Boys and Girls: Make a connection
I have a best friend who is like a sister to me and through her I've met a bunch of really great women who've become good friends but it wasn't always that way for me. I wasn't always one of the girls, gabbing about boys, and shoes and chocolate. For much of my life I was one of the guys.
My devotion to Dawson's Creek is well documented as is my belief that it holds many profound bits of wisdom. So, it's time I talked about the maxim that has been one of the defining principles of my life and, like many things, it was eloquently voiced (by Jen) on Dawson's Creek. She was in therapy, discussing her inability to trust boys when the subject came up of whether or not she trusts girls and she says, "Girls suck. I mean, it's like they get a lobotomy the day they hit puberty. I mean, one day you're all milling around FAO Schwartz in the Rainbow Brite section, next day somebody gets breasts and after that it's all about getting boys to like you and whoever does first wins." This bit of little lost girl wisdom was, or is, something I've believed absolutely for most of my life.
Women are duplicitous, manipulative, illogical, competitive, evil meanies. I am a woman and, of course, consider myself an exception to this rule, though not entirely, because part of the evil that is inherent in the female of our species is that, when they get together in groups, they can infect each other, even those usually immune, with this toxic competitive urge. I'm not saying that competition is, in general, bad, or that men don't compete as much, if not more. However, men compete over things with concrete outcomes, things that can be measured...faster, bigger, louder, etc. Women, as you might expect, being ruled more by emotion than logic, compete over emotional things, primarily, though not exclusively, who is more loved (and how the hell do you measure that, really?). It's as though they think there is a finite amount of love, or sympathy, or whatever, in every room and they aren't happy unless they leave the room with more of it than anyone else.
Most of my life I've been more likely to make friends with guys because women are too complicated and you can never really trust that they mean what they say. Now, some people out there subscribe to the Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally) view of male/female relationships, that men and women can't be friends because sex always gets in the way. This is patently ridiculous. Theoretically I can't comment on the purported basis for this theory from the film. Maybe it's true that men want to sleep with every woman they find attractive and even the one's they find unattractive (how would I know, right?), but my experience having primarily men as friends would seem to contradict that premise.
It might be true that when men and women are friends, assuming heterosexuality on both parts, often one of them will develop more than friendly feelings. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that as often as not it's the women who want more and the men that want to be just friends. In fact that's not such a risky statement for me to make because in my personal experience, I've been on the receiving end of unwanted advances from my guy friends as often as I've been the one making unwanted advances. I'm not going to claim that it never ruins a friendship but I will say that it doesn't often.
That's predicated on logic though, which, granted, women aren't often well versed in. For example, if I'm friends with someone and I enjoy his company and he lets it be known that he's interested in more than friendship but I don't feel the same, I'm going to tell him that and hope that he can still be my friend which works most of the time. On the other hand, if I develop fuzzy feelings for a friend and I tell him but he's not interested and says he just wants to be friends, I'm not going to abandon a perfectly good friendship because of unrequited love. That would be such a waste.
Years ago I was madly in love with a guy who was not in the least interested in me but we became friends, over time we became best friends because we hung out a lot together. People were constantly telling me that I was wasting my time because he was never going to feel the same way about me that I felt about him. That's a position that I think completely defies logic. If I enjoy spending time with someone that time isn't wasted. The time would be wasted if I spent it alone, pining for someone who wasn't interested, rather that out in the world hanging out with a friend and having a good time. To burrow a term from the business world, you have to decide whether or not the time your spending talking to or hanging out with someone is "value added" or not and really, if you like someone that much then their friendship is obviously going to add value to your life. Why abandon someone, if you have a connection with them, just because one of you wants more than friendship.
That brings me back to my no female friends rule. If you meet someone, who you really connect with, writing them off, deciding that you can't be friends with them because of their gender (whether, like me, you have a bias against one gender or like Harry you're afraid sex would get in the way) is ridiculous. Genuine connections with people are special and you owe it to yourself to foster them.
My devotion to Dawson's Creek is well documented as is my belief that it holds many profound bits of wisdom. So, it's time I talked about the maxim that has been one of the defining principles of my life and, like many things, it was eloquently voiced (by Jen) on Dawson's Creek. She was in therapy, discussing her inability to trust boys when the subject came up of whether or not she trusts girls and she says, "Girls suck. I mean, it's like they get a lobotomy the day they hit puberty. I mean, one day you're all milling around FAO Schwartz in the Rainbow Brite section, next day somebody gets breasts and after that it's all about getting boys to like you and whoever does first wins." This bit of little lost girl wisdom was, or is, something I've believed absolutely for most of my life.
Women are duplicitous, manipulative, illogical, competitive, evil meanies. I am a woman and, of course, consider myself an exception to this rule, though not entirely, because part of the evil that is inherent in the female of our species is that, when they get together in groups, they can infect each other, even those usually immune, with this toxic competitive urge. I'm not saying that competition is, in general, bad, or that men don't compete as much, if not more. However, men compete over things with concrete outcomes, things that can be measured...faster, bigger, louder, etc. Women, as you might expect, being ruled more by emotion than logic, compete over emotional things, primarily, though not exclusively, who is more loved (and how the hell do you measure that, really?). It's as though they think there is a finite amount of love, or sympathy, or whatever, in every room and they aren't happy unless they leave the room with more of it than anyone else.
Most of my life I've been more likely to make friends with guys because women are too complicated and you can never really trust that they mean what they say. Now, some people out there subscribe to the Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally) view of male/female relationships, that men and women can't be friends because sex always gets in the way. This is patently ridiculous. Theoretically I can't comment on the purported basis for this theory from the film. Maybe it's true that men want to sleep with every woman they find attractive and even the one's they find unattractive (how would I know, right?), but my experience having primarily men as friends would seem to contradict that premise.
It might be true that when men and women are friends, assuming heterosexuality on both parts, often one of them will develop more than friendly feelings. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that as often as not it's the women who want more and the men that want to be just friends. In fact that's not such a risky statement for me to make because in my personal experience, I've been on the receiving end of unwanted advances from my guy friends as often as I've been the one making unwanted advances. I'm not going to claim that it never ruins a friendship but I will say that it doesn't often.
That's predicated on logic though, which, granted, women aren't often well versed in. For example, if I'm friends with someone and I enjoy his company and he lets it be known that he's interested in more than friendship but I don't feel the same, I'm going to tell him that and hope that he can still be my friend which works most of the time. On the other hand, if I develop fuzzy feelings for a friend and I tell him but he's not interested and says he just wants to be friends, I'm not going to abandon a perfectly good friendship because of unrequited love. That would be such a waste.
Years ago I was madly in love with a guy who was not in the least interested in me but we became friends, over time we became best friends because we hung out a lot together. People were constantly telling me that I was wasting my time because he was never going to feel the same way about me that I felt about him. That's a position that I think completely defies logic. If I enjoy spending time with someone that time isn't wasted. The time would be wasted if I spent it alone, pining for someone who wasn't interested, rather that out in the world hanging out with a friend and having a good time. To burrow a term from the business world, you have to decide whether or not the time your spending talking to or hanging out with someone is "value added" or not and really, if you like someone that much then their friendship is obviously going to add value to your life. Why abandon someone, if you have a connection with them, just because one of you wants more than friendship.
That brings me back to my no female friends rule. If you meet someone, who you really connect with, writing them off, deciding that you can't be friends with them because of their gender (whether, like me, you have a bias against one gender or like Harry you're afraid sex would get in the way) is ridiculous. Genuine connections with people are special and you owe it to yourself to foster them.
posted by Beth at
8:21 PM
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