On feeling unsafe in women only spaces

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Returning to the original subject, there is no perfect safety but I am trying to not focus so much on who is difficult as it drags me down. I always had an easier time with men when I was growing up, less confusing, but no gender has the monopoly on being difficult or unpleasant. More recently I've actually found men can be pretty confusing and play power games. Trying to not think too much about it is the best I can do.

Don't worry, sly, you're welcome and much appreciated here!

Relationships between women are difficult and complicated. Women are often mean to each other and do psychological warfare. When the tension reaches the breaking point, a fight starts and it involves clawing, slapping and hair pulling.
Men, on the other hand, are generally civil to each other. Conflicts between them are rare and brief.
Sorry if I come across as offensive, but I'm an aspie and I can't tell.

Sorry Cockroach. I thought you were from Brazil. You're from Romania instead! Transylvania, despite its reputation, is actually a beautiful place.

Back to the subject: People should always feel like they have something to offer to any situation. Otherwise, they, inevitably, feel less than they should feel.

Ok....let me tell my experience about friendship with women, and how is the friendship with each others. And this isn't off topic.

Note: I am not implying anything, this is just my experience.

I had 4 groups of friends in the last 5 years and most of them were females.

Group 1: mainly 2 ladies and me + a guy who comes along sometimes.

We hanged out for couple of years, those two were best friends but suddenly, The conflict started because woman 2 felt that woman 1 isn't initiating any effort to maintain the friendship (as in texts and calls...etc).
Woman 2 started to be hostile with her, and to gossip about her (accusing her of sleeping with the other guy), woman 1 ignored her childlessness but the group collapsed. Each one of the ladies came to me to complain about the other...duh.

Group 2: started with a woman I met in a hiking trip, got introduced to her friends, most of them are women.

Conflict started with her friend's female cousin, who was part of the group too; the friend's cousin suddenly blocked her contact and ignored her calls :-/ - her friend lessened contact with her too because of her cousin; they also lessened contacting me after they stopped contacting the hiking girl (they seem to associate me as her closer friend, and its true) .... the group collapsed after couple of years, and to this day she doesn't know what happened.


Group 3: 2 women + 1 guy + the hiking girl from group 2 (introduced by me to them) -

first conflict started with the first two women (who were 'besties') , because of ...a joke said by the woman 1; all what she said jokingly 'I am always the driver' (the other has no car) - her bestie felt hurt, and she stopped me in the street in front of her place for straight 30 minutes telling me how insensitive her friend is and how she keeps saying hurtful jokes.... :-/. Then another conflict between the hiking girl and the driver girl, then another between the guy and the driver girl, ... the group collapsed LOL.

Group 4: Derived from group 3, the hiking group from group 2/3+ the guy from group 3 and his friends who had been friends with him since childhood (1 girl + 2 guys).

Conflict started subtly in a picnic trip between the hiking girl and the guy's female friend and the friend's mom; who both jokingly criticized her way of making salad. :-/ Hiking girl felt hurt, and started to ignore the guy's calls, even though he did nothing, he was used to call her a lot (he tried to call her several times), guy felt hurt and blocked her, hiking girl felt hurt because he blocked her - again, a disastrous collapse of a group.



What's funny, that in all groups, they all came to me to complain, and wanting me to take sides, and there was nothing I could do about all the conflicts....what a headache...what a headache!! sometimes I feel I am better off now as a loner with no group to hang out with on weekends.

Hi Sophie, welcome to WP

So I know you wrote your post to hopefully find others who can relate to your experience, and I hope you have found that (it seems there have already been a few posters who have similar thoughts) but I want to flip it around and thank you sincerely for posting the thread and sharing these thoughts and feelings! I can relate to so much of what you said.

While I have always had a very supportive family, and always gone to co-ed public schools, I have also had a much harder time getting along with females than males, in general. I'm bi, but did not realise for sure until only a few years ago (I'm 35). I had been kissing women and having a bit of fun, but I assumed I was ultimately straight because I thought I could never actually date a woman. They seemed to difficult to get along with, and I had spent most of my life feeling judged, rejected, looked down upon by most of them. That is how it seemed at least.

Then I discovered lesbians (and bi women). Generally having a more masculine make-up (e.g. higher testosterone levels and all that stuff), I realised I could probably actually find some that I could enjoy being in a relationship with. On the other hand, I have not been able to feel like I fit in (or want to fit in) with the LGBT community or "scene". It has been hard to pinpoint why, but I think some of what you have said has given me some new insight. Where is the place where a woman can just be herself? It seems we either need to be straight, feminine, aligned in our baby-making goals, or we need to be proudly LGBT, have a clearly defined "look", have strong opinions about queer politics or feminism or something along those lines. I've never been either of those things and I long to find other people who just "are what they are", like me, and accept me for that.

I love this:

Thanks for posting your story - I could relate to quite a few parts of it. Went to a similar sounding school - a girls grammar in my case and simply hated it there, spent the first few years trying to make it work but making one social error after another and finally resorted to spending my entire time in the music block playing the piano as a survival strategy.

Plus my Mum tried very hard to mould me into a typical adolescent girl between the ages of 14 to 22, she probably thought it would be better for me - only problem was that it just didn't work, I wasn't interested in all the normal things - clothes, fashion, boys, make up and wasn't going to swap my real interests - music and the outdoors for them. Got to 25 and having had more practise at getting on with other women thought I'd finally cracked it with my group of friends at the time for it all to go wrong again.

Basically I've decided to give up with the 'shoulds' and most of my friends are either men or LGBT women. Didn't realise that my issues were related to autism until a few years ago but went through a lot of confusion from a gender perspective in my teens until my mid 20s as I didn't feel like I fitted in with other women but am not a lesbian, wouldn't call myself straight either but that's another story!

I don't think you can make yourself feel more comfortable, all you can do is to keep on practising and hope that there are a few people that you just click with, whoever they are. For me school was probably the most uncomfortable social environment ever, if you have survived that then I think it can only get better. That over achievement message is such a load of rubbish anyway IMO, we are all different and what is the point of following such a script if it won't make you happy.

^^but those are adults!!
The last group collapsed perhaps last spring - and ever since my social life is almost null, only the hiking girl remained regularly in contact.

Hiking is cool, and it keeps you in shape.

Think about sitting next to each other on the ledge of a mountain, looking up at the sky. She takes your hand...and guides it toward Consummation.

^^ Hey hey slow down Romeo; who said about anything romantic between us.
Well, I was her interest for a while but it wasn't mutual.

Ever hike the mountains of Turkey?

I am scared to death of "women only" spaces.

I've had two job interviews lately, where each time two females interviewed me together, and at both places I probably would have been working with mostly females. It set off major alarm bells for me. Really hard for me to explain but I noticed little comments they made, the way they looked at me, etc. I just felt like they were critiquing every little thing about my appearance, especially my short hair. They were bubbly, girly-girl types and I just felt totally out of place. I dress rather feminine, but I'm not into makeup and manicures and things like that, and I think that plus my short hair makes some people assume that I'm a lesbian.

I am a male, I've worked for two female bosses and they were the best I ever worked for; and the least mean interviewers were women and were much easier to impress; male interviewers often try to jerkily outsmart me and and in a context not really related to work.

The "catiness" among women dianthus and others talk about, is really common in the workplaces and I've seen it countless of times but only among...let me dare to say... the regular employees. Female seniors are so often different, they do not partake in those catiness/gossiping/bickering warfare, they don't mix their personal preferences with team work, they do not mix much with these women outside work (I don't even think they even click with them on personal level). If there's a dispute, they solve it, they put boundaries if necessary, and move on with work, something that many of the lower ranked female employees often fail to do for long by re-bringing old wounds.

All in all, they are indistinguishable from how senior men work and behave. I don't know if this is simply an age thing (even though one of the seniors wasn't that old), or those seniors have common traits that make them fare further in hierarchy.