Episode 19: Why are women so choosy about friends?

He says:
Ever noticed how women are choosy about friends?

Men just about bond with anybody and everybody. Men and women. Women are picky. Men do not stay away from women who aren't that attractive or smart. Women are snooty.

Men do not assume that every girl who talks to them is hitting on them. Women can be so vain.
Men don't see why they need a reason to be friends. Women need a reason.

They need to either find the guy intelligent or attractive or entertaining or helpful and caring and sensitive and all that you find the shopping for in matrimonial profiles and dating lists.

Isn't it rather strange that most women try to find reasons to be friends after you break up with them? Of course, it is difficult for two people who loved each other to be friends even if one of them still loves the other. But once they've broken up or decided against a relationship, it's probably because they don't really love each other any more, or, at least one of them doesn't love the other enough for the relationship to survive, and hence, it becomes a pointless one-sided exercise which one must get over before they can be friends.

But the point here is, once you are over it, it doesn't take much to be friends. Unlike a relationship which requires people to share lives, time and space, friendship comes with no strings attached.

A friend wouldn't even care if you don't call him for a week. He knows you care even if you call him after two months. Because, for a man, being a friend is as simple as simply being there. Unconditionally.

Men are willing to be friends all the time. With anyone and everyone.

Can a woman dare say the same?

She says:

Dare? We wouldn't dream of it. Of course we're snooty about our friends. We have every right to be.

Friendships between women are very different from friendships between men. The most intense conversation I've seen between two men involved a certain scene from Star Wars.
Most of the time male bonding involves the sports channel, chips and beer. Guys rarely have deep meaningful relationships with each other.

Heck. Guys barely have conversations with each other — unless you count grunts and glugs as conversation.

Which probably explains why men need a 'boys night out' only once a month or so. Why telephone conversations between men rarely last more than five minutes. And why men always, and I mean always, want female company — whether it's in the form of girlfriends or just girl buddies — no matter where they are.

Try looking for a straight man who will willingly go to an all male party and you'll be circling the globe forever.

Women, on the other hand, love Girls Nights. And this is regardless of whether they're pig-tailed horrors in flannel pyjamas encrusted with chocolate at a pyjama party; perfectly turned out, cocktail drinking hipsters at a nightclub, or dignified greying friends gathered around a card table sharing gossip and Darjeeling tea.

Because women truly enjoy each other's company.

We do things together, whether it's going for group beauty parlour binges or shoe shopping sprees. We make sincere efforts to keep in touch, even if it involves trans-Atlantic phone calls or taking a train, bus and autorickshaw to share a pot of tea. And we depend on each other, being supportive though break-ups and bad hair days.

Which is precisely why we're picky about who we count among our friends. Because we need to have people we can count on. Not just go fishing with.