Female versus male friendships - Daily Nation

Women and men go about their friendships in entirely different ways.

Sometimes it’s so hard to keep up with female friendships. One moment they are talking and going shopping together, and girl’s night outs together, and going on holidays together.

And the next time you ask, “by the way how is your tight friend, Miriam, I don’t hear you talk about her anymore,” and you get an impervious or aggressive answer.

Something like, “Tight? Who told you we are tight?” If you are smart you will leave it at that, if you are not, you will proceed.

But then after six months they will be back together, shopping and lunching like nothing happened. They are so intense when they are on and even more intense when they are off.

And the only rules for you are — to give it a wide berth and take her side whether she is the one on the wrong or not. Allegiance is a big thing rewarded as highly as ransom across the gender pond.

Someone asked me what kind of friendships men have. Well, obviously we don’t shop together. Actually, we don’t shop.

If your trouser is old, you go buy a new trouser. From one shop. You get the blue one. Then you leave. It’s not a group effort.

We won’t send pictures to our friends to confirm if we look good in this blue one or the grey one.

Our friendships seem so simplistic, if not superficial. First, the whole talking on the phone for many minutes thing? We don’t do that.

Calls go something like, “Chief, you are OK? Familiar? Great. Listen, remember that guy you told me sells phones at a great price, do you have his number?” Two minutes at most.

Now listen to the same call by a lady: “Sweetheart, you are so lost? How are you? … imagine I was just here doing my nails then I remembered that we have a pending date …. kwani where do you do your hair nowadays? … work is great, my boss is still the same witch … imagine … Lenny [the son] is fine, he won some award in swimming two weeks ago; he goes to bed with that trophy … imagine … you don’t say … aki …..I haven’t seen her in a while, last I heard she had quit her job … by the way, there is a guy who sells TVs, the one you mentioned before …”

But talk is good, I have learnt. When they talk, they offload, and they are lighter to tackle other life’s puzzles.

We are afraid to talk, to open up, and we end up jumping off buildings, drinking copiously or getting sick mentally because we insist on being men, on dying with our problems. Talk is good. But not for 30 minutes on the phone, surely.

But as you grow older you retain a tighter circle of friends. I have two types of friends. I have the good-times friends, the fair-weather friends.

These are friends who I drink with. They are fun friends. We meet and laugh and go home. I don’t demand any more from them than they demand any more from me.

We will not necessarily talk about important things while drinking, but the idea is camaraderie. After we leave the bar, we go back to our lives until the next time.

My next brand of friends are the type that know your nakedness, these are guys you have known for long. They are never more than four.

They are the centre. They will show up. You borrow money among yourselves. You tell each other the truth about each other.

The peculiar thing about these friends is that I meet them far less often than the first group of friends.

We can go silent for a week and not meet for three weeks, but everything is fine because the friendships roots go so down below the ground it will take a 7.8 Richter earthquake to uproot it.

Disagreements and disputes are usually resolved over drinks, unplanned. Because we hate to dissect a problem for too long.

Those meetings are usually swift to allow everybody to drink without tension. There are never factions within a group of friends.

If you owe me money I’m not going to pull someone aside and talk about you with them. Nobody storms out of a WhatsApp group promising to never speak to the rest.

I think money is the biggest thing that breaks friendships for men, never what anyone said to someone. Money is horrible.

Money and someone trying to get fresh with your woman. But the general rule for both sexes is to adjust expectations of the kind of friends you have. That way nothing will ever surprise you. And people will live happily ever after.