Guys+Girls+Talking=Not Good for Anyone

Being good friends with girls is something I never experienced really until college and once I did sometimes problems come up such as the ones in the book. It says that “men sometimes have a harder time being friends with women without some hope of romantic involvement.” (Gamble and Gamble Chapter 6) Women are perfectly capable of being just good friends but men have a tougher time keeping it as just good friends and when a woman discovers this it leads to mistrust and sometimes ends the relationship. I see this happen frequently in college with myself and with my friends. It is tough to be good friends with girls because men are much more conversational and willing to open up to women which in my mind creates more intimacy. The problem with that is that women already are used to that because they share it all the time with other women. Part of the problem in men and women becoming close friends is there really is not too much about it that is different for women, but for men everything about it is different.

I do have several personal stories relating to this but the one I am going to share started May of 08. I met this girl who also went to CNU and we were simply friends that was it. Slowly we started talking more around campus then school ended and she went back to Richmond and I stayed in Newport News. We began to talk on the phone some and I started to develop feelings for her that were not there originally. As I was trying to figure out what to do she invited me to her house a few times to visit. I did and she has an awesome family and I started to really feel like I really liked her. We would stay out by the pool all day talking at her house or ended up talking pretty late a few nights. This went on for a little while then I just told her how I felt and she had absolutely no clue I liked her and she saw me as just a friend. Needless to say I was pissed but now I can see it from her point of view and she sees it from mine. To her I was just another friend because she stays up late talking to her girlfriends all the time, invites her girlfriends over to her house for weekends, and when they visit they just hang at the pool talking all day, so nothing she did with me was any different than what she normally does with friends. I on the other hand never talk to people that consistently so it was just miss communication on both sides. Needless to say it never worked out but we are still friends.

Sources:Michael W, Teri Kwal, Gamble (2003). The Gender Communication Connection. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.