I feel really similar. I’m a dude, and I’ve always struggled with male friendships. I’ll ask people about themselves and their interests, get answers, and then the conversation stops with no reciprocation. I have a hard time just talking about myself unprompted, so since it’s rare for men to ask me stuff, I just get to know a lot of people but it never seems like they meet me.
That sounds really, frustrating. There’s a socialised culture built where men are taught they can’t operate outside “man” and I feel like I’m finally noticing how limiting that is, wearing the “prove I’m part of the club” mask all the time. I feel like that mask is getting less rigid, by each generation. But I can imagine how hard it would be to be able to express your feelings, when you’re in the constant practice of ignoring your feelings and replacing them with “what fits in” so that might make it really hard for some of the men you try to befriend to even know how to reciprocate in questions, to deepen your connection. But also, even asking or answering questions about your feelings requires a genuine and authentic connection with them, and if you keep telling your feelings, all your life, it isn’t safe to feel, or say feelings, that would cause some hugely damaging repression. It’s understandable, even, that some men never get to a level of emotional intelligence that they could, because getting to a certain level of emotional intelligence requires that connection with your own emotions. I can see how all those factors could really stunt friendships. You would almost have to teach them how to do all the things, from the ground up.
I feel really similar. I’m a dude, and I’ve always struggled with male friendships. I’ll ask people about themselves and their interests, get answers, and then the conversation stops with no reciprocation. I have a hard time just talking about myself unprompted, so since it’s rare for men to ask me stuff, I just get to know a lot of people but it never seems like they meet me.
That sounds really, frustrating. There’s a socialised culture built where men are taught they can’t operate outside “man” and I feel like I’m finally noticing how limiting that is, wearing the “prove I’m part of the club” mask all the time. I feel like that mask is getting less rigid, by each generation. But I can imagine how hard it would be to be able to express your feelings, when you’re in the constant practice of ignoring your feelings and replacing them with “what fits in” so that might make it really hard for some of the men you try to befriend to even know how to reciprocate in questions, to deepen your connection. But also, even asking or answering questions about your feelings requires a genuine and authentic connection with them, and if you keep telling your feelings, all your life, it isn’t safe to feel, or say feelings, that would cause some hugely damaging repression. It’s understandable, even, that some men never get to a level of emotional intelligence that they could, because getting to a certain level of emotional intelligence requires that connection with your own emotions. I can see how all those factors could really stunt friendships. You would almost have to teach them how to do all the things, from the ground up.