To see and be seen

I used to have a lot of friends. Not to say that I don’t have many friends now, but I used to have the types of friends that you wave at in the hallway but would never really see on the weekends. I used to have friends whom I would only frequent cafes and libraries with because for some reason, we worked well together, sometimes better than my more intimate friends. I used to have friends that spawned from many different facets of my life. But as I’ve grown, as I’ve graduated and moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, as people in my life transitioned into a new chapter and have flown the nest, my outer layer friendships have dwindled. What used to be a majority of good friends and a handful of great friends, now I have mostly great friends, friends whom I know and understand on a deeper level, friends whose intimacies I have cultivated over months and years. 

As I have outgrown old friendships and grown into new friendships, I have noticed many things when it comes to gender specific friendships. For the sake of this article, I will refer to gender in the binary, as heterosexual cisgender males and heterosexual cisgender females, though I do acknowledge the spectrum that gender and sexuality themselves live on. As a cisgender female, most, if not all, of my friendships with other women are grounded in emotional intimacy, self-disclosure, and support. When we spend time with each other, location and activity holds no bearing over us, just as long as we have a middle ground to meet. We can spend hours sitting across from each other in a cafe, and it would be some of the most valuable hours I spent that day. We could explore a secondhand bookstore together, minimal conversations but silent nudges as we show each other the gems that we find hidden in the wooden shelves. With my girls, what we are doing to spend time together is subsequent to the sole company of the other person. 

My friendships with men, surprisingly, runs a similar course. With most of my male friendships, I try to cultivate a similar connection, to invoke more deliberate conversations, to get to know them better every time we see each other. It’s ironic, though, because from what I’ve studied in gender and communications, and from what I’ve witnessed firsthand, is that men tend to deviate toward activity-based bonding and emotional stoicism. When I see men spending time with each other, they almost always have a “side-by-side bond”, where the focus is more on a shared activity, like sports or gaming, and they lack the intimate face-to-face physicality that most women encounter in their friendships. This isn’t to argue that men don’t value closeness in their friendships, but their ways of expressing it are very different than a female friendships. 

When I spend time with my male friends, we often partake in side-by-side bonding, like going for a walk together. Though there is the verbal sharing, self-disclosure aspect to this activity, it ultimately is rooted in more of an activity based bonding. As I’ve begun to notice this more prominently, I also wonder if this difference in male friendships and female friendships also plays into why a lot of men are apathetic regarding platonic relationships between men and women, or even that they don’t believe they can exist. I believe that this sentiment truly goes deeper than just reluctance to pursue a friendship, more so on the male counterpart rather than the woman’s. But on a more surface level understanding, the emotional effort that a woman puts into their friendships with other women is very different than what a man contributes to their male friendships. 

Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that many activities that men take part in when spending time with each other aren’t things a woman stereotypically chooses, like a sport or video games. So already, the initial hindrance is enough of a hurdle to abandon a friendship. But, on a more intrinsic perspective, when you think about the conversations that female friends have with each other, the amount of time we invest in our friends to continue getting to know the other, even years after, is almost as if we are dating our friends. The level of intimacy we reach with our female friends is almost on par to that of a romantic relationship, with the exception of the physical intimacy. Women see both types of connections, romantic and platonic, as a relationship. Regardless of gender, women typically seek this sort of emotional fulfillment in their friendships. 

So, if a man suddenly encounters this sort of connection with a woman, they usually only experience these affections when they’re getting to know a romantic partner. But from the woman’s perspective, this may just be a routine way of building a friendship. When some men reach this level of intimacy, it’s not surprising if they develop romantic feelings towards their friend because it’s not how they typically navigate their male friends. For them, this sort of connection is usually foundational for more romantic intentions. But for the woman, it’s still very much platonic, which could lead to hurt feelings and miscommunications and the decline of the friendship. 

All of this becomes more contentious when it comes to the added value of friendships in a romantic relationship. Specifically, integrating your partner into your life and your friendships. From personal experience,  because I view my friends and my boyfriend as a relationship, I enjoy integrating him into my life more. This doesn’t mean that my friends automatically become his friends, but rather I want him to get to know my friends. For me, my friends are an incredibly important part of my life, so getting to know them is on par with understanding who I am as a person. However, for men, I have seen and also experienced, as the girlfriend, that they are not as proactive with integrating a partner into their life. This isn’t to say that they don’t do it, but I’ve noticed that women prioritize it more. Men see their partners as strictly significant others, whereas women also view their romantic partners as their friends. For women, when you date someone, you don’t just date them. You’re dating their hobbies, their lifestyle, their job, their habits, etc. The relationship is more than just the physical and emotional link between the two of you; it’s an accumulation of intrinsic and extrinsic facets of both your lives. 

As a child, friendship is pretty easy to navigate. You would think after years of continuous experience, it would become simpler as an adult. On the contrary, as life adds more burdens and conflicts in your schedule and livelihood, friendships may fall to the back burner. Breeding grounds for friendship become minimal as classrooms become a cubicle and your work hours burn through your social battery. But friendships are what keeps you going. It’s the spark of joy in the middle of a busy day, a text from your best friend or a spontaneous weeknight outing. However you choose to pursue and maintain that friendship is all your choice, but it’s important that you do.