Can't we be friends?

I felt like this article said a lot of things I've thought. I never was a "guys' girl," but I do remember being shocked to learn that -- seemingly -- nearly all guys are not capable of separating "the purely intellectual friendship of a woman who’s just happy to hang out, from an opening to someone who might become a romantic partner — or at the very least go to bed with them." I know you can't generalize that all guys are the same, but I do remember my surprise at how prevalent this was.

https://psiloveyou.xyz/do-them-all-want-to-f-k-me-and-other-questions-of-a-guys-girl-4f4687d0fef5

Do They All Want To Sleep With Me? — And Other Questions Of A Guys’ Girl

Being a guys’ girl is all fun and games — until you realize you’ve been the one in play all along.

I recently read Girl Logic: the Genius and the Absurdity, by Iliza Shlesinger. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. If not, go find one of her specials on Netflix.

The point I want to highlight from her book is (spoiler alert) not really part of any of her stand-up specials. Even though Iliza and I are very different people in many ways, by reading her book I found a strong commonality: we’re a couple of guys’ girls.

Iliza’s whole chapter on being a guys’ girl is very spot-on. My experience fits exactly what she describes: “It’s not like I specifically set out to become one; it happened naturally.”

There are a few factors that bring a girl to cultivate more friendships with guys than with other girls. For some of us, connecting with other women just doesn’t come naturally. Men seem simpler to deal with (when there’s no romantic interest on the girl’s part, but more on that later). Around them you can say anything, be anything.

As a rule, I don’t feel as comfortable around other girls as I do around men. I was never the most feminine of women. Makeup was a mystery to me until I turned 25, which was the same age when I finally learned how to properly blow-dry my hair. Before that, I used to think of hair driers as something for emergencies only. I nearly put mine inside a glass box in the bathroom with a sign: break glass in case it’s below 50ºF outside and you forgot to wash your hair 3 hours in advance. To this day, I’m completely lost when it comes to flat irons and curling wands.

Hanging out with boys so much has that effect. It’s a never ending vicious cycle. You start hanging out with boys because they’re easier to deal with. Around them, you don’t wonder why you can’t hide your dark circles with makeup as well as Lucy does, or if you’ll ever manage to starve yourself enough to have abs like Debra’s. You don’t feel inferior for your clothing choices because you’re not standing next to Allison and her perfectly assembled, on-season, trendy outfit.

There are so many questions involved in hanging out with girls. Like, how much boy talk is too much boy talk? How much weight should I say I’m trying to lose this week? How can I pretend to care about Stacy’s flat iron dilemma? Ceramic or titanium? Is forming a star with our fingers for a picture still a thing? If I just nod and smile, will they catch on that I’m not enough of a girl to keep up?

I never had any questions when hanging out with boys. Boy’s harden you up with crude jokes at the same time as they allow you to relax with their incredibly low standards for what constitutes good company. So things like makeup and hair and clothes become less important, and when you notice, it becomes even harder to connect with the girls than it was before.

Like I said, vicious cycle.

I don’t want to be unfair to girls by implying all they care about is looks and clothes, just as I don’t want to be unfair to boys by implying it’s all pizza and fart jokes all day.

I have connected at a deep level with many wonderful girls throughout my life, it just has always been simpler and far easier for me to find that connection with guys.

Of course, boys are only easier to deal with when you’re not into them.

It’s 100% true what they say: once we put a guy in the “friend” category, he becomes an assexual being. When we say that he’s like a brother to us, we don’t mean it Game of Thrones style. Not ever. We mean he holds as much sex appeal to us as a seashell. And maybe not even that.

And that’s impossible to change.

My behavior next to a guy I’m interested in is completely different from my behavior next to a guy I consider a friend. For starters, coming up and saying “hi” to someone I’m interested in is a struggle, while around my friends I’m spontaneous and loose. I’ve recently got better at it, but I still get very nervous around guys I find attractive.

A relaxed time is one thing a girl can expect from guy friends, but Iliza accurately points out another aspect of the dynamics:

“Being a woman participating in a male-dominated activity meant one thing: you were “good enough” to run with the guys. Being as skilled and ballsy as the guys lent a girl a subtle air of superiority.” — Iliza Shlesinger, Girl Logic: the Genius and the Absurdity.

My earliest memories of being five at the preschool’s playground all involve me running around playing with the boys. I’d spend summer vacations surrounded by them, biking, climbing trees, bodyboarding, playing soccer and hide and seek. My knees couldn’t catch a break, they were always scraped raw.

I liked the idea that I could keep up with the boys. Short of belching the alphabet, I’d do pretty much anything.

But then I grew up. And even though I still occasionally played basketball with the guys, those friendships became less about physical accomplishments and more about intelectual discussions and shared interests.

And that’s when we’re back to Girl Logic. Iliza separates the guys’ girls into six different categories, from the truly sports fanatics to the funny girl through “The Hot Chick Dudes Claim Is “Like a Sister” but You Know They Secretly Jerk Off to Her Instagram Pictures”.

I never really second-guessed any of my guy friendships. Not even when I discovered, a couple of years after high school, that one of my great friends from that time had lied to everyone that we’d kissed. Not even when another great friend sent me texts at 4 am telling me he couldn’t stop thinking about me.

Not even until recently, when a third friend (or so I thought) decided to drive 7 hours to see me and got extremely disappointed when I treated him as no more than just a friend. To be clear, before he hopped in his car, I told him I was involved with someone else (which was true), but he came anyway.

So, it just recently dawned on me that many of what I had always considered to be great friendships had had their starting points on a guy being interested in me.

And yes, I saw When Harry Met Sally.

I just always thought that the arguments against male/female friendships in the movie weren’t exactly accurate.

I guess you can call me naive.

If you remember the movie (or haven’t seen it), Harry meets Sally and tells her women and men can’t be friends because “the sex thing always gets in the way”. He explains to her that a man can’t be friends with a woman he finds attractive because he’ll want to have sex with her, and he can’t be friends with women he finds unattractive because, in Harry’s words: “you pretty much want to to nail them too”.

All my life I’ve heard people tell me that I’m pretty, despite sometimes looking in the mirror and not being so sure of it myself. I know I also divide opinions a bit. I know some men think I’m stunning, while others look at me and go “meh. No big deal”. But no one ever thinks I’m ugly.

This isn’t me being conceited, this is just what I’ve learned after almost 30 years of being alive in a western society.

It stands to reason that many guys first approached me because they thought I was pretty and perhaps they could get some. It just never occurred to me that their friendship had hidden intentions, since it never occurred to me to first become friends with someone I’m interested in — if you remember, I find coming up and saying “hi” nearly impossible to do.

I used to not really question my friendships with guys. Now I have one major doubt:

How many of them want to sleep with me? Do they all?

I supposed I used to think that Harry’s argument in the movie was flawed because it paints men as sex-obsessed animals, incapable of separating the purely intellectual friendship of a woman who’s just happy to hang out from an opening to someone who might become a romantic partner — or at the very least go to bed with them.

And I spent my life giving men more credit than that.

OR I spent my life too distracted to notice the hungry wolf eyes of those I had already put in the seashell category. Because if I’m not interested in a man as more than a friend, how could he?

But of course, just because you’ve a-sexualized someone in your mind it doesn’t mean they’ve actually became asexual beings. I’m ashamed to say I’ve only recently came to this realization.

And that brings me to the second major question involved with being a guy’s girl:

Are they all only being nice to me because they think I’m pretty?

Are any of them interested in me for who I am more than for what I seem to be?

I’d like to give my friends more credit and believe that they are. I’d like to believe no one would bother to be my friend for ten years if they didn’t get deeper value from my friendship than maybe eventually attain the opportunity of perhaps someday obtaining sexual gratification.

Still, I know my overall perspective on being friends with guys has shifted a bit. I won’t suddenly start avoiding forming these bonds, but I feel more equipped to do a better job separating the men who can put their sexual desires in the back burner and value the friendship from those who’ll take any opportunity to come on to me.

Meanwhile, I want to celebrate my friendships with other girls. After all, they’re not nice to me because they want to f*k me (most of them, I think), and that makes any difficulty in connecting a thousand times worth overcoming.

by Tesia Blake

Names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the guilty.