Follow Up
Yesterday, I wrote about memories and the making of new ones with new friends. And a high school friend commented that she was in a new locale and ready to make new friends herself, and added, “…I sense you are lucky. I believe a lot of men don’t have friends for whatever reason….Any ideas why??” And I said that was food for thought, and I had a few thoughts on the subject, and here they are. And the first thing I’ll point to is a group of my friends trekking the El Camino from Porto to Santiago, because they are all women, nine of them, mother’s, sisters, and daughters. Most of my male friends run in pairs or solo. Think male lions on the Serengeti.
There are actually studies that show women have larger networks of friends and close friends than men do, but I don’t need a study to know that. I watched my wife go on scrapbooking weekends, Ya-Ya weekends, bridge nights, and countless DAR conventions. She knew a large, diverse group of women and she kept in touch with all of them. I’d go hunting or to a baseball game or to hear music with friends, but it was a small group of male friends, mostly spouses of my wife’s friends, and it was usually in ones and twos.
And if I know anything about those trekkers, those nine women, it’s that they share things and look to others, while men are notoriously bad sharers. That seems to be a seminal difference. If you look to others for help, you need friends. If you look only to yourself, you don’t, and how many men do we know who don’t go to doctors? As for myself, I’ll take all the help I can get and the only way to do that is to put myself out there. And it also helps to tell people you love that you love them and then do things that show it. And it also helps to know it’s okay to cry and let someone hold you when you do.