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Do Men Suck At Friendship?

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Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#221

Post by coldtea »

juusto wrote: post #112
Cadsby wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and started to mean "USA" in the heads of US citizens You're being a little pedantic. It's usually understood to refer to US citizens by just about everyone outside the USA as well, not just US citizens themselves.

I guess you are being a little bit insensitive by calling him "pedantic". As an "American" from the South, and having friends in both Central and North, we constantly make fun of the fact that we can't call ourselves Americans the way Europeans and Asians do. Another "interesting point" though is that the Indigenous population are still called Indians and the the real Indians are not identified as Asians.

You can call yourselves "South Americans" though, and everybody would understand.

Not all taxonomies consider "America" as one continent. In geography school we were taught of North America and South America as different continents. And if you check Wikipedia, you'll see there are several ways to divide the continents, and they cound from 5 to 7 depending on how you look at it, IIRC.

>Another "interesting point" though is that the Indigenous population are still called Indians and the the real Indians are not identified as Asians.

In my corner of Europe we don't consider the "real Indians" as Asians either. Some cultures do, but we prefer to reserve the "Asian" moniker for the far east (Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea etc). I don't see much cultural or historical resemblance between these and Indians.

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#222

Post by diydsp »

aaren wrote: post #171
diydsp wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> men and women simply have different kinds of friendships I think you nailed it there. This matches what I've been picking up from books by Deborah Tannen, an author recommended to me by a guy at work. Tannen describes men and women as having two massively different styles of communication. Communication is not at all addressed in the attached article, yet, when I perceive the dialogue in the article, it matches Tan…

can you recommend something specific by Tannen?

Sure. She has numerous books now, but the first one that started her off on this path was _That's Not What I Meant!_, which was about differences in communications styles in general. One chapter of it was about the diff. b/t men and women and that got the most attention and requests for more info, so she wrote _You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation_. (There's a lesson for startups about listening to your audience there, too.)

The main one to recommend is the latter, but the first one is great, too. I haven't read her other ones. And TBH I haven't finished either one after several months, b/c the material in the first few chapters just got me so far along I was surprised and it shifted my perspective quite a bit. Especially for a literally-minded person like myself, it was like learning to see not only a new color, but a new, parallel spectrum.

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#223

Post by adamzerner »

pskittle wrote: post #86
adamzerner wrote: post #18

Some people say we're past the "social fad". I think that we're just at the tip of the iceberg, and this article hints at some of the problems that we could solve.

like?

- The fact that most friendships are shallow, not deep.

- The fact that people lose touch with their friends at predictable points in their lives.

- The fact that married people have trouble finding friends.

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#224

Post by ds9 »

adwn wrote: post #97
colechristensen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of cringing, the adjective you're looking for is 'American'.

I wonder when "America" ceased to mean "the two continents North and South America" and started to mean "USA" in the heads of US citizens. There's a reason why "European" isn't synonymous to "German", and why "Asian" isn't synonymous to "Chinese".

I'm sensitive to this enough to specify 'US' when that's what I mean -- yet, when Europeans (well, N. Europeans in my experience) say "Americans" they're referring to US people. It's probably because US culture, politics, imperialism etc. intrude into their countries and lives a lot more than Canadians, Mexicans or South Americans do.

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#225

Post by dankoss »

doyoulikeworms wrote: post #26

As a 27 year old male, most of my friendships revolve around doing things together. Working, video games, sports, drinking, or eating, mostly.

I agree with this but, my problem is that most people have only one or two major interests so friendship is completely one-dimensional based around a single activity. So when conversation drifts off the common topic or activity, there isn't much to do or talk about. People interested in sports may not also be interested in video games, etc.

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#226

Post by sosuke »

ardit33 wrote: post #28
mixmastamyk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People at work aren't necessarily your friends, rather they are people forced to "cohabitate" together. Makes sense to keep it friendly, but don't expect it to last much longer than a year or two past your resignation. Patio says the same thing here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro... Similarly, I've always liked to keep in touch with friends, see how they are doing, etc. When I was young…

I disagree. Three of my best friends were former co-workers. We happened to be new-ish to the city back then, in our 20s, going out, bars/clubs, etc, yet sharing a lot of other common career goals as well as personal ones. If you hang out with co-workers on non work related (or sponsored activities), a lot, there is a greater chance for you to become friends on the long term after you moved on to different jobs. They…

HN is a common interested, and this is completely outside the current thread, but we joined HN on the very same day!

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#228

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

vacri wrote: post #108
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do men have to be gay to be effeminate?

The adjective that should usually be used for that stereotype is 'camp'. Plenty of gay men aren't camp, and plenty of camp men aren't gay.

Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of 'effeminate' really.

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#229

Post by nzp »

cperciva wrote: post #49
sardonicbryan wrote: post #37

As a male with more close female confidants/friends than male, I find it interesting that this article in no way acknowledged the possibility of a platonic male/female friendship.

Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.

But the thing is, why is this considered a problem really? Should we only have sex with our enemies or persons we don't like? I understand the underlying reasoning, the questions are for the most part rhetorical, but I just don't find the whole idea very well thought out, not to mention it's completely wrong in the "always" part. Also, I never heard people say gay men or lesbians can never be friends. Why is that? Is there some bogus assumption that hetero sexuality is somehow different in nature?

The point is that the "sex part" does not have to get in the way. In most cases the sex part is very superficial, it's just an idea that comes naturally to peoples minds and it's simply not a big deal at all. People, men and women, think about sex (almost all the time, both sexes) and worthless semi random thoughts about sex with almost any person will be had. It simply is not such a big deal. The funny thing is that we are all aware of the universality and banality of these thoughts, yet act as though it's something special, extraordinary and serious. Just to be clear, I'm not advocating promiscuity (although, again to be clear, I have no moral issue with that as long as it's honest), but simply putting the whole thing to rest, it's not even worth talking about.

And it better not be true that sex stands in the way of friendship because long, commited, beautiful relationships sure involve a lot of sex and deep friendship. Sex can only stand in the way of friendship if all one wants is sex.

Re: Do Men Suck At Friendship?

#230

Post by analreceiver »

ashwinaj wrote: post #15

Yeah this is clearly a American issue. It's certainly not true in Asian/South Asian countries, sure we lose touch with friends but whenever we meet there is an instant and unmistakable bond. When I moved to the US, I couldn't understand why Americans were so "distant". I don't have the same friendships with them as I do with others. Sad but true.

I'm from Venezuela and I must tell you that every male guy I know has very close friends. We're more outgoing and trustworthy and we've always attributed this to the fact that we're from the caribean and as such very warm. I've made acquaintances with americans and europeans alike and the difference I have noticed is that the time it takes you to share trust with other Venezuelans (also colombians and people from caribean islands) is several orders of magnitude shorter. You can meet someone and a week later you'll be interacting like you've known each other for years. I've read this elsewhere before as well, It's not a rare opinion.
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