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Are male or female friendships harder?
It doesn’t necessarily matter, but it’s an interesting discourse.
Feel like this question comes up a lot for people: are male friendships or female friendships inherently harder?
At some level, the question doesn’t matter — if you struggle with connection, regardless of genitalia, that can be tough. It’s one reason that we’ve seen upticks in loneliness, social isolation, and people feeling nervous.
But male friendships and female friendships are obviously different. The problem is, anyone choosing to write about this topic falls into one specific gender (in my case, male). So while I might have female friends and observe some of their dynamics, I’ll never truly know what a female-female friendship (or group) is like to experience. We don’t acknowledge that reality in these types of discussions enough.
But let’s now hit some research.
The baseline on male friendships
Before we get super far here, I think we need to understand how boys are typically raised in terms of connection (and what to prioritize). Some work on that, from a Cal-Berkeley therapist, would be here.
