Being friends with other women.

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I have a hard time acquiring not just female friends, friends in general. I don't really understand how people my age become friends. A lot of girls are just really catty, but I don't do well with guys...people say they're intimidated by me, I don't know if that's true. I'm doing alright though, I have a couple of really good friends and that's all I really need.

Actually I see a lot of validity in expressing your feelings and getting others to affirm that. As a woman who grew up very on aware of my feelings, being able to discuss feelings with other people, especially other women who are better in touch with their feelings has helped me a great deal. I too like to problem-solve, but I don't need help with that. I do need help understanding what it is I'm feeling a good lot of the time, and to me, if another woman who is educated, articulate and self-aware can help me gain insight there, that is constructive and worthwhile.

Unfortunately I'm not in a place where I can be around people who can help me like, in particular mature educated women who can articulate their feelings well and in a way I can understand. My problem is there are people who aren't so educated or mature nor articulate themselves well, and talking with them is a waste of time and energy and usually leaves me anxious and drained.

On the same token, I don't find much use in acting like you don't need to learn your emotional side and deriding other women because they are better aware of their feelings. When I was younger I used to run away from any hint of my feelings, thinking if I could just fix the problems intellectually everything would be fine. No, it doesn't work like that. It took me one full-blown nervous breakdown and and another nearly full-blown one to realize that you can't run from your emotional self. Those women who vent with their gal pals and seem to do nothing productive, they're not having nervous breakdowns like I have, so more power to them.

My friends are mostly women, but they aren't typical ones. They're either gay or weird introverts.

I do get along much more comfortably with men though. And because I'm gay myself, I find it easier to be me. With straight women it can sometimes feel awkward. Another point is that men are blunter about things than women and don't get easily offended when I say whatever I am thinking.

My friends are mostly male.


I feel that men are more tolerant towards me, they don't care if I say or do something odd. I have allways been bullied by females.

I sort of find it weird when there are SO many women that claim to only be friends with guys because girls don't get them and think they're so different This is so NOT a diss, I just think it's funny. I wonder why they aren't just all friends with each other. There are plenty of NT women like that as well. I only ever have experience with women friends, I don't really understand what male friends are for or what I'd possibly talk to them about, they all have such foreign hobbies. I couldn't relate to them.

I am rubbish with women anyway. I don't do small talk and I am not interested in discussions about romance, soap operas, talk shows, children, etc. so it never works.
I only have two female friends, and they are both somewhat on the spectrum so we talk about sci-fi and computers and literature instead. We actually met over the Internet because of common interests, not during shopping or at the mall. True, when we meet, we drink tea and eat cake (that is, they eat it) like many other women but while doing it we compare the size of our RAMs and argue about which season of Blake's 7 is better, so it's nothing like your average hen meetup.

I've had female and male friends, but right now all my friends are boys and all are between 3 months and 3 years younger than me and most of them are aspies/auties. I may look like a young female adult but I'm really I'm a boy in their young teens. I find that my current friends are way better than any girls I've been friends with. But I've fancied most of my current friends in the past or now (I'm in love with one of them), that's the only draw back to being friends with the opposite sex.
I find girls are harder to make friends with because they tend to be more mature than me and I feel more like a younger relative than a friend of their age. Unless that girl is a lot younger than me and is more boyish than most.

Actually, most of my friends have been girls. But not because it's been easy. My class at primary school had like 3 boys and 15 girls. I've also always had a 'best friend' (up to Y11, anyway). In primary school, I didn't get a lot of the teasing that went on, and a lot of it was directed towards me because of my wacky behaviour. I thought you were normal if you were mean and scathing. So I tried to be mean and scathing. Only it was my own peculiar brand of mean and scathing, which didn't go down too well, especially when everyone else grew out of it. But I came out with random things and made people laugh I guess, so I always had friends. And they just happened to be girls. Not my choice! In Y6 I found myself the class clown, which was fun, but I made a few new friends and I think that year 6 and year 7 just brought how different I was right up to my attention. I'd always been pretty obsessed with becoming normal, I've forgotten a lot, but those two years were weird. I also had one special 'best friend', who was one of the most open minded 11 year olds I've ever met. I was was in my Holocaust-obsession stage and she was interested in Anne Frank. I loved the Beatles and she listened to 60s compilation tapes. She invited me over and we had fun together. First time I shared an interest with someone else. But then there was this sleepover with some of her girl friends and that was just really weird. They were talking about all kinds of things that were foreign to me. Lol. In the beginning I just sat there, watching them, and suddenly I piped up, "I've had three showers today!". Because I'd recently become aware that normal people showered every day, so I took more (overcompensating?). They did that thing where they all looked at each other and smiled. I must have had that a million times through my childhood. The sleepover went a bit downhill from there. My friend was nice, but it was still awful. After that we weren't really friends anymore.
Secondary school was just AWFUL. I never agreed that girls were 'catty', but then I realised that I can't recognise 'catty' when I see it. Now I can see when I was taken advantage of, etc etc, when they were maybe not being so sweet after all...it was a minefield! But it's okay now.
I've always gotten along better with boys, but the boys in my secondary school were all into cars, bad music, drinking, stupid stuff.
At the moment I've given myself a break from friending. I mean, I have them, quite a few, no close ones, that's fine with me. If I want to go to the common room with them and meet up with them outside of school, I will, but not just to be social. So I spend lots of time in the library. Most of the friends are not library people, so it's fine. About 3/4 of them are boys.

I had very few female friends from age 14 - 27, preferring the company of guys. I didn't know it at the time but my reason was that I liked the attention that I got and wasn't getting that kind of attention from straight women.

Somewhere in my late twenties I decided to change that. My female friends are awesome. They aren't the kind of people who fit the stereotype. They understand the other things going on in my life and, what's awesome is that when I share a problem, they don't insist on trying to fix it for me (then get all mad when I don't accept the advise). They listen, understand, and offer consolation and sometimes some ideas. No pressure, no selfishness.

They aren't pressuring me to go shopping, dragging me to the restroom with them, wanting to swap make-up tips, trying to steal my man, or whatever all was said here. I think it's just a matter of finding the actual people you get along with instead of alienating an entire gender based on stereotypes or a few superficial types. And when my female friends are bitchy, that's just fine, because when I'm bitchy, they love me anyway.

I can count on one hand the number of close female friends I've had in my life, and I'm still friends with only two of them. I've been friends with my best friend for 22 years. Our oldest kids are only 4 days apart, and we met at a playgroup. She's as NT as you can get, but she doesn't seem to mind all my quirks. She's one of the few people on the planet I feel completely comfortable with. We had a huge falling out about 10 years ago, and she didn't speak to me for a year. (I still don't think I was wrong, but that's another post for another day!) But eventually she forgave me, and we both admitted that our friendship was too precious to just throw away.

Looking back now, it seems miraculous that I managed to make the friends I did, because I have such difficulty with it now. Generally, the women I meet don't like me, don't get me, and don't even try. I'm not even sure what it is about me that puts other women off, other than I never really know what to say in social situations. I can't do chit chat, and I'm kind of awkward. Very few go out of their way to try and make me feel included (although I really appreciate the ones who do!).

Guys, on the other hand, that's a different story. I get along great with guys, always have. When I was a teenager, most of my friends were male. To this day, I find men much easier to relate to than women, and they almost always like me. Men generally mean what they say, and say what they mean, and they appreciate that I do the same.

It's all good though. Besides my best friend, I have my daughter, my mother, and my sister, all of whom I'm very close to. That's really all the female companionship I need.

Me! Women are confusing, how they say one thing and mean another, how they go to the bathroom in groups, how they act friendly to your face then badmouth you the second you walk away. I know, huge generalizations, but still a lot of truth.

I like sports, I like going to bars, I like getting dirty. Plus I don't have to be all pretty and well-dressed, I can scuzz around in jeans and a flannel shirt with my guy buds