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Firechick
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05 May 2009, 7:54 pm

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this. If it isn't, feel free to move it. Do you ever feel that even though you're a certain gender, you seem to connect better with those of the opposite gender? I mean, if you're a girl, do you ever feel you get along better with boys than girls? If you're a boy, do you seem to get along better with girls than boys? Even though I'm a girl, I seem to connect better with boys because I'm a fan of anime, manga, and video games and I'm not a cliche girl who likes to go shopping in the mall, gossip, talk about cute boys, get fancy-wancy sparkly dresses and skirts (ew!) and vice versa. I do have some girl friends who have the same interests as me, but I don't get to see them very often.



Learning2Survive
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05 May 2009, 8:11 pm

Women at work are nice to me, but the guys think I'm weird


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zghost
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05 May 2009, 8:33 pm

Yep, every good friend I've ever had was the opposite gender.



aleclair
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05 May 2009, 10:57 pm

Lies! I used to believe that it was easier to build opposite-sex friendships - probably for the stereotypical ideal of girls being "more mature" than guys at a given age group. It happened that both my definition of maturity at the time was lacking a critical component, and that teenage girls may be more mature in the social component but not the intellectual-cultural component.

I've realized that if I could place female friends throughout the past several years into one array of data and male friends in the same time-step into another array of data (note that I am a guy), there would be more people in the opposite-sex friends category - but these are people I have not seen in months, even years. On the other hand, I have talked to or hung out with every person in the same-sex friend category in the past week. Assuming that the opposite-sex friends were really friends, we were on the average friends for ten or eleven weeks. Compare this to same-sex friendships that have lasted two-plus years. It's a bizarre recurring motif that started right in the center of high school and has repeatedly occurred from then until now.

So the critical question then is: why is it that one would expect opposite-sex friendships to exist, but they simply can't? So far, I've deduced that opposite-sex friendships cannot exist in isolation. In other words, what keeps opposite-sex friendships grounded to the social necessities required to keep them afloat through NT-land is people in common: people with whom to hang out and share new experiences, people about whom to recollect anecdotes and the like. What will inevitable happen if an opposite-sex friendship is in isolation is you'll realize that common experiences and interests will run dry fast, and there are thousands upon thousands of more interesting people who have common experiences out there. Therein probably lies a critical point: perhaps the opposite sex may be "nicer" - but does that translate to lasting friendships or just suprerficial pleasantries?

In the end, I've realized I tend to have a lot more in common with guys than girls, despite the fact that all the guys I consider myself friends with are a bit bizarre and eccentric in their own ways and hence I can't generalize to an ability to relate to the "general-case arbitrary guy".



MONKEY
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06 May 2009, 1:41 pm

Most of my friends are boys and so is my closest friend. I much prefer them to girls. I prefer how boys talk to each other, I have a similar sense of humour to most boys and I have similar interests. I just find that boys make better friends than girls, especially if they're about 2 years younger than me.


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TheKingsRaven
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06 May 2009, 2:35 pm

I make friends easily with both genders, but the people I keep in touch with are all girls. Categorise that how you will.



GustavHolst
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06 May 2009, 2:41 pm

you mean transgender?



MissConstrue
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06 May 2009, 2:46 pm

Yes I've made more friends with the opposite sex.

Not sure why but I seem to get along better with guys than I do with girls. Some of the women I've encountered are hyper social and I've never been good in keeping up with the cliquish mentality.


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MissConstrue
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06 May 2009, 2:49 pm

GustavHolst wrote:
you mean transgender?


I don't think transgender has anything to do with who you socialize with.


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protest_the_hero
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06 May 2009, 3:56 pm

I've had more male friends. My first "best friend" from preschool was a girl though and one of my group now is a girl who hangs out mostly with guys. There are things I like about girls over guys though, but I also like having male friends.



TheKingsRaven
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06 May 2009, 5:28 pm

MissConstrue wrote:
GustavHolst wrote:
you mean transgender?


I don't think transgender has anything to do with who you socialize with.


I think it might have been a joke based on "Categorise that how you will." But if so I didn't get it.



oppositedirection
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06 May 2009, 6:30 pm

Most of my major friends have been female, sometimes because I was attracted to them so actually made an effort to get to know them, other times not. Most of my minor friends are male. I don't put the first fact down to chance but I do put the second.



Ichinin
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07 May 2009, 7:19 pm

Gender on friends do not matter for me. I just click with nerds/geeks and odd people...

The so called "anti social people" are very social in my opinion, mostly because they do not chit-chat and jump directly to more interesting conversations.


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0_equals_true
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08 May 2009, 5:08 am

Absolutely the case with me. I have one male friend, but I am at a loss what to do with him when my female friend is not there.



Homer_Bob
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08 May 2009, 11:09 am

Not really, I was never very good at befriending those of the opposite gender. I found that with other guys, I could just be myself and we'd have more common interests. We'd have a lot more to talk about. I mean they like sports and video games just like me. With girls, it's a bit harder because not only do I have less common interests then they do but because girls care more about the emotional aspects of friendships, they are more into gossip and they care more about what others do. I certainly don't care about that nonsense. Plus with girls, if it's one that I'm attracted to, it would make the friendship more difficult. I might like them too much when I shouldn't.



Rok
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08 May 2009, 5:00 pm

Hmm...the opposite sex. Growing up as a kid, most all of my friends were guys, and usually not by choice. I had a few spaced apart opposite sex friendships, but mostly guys. The older I got, the more girl friends I had. Now, my closest friends, some of them are girls (I am a guy too for the record). Also, just to throw in a note here, they also talk to me about girl "issues", which I find particularly amazing since I was always under the impression that it was taboo to talk anything of the sort with a guy.

Anyway, point in case, I have guy friends, but in the end, I get along better with girls. There's not so much of the macho BS that comes along with those friendships.