According to most of the women I know, men don’t analyze, they just act. “Men want the facts…and we (women) want what’s between them, the interesting air circulating around them.” (From The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer.) Maybe this is all true. Men certainly seem to be wired differently. But are we really that different? I do know some women as well as men who do not allow much air into their lives, who just want activity, some men who investigate the interstices of experience, who look and feel into every corner.
I was talking to a (female) friend at lunch recently about men and women friendships, how an infraction of trust, a betrayal is different when it is a female friendship, different than a male lover. In a friendship there is not as much at stake, usually, as in a marriage. There is not that foundation of intimacy that sharing a bed creates. But the same patterns can create a bad friendship as a bad marriage and mutual responsibilities.
She had been questioning her marriage. After a brief separation, she realized that she had been focusing on all the negative aspects, things that she didn’t like about her husband. Looking at what she did like, what she missed about him when they were apart, having a better perspective from the distance of separation, she saw that the good qualities outweighed the bad and also that both of them could plan, schedule into their lives ways to enjoy each other more. Have a friendship beyond the structures of marriage vows.
Until recently, when I have needed someone to talk to, to chew over a problem, a situation, it has always been a female friend I turned to. Possibly just my history, maybe growing up in an era where there was so much separation of boy and girl. Maybe we, boy and girl, are really not so different and maybe my understanding is changing. Certainly the last time I had some good news to share it was not only my children I called (they are usually first on my list) but also a man friend. Lately my male/female (self-created) barriers in friendships seem to be breaking down—and that feels good. After all, we are all people.
Posted by leya at January 6, 2005 08:20 AM