Just because guys don't sit around and share their deepest feelings, it doesn't mean that male friendships are inferior to female friendships:
"If we use a women's paradigm for friendship, we're making a mistake," says Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Social Work, who has studied how 386 men made, kept and nurtured friendships. Men might not be physically or emotionally expressive, he says, but we derive great support from our friendships.
Researchers say women's friendships are face to face: They talk, cry together, share secrets. Men's friendships are side by side: We play golf. We go to football games. [...]
A woman from Wisconsin wrote to me recently to say that she effortlessly shares intimate feelings with her friends. That's in great contrast to her husband. He recently went on a fishing trip to Canada with four longtime friends. And so she wondered: What did they talk about for a whole week? She knew one of the men had problems at work. Another's daughter was getting married. The third man has health problems. Her husband said none of those issues came up. She couldn't believe it.
She told him: "Two female strangers in a public restroom would share more personal information in five minutes than you guys talked about in a week!"
Sounds about right! Link
> assuming anyone claimed that
and in my opinions, they easily make far better friends, yes.
Because i'd rather have an intelligent conversations, hehe!
Women and men have friendships of all varieties and types. Not all women want to talk to strangers in a bathroom. Yuck. Furthermore, men get together and share emotions in some groups. Women get together only to work on projects in other groups or participate in sports, etc.
You cannot boil people down this simply. There is not one set of men and one of women. However, writing about that is far less compelling or interesting. Researching everyone is impossible. I dislike these studies like this greatly.
That's very Anglo- or Americano centric.
And if anyone starts getting all open about their love/feminine problems... good friggin grief, tell it to your OBGYN, not me.
Anyway...article is fairly ridiculous.
Comparing men and women are like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, they're both fruit, otherwise completely different.
A woman hears the news that someone's daughter had a baby. She wants to know every detail. How long was the labor? How big was the kid? What do they look like? What did they name it? etc. etc.
A man hears the same news and probably doesn't ask any questions.
My wife always gets upset when I don't have any details of something I'm told. I don't understand why people are upset when they are told men and women are different. Men and women are completely different in so many ways. That's just the nature of things.
That's interesting, because I look for the emotional point of view of a woman to find a more enriched friendship. But it's interesting that I've found that my female friends are all looking for that connection with another woman that she could concider a close friend that they havn't been able to find yet.
...and that's why many men don't trust women. Not only do some women habitually do this, they do it with their partner's confidences. Eventually, the partner stops confiding in those women. Shocking, eh?
Men are often very private. Intimacy opens that up; it's quite a shock when that turns into public information, though. Tends to modify behavior a bit.