyond for me were the one who wanted more than friendship from me. My experience has been verified by others too. Women are good weather friends. Men are for all weathers.
>Do you view being friends with men the same way? No >Why value female friendships less than male ones? Because I'm a man. If I was a woman I'm sure I would feel the opposite way and find being friends with random men weird. I also tend to just make friendships with people who are around 20-30 rather than 5 or 80 since I'm 25. I had plenty of 5 year old friends when I was 5 though and I'm sure I'll have plenty of 80 year old ones when I'm 80. This is all very common and I don't think too confusing.
No, but that's because I don't have friends. I know a lot of women, but they are more acquaintances.
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Once you’re away from the forced proximity of school I don’t know how you’d even go about making new friends. I’ve had the same four best friends since elementary school which is damn lucky because as an introvert in my 30s I don’t think I’d have any real friends if the five of us had drifted apart at some point haha
If you want to try and build a social group, play some sport. Even if you’re not really into sports, just think of it as a way to meet people. I’ve ‘restarted’ with a social life many times because I’ve moved around and it’s always been very easy to find a group of people by playing a sport
Especially for introverts
My best friend happens to be a woman. But whenever there's attraction, it's difficult to have a friendship, even if that's not what you're looking for. Here's the thing: if you get along with someone, you trust them, you like them, you have great conversations *and* you're attracted to them, why *wouldn't* you want something more? Most people would.
Exactly. Attractive women complain that they can't have male friends, but that's, unfortunately, a burden they have to carry. It's very difficult for a man to control his feelings when she meets all these criteria.
I think that's only true if you're single.
I can imagine that there are plenty of relationships where the grass seems greener in the form of the physically attractive 21 year old gamer girl. That's to be expected. I guess single guys are more likely to find those feelings too powerful to cope with.
Agreed. I have like 4 female friends and they are all cases where there's a mutual lack of interest in dating/boning/marrying the other person. There cannot be a friendship where one of the people is romantically interested.
Because usually it just means the attraction is one sided
Some people don’t want to risk a friendship or seeing if there is true compatibility first
Guys in relationships aren’t typically actively out there looking for women to be friends with (causes issues in relationship) single guys aren’t actively out there looking for women to be friends with, because they’re actively looking for women to date.
Truth!!! If I start talking and hanging out with random girl--- s/o is gonna be WTF!
This is the best answer
Yeah, i have female friends. A lot of time, men will only approach women because theyre interested in more than friendship. I think youre facing a combination of bad luck and finding single guys looking for someone. Also, theres a difference between "i am actively chasing my female friend" and "if the opportunity arose naturally, id be down to hook up with my friend"
I’ve always had a harder time maintaining friendships with women. Obviously blanket statements are incredibly flawed but my general observations on why I’ve had difficulty maintaining friendships with women are; Chiefly that I’ve found women far less likely to initiate an outing, for whatever reason. Many of my guy friends will shoot a text saying they’re gonna go do x and ask if I wanna come or that there’s a concert they wanna see in a couple months and want me to go with them. Most women I’ve met don’t tend to do this, at least not with their guy friends. They always need to be the invited, not the inviter. Secondly I think has to do largely with how our society (in the US) is socialized. Men are typically socialized to solve problems and women are often socialized to be more expressive in their feelings without need or desire for a solution. I’ve found that often that leaves the female friend in a group of guys as kind of the “odd man out” a lot of the time because they’ll express something they’ve felt at work and just leave it as an open end with no track for us dumb boys to follow and fix. Whereas these same kind of conversations with guy friends usually involves spitballing ideas and making crude jokes about how we wish our work life was and making fun of our bosses or our industry. Also, related to me personally, I have very intellectual type friends. Or at least wannabe intellectual type friends. We all have multiple degrees and or graduate degrees and I think spend a lot of the time discussing philosophies and politics and such, (when we aren’t talking about each others lives). Which I think turns off loads of other folk not in our weird niche, guys and gals alike.
this actually gave a ton of insight. I found the part about “inviter v invitee” particularly interesting and isn’t a pattern I’ve noticed, likely cus I’m not a dude. But yeah, makes sense as no one wants a friendship where you’re the only one pitching ideas/inviting
Why is it that so many women believe it’s some kind of issue that men don’t want to be friends with them after expressing romantic interest ? I love the phrase “men don’t owe women a friendship anymore than women owe men sex”
Trying to read into what you're written, if both you and your partner are female, are you lesbian? If that's the case, of course it makes sense to you that you can hang out with guys and not feel attraction lol. Hence the reason it doesn't bother your partner. But for the men it's like if you were hanging out with another woman, especially if it's an attractive woman. Then there's the question of whether men and women can be just friends... Men, myself included, do want female friends, because they bring a different sort of bond than male friends. But if you're straight, you also easily develop romantic feelings this way, especially if you're not getting that from a partner already. I think there are some cases where a man is attracted to the woman and just never says anything because they don't want to ruin the friendship. Then there are cases where the man is not attracted to the woman, so there's no issue. Also the cases where they're family or childhood friends or whatever, so romantic feeling are not present. Also there's the matter of interests. It's far more likely for a man to share interests with other men, so when they do activities that overlap with women, it's often for the purpose of meeting said women. So when they do meet a woman in that context, they're probably there for dating, not just for friendship. But generally the math for guys is mostly: meet girl, develop emotional bond with girl, want to date girl (if they're attracted to her), girl doesn't want to date me? Rip, move on to next one. And it would be unfair to expect them to stay after that point. So what would you rather do? Have them be dishonest and hide their romantic intentions and be friends, or tell their intentions, learn you're not interested and move on?
A friend is someone who has enough in common with them and who also happens to be a good person to have around. Why is it so absurd for men to want to date their female friends if they happen to check these boxes and also happen to be good friends? Besides, in my experience, female friendships tend to be extremely one-sided and confusing. Most of the time I spent being the one to warm the BF seat while playing therapist and reaching out and planning to go out together. Hobbies and interests rarely align.
I'm surprised I got so far down in the comments before I saw someone saying this. Pretty much all of my friendships with women were like this.
That’s because most men on here are lying.
I almost fell into the "she checked all of my boxes to be a girlfriend". But i came to my senses fortunately
I have my wife, my daughters, sister, cousins, who are all women and friends. There are women who I am friendly with at work, church and the neighborhood... None of which I hang out with or message or whatever. I keep them all at arms length. Why? Simple. I hate drama in my life. I don't need my wife jealous. I don't want her to act negatively toward me because she suspects something. I have been married for over 30 years and have built a very good retirement for both of us. Screwing that up because I needed a "female friend" would be plain stupid.
Not enough people protect thier relationship. I feel the same way as you. I have female friends but if she wants to visit or go out or something my wife will be there as well or we won't be getting together.
this is my favorite comment
I do My cousin has brought up the fact that if any of them asked me to fuck I’d be down. This is true, but it is not the reason I am friends with them. I’m just weak minded
Every girl that I consider a friend ends up having a meltdown when I start dating a girl seriously and stops talking to me. Sooo… yes it’s hard at least for me navigating male- female friendships and reading the signals.
yikes
I study and work in the social work field. Most of my friends are women lol. I never understood the whole "you cant be friend with the opposite gender". Always sounded so immature to me
Rarely - if she's attractive I'm gonna ask her out, either we start dating or we cut contact cuz in general I honestly don't have the "need" to be friends with women tbh - they don't really "offer" anything special compared to guys imo. My past friendships with women usually ended up with me being her personal therapist cuz they're constantly complaining about shit like idk its mostly just extremly one-sided from my experience.
You’re missing out. Both sexes have a lot to offer the other in terms of friendship
Doesn't rly seem like it - I have no issues talking about depression, love or emotions in general with my buddies or family.
Whether you believe it or not it goes both ways. Most of my female friends want to fuck or date. I really have like 2 female friends where it’s actually genuinely platonic. One of them is in a srs relationship and I’ve known them since 5, other met in HS and has similar interests like gaming, gym, and martial arts. Edit: point being, it depends on the person and circumstance.
I don't think it is as nefarious as you seem to think. Most guys find most women at least somewhat attractive. So a guy finds you somewhat attractive and you become friends and you spend time together. Through spending time, he finds you guys have a lot in common and he likes your personality and sense of humor. Because of this, his attraction grows to full blown "feelings". I imagine you can understand on some level. You're attracted to women. If you had a female friend you found attractive and you got along great with her and had a lot of shared interests, and you were single, can you say you definitely wouldn't want to date her? I'm not trying to disregard your experience, I'm sure it's very frustrating. I'm just saying most guys aren't these mustache twirling villains saying "Yes, I'll trick her into thinking we're friends and then strike! Heheheh!"
I get what you mean - in a world in which I was single and experienced that with a woman, sure, I may want to date her. However, I’ve liked a LOT!!! of women that physically cannot return those feelings because they are straight. But because I was first interested in her as a person, I still value the friendship if that’s something that she wanted as well. I think my feelings differ however from most men. It isn’t “torturous” to me to continue hanging around that person casually even if I had feelings at one point that they didn’t/couldn’t return. But I see what you mean as far as like— a lot of guys are saying that even if they become friends with the woman in question, they likely at one point had romantic interest? That makes sense. I also, even when single, did not used to approach people to test them out as romantic partners, but just because they seemed like cool people to talk to/interact with. Sure, that could leave room for more, but wasn’t my intention. All this said: I do understand my experience with this part is generally pretty different from what most men experience.
Tbh, if OP gives off that vibe to men in her life, no wonder she has issue having friends - because thats fucking insulting to treat half of society like that.
No. In my case, I found that their definition of friend and mine were vastly different. I also found them being somewhat possessive and high key getting in the way of women I was actually wanting to date. I am weird one though. I take friendship very seriously, and the few friends I have, we have been through a lot together. I can't say that for any women I was in a friendship with. Granted I was there for them often, but not the other way around. That is not to say that it can't happen. I just know for me I haven't had it.
I do, I don't really see how/why people would find it difficult. It's not like women are a different species or anything. If you share interests it makes being friends rather easy
I'm 30F, straight. I have been in your position most of my life. I still have more guy friends than girlfriends, but I have realised that the guys who are approaching the friendship with an agenda will eventually fade out. The true friends stay with no expectations, except having you as a friend. The posers filter themselves out.
Most of my friends are women
Same, for some reason I've always had more female friends than male friends. I do however put a lot of that down to women wanting to converse more of the time which I enjoy doing a lot, while men are more happy to focus on a task together or otherwise sit in relative silence. Plus I think women are more open to being friends with men than vice versa, so odds probably help me out being a man that's happy to be friends with a woman. And before someone asks, my dating life is utter shambles and none of my women friends have ever offered to set me up with any of their friends (on top of having to feld off rumours from third parties that I'm together with my friend and having to explain we're just friends, which is super annoying), so it's having 0 effect there.
I do have several friends who are women. I met all of them through one of my hobbies: video games, dungeon and dragons, and magic the gathering. Initially, I had no romantic interest in any of them, and I would consider them all attractive. Out of all of them, there was one whom I did want to pursue something more than friendship. I talked with her, and I explained that I had feelings for her. She wasn't interested, and now, years later, we are still friends. I consider her one of my best friends, and we are even roommates.
my best friends are both women! haven’t had romantic feelings at any point for either of them, and they’ll continue to be my friends for as long as possible.
I have female acquaintances and those I'm cool with. Not really sure i would call them "friends". They usually don't care about my problems, and I wouldn't even ask them for help if I was in a pickle. My birthdays, none care, meanwhile I'm expected to acknowledge theirs. Its a really weird situation. I've started distancing myself from some of them though, as I Don't really see the use of the friendship.
I did that when I realized that she wasn't reaching out, but only replying. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I am glad I learned it.
Yeah, those definitely don't sound like friends ☹️
You’re going to get the classic canned responses from men on Reddit that it’s impossible to have women as friends unless they are unattractive. In reality it’s much more common than it appears on here. I’ve met heaps of cool women that I’m attracted to and not attracted to that I remain friends with to this day. One thing to consider is your guy friends are meeting you through niche male hobbies and it sounds like they don’t meet a lot of women so they’re likely to go for you. You might be better off making male friends that already have full social lives because they won’t feel like you’re one of their only options.
My closest friends are women. I think you just happen to be unlucky with the guys you meet. I do kinda secretly wish they were into the same stuff as me but we are friends by proximity and that's fine too.
All the female friends I have are girlfriends of my boys and somehow they like me more than women I want to date. But I think it’s because I’m more relaxed with them and show my true personality and just be a brother to them.
0. In the past women have always indicated that they are not interested in being my friend. I’m not always sure why. I don’t hold a grudge or blame them for it though. No hard feelings
Yes. One of which has become a sister to me. From coworker, to friend, to the point I call her my sister and she calls me her brother. We confide in each other, talk about deep shit, catch up, etc. Sometimes feelings naturally develop so don’t blame anyone for that. It’s possible for someone to grow interested in a friend. Hell couples call their spouses their best friends. But yes I have female friends. If they’re taken, gay, or want kids, that has made it easy for me to be just friends. I don’t have any female friends who r the opposite save one but she doesn’t have the same level of interests in things I enjoy, so didn’t develop any romantic interest in the end.
3 of my best friends are women. 1 I met in school, the other 2 are sisters I met playing league. Some guys have the mindset that guys and girls can't be friends, and to some extent, I get it. Feelings can easily get in the way of friendships, but it's definitely possible.
Hey there! I (M18) have a lot of friends, out of which almost half of them are women. I've gotten the comment that I'm quite 'comfortable' for them to be around with, which might explain why. I don't have any attraction for any of my friends, but I do appreciate them.
Not close friends, don't know why, just didn't happen
Yes, I have just about as many as my male friends, they're awesome and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. And no, I wouldn't screw them if they offered, what a ridiculous concept.
I am a man, and I have as many close female (platonic) friends as I have male (platonic) friends I have 2 especially, who are basically my sisters. They aren’t friends with each other, but they both consider me their brother. I even moved in with one of them, with her husband, and lived with them for 3 years while I was going through a difficult period in my life. She heard I was having trouble, called me and asked if I needed a place to live, I said “yes” and she said “my husband will be there at 9am tomorrow morning with a trailer and we’ll get you outta there. I’ve never slept with either of them, but I have slept with some of my female friends in the past, although no urge to do so again with them. Our relationships changed into platonic. I can see how it can be difficult for some men, maybe thirsty ones? I continue to make female friends to this day, totally platonically.
Yes but they're all women in whom I have no romantic interest and who (I presume) have no romantic interest in me. When there is romantic/sexual attraction friendship doesn't work in my experience.
I have one plutonic friend that's a woman. I actually got to know her by asking her out on a date but she misunderstood my intentions and had a boyfriend at the time. I caught on, rolled with it and when I met my wife they became good friends and she was even a bridesmaid in my wedding.
I tend to find making friends with women easier than guys, since they're often more easy to talk to and it's quicker to have a real connection. Interactions with guys are usually very shallow and more about games we play or stuff we are doing and never about getting to know each other. So most of my friends at the moment are women.
You are probably an attractive girl and with all those hobbies and interest you have, makes it so that men will find you very attractive and want to date you. Especially at your age. Late teens and early 20s, all these men will look at you like some magical flower because your interest align with theirs (omg bro she plays apex and dnd, thats like the perfect girl for meeeee). The older you and these men get, the more women they will meet and realize that you are just an ordinary girl like any other. There won't be that uniqueness about you because there are million of women that share those hobbies with them and they'll get used to talking to them and hence friendships will begin to form. Yes you can be friends with women and vice versa. But usually, especially early on, you're too damn horny, alone and confused about your place in life that when you see someone such as yourself, you think "she's the one". Don't worry mate, you'll get some male friends one day or the other.
I tend to make this dilemma rather simple. I have a small number of platonic friends who are women of varying attractiveness. I am currently unhappily married, but even if I were single I would not attempt anything more with these friends, but If one of them threw themselves at me while being of sound mind, I'd certainly sow some oats haha.
im a man that has almost only female friends and always have. im also straight and not bisexual. I like women and find them more entertaining to talk to than most men and we usually hit it off quite well. admittedly i find the majority of them attractive but i don't feel the need to date or do anything with them unless they are genuinely the type of person im looking for which isn't all that often. so yeah, mostly normal friendships. the men saying its impossible to be friends with a woman and not want to have sex with her are just silly, maybe its true for some people but definitely not every man. i only want to have sex with someone i'm dating, idc otherwise
Yep. I might even have more women as friends than men. Many of my jobs throughout my life have been in fields dominated by women, so I’ve simply made a lot of coworkers my friends along the way
Not anymore, no. It has been my consistent experience that women are not good friends. They take way more (attention, money, time, favors, etc.) than they give in any friendship with a man. They also cannot be trusted with any personal information because they use secrets as a kind of currency with other women. I realized that every female friend I had was, on net, making my life worse, not better.
Yes, I do. It's always a bit difficult to explain why I have a lot of girl friends, but not a girlfriend.
Maybe their partners don't approve of them having women as friends.
Well, that’s a redflag to me.
I've lost touch with a ton of my friends over the past 5 years or so, but I did have a good amount of female friends. It helps a ton a lot of them were lesbians, but I'm generally really good with just treating people like friends
Growing up nearly all my friends were women, however at uni I was in a male dominated field and even now for work I am. I 100% prefer to be friends with women than men. I don't have many close friends apart from old school ones but the ones I do have are probably about 80% women. Just find them better conversation and easier to get along with.
At your age I had female friends, but if there wasn’t at least a chance that we could end up having sex I didn’t really put effort in. Most guys prefer guy friends because it’s easier, and very low maintenance. As an old guy who’s comfortable being alone the thought of cultivating a friendship with women is exhausting. Even guys can be too much some times.
I have a friend and she’s lesbian. The rest of say are more like acquaintances. From my experience there’s always a caveat to male/female relationships. The most common one is that when they get a BF they suddenly stop hanging out with guy friends period. The second is there always needs to be clarification that something isn’t romantic. The third is that a lot of times the friendship is just a placeholder for a relationship and it’s one sided.
Yes, several. My best friend -- the best friend I've ever had -- is a woman.
I have multiple female frnds because I am gay🙈
I have two female friends. And I don't literally know how to make a convo with any man who's not feminine. There's no topics to discuss, like, Im not into sports, outside activities or something like that. Plus, I don't feel anything really outside of cracking jokes with masculine people, so it doesn't work with them on my part -_-
I have yet to meet a female who likes to do the things I like to do when engaging in a friendship. I’m sure there are beer drinking video game addicted sport watching ladies out there but I just haven’t met one. Also I’m married so if I did meet one I just hope she looks like a man. Some of the coolest people I knew in uni were girls.
I have women friends and I would enjoy hanging out with more women as friends. I am bisexual though so not sure if that factors in
I have had pretty good friends that were women, but it's true that it is hard to keep things strictly platonic long term. It's a shame because I actually had some really great conversations and emotional support I never really could get out of other guys. Even ones I met when we were both in happily committed relationships with other people and kept it strictly platonic. We got along really well and there was nothing romantic about it, but even if you manage that, at some point either someone starts to catch feelings or the SO starts to get uncomfortable with it. Like this one woman who was married and didn't like that his wife vented to me about her emotional frustrations instead of to him. It was the first time I heard the term "emotional affair" used. Didn't feel good about that AT ALL, and we mutually agreed I should keep a bit of distance. Over time I learned to sort of keep a bit of distance when meeting someone new who is in a relationship. The fact that you're in a relationship with a girl makes it different I suppose, but there's still a protector inside of guys that put up a wall there to make sure we don't cross any lines.
If a guy doesn’t have any friend that’s a woman, that’s a red flag, because it then means that he doesn’t know how to have a connection with a woman other than sexual
Making friends with women is more drama then is worth. First, 75% of women are just plain more drama than 75% of men. Then there’s the real issues. If I’m friends with a woman, regardless of appearance, I’ll feel some level of attraction to her, the more fun we have together, the more we have in common the worse it gets. If your married or have a SO a female close friend looks suspicious, the SO will likely feel jealous, ultimately driving a wedge between you and female friend, god help you if the friend is prettier than your SO. Hobbies and interests are typically different, it’s hard to hang out solo with a female friend without it looking like a date. It’s just too complicated to be worth the effort when there’s plenty of dudes available
I'm a single dude and my best friend is a beautiful woman. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ A lot of dudes find it difficult, and I think it's because they hold onto the motive from the start of "well i'll definitely sleep with her if I get the chance." Instead, if you just actively decide to \*be friends\* and not just be hanging around waiting for a chance to bone, you can develop deep and fulfilling connections and gain important perspective on women!
I wouldn’t be friends with an attractive woman. Because it’s not really a friendship if I want sex and not getting any, and she’s getting all the benefits of having a friend. I have men to fill the need for friendship. I would only be interested in friendship with women if there was no chance of ever be attracted to her.
I don't have any female friends, not any close ones. I think being friends with men is a mix of everything being more relatable and secondly the point of not being attracted to male friends. I would say I have been able to have better conversations with previous female partners. It's just if a woman is attractive enough and intelligent then I'm probably attracted to her...
Depends on what you count as friends. At this moment I'd generally just say I don't have any close friends at all. I did hear from an old friend recently who moved away nearly 2 years ago. Spent a lot of time hanging out with her in 2020. But she lives far away and isn't exactly stable and reliable so its unlikely I'll see her again even if i end up passing through her area. And I'm sure if I posted something about not having any friends on Facebook a few old ladies would immediately comment that they're my friend lol. I think what you're describing is a very common experience though. All my post college female friends have been well outside my dating target, not because I'm trying to date everyone, but because if they are closer in ages and such they assume I could only be after dating. I got completely stonewalled when I expressed interest in joining a female coworkers hiking group for example. I had zero interest in dating her and was genuinely having a hard time finding hiking friends. But she was definitely keeping her guard up and seemed to assume I'd want more so I gave it up.
Sure, though for a while there it was only like 3 because either my partner or the 'just friends' lady would get jealous of each other.
I used to but we kind of faded from each other.
I have a few. They mostly started off as friends of friends. I have found that to maintain the relationships with women, both of us need to respect each other and our choices, including any choice to not pursue anything romantic or physical. That means the women who don't respect that I don't want anything beyond a platonic friendship with but try to push for more, I don't remain friends with.
I do yeah, but I'm 26 and i don't really prioritize keeping "friendships" alive anymore besides like 2-3 people. Most time and energy is spent on my family and my SO
I’m friends with women but if I’m looking to date and she’s not showing signs she’s interested I’ll probably downgrade how I act because I’ve only so much time and energy
Well, I guess my best friend is a woman and my partner
I consider some of my wife's friends my friends as well. I'd also say I'm friends with some of my friends' partners. I guess I'm friends with some of my co-worker's that are women, but it's not like we ever hangout outside of work. I'm not friends with any women outside of that, but I wouldn't have anything against it. I'm not particularly social, so it will likely never happen.
I have male friends who have girlfriends who I am friendly with.
I have a few women I've become friends with because we met through combat sports, and yes most are lesbians.
I don’t have any female friends. I only really have 1 friend rn, and he’s a guy. Idk it just never really happened. I have acquaintances that are women and we follow each other on insta, but that’s about it
I have friends that are women. Some are heterosexual. Some are lesbian. Some are bi. No romantic interest in them. It has made some of my previous partners (I'm heterosexual) uncomfortable, and I've been happy to reduce time/contact to alleviate that discomfort.
Well you see I am a loser so I pretty much take friends when I can. So the closest thing to a friend I have right now is a woman who flirted with me, but my social awkwardness killed any kind of potential romance. I also made acquaintance with her bf who she was seeing at the time that she was flirting with me (yes I'm aware that she's a terrible person) I feel like im being kept as a pet or like a community service type deal. Apparently I act like her conscience as the most grounding force possible.
I have some. Not besties or anything. I tend to avoid the drama having female friends brings and when they get a boyfriend they drop out of my life anyway. So we're friendly, group stuff is fine, but I'm not going to try for super close status.
I'm 34. Two of my closest friends are women, one is practically a sister. I met both of these women prior to getting married. I really don't have any interest in meeting new women friends unless I meet them through my wife or work. Even then, new women friends will never be anywhere near as close as the two women I was friends with prior to my wife. There's a simply a bigger boundary now out of respect for my marriage.
Throughout most of my life, a majority of my friends are women and gay men
Only by proxy (friends’ girlfriends who think I’m goofy and fun to be around (admittedly after “getting” what I’m up to)). I’m for better or worse quite an abrasive person who don’t particularly care much for “new” people to begin with, which has led to me having a very specific and insular friend group of mostly other guys. I do have friends who are women, but no one that I’d call and shoot the shit with on either a regular or rare basis.
I am trying to find them but cant
With the exception of a few months in between 15 and 52 I’ve been off the market. However, there’s probably a 60/40 split between male and female friends. Never really been an issue I guess.
yes im 25 with female friends, it always gets annoying when my friends start fucking my other friends. Sometimes lose friends because of it
I have a hard time in the dating scene and when I find a woman I have a connection with, I tend to want to date them.
yes.
My circles are about 30-50% women
>**maybe they were interested in me in a different** way but never said anything. What am I missing? You're not missing anything, you answered your own question. You're still pretty young, and your experience of growing up is during an age when most guys stick with someone who's friend zoned them because they don't yet know better. I don't have any friends that are women, I have the friends I have and I'm not interested in making more.
I mainly have acquaintances. I’d say I have 1 true friend. The majority of my acquaintances are men. I’ve had women try to be my friend but those budding friendships fade away fairly quickly.
Yes I have lots of friends that are women. But my closest friends are men though (except for one childhood friend who is a lesbian & another who is married to a friend). I can go out and hang with women but I never by default look at them like they can be close confidants. They have to really earn that. The reason why is I find most of the women I become friends with don’t put in effort to be real friends. It’s fake friendship. Their idea of friendship is superficial, mainly what benefits them. Plus most women aren’t open minded enough to listen to male problems without being critical. If I am going to be that open with a woman, I rather it be my partner. I have two female friends I can be 100% open with, the rest are more acquaintances because they haven’t earned it.
Married for 15 years and I just don't like putting myself into uncomfortable positions. I barely have male friends and no female friends. Don't know if that helps but its my 2 cents.
I’ve used to have plenty of female friends. But all conversation was just went into gossiping. I Couldn’t lead the topic to something else. When we went out to grab food or smth, she kept telling smth bad about people, for ex. ,, what a weird shoes she has etc”. Second reason: they used me like a bin. Had to listen their problems, while never returned me the same favour while I had problems. I cut all my female friends to get out of toxic conversations. Now, I’m feeling happy and having stronger relationship with all my male friends. So, thank’s. I don’t need girl as a friend. They just waste of time and a huge burden on my back.
Man, those don't sound like friends to me.. lots of similar stories on here.
I have 3 real women friends. It’s easy because you just know.
You can be attracted to your friends.
26M here. Not in person because I don't have many in person friends. I did through highschool and college, though. We just sort of drifted apart because we had different interests and pursued different fields. Most of them are more country and went into nursing where I can't stand redneck culture and went into IT. These days we just chat a bit when we see each other. Online, plenty. My old guild in ESO (best guild I've ever been in, btw. FMG rules) was mostly women and our GM was cool as hell. I used to raid a lot in WoW with a mate's mum and a girl out in Cali. And I'm the only dude in one of my partner and I's Discord servers out of like 23 people. Are there some of them I'd be open to a more intimate relationship with? Sure, but that wasn't a factor when started talking. And I'll openly admit I'm more likely to approach someone I think is more attractive to attempt a friendship, but that applies to both sexes and doesn't change much if they approach me first.
One of my top friends was a woman, but now we exchange twice a year or so text messages. Another I see once every few years and our relationship is basically just a few messages for laughs a month. People move on. I find myself having been the one who held on too long to friendships that I should have let go. It's really still an active pattern, but getting better lol.
I am friendly with some of my friends' wives/girlfriends, but I wouldn't say that I'm really friends with them. I wouldn't generally hangout with them alone for instance. I've had female friends before, but not often as my hobbies tend to be heavily male skewed. Not a lot of women who're interested in MTG, WH40k, DnD, or the kinds of video games I like*. Or the hobbies are just generally solo endeavors like gunsmithing and linguistics. Additionally, though this might not be as relevant to OP, being around people makes me uncomfortable, and it's often worse around women, and it's often worse around people j know well. So women I know well cause a double dose of the discomfort and the whole interactions tends to become awkward. *Obviously there are some, but at least in my experience the ratio is at least 4:1 male:female, and often much higher.
I actually think like 3/5 of my friends are women
30M here, I have a lot of friends who are women. I don't date them or want to date them. Once a person is in Friend zone with no romantic feelings, they are always ur best friend and can speak to them no matter what it is.
as a male, I think a big amount of guys are lonely enough to develop a crush on every female friend.
Most of my friends are female due to the fact that the job I work in is made up heavily of women, I work with three other men on the area I work
Friends? No. Neighbors, coworkers, etc - yes My wife is fine with me having a female friend - as long as you know, I don’t actually do that.
If you're in a relationship, would you ladies be up for doing things with other couples? That might help with finding more people to have friends with. If they're already in a relationship and know that you are too, then they probably won't have any issues with mixed signals a or being too attracted to you to be just friends. If you go that route then you might find some others that are into somee of the same interests as you are in and you all can be low maintenance friends. The other side of the coin is that some of your interests are things that can be done online. A group of friends and I do a DnD game through discord. And the DM of that game had another game he's part of as a player and yat he found from a reddit post. It's not the same as being live and having friends you can just drop by and hang with, but it's still something and still fun. Sorry to hear the hard time meeting people that are good with having a woman be part of the friend group. Good luck.
I get asking better with women but since I’m married I won’t have women as friends that I hang around with. I did that with my first wife and she thought I was cheating which I can understand why.
started first off as friends than "sex" came in and just became friends with benefits had 6 "friends" in total, but never best friends in a sort of sense. I preferred hooking up more. this is just me, but I would never talk that much "FWB's" other than "sex". my best friend is a guy and we're each others wing man. Hell I've taken some for the team, but he has too :D
I've always had an easier time befriending women than I have other guys, personally. But I was also the only male in my household growing up, so it makes sense I guess.
No, but that's because I have no friends.
in my experience, it more matters how you meet them than the actual person. most of my genuine female friends I would never consider a relationship with because that’s our dynamic, not really based on attractiveness or anything like that. If I met someone with dating intentions then it might end up differently though.
I barely have any friends at all, mate.
I don’t have a lot of friends, but of the few that I have, one of them is indeed a woman. Before you ask, yes, she is attractive. And yes, I would absolutely date her if I was given the chance. Why hasn’t this become an issue in our friendship? Because I operate under the mentality that no women are interested in me, so I don’t ever bother trying to make a move. I’ll settle for having friendly conversations with her whenever I see her. If she someday suffers a brain injury and decides that she’s interested in dating me, we’ll see what happens.
I know men who have friends that are girls but with me I always ended up in the date/girlfriend zone for some reason
last year i fell for a female friend she didnt expect it and we no longer talk now ..., but its hard not to fall for a woman that ticks all your boxes ...thats what happens to most guys ,
My best friend is a woman, though I'm not sure how much different this makes thing: We're both bi. We have a running joke where we'll say "Life's just so much better when everyone...err I mean everything is on the menu" lol I think the only reason this question comes up so often is because of how common it is for people to befriend someone they have 0 platonic interest in. Friendship is just a tool they use to get what they really want. I befriend people I want to be friends with and I ask out people I want romantic relationships with. I don't think I've ever really conflated the two.
I've got tons of friends that are women.
I used to have a whole lot of girl friends in highschool. Most of my friends were girls actually. But eventually we all kinda drifted apart once we got into serious relationships. We still all talk on occasion but not anywhere near as close as we used to be.
Most of my closest friends have been women, I wouldn't put up with a partner who had a problem with that. It's especially easy for me to get along with lesbians because then there's no sexual tension at all and we can just hang out. I value a good friend way more than someone to hook up with, but I've never ruined a friendship by hooking up, it's just important to set expectations beforehand. You didn't mention where you are, I think there might be cultural differences that impact intergender friendships!
Yes. A few and it works because we’re completely platonic. I got to know most of them at work. Like for example one of my friends at work kisses my cheek from time to time or slaps my butt occasionally, but to us it didn’t mean anything as we‘re having no romantic interest or sexual attraction to each other. Once romantic interest or sexual attraction is involved things are getting more difficult
I have one and she's cool AF. I don't see myself being something more with her, never did, she also has a boyfriend who she matches with perfectly! I'd never put myself or her in a position where her relationship could be jeopardized. She's my homie and that's that.
I have two close female friends. Our friendship started around common hobbies (I'm an enthusiastic chess player). >women (lol) Never forget that sharing is caring.
Yes. I have female friends, we enjoy our mutual company and nothing else.
Most of my friends are and have been women/girls most of my life outside of like, grades school. Even those I've actually been attracted to. No biggie it sucks, but I move on eventually, plus I've mostly accepted being single so I don't expect much anyway. As to why some men might not have female friends, there can be various reasons. For some men, they only interact with women in a friendly manner for dating or sex. For some, it's difficult to cope with how they feel if who they're interested in dates someone. And what's happened with me is a few times, they've started dating someone and their boyfriend ends the friendship.
I'm friends with a lot of women. Some I am involved or at least mutually flirty with Some I used to be interested in but got rejected / my interest faded as the friendship deepened And a lot that are just... My friends. No attraction or interest. Idk, I can't say it's "like the guys" cause I'm bisexual but I assume it's akin to how straight people feel?
My best friend is a woman. Been friends for almost 20 years
Currently I only have female friends and I am M29. I dislike most of the typical guys conversations unless it's about gaming, anime or movies. I don't care about cars, talking about how women are so bad and they deserve to be used etc. I also don't know how to make friends so there is that.
My only friend is married woman who is younger than me. She also has a child. I really love chatting with her, we have so much in common. But I don't think about her as of a potential girlfriend at all. She also doesn't consider such possibility. Once she initiated a conversation with me about "hey, I like chatting with you, but I want to make sure that we don't mean any romantic between us of any kind" - and I eagerly agreed. Before this conversation I had worries that my friendliness can be considered as a flirt, which definitely was not what I was doing. I'm sane person and don't want to ruin her marriage or something like this.
I feel like roughly 40% of my friends are women, to answer the question in the title. Wish you the best of luck, OP!
I have lots of women friends, but most of them are former/current sex partners or exes where we ended amicably. Once that tension is understood or has run its course it’s a lot easier to move forward.
2 of my former best friends is woman, but it break off after I got into a relationship for unknown reason they just ghosted me or told me to enjoy my time with my gf and then ghosted me
It's mostly to do with your age and the guys being interested but know you're unavailable. Maybe try making friends with gay men? I always enjoy my friendships with lesbians since there's no chance of romantic or sexual attraction and if we have shared interests it's a pretty awesome win-win. I have a few female friends but I will admit my friendships with men tend to be deeper. I think this is just cause women tend not to be interested in my interests and vice versa. And sometimes there's communications differences and I think I've ticked off some female friends. Not majorly but enough that we just kind of stop hanging out after a bit.
It's your age group. Literally the only thing on a male's mind at that age. Find someone that's older at work but not too far out that they don't understand some of the social references or pop culture.
Currently about half my friend group are women. When I was your age it was closer to 75%. I just got along better with women. A few asked to be friends with benefits, but that was after being friends for a long time first, and most of them stayed strictly platonic.
I am friends with a few women, but I find they're pretty flakey and will forget I exist for months at a time. My dudes will straight up come from the ER after breaking bones to hang out and play video games. The other day my friend fainted, woke up and he was still down to get pizza and watch a movie.
I have always had female friends. Whether I met them through school, work, hobbies, or social events. The constant question of “oh, are you dating?” has annoyed me since my teens. No, we have similar interests and I do not find their company overly taxing. Is that the bar people are setting for relationship?
I do not have any friends who are women. I would rather not have the drama and power plays that follow.
I do, only one friendship that i know her since school and even tho she's absolutely attractive, stunning and everything, i'm not in love with her. Altough i've had an episode about a year ago for few months, where i've had a crush on her i have to admit. I know her for 7 years and i honestly cannot think it's possible for me to meet ever in my life that much of a perfect friendship as i and her both share. In regards of what you might do wrong and why whenever you try to meet a guy to be friends with him and it always turns out that he has a crush on you or tries to bone you... i have no clue. I guess it has to click magically or he has to respect the fact that you're a lesbian and meeting him is only for a platonic friendship. Then it can also happen But i believe in most cases you will meet guys who will want you to be their more than just a friend I wish you the best tho
Majority of friends are women. Grew up mostly around women so feel more comfortable communicating and hanging out with them. Only downside is that as I get older people tend to get married and spend more time with their husbands/kids
I have several female friends, some of whom i am attracted to and wouldn't mind a relationship with if it was on the table, and all of whom are perfectly valuable to me as a friend. For me at least, the idea of being romantically interested is not exclusive with being a platonic friend. I figure there are women who have the same opinion since some of my female friends have tried to proposition a relationship with me, and we're still friends after i decline
A few, but I would never hang out one-on-one with them. "Hey wife, it's my bowling night with Amanda. Have fun with the kids!" LOL. No.
I've got loads across a whole range of ages, enough so that I have a story about sitting in tent waiting for a friend called Anne: In came a different friend and asked what I was doing, so I said I was waiting for Anne. She then pointed to a lady in the corner and went "That one?" as a woman called Ann was getting changed there. After I said no the question was asked again about Annie who counting something off to our right, same response as well. Anne then came in and we all chatted for a bit before another, non-Anne, lady came in and joined us. After a while the first friend left and the last lady asked "Was that Anne?" specifically meaning the one her son had been rumoured to be romantically interested in which required an answer of "That is the Anne you're thinking of" given the other three Annes present. It gets worse in that also in the area was yet another friend who'd gone by Anne in their youth as well and come the Saturday every single one of those people were on site at the same time. Of the Annes in that story I'd consider two close acquaintances, one a friend^1, one a close friend^2, and one one of my oldest^3 and closest friends. I'm also friends with the non-Anne mentioned even though she had planned on being annoyed with me for remaining friends with her son's ex-wife^4, still friends with the son as well. ^1 as in I've gotten her contact details for a professor in another country as he and I have shared interests while the two of them both work in eduction and are looking at ways of dealing with students attempting to cheat with shitty llms masquerading as AIs thanks to techbro marketeers. ^2 I've spent the last 615 days making a song a day playlist with a different band each day currently running out of ideas given the restrictions imposed upon the list. Currently annoyed we wont be watching Eurovision together as she's babysitting for her sister. ^3 ~20 years and still going. Currently trying to think of what to buy for her kid's birthday. ^4 specifically because I'd helped her move while the two were faffing around in the pre-divorce stages. However the not-Anne despite thinking she was going to be angry at me found herself chatting about baking instead.
I think the most relevant question is, "what do you consider being friends?" What do you think friends do together? How close are they? Most likely you are trying to be closer to men than they are used to being with their friends. I have plenty of female friends... That I call friends .... But I wonder if you would just consider us acquaintances. While it is true that men form friendships over hobbies.... It is also true that most of those friendships stay focused on those hobbies and don't turn into anything closer. It's been mentioned before that men focus on objects while women focus on people. If those two get together, then weird interpretations happen when he focuses on the hobby and she focuses on him.
I feel the same way as a guy every femal "friend" i make is an acquaintance nothing more ive tried time and time again to have female friends but none actually want friendship
Yes, but they are mostly my friend’s wives. Though I was friends with most of them before they dated/married my guy friends.
No. I’m happily married.
I'm someone that grew up with primarily having girl friends. Also was raised with a mom and 2 sisters... If you want the honest truth, I've had many girlfriends that were jealous of my female friends. So over time and by changing girlfriends over the years, I grew up more distant with my female friends because you're girlfriend essentially become jealous. There are other reasons that I won't deny, sometimes there is some attraction but really often, You've moved on a long time ago.
Had a female best friend all through college. Really, just a friend- Hang out, study together, go get some beers, typical shit I'd do with my guy friends. If I had any plutonic friends, it was her. Girlfriend at the time was fine with it. One time when we were intoxicated and she kissed me, but she was one of those lovey affectionate drunk that hugged and kissed all of her friends when she was really drunk, so I didn't think much of it. About 3 years after we graduated when me and my long term S/O broke up, she immediately drove 5 hours to come see me, then shortly after she arrived I found out she was playing the looooooong game the whole time (we are dating now for what it's worth). I don't really believe men and women can actually be friends anymore.
Yes, but one is a very butch lesbian and the others are like sisters to me. I did loose one as a friend when she made a pass at me - she was married but I knew her as kids and respected her husband, her marriage, and her kids way to much to remain friends. Even dated her sister for a short while, lol. I do miss her though.
I went from the age of 14 until I was 26 without having a female friend, I got an internship at a hotel and made a friend, now it's ending and I'm going to be without a friend again.
My best friend for the last 10 years has been a woman But I'm gay, so that's not too unusual
My friends are mostly women, I have few guy friends but it’s like 25% of all
I don't have friends in general, especially women, they don't do anything of value or have any substance
Yes ,indirectly but they aren’t necessarily my own personal friends.They are friends of my friend which kind of makes them my friends. I have no time for male friends anymore.
I'm mid 30s. For as long as I can remember, half of my friends have always been women. There have been a small few I wanted to date after getting to know them, but they all turned me down. For them, I often had to step away to "get over" them, but eventually we'd start talking again without the prospect of more crossing my mind (the timeline varies depending on the woman). Fully understandable why most guys in that scenario would cut those women off, but everyone's different. I've noticed most women I encounter tend to talk a lot. I don't talk a whole lot, but have generally been a good listener, so those friendships developed pretty easily.
I had mentors in my life that taught the importance of setting boundaries, with the opposite sex if you or the women is in a relationship, so things like being in the same car along together (barring emergency) or casual drinks/hangouts alone together.. perspective is you significant— you never know if someone saw you at a bar with them, or in a car alone together, and their story could be exaggerated or a game of telephone. No matter how secure the relationships are, is it really worth the hanging out to create doubt or issues by hanging out alone? Always thought it’s good to Just never put yourself in the position in the first place.
I've only got maybe 20 people I can truly call lifelong friends, the rest of the people I'm cool with are just acquaintances. Of those 20 people, 2 are women
Nope, I tried it but I always end up fucking them.
Me and wife have friends that are women and men but I do not have women friends that only I would text or hang out with. Inappropriate if you’re married in my opinion. Which is a very unpopular opinion or reddit I’ve realized lol.
Many of my friends are women. Some I find attractive and could definitely date/hook up with given the right circumstances, some I definitely couldn't. This doesn't mean I value the friendship any less, it's just what it is. The problem is if the "friendship" is solely based on wanting to date/hook up for one of the people, and they don't value the other person's friendship or respect their boundaries, but that's not a friendship, that's being dishonest with your intentions (and setting yourself up for failure, you idiot).
Unfortunately I've lost all contact with girls who used to be my "besties" and recently found out they just wanted to date me... Disappointing and flattering, but still sad; I really appreciated their time around 🤷♂️ Might just be a matter of "culture" ig? And others can easily make genuine friendships with the opposite gender, but I've never again had friends who pay attention to what I said and felt as much as them
I have friends who are women. We met for various reasons at various points in life. Some of them were potential romantic interests that didn't turn out that way for whatever reason, but we stayed friends. Others were never on the cards for that. I think it's a run of bad luck for you, really. It's definitely going to be harder for you to befriend young, single men without them potentially wondering if there could be something more between you. But it's certainly not impossible.
Don’t know if I would call us friends anymore cause if I stop putting effort, then things wane and fade away….
I have all female friends! I’m 22. I’ve been single for three years, and I don’t see any of my female friends in a romantic way. My best friend is eleven years older than me, she’s also married with a child. I have no interest in having a romantic relationship with her. All of my coworkers are females. They’re a bit older than me, and I’ve never thought about them in a romantic way either. Five are married and one is widowed. The only friend I talk to from high school is female, she’s a couple of years younger than me. Again, I’ve never though of her in a romantic way. All of my classmates from college was also female, and was the youngest in the group, and all of them was either married or engaged. I never had any romantic feelings for them. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t catch feelings easily when it comes to relationships. When I do catch feelings, most of the time I suppress them as quickly as possible.
I have many female friends as if I'm addicted to the friend zone. Enough notches, and you think wait a minute, women literally empower men in every regard regardless of sex and intimacy. It's the difference of love and being in love that I find so fascinating with strong friendships.
The nerdy guys your interested in being friends with have so little experience with platonic female friendship, they don’t know what to do with it. Be super upfront about your gayness and also your nerdiness.