Easier being friends with males than females.

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I don't know what it is, but I always find it easier to stay friends with males, both NT and on the Spectrum, but I always find it tough to stay friends with females for long, especially NT females. As hard as I try to be friends with NT females I find I rarely understand them and often end up erring in someway to make them very angry at me. Males seem to be easier to understand and avoid angering. Do any other women on the Spectrum have this?

Yeah for sure. I think it's pretty common for women on the spectrum. For me, it's just that my interests are typically male interests so I can talk about them more. As well, guys are more direct in my experience and will say what's on their mind, which is so much easier for me to understand.

I definitely agree. I have mostly had guy friends. I do wonder though if I could finally have good friendships with women if they were also on the spectrum.

I think I did while I had a lot of internalized misogyny as well as femmephobia, which I'm not applying to anyone else - however during that time I think that impaired(and still does to an extent) my relationships with other women greatly.

If a woman was into nail art and pink cupcakes or pop music I would write her off as having very little depth or intellect and treat her as such. Then I would place the onus on her when she reacted to how I seemed to look down on her. And I valued masculine traits over feminine traits, which I now see as being an arbitrary social construct.

This doesn't sound like your situation save for not having a ton of female friends. Or, I did, I just felt I couldn't be close to them. That's been changing for me though.

I usually find friendships between the sexes to be very different. But best summarized in this manner. All my male friendships involve that we share a hobby or passion. They do not extend past that. We talk about that, and that is all. Female friendships are more about day to day things, emotions, thoughts, desires, problems, etc. So In a degree for me friendships with women always seem to be more valuable than with men.

I think that men tend to be more direct with what they are thinking/wanting/feeling. I find it very hard to judge what a person is thinking if they aren't direct. I have one female friend that I have had since 4th grade (10 years ago) and I love her because she is direct with me about what she is thinking and doesn't beat around the bush or expect me to know what she is thinking.

I've never had female friends.
It's been this way for me since primary school so I think a lot comes from simply not being 'girly' both in interests and behaviour, but then in high school girl social rules change and become far more complex. You get the classic 'girl hate' of indirect aggression towards each other, various rules on what you can or can't do, social hierarchy, and so on...added to the general NT social rules it's just impossible to keep up with and if you get things wrong you're in trouble. I've also never understood women, that they can be so emotionally attached to one another and very supportive, while at the same time undermining each others confidence or judging one another.

Agreed. Girls can be very passive aggressive and hostile.

Yeah I've experienced the cattiness, been set up and talked about behind my back before when I was younger. It was kind of like the movie "Mean Girls". Ever since, I've tried to avoid the cliques - why do women need cliques anyways? Thankfully I've also had some female friends who were more mellow, nicer and had similar interests. They tended to be more mature. It's just been that in general, men were easier to get along with.

Exactly, I'm with Leora Tanenbaum who says this is about competitiveness...who is the prettiest, thus who is worth more in an appearance-focused world so it creates self-esteem issues that make us turn on each other, like bullies who try to pull down other people to make themselves feel better or spoiling other girls reputations so they're no longer as attractive to other people, only this is not lady-like behaviour so girls develop a means of bullying indirectly via cliques and passive aggressive behaviour. I was good at avoiding this in high school, I realised early on that it was done in such a way that if I pulled them up on their bullying that I'd be the one looking bad, so I just avoided the whole thing all together...I think for me it developed into a fear of women as an adult, to be honest.

I think it gets better as you get older, you find more women who are secure enough in themselves not to act like this, and you come across the other women who were wise enough to keep the hell out of this sort of behaviour. Unfortunately though many women never gain the sort of self-esteem needed to escape this behaviour so they continue competing over looks, their ability as mothers, or place in the office.

I tend to get along with males better than females. After living with three sisters, who are often moody and over-reactive, I get sick of being around women. I have three female friends in college, but they are very level-headed and tend to avoid drama. I like having female friends who are like this rather than being moody and melodramatic. Most of my friends in high school were females because I was afraid to talk to males. I never felt like I completely fir into the group. Now, all my friends at the university are male except for three. They are easy to talk to and tend to be more relaxed than a lot of females. I also don't feel jealous or competitive around males.

This is true for me. As I think more and more about things I think it has to do with female social exclusion and lacking that warmth feeling that other females seek from each other. See I have a couple female friends, and well no one ever comes to me for emotional support (well rarely). Females tend to bore when you talk more about facts without much emotionality. I notice, even acquintances, women love to emote (be more expressive) with each other. And I just stand there with a straight face = cold.

I kind of agree with this. When I was 11-13 I was almost only hanging with boys, mostly because we shared the same interests and most of the girls found me immature. But after being verbally abused by the same boys because of me having a huge crush on one of them which lead to obsessive jealousy from my side, I feel safer being with girls although I don´t always find it easy.

I find that women are more catty then men and the more time i spend with my husband and son who have aspergers its harder for me to interact with females. So i end up feeling out of place. I feel like i have forgotten how to "play the game" that i hated to begin with. So my friends are male. I seriously thoght there was something wrong with me. Glad i found this thread.

Wow, I agree with just about everything said here. ~starts humming the Cheers theme song~

I've always had more male friends than female. I was a bit of a tomboy. I'd rather be out climbing a tree, than inside braiding hair. I thought girls always had to talk, but, guys don't seem to mind being quiet.

Now, twice this year I've had similar experiences with two long-time female friends about a 'problem' in our relationship (which, of course, I was completely unaware of). One I met about 5 years ago, and we've had a lot of great times together. She's a lovely social butterfly, but, doesn't rip on me for not being like her. We get on great. Well, she was a bit emotional about why I never call her and hang out anymore. Well, the simple answer is... I've never called her. Whenever we get together, it's because she's called me. She's got a new boyfriend now, so she never calls me or shouts at me over the fence to come over and hang out. It doesn't bother me, because it's happened when she's had more outgoing friends in the past. I'm always here for her when she does call, though. I hope she understood that, but, we love each other no matter what, so I know it's cool in the long run.

The other was a girl that I've been friends with about 11 years... only because one of my good childhood friends was getting married, and his fiance had a fight with a bridesmaid, and I was the only one they knew who'd fit in her dress (I'm a little tall). She took me in with all her girlfriends and we've got boys all the same age and have been through two pregnancies together.
Well, she's all 'why are you mad at me, why do you never call me or come over anymore?'
Let's face it, I don't call people... same, she called me. And, we live in two different states, it's unrealistic to expect me to pop over for a bbq anymore. I think we're sorta cool, but, I don't know how to handle the emotional 'are you mad at me, I'm so isolated and it's partially your fault' kinda thing.

Most of my girlfriends are more like me. We're practical, we meet up when we meet up, shoot the breeze about our favorite topics and go 'see ya next time'. No pressure. Occasionally we'll organize things, like a pool party or bbq or Patty's Day get-together, and it's all smaller groups that I'm more comfortable with. They're great. Or the ones I only see once or twice a year because we became friends through work stuff.

I've only got one problem with having male friends. And, it rarely comes up, because, truly I am just 'one of the guys' and am always treated as such and viewed as such. But... if one of them gets to drinking a bit much... they just lose all intelligence when they've got the :beer: goggles on, and then you've got the awkwardness of getting rid of them until they sober up, and the awkward apologies the next day where they reassure you that they respect you and didn't mean to hit on you (which you know darned well they'd never do when they were sober because they've got smokin hot, normal, NT wives). Weird weird weird. Like my own social awkwardness isn't bad enough, I don't know how to handle these situations, no matter how many times they happen.

I recently read a study that said that while women can easily be 'just friends' with guys, guys have more of a problem with it and are more likely to consider a hookup being a positive possibility with female friends, whereas women were likely to view it as a negative consequence and one they hoped wouldn't happen. I thought that was interesting.

Oh, sorry for getting wordy in my reply, but, there is one more point I wanted to make from the previous comments.

I've always liked guys because they seem to be more direct and less distracted (telling you what they're ticked about, rather than having some big emotional meltdown about it), and I always assumed they liked me because of the same reason.

However, just last month I was having a heavy conversation with a friend. Now, I've known the guy for well over a decade. He's a lot more 'normal' than most of my friends (who tend to be pretty nerdy), but, we met through similar geek interests and share many friends.
Well, during this conversation, he was talking out his thoughts. Neither of us were being really emotive, just using words as they were intended, as we have done many times before over the years. I like him because he's straight to the point and I am the same in return. While he did most of the talking, I was listening and sorting through my own thoughts on the subject. When my input was solicited, I would pause, and summarize my view.
Toward the end of the conversation, he acted a little frustrated, and I'm like, 'what?' (it was a departure from our usual monotone exchange when discussing something deep). He said he just wished he knew how I felt about the subject.
~blink blink~

I was a bit taken aback. I had just told him precisely how I felt.

Should I have made the effort to infuse a lot of emotion into my tone? I never really thought I had to do that among my buddies, like I do at work or with my extended family. I just accept that they will listen to the content of my words, and not how I deliver them.

It just threw me off a bit, and left me a little confused at the time. ~shrug~

i think i get along with males better than females because i have little or no patience for the pointless (to me anyways) social mind games that females play... theyre like spiders, and im tired of getting hung up on their threads. males are easier to handle because their pointless (again, to me) social mind games are more straightforward, and i, being female, have the option of nonparticipation. life is too short to waste time playing stupid games that i not only hate, but will never understand.