(My) Male Friends
Disclaimer: this whole post revolves around cis relationships. I'm not including here trans-masc/trans men.
In my early childhood years I had both male and female friends. At the time, I don't remember this clear distinction between boys and girls. And I don't know when it started to happen, I just know that by age 11 I was only able to successfully interact with girls to make new friendships, but I was still friends with boys on my street. Once I got into my teens, though, the girls were the only ones left. That kind of hurt me, and I actively tried to make friends with boys again -- only to realize if I acted too much like a "boy" they thought I was pathetic, and if I acted too much like a "girl", they also thought I was pathetic. It was only in college that I got to have male friends again, and now, in my mid-thirties, they're mostly gone, too, but for a completely different reason.
You see, most of my male friends in the past 15 years or so have fucked up... royally. Humans are made of flaws, sure, and most of my girlfriends have also done pretty shitty things, but the level of fuckery that I'm trying to convey is something other.
Now, whenever I meet a nice man who can be a potential friend, there's always that little voice in the back of my head saying "what fucked up shit am I going to learn about you, eh?" and I hate it.
It happened recently. This funny, goofy guy that I met through my husband and is always around our place turned out to be a good friend. We shared many meals and laughs and helped each other through some very tough times. I knew he had a live-in girlfriend but I'd never met her (they live a few towns away and she works in an office there, while he goes to college in our town). Last year I met her for the first time--we spent New Years together--but it was only in March that I learned how they met: she was 17 and he was 24 and he'd wait for her at the school gate so "no other boys would talk to her" (their words, not mine).
What I am supposed to do with this information, internet friends?
My past male friends were people who were amazing, caring, talented, but who also turned out to be forcing their girlfriends into unprotected sex, leaving their wife alone when it was time to care round-the-clock for their dying elderly dog, saying "can I visit you tomorrow" when they need something, then disappearing for months, only to show up in a whole new continent wanting some more help with whatever? My god, why are men so messy?
It's a real challenge to keep up friendships with cis men (gays included). Firstly because they're not usually open to friendship, and when you finally befriend one... they're kind of secretly shitty. I wish I could have more male friends, but the truth of the matter is that they're such a liability to befriend. If they don't do something horrible to you directly, they'll do it (or have already done) something objectively amoral to someone else (usually a woman).
Girlfriends can be (and are) messy too, but their shittiness stems more from a place of desperation than trickery/malice. Not that women can't do heavy stuff like that, but for every 5 former male friends that should rethink how they interact with society, I can think of one female friend who had this level of fucked-up behavior (and we're not friends anymore too).
Sometimes I think I'm the problem -- maybe I suck at reading men, while I can tell a woman isn't a good person more early on in a friendship. I've had a pretty good roster of amazing girlfriends throughout the years, and I see that this isn't always the case when these very women tell me about their issues with other female friends.
So I don't know what's the truth here, I just know that now I feel a bit paranoid befriending a man and I absolutely hate the feeling. It's become second nature and so far it hasn't failed.
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