Speaker 1: Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
Speaker 1: the world, it is so great to have you here,
Speaker 1: back for another episode, as we, of course break down
Speaker 1: the psychology of our twenties. There are some episodes that
Speaker 1: I do just for me. You know, no one has
Speaker 1: really asked for them. I'm just super fascinated by the
Speaker 1: topic or it's just really showing up in my own
Speaker 1: life and I feel like I can't move past it
Speaker 1: unless I do an episode on it, like that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So like the recent episodes that I've done
Speaker 1: on how to Pursue your creative Passion, that was one
Speaker 1: of those, as was the one on hobbies. And then
Speaker 1: then there are the episodes that you all the listeners
Speaker 1: are almost begging me to do. And anytime I ask
Speaker 1: for topic suggestions, anytime I ask people to guess what
Speaker 1: episode is coming next, overwhelmingly I get this response. Please
Speaker 1: talk about the psychology behind male female friendships, why they
Speaker 1: seem so rare, why they can be so hard, what
Speaker 1: makes them work, what makes them doesn't. And today, my friends,
Speaker 1: is the day that we talk about it, because you know,
Speaker 1: I have to give the people what they want, and
Speaker 1: I have to also give you all the psychological answers
Speaker 1: behind this big question can men and women be friends?
Speaker 1: I think the reason that it's taken me so long
Speaker 1: to do this episode is because I don't want it
Speaker 1: to be like surface level so as not to offend anyone.
Speaker 1: I don't want to make general claims and like gloss
Speaker 1: over the facts and the research. I wanted to really
Speaker 1: go deep into this question of whether men and women
Speaker 1: can be friends, like the age old when Harry met
Speaker 1: Sally Trope, and in doing that, we are going to
Speaker 1: explore so much. We're going to explore how societal expectations
Speaker 1: around gender and friendship have changed over the past sixty years,
Speaker 1: what the key difference is between male to male and
Speaker 1: female to female friendships, non binary and queer friendships, before
Speaker 1: really jumping into what makes male female friendships in particular
Speaker 1: so tricky, whether it is just romantic attraction or something
Speaker 1: deeper like communication or expectations, but why also these kinds
Speaker 1: of friendships, when they work, are really important and really fulfilling.
Speaker 1: We'll also touch on what happens when one person gets feelings,
Speaker 1: how to reassert boundaries, and some stories from the listeners,
Speaker 1: I asked you guys to submit your opinions and your
Speaker 1: stories on this good, bad, and ugly about your experience
Speaker 1: with male female friendships. One thing that I got out
Speaker 1: of all of those dms is that there is not
Speaker 1: a general consensus when it comes to this question. I
Speaker 1: definitely have my own opinion because I do have quite
Speaker 1: a few really close male friends that will always be platonic.
Speaker 1: But you, all the listeners, you also had opinions and
Speaker 1: there was not a single, you know, overarching, overwhelming answer.
Speaker 1: So we're really gonna dive into some of the fascinating
Speaker 1: studies done on this in social psychology, debunk some of
Speaker 1: the misconceptions, but also provide a bit of a checklist
Speaker 1: for what makes female friendships work. If you can't already tell,
Speaker 1: you are in for a treat and a big discussion.
Speaker 1: So I hope you are strapped in. I hope you
Speaker 1: are excited to learn or perhaps to maybe confirm something
Speaker 1: that you already did know. But without further ado, let
Speaker 1: us talk about the psychology of male female friendships. I
Speaker 1: want you to do a quick exercise for me right now.
Speaker 1: How many friends do you have that are the same
Speaker 1: gender as you? I want you to keep counting until
Speaker 1: you reach maybe maximum of fifteen. Now, how many friends
Speaker 1: do you have of the opposite gender. They can't be
Speaker 1: partners of friends, that's a big one. They can't be
Speaker 1: related to you. They can't be people that you have
Speaker 1: previously been romantically involved with. Chances are that the second
Speaker 1: number is much smaller than the first. For most of us,
Speaker 1: our friendship preferences do tend to be skewed towards people
Speaker 1: of the same gender because there is a lived experience
Speaker 1: there that we share. But also we've been socialized by
Speaker 1: society in the same way, so we are more likely
Speaker 1: to enjoy the same activities, like the same things, have
Speaker 1: similar language and a way of communicating, And research really
Speaker 1: does show that people often form friendships with those of
Speaker 1: a similar age, religion, education, occupation, and also gender, with
Speaker 1: some exceptions. Of course. One study to find that younger
Speaker 1: gay and bisexual men are more likely to have cross
Speaker 1: gender friendships, while lesbian women are not. They're more likely
Speaker 1: to have more female friends. I think it's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that not a lot, actually very little of this
Speaker 1: research has been done on this population, and very little
Speaker 1: has been done on non binary people as well, so
Speaker 1: that is a big research gap. If anyone needs a
Speaker 1: PhD topic or a thesis idea non binary friendship preferences
Speaker 1: by gender or something like that would be very interesting.
Speaker 1: But as a general rule, women tend to be friends
Speaker 1: with more women, and they express greater closeness to their
Speaker 1: female friends, and the same goes for men. There are
Speaker 1: a few reasons for this, some of which we've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: but I think a large part of this gender divide
Speaker 1: is actually quite historical, and it's remnant of a time
Speaker 1: where male female relations could not be platonic. You were
Speaker 1: either courting, married, or family. And even then there was
Speaker 1: still a great deal of separation. We had male quarters
Speaker 1: female quarters. As an example, a woman couldn't be alone
Speaker 1: with a man who was not family or her husband.
Speaker 1: That's still the case in some parts of the world.
Speaker 1: So that makes it kind of hard to be friends
Speaker 1: with someone of the opposite gender, doesn't it. It's not
Speaker 1: very likely we can also trace this general pattern back
Speaker 1: to potentially things like the division of labor. So men,
Speaker 1: you know, historically went out hunting, women participated in child rearing,
Speaker 1: and you know, women only recently, and I by recently,
Speaker 1: I mean in the last one hundred years entered the
Speaker 1: workplace where they actually had a chance to make friends
Speaker 1: with men and had a chance to exit the home.
Speaker 1: That's only like three to four generations of progress. So
Speaker 1: this long historical division has also that I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: changed how men and women were socialized or caned basically
Speaker 1: just a fancy word for how we were raised and
Speaker 1: the values and personalities that were instilled in us. Women
Speaker 1: are typically seen as more vulnerable, they're more feeling giving, nurturing,
Speaker 1: that is the traditional consensus, whereas men have been seen
Speaker 1: as more adventurous, tough, less emotional, so that has dictated
Speaker 1: how they relate and interact with those of their own gender.
Speaker 1: So let me explain this a little bit further. So,
Speaker 1: there was this really cool research study downe at Duke
Speaker 1: University in twenty sixteen, and it wanted to see the
Speaker 1: difference within female female friendships and male male friendships. It
Speaker 1: found that women we tend to lean into self disclosure
Speaker 1: when hanging out, so when we catch up with our
Speaker 1: friends were more likely to tell them about things that
Speaker 1: have happened in our life that have hurt us or
Speaker 1: excited us, or that have caused us to be angry
Speaker 1: or sad, whatever it is, we're more likely to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Whilst men, when they get together they often do a
Speaker 1: shared activity, or they're helping each other with a project
Speaker 1: or a task. I have seen this with my own boyfriend,
Speaker 1: where he prefers to play three hours of video games
Speaker 1: with his friends, whereas me and my girlfriends will go
Speaker 1: out for like a three hour dinner and a three
Speaker 1: hour chat. And after he has seen his friends, it's like,
Speaker 1: very typical. He's gone out for a beer, they've gone
Speaker 1: to the beach. I'll be like, oh, yeah, so, Like
Speaker 1: how is so and So's girlfriend? Like what's happening there?
Speaker 1: Like are they still together? She's so nice? I really
Speaker 1: like her, Like what's happening? And he'll be like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. We didn't talk about it. Or I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, your friend, how is his terrible job going?
Speaker 1: Like has he been able to find a new job?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Again, we didn't talk about it. And
Speaker 1: it leaves me so confused because I'm like, what else
Speaker 1: are you meant to talk about other than each other's lives?
Speaker 1: Like that's what a friend is for, but obviously that's
Speaker 1: not really the case. For him and like he has
Speaker 1: a preference or maybe a conditioned preference towards more of
Speaker 1: a hangout than a catch up. So there was another
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen study done on this from none other than
Speaker 1: Robin Dunbar. You may know him from Dunbar's number, which
Speaker 1: basically tells us how many friends we should or could
Speaker 1: have at a particular time. But he does a lot
Speaker 1: of research on like. He's a social psychologist, so a
Speaker 1: lot of his research is on how we interact, how
Speaker 1: we learn each other's behaviors, how we hang out, how
Speaker 1: we talk, how we gossip, all those things, how relationships
Speaker 1: are formed. And his research from twenty seventeen found that
Speaker 1: women also tend to prefer to socialize one on one,
Speaker 1: whilst men prefer to socialize in groups. Again, I see
Speaker 1: that reflected in my own experiences. What's all so different
Speaker 1: between women women friendships and male male friendships is that
Speaker 1: women tend to have higher expectations of their friends, and
Speaker 1: they expressed greater disappointment upset at last minute cancelations of plans,
Speaker 1: not seeing their friends for a while, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: whereas men are kind of okay with their friends having
Speaker 1: agency even if it doesn't match what they want from them.
Speaker 1: One final big thing that I found really really interesting
Speaker 1: and that I promise i'll stop. But women are more
Speaker 1: likely to have a best friend compared to men, which
Speaker 1: again checks out. So for a long time, friendships exhibited
Speaker 1: something we call gender homophilly. Women were only friends with women,
Speaker 1: men are only friends with men. That has changed a
Speaker 1: lot recently. I want to explore how that shift took place.
Speaker 1: So the big factors trace back to society just becoming
Speaker 1: gradually more liberal, women entering the workforce more after World
Speaker 1: War One and World War II, the rise in co
Speaker 1: ed schools, and just more rights for women in general
Speaker 1: to exist in the public sphere rather than just at home.
Speaker 1: So there was just more opportunities for exposure and for
Speaker 1: meeting and for friendship making. But this, really, you know,
Speaker 1: takes us back to this big million dollar question. For
Speaker 1: all this progress, for all the male female friendships that
Speaker 1: we do see, can men and women ever actually be
Speaker 1: friends without romantic attraction getting in the way. Despite all
Speaker 1: of the progress, does romance still always find a way in?
Speaker 1: So I wanted to hear from you all the listeners
Speaker 1: before I reveal what the psychology says so far, And
Speaker 1: I asked you all over on Instagram, give me your perspective,
Speaker 1: what do you think? What have you seen happen in
Speaker 1: your own life? And the answers your responses they were
Speaker 1: split perfectly fifty to fifty, right down the line, right
Speaker 1: down the middle. And also no one who DMed me
Speaker 1: had a neutral opinion. What I mean to say by
Speaker 1: that is that no one was messaging me saying oh yes,
Speaker 1: sometimes yes, sometimes no. It was either some of my
Speaker 1: best friends a men or women or the opposite gender,
Speaker 1: and I trust them and I love them more than
Speaker 1: anyone else, or this always ends in disaster stay away.
Speaker 1: For example, I heard from one woman who said her
Speaker 1: closest friends are all men. She has deep trust for them.
Speaker 1: They've known each other for almost a decade, and she
Speaker 1: was also in their wedding parties. I got a similar
Speaker 1: message from a guy who said he had recently mceed
Speaker 1: one of his female best friend's weddings. How he will
Speaker 1: eventually include his female friends as part of his groomsmen.
Speaker 1: How he and this was actually a really refreshing message.
Speaker 1: He was like, my female friends have changed my worldview
Speaker 1: compared to some of my other mates, you know, like
Speaker 1: I see the world and I see life differently, which
Speaker 1: I was like, huh, this is actually quite beautiful, and
Speaker 1: that was reflected in another message from someone who was like,
Speaker 1: my male friends have taught me what it means to
Speaker 1: be considerate and caring for someone in an unconditional way,
Speaker 1: which how beautiful is that. I also did get a
Speaker 1: few messages of like, men are just easier to deal
Speaker 1: with compared to women, which, yeah, I'm sure that's the
Speaker 1: case for some people. I don't find that to be
Speaker 1: the case, Like, I think it's just different, but that
Speaker 1: was a common message I also got. And then the
Speaker 1: other side of the coin, the dms about male female
Speaker 1: friendships that were destroyed by someone catching feelings by deep
Speaker 1: betrayal in some cases, trauma and hurt, jealousy and unrequited
Speaker 1: love all very common. A surprising insight was that a
Speaker 1: lot of the dms from women who had male friends
Speaker 1: actually said most of their male friends were gay or queer,
Speaker 1: which kind of supports the common argument the male female
Speaker 1: heterosexual friendships they don't work because of sexual attraction, but
Speaker 1: when you take out that lam it can flourish. All
Speaker 1: of that aside. We are going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we return, I want to talk about
Speaker 1: what makes male female friendships so hard, why they fail,
Speaker 1: but also how to set boundaries, how to approach the
Speaker 1: friend zone and perhaps keep the friendship, and so much
Speaker 1: more so stay with us. So we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the romance, the lust, the feelings, the Harry met
Speaker 1: Sally's situation, which is a great movie. Actually showed my
Speaker 1: boyfriend that movie the other day and that's really like
Speaker 1: as research and we had a really interesting discussion about it.
Speaker 1: But firstly, I want to touch on some of the
Speaker 1: other reasons, less known, less thought of reasons why male
Speaker 1: female friendships may be a bit harder. The big first
Speaker 1: one is gender differences in emotional expression and communication styles.
Speaker 1: Try as we might, men and women do emote differently,
Speaker 1: and they have been socialized to show vulnerability, compassion, empathy
Speaker 1: in different ways. For men, empathy is often seen as
Speaker 1: a sign of weakness. For women, it's a sign of kindness,
Speaker 1: a good soul, it's a strength. So when you combine
Speaker 1: these reactions, when you put them together, sometimes there can
Speaker 1: be this divide between what either party wants and what
Speaker 1: the other party gives. So I will say one of
Speaker 1: my closest friends Jack. He's a guy, and I've never
Speaker 1: experienced this with him. In fact, I think sometimes he's
Speaker 1: more sympathetic than some of my female friends. But I
Speaker 1: have seen this in other instances where a male friend
Speaker 1: is like, you know, they're there, like, don't cry, child like,
Speaker 1: and I can see that he's really struggling because he's
Speaker 1: never had to practice this skill, and so that does
Speaker 1: make it difficult if time and time again you realize
Speaker 1: that going to this person for emotional comfort isn't necessarily,
Speaker 1: you know, going to give you what you want. There
Speaker 1: was a DM I received from one person that matches
Speaker 1: this assumption. She said, I don't feel as comfortable around men.
Speaker 1: They don't show empathy, they have no idea what struggles
Speaker 1: women often have to face. I don't relate to them,
Speaker 1: and I don't feel validated, which might be what some
Speaker 1: people feel, and they just tend to find more support
Speaker 1: in people who get their lived experiences, and gender does
Speaker 1: influence how we experience the world. The second difficulty comes
Speaker 1: down to jealousy and insecurity from partners, and I think
Speaker 1: this is the problem with assuming all bale female friendships
Speaker 1: automatically have an underlying level of sexual attraction, it can
Speaker 1: ruin the friendship in other ways, it's the assumption that
Speaker 1: they do that ruins them. I e. You know, when
Speaker 1: the boyfriend or the girlfriend or the partner of your
Speaker 1: friend feels insecure or jealous of your platonic bond, or
Speaker 1: they have a low residing level of competition, it's like
Speaker 1: a form of platonic retroactive jealousy almost and doubt even
Speaker 1: if there isn't no, there is no sexual attraction there.
Speaker 1: Some people do worry about emotional cheating and they do
Speaker 1: see platonic friends of the opposite gender as a threat
Speaker 1: in that way, like why do you need to have
Speaker 1: female friends now that you have me? Why do you
Speaker 1: need male friends when you have me? As if you know,
Speaker 1: gender is the only thing that defines the bond. I
Speaker 1: received a message from someone who said that she had
Speaker 1: been friends with her guy friends for over a decade. However,
Speaker 1: when they started getting into relationships, they stopped talking to her,
Speaker 1: and now they have no relationship at all. And I
Speaker 1: think the assumption there is that their girlfriends probably maybe
Speaker 1: weren't comfortable with them having such a close female friend.
Speaker 1: One woman said, and this actually shocked me when I
Speaker 1: got this, she said, my male best friend's ex used
Speaker 1: to accuse me of and running her car so that
Speaker 1: I would get in trouble with him. Like when I
Speaker 1: read that message, I was like, oh my god. Like
Speaker 1: the image of that, like this woman showing up and
Speaker 1: like somehow, you know, finding a way to dent her
Speaker 1: car to blame this friend of her of her partner,
Speaker 1: is just ridiculous. And I honestly think that does indicate
Speaker 1: already a general insecurity or lack of trust that goes
Speaker 1: far beyond a male female friendship. But for some people,
Speaker 1: they just can't understand again why you need friends of
Speaker 1: the opposite gender when you have a partner. I am
Speaker 1: going to say this, and I don't like to make
Speaker 1: hot takes like this, but I don't think that's particularly
Speaker 1: socially intelligent to have that assumption. But I also respect
Speaker 1: that if you've been burned by past experiences, maybe this
Speaker 1: does feel like a natural protective reaction, Like I don't
Speaker 1: want to be hurt again. This is past, you know,
Speaker 1: a past situation that has hurt me. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to have boundaries and rules for myself, which if it
Speaker 1: works for you, it works for you. I do just
Speaker 1: think that it's nuanced and its case by case. It
Speaker 1: is something I used to be very aware of in
Speaker 1: my male friendships, because you know, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: come off as threatening. I didn't want to come off
Speaker 1: as like someone anyone had to be worried about. But
Speaker 1: as I've gotten older, you know, I've expected more maturity
Speaker 1: from people, like I've known this person for eight years.
Speaker 1: Of course, if either of us had any kind of feeling,
Speaker 1: we would have figured it out by now. Like you're okay,
Speaker 1: Like I do really think that as you get older
Speaker 1: it gets easier as well, because you're like, well, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: if it was going to happen, it would have happened.
Speaker 1: So we're in the clear. But if you do believe
Speaker 1: male female friendships always end with someone getting feelings, it
Speaker 1: is a hard intuition to move past. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about it now. Let's finally get to this point. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about one study in particular from twenty
Speaker 1: twelve published and Scientific America. So for this study, they
Speaker 1: wanted to see male female friendships possible, not possible, What
Speaker 1: is the threat of sexual attraction? So they brought in
Speaker 1: eighty eight pairs of undergraduate opposite sex friends into a
Speaker 1: science lab and they separated them, but before they did,
Speaker 1: they made both friends promise verbally in front of each
Speaker 1: other that they weren't going to talk about this study
Speaker 1: with each other afterwards. Anything said in the separate rooms
Speaker 1: would be private. Have a guess what they asked them. Well,
Speaker 1: they took them into separate rooms and they said, all right,
Speaker 1: this friend that you brought today, would you ever consider
Speaker 1: dating this person? Have you ever felt attracted to this person?
Speaker 1: Would you like your future partner to have qualities like
Speaker 1: your friend? Do you want to ask them out? Do
Speaker 1: you think they feel the same way about you that
Speaker 1: your feelings are reciprocated. Here is what the results said.
Speaker 1: Men were much more attracted to their female friends than
Speaker 1: vice versa, so they were more likely to say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she really hot, I would date her. They
Speaker 1: were also more likely than the women to think that
Speaker 1: their opposite sex friend was attracted to them, even when
Speaker 1: it wasn't the case. So a lot of the men
Speaker 1: were saying, I have feelings for her, I think she's attractive,
Speaker 1: and I think she feels the same about me, And
Speaker 1: really that had virtually nothing to do with how these
Speaker 1: women actually felt. Most of the men would just say it.
Speaker 1: In general, there was no pattern, like, it wasn't like
Speaker 1: they were picking up on cues. They just assumed romantic
Speaker 1: attraction and they assumed that it was mutual. Women, though,
Speaker 1: they were also a little bit blind and they were
Speaker 1: blind to the mindset of their opposite sex friend. So
Speaker 1: some of them were attracted to their male friends. Most
Speaker 1: of them, though, weren't, and when they were, they didn't
Speaker 1: assume that their attraction was mutual, so they weren't being like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, he were totally date me. They were a
Speaker 1: bit more cautious. They were also more sensitive to their
Speaker 1: male friends relationship status. They were more likely to say
Speaker 1: that they were uninterested in pursuing their friend because they
Speaker 1: were already involved with someone else. Men just didn't really
Speaker 1: seem to care. Basically, the age old wisdom may be true,
Speaker 1: but it's not women who struggle with being just friends.
Speaker 1: It's the men, which is perhaps why the friend zone
Speaker 1: often is filled with a lot of guys and not
Speaker 1: so many women. Now, before we jump to conclusions, I
Speaker 1: really want to say a lot of people do and
Speaker 1: will look at the study and be like, well, there
Speaker 1: you go, that's it. It proves it. It's impossible. Men
Speaker 1: and women can't be friends. It's in the science. That's
Speaker 1: simply not true. Not every person or every man or
Speaker 1: every woman in this study answered the exact same way.
Speaker 1: There were male participants who did see their friends completely platonically,
Speaker 1: and as did their female friend. So one thing we
Speaker 1: need to understand about any kind of psychological research. No
Speaker 1: one's study is going to prove something, and it's definitely
Speaker 1: not going to give you a result with one hundred
Speaker 1: percent significance, and the same is to be said about
Speaker 1: this study. We cannot take those findings and apply them
Speaker 1: to everyone. Also, because there were only eighty eight people involved,
Speaker 1: so only forty four groups of friends. I also think
Speaker 1: that if attraction was the only issue, lesbians wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to be friends with straight women yet they are. Gay.
Speaker 1: Men wouldn't be able to be friends with straight men,
Speaker 1: Bisexual individuals wouldn't be able to be friends with anyone,
Speaker 1: and that's obviously not true. Just because you may think
Speaker 1: someone is attractive, it doesn't mean that you'll necessarily act
Speaker 1: on it. We do have self control, so we want
Speaker 1: to take a nuanced approach to these findings. But it
Speaker 1: does really lead me to my point what does it
Speaker 1: take for men and women to be friends? Is there
Speaker 1: a bit of a checklist or common factors that unite
Speaker 1: successful platonic male female friendships in some way? Well, I
Speaker 1: want to find out and report back my findings, and
Speaker 1: this was the kind of checklist that I came up with.
Speaker 1: The checklist for a successful male female friendship. Number one,
Speaker 1: I think neither party can be secretly attracted to the
Speaker 1: other because this creates a pining unrequited love situation where
Speaker 1: someone is bound to be hurt whilst you know either
Speaker 1: they're waiting for the other person's feelings to change or
Speaker 1: they're also waiting for the feeling to go away. Like
Speaker 1: when you're in that situation, in that emotional limbo, you
Speaker 1: are just going to be repeatedly hurt, I think, and
Speaker 1: you're going to have expectations for the relationship that aren't
Speaker 1: the expectations that you would have for your purely platonic friend.
Speaker 1: The other thing about unrequited love is that it makes
Speaker 1: it really hard to walk away, even when you know
Speaker 1: you should, because the possibility of the what if or
Speaker 1: your hypothetical feeling about the situation feels so real, like
Speaker 1: you are waiting for things to change when it might not,
Speaker 1: and it probably won't if you cross that line as well,
Speaker 1: if you do have sex, or if you do say
Speaker 1: I really feel for you, I want to date you,
Speaker 1: it can be hard to come back from. It is
Speaker 1: very difficult, and I want everyone to hear this. It
Speaker 1: is very difficult to come back from being friends with
Speaker 1: benefits to just friends unless it is purely transactional. But
Speaker 1: of course it never is because you're friends. You know,
Speaker 1: you already had a prior emotional bond, so you obviously,
Speaker 1: at least in a slim sense, like them. You've kept
Speaker 1: up a friendship with them. So you can't kid yourself
Speaker 1: and say it's just sex, it's just physical, because you
Speaker 1: know the feeling most likely originated from a more mental place,
Speaker 1: one of kinship, friendship, mutual respect, liking like you were
Speaker 1: friends for a reason, and that blossomed into sexual attraction.
Speaker 1: Now it's more than just that, you know, it's two
Speaker 1: things combined. Think about all the movies that have been
Speaker 1: made about this, all the storylines in television shows like Friends,
Speaker 1: like The Office, like Parks and Recreation. I could literally
Speaker 1: name dozens. They all have a predictable ending. Either they
Speaker 1: end up together. Which is the best case scenario, or
Speaker 1: the friendship disintegrates because it can't remain in that ambiguous
Speaker 1: whatever we are zone forever. And when you have to
Speaker 1: either move on or commit, what if both people are
Speaker 1: on the same page, one of you wants to move on,
Speaker 1: one of you wants to commit, the friendship's done. So yes,
Speaker 1: no attraction, definitely, no sex. Second, a successful male female friendship,
Speaker 1: or any friendship for that matter, needs to be respect spectful,
Speaker 1: gender aside. And honestly, that's what I really heard from
Speaker 1: a lot of women who dmned me. It was that
Speaker 1: their male friendships ended because of a lack of respect
Speaker 1: and a failure to learn or understand their perspective. So
Speaker 1: there has to be respect for each other's opinions, perspectives,
Speaker 1: and individuality. And I'm gonna say it again, like any
Speaker 1: friendship can end from a lack of respect. But since
Speaker 1: men and women have been socialized to show respect differently,
Speaker 1: I think it can be a learning process for some people.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, again, gender aside. You need this and
Speaker 1: kind of links to the next thing, which is emotional safety.
Speaker 1: You have to feel emotionally supported and safe in confiding
Speaker 1: in them. And if you're perhaps a woman who has
Speaker 1: previously had bad experiences with male behavior. That emotional safety
Speaker 1: can be hard, and that can make male friendships difficult
Speaker 1: following a betrayal. With that, we also need mutual trust
Speaker 1: as well and equality in the friendship, so both parties
Speaker 1: are putting in effort, both are putting in attention time.
Speaker 1: That can be difficult because, as we discussed before, differing
Speaker 1: expectations between men and women when it comes to friendship
Speaker 1: can cause this to become a source of friction. And finally,
Speaker 1: I think for male female friendships to be successful, there
Speaker 1: has to be an absence of jealousy, particularly around others
Speaker 1: romantic relationships. So partners of these people cannot be jealous.
Speaker 1: People within the friendship cannot be jealous of the partners,
Speaker 1: and I think that jealousy in this case, like when
Speaker 1: a guy gets a girlfriend and suddenly you know, his
Speaker 1: female friend gets quite upset and distressed, that reaction is
Speaker 1: really just a proxy again for romantic interest. So it
Speaker 1: links back to that big umbrella point, you can't be
Speaker 1: attracted to each other. Basically, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: these points go beyond gender. If they're a good person,
Speaker 1: they'll be a good friend and I don't think, at
Speaker 1: least I hope those aren't hard criteria to meet, and
Speaker 1: in all honesty, I think it's really worth finding friends
Speaker 1: of the opposite gender that you can trust and care
Speaker 1: about and vice versa. Obviously it's not a necessity for
Speaker 1: some of us, but if you can get it right,
Speaker 1: it is really rewarding because you do see a whole
Speaker 1: new perspective. You may even see the world differently. I
Speaker 1: also had one message from someone who was a woman
Speaker 1: and she has autism, and she says, you know, being
Speaker 1: around men allowed me to finally learn how people interact
Speaker 1: because there's so much more straightforward, so I learned a
Speaker 1: lot of social skills from them. Men may also experience
Speaker 1: less judgment and more validation and emotional safety with their
Speaker 1: female friends, so we are getting things from the other
Speaker 1: person's perspective, even if it does look different to how
Speaker 1: you would hang out with friends of the same gender,
Speaker 1: i e. It's more activity based, or it's coffee and
Speaker 1: a chat rather and playing soccer or whatever. I think
Speaker 1: everyone does bring something new based on themselves as individuals,
Speaker 1: and gender is a facet of who we are, so
Speaker 1: bringing a different perspective whether you are male female, non
Speaker 1: binary like that is important and allows people to see
Speaker 1: things differently. I will admit, for many a lot of
Speaker 1: the comments I received said it is becoming harder because
Speaker 1: of how gender has been weaponized in politics and in
Speaker 1: our society recently, it does feel like there is a
Speaker 1: bigger social and psychological divide between men and women. So
Speaker 1: this amazing article from Vox actually interviewed people about this
Speaker 1: after the US election and found that there is a
Speaker 1: lot of social momentum pushing men and women apart, you know,
Speaker 1: from reproductive rights to which parties young men versus young
Speaker 1: women choose to vote for, how social media has become
Speaker 1: more intense and pushed men into these weird corners of
Speaker 1: the internet that nobody quite frankly needs to be in,
Speaker 1: Like it has made it harder to see eye to eye.
Speaker 1: And I get it. If you're in the US and
Speaker 1: you're a woman whose basic reproductive rights have been squashed,
Speaker 1: and you have a male friend who just doesn't really
Speaker 1: seem to get it, or really doesn't really seem to
Speaker 1: care how serious this is, it can take a toll
Speaker 1: you don't feel seen, and that's not good for any friendship.
Speaker 1: But furthermore, the difference has become more and more apparent
Speaker 1: because of you know, how society is currently being I
Speaker 1: don't know how it's being manipulated and how it's different
Speaker 1: from how it was before. It's harder to overlook, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of resentment can also arise. But
Speaker 1: I also don't want to see us go back to
Speaker 1: pre nineteen fifties or nineteen sixties, where male female friendship
Speaker 1: was even more rare and strange. And I think that
Speaker 1: will occur if we continue to believe that men and
Speaker 1: women can't be friends, if we continue to suggest that
Speaker 1: there was always romantic sexual attraction, and I think that
Speaker 1: just stretches the divide further and it means that we
Speaker 1: are less able to learn from each other. But I'd
Speaker 1: also love to hear your opinions as well, because I
Speaker 1: do believe men and women can be friends if there
Speaker 1: is no sexual attraction, and I do think that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of you know, situations where that isn't
Speaker 1: the case. And I also think that it's possible to
Speaker 1: have really respectful male female friendships that are reciprocal, that
Speaker 1: are you know, work for both people, where there it's
Speaker 1: emotional validation and emotional safety and listening. All those things
Speaker 1: are possible. I do want to hear your opinions, though,
Speaker 1: I would also really love to see more research on
Speaker 1: non binary, bisexual trendsgender friendship preferences, because I think that
Speaker 1: could just give us such an amazing insight and more
Speaker 1: knowledge about why we do see a divide between genders
Speaker 1: when it comes to friendships. And I think it could
Speaker 1: also undo so many assumptions about you know, attraction, friendship preferences,
Speaker 1: lifestyle like dating, jealousy, all those things. So if anyone
Speaker 1: needs a fun research project, you can have that one.
Speaker 1: That one is for you, Please do it, report back
Speaker 1: your findings. I would love to hear about it. But
Speaker 1: just to summarize again, I think male female friendships are possible,
Speaker 1: but they don't come without difficulty. Some of the difficulties
Speaker 1: are attraction. They are that men and women have been
Speaker 1: socialized differently. They are a difference in lived experiences that
Speaker 1: can create a divide. But if there is respect, if
Speaker 1: there is you know, no interest in a romantic partnership,
Speaker 1: if there is emotional safety, mutual trust, and ability to
Speaker 1: listen to each other, I think it's beyond possible and
Speaker 1: you can learn so much you can learn so much,
Speaker 1: which so always reminds me of those like videos that
Speaker 1: I used to watch on YouTube back in the day
Speaker 1: of like questions women want to ask men, or the
Speaker 1: biggest questions girls have for guys answered, And I think
Speaker 1: that like when you have friends of all genders, either gender,
Speaker 1: of just a variety of people, your worldview is more expansive.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's what I hope for at least. Thank
Speaker 1: you again for listening to this episode. If you have feedback, thoughts, questions,
Speaker 1: please drop a comment below. I would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. If you have made it this far, what's
Speaker 1: the emoji I'm going to choose today? I'm going to
Speaker 1: choose the little friend emoji, like the two people holding hands.
Speaker 1: So if you've made it this far, drop that below
Speaker 1: so I can say hi and I can see who
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Speaker 1: be kind, be gentle to yourself above all else, and
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