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My parents divorced when I was about 3, so I grew up in a home with my mom and sister. I believe that this conditioned me to be more comfortable around women than men. Relationships with men (family, coworkers, etc.) just seem to feel awkward. I hadn’t noticed how deeply I felt this until yesterday. I applied for a job at a school where the principal is male. This gave me an uncomfortable feeling. I have always worked in school environments (and with one exception, jobs in general) where the principal/boss was female. I’m not entirely sure what this says about me, but has anyone else experienced anything like this? Or just generally feeling more comfortable around women?
Hi Kendra
In my case, my Dad left home while I was still in primary school and I was brought up my Mum. I have two sisters, one two years older than me and the other five years older.
I don't have trouble forming male friendships but I am absolutely more comfortable around women than around men and always have been. If I ever have to share anything on an emotional level it will always be with a woman, never with a man. And everyone I've come out to in my life so far has been female 🙂
Ellie x
It's not just you, Kendra. I think many of us have better relationships with women. Maybe it's the way we're wired?
I've always felt awkward around guys. I can't relate. I disdain 'bro culture'. I did okay in most social situations, but I often sensed that I was an outsider. Like the 'cool chick' they would hang with. An honorary guy.
Now it makes perfect sense. My gender identity has always been female.
Conversely, I easily bonded with female friends. We could talk for hours about almost anything. They would tell me things usually reserved for their girlfriends. I would often hear something like "I don't know why I'm telling you this but you're not like other guys".
Duh. Little did they know.
All of my dearest friends are women. My best bosses have been women. Emotionally and intellectually, there is a connection that doesn't exist with guys.
I think it's the way I'm wired. #girlbrain
/LK
@lizk I love the term “bro culture” Liz because it’s such a perfect description of the manly bs lifestyle. As a participant in it myself for a few hours each day at least (playing sports) - I’m never short of laughs at how ridiculous it all is. And it’s crept into a lot of different areas of our lives besides just sports too. It makes men wearing dresses seem completely run-of-the-mill and a much more safe and sane alternative.
So many guys are sports “do or diehards”. In their playing, and following of their favorite teams. They live and breathe it constantly. To the tiniest of minutiae. They put on uniforms and all their paraphernalia to be as badass as they can. They think opponents are “out to get them.” I mean, seriously?
I love keeping active, staying in shape and playing sports. I love winning too. But if I don’t, it won’t keep me up at night. I’ll have the same life had I won or lost. I will have still had fun.
I guess I just don’t take “games” seriously enough for some. I keep thinking they’re “games.”
Unless its the crossdressing game…then it’s serious🤣
GP
Hi, Kendra.
Definitely a pattern here, my father left us before I was a year old so I have no memory of him in my childhood.
My mother moved us back in with my grandparents and she and my grandfather both worked so much of my home time was spent in the company of my grandmother and her friends.
I have no doubt, now, how much of an effect this had on my social development. I have always suffered from a lack of confidence, even now I don't often initiate conversations with people who are new to me. Well, Allie has changed that at least.
In my early twenties, I got a job in a spirits bottling factory, in which 99% of the employees were women. I soon got used to talking with them and, like Liz @lizk, I was often told, "You're easy to talk to" and was taken into their confidence. I've felt far more comfortable with women than men ever since.
In fact, I often felt guilty because, as well as feeling privileged to be accepted by women, on occasion, I'd be fancying them like crazy!
Thanks for this topic, Kendra, very interesting.
Allie x
Thought provoking Kendra!
I believe there's some environmental factors along with genetics.
Some of us my have some more feminine DNA markers than male.
I had a pretty normal childhood. Mom and dad a slightly older sister. My dad's parents lived a few hundred feet behind us on a farm. My mom didn't drive so my grandma drove us around. My dad's 2 brothers lived close by. I played with 3 male cousins and 1 female cousin. My 2 aunts would take us places too. My mom had 2 sisters and a brother. I asked him once when I was little where his wife was. He told me he traded her for his car. I thought he made a great deal.
Mom next younger sister and I share a birthday. So she and I were really close. She didn't have her daughter until I was 13 so my sister and I were like her kids.
Since mom was a stay at home mom I spent alot of time with her and her sisters.
Women were always special to me. I had some good guy friends. But avoided the trash talking bullying types.
The fem side of me must have came with the Pink Fog!
Fran 🥰
@kendrawhite I absolutely prefer the company of women. I feel that I have more in common with them and the conversation is better. I also feel that women are more empathetic towards others which is how I feel.
Good luck with your job search Kendra. I hope you find something that is comfortable for you and allows you to make best use of your abilities.
@kendrawhite This is a great topic Kendra. I wasn’t real close to my very macho Dad but I loved and respected him. I looked at his life and consciously thought…yeah, I’m gonna go another way. We never had any deep conversations. In his last week of life we were sitting in awkward silence and I excused myself to “go talk to Mom for a little bit and let you watch TV.” He said: “You always were a Momma’s boy.”
That’s one of my last vivid memories of him. And he was right, I never tried hiding it. I just clicked better with my Mom. She was the encourager in the family. Dad was the discouraged….”You’ll never make it in life if you don’t find a real job!”
I think you’re correct Kendra. There’s a lot of men who are “bro-centric” in their outlooks and it gets to be too much. I could definitely see that in your growing up situation. For me, I grew up with 3 brothers, no sisters and an ex-marine father who’s hero was John Wayne. I think that’s why I gravitated the other way towards the feminine side. I needed a break from all the competition!
GP
- @kendrawhite My parents divorced around 5 but mom remarried quickly. regardless I was raised by mostly women for all the early stages of my life. dad was never around. grandma mom and sis. my brother left at a very early age. so I think I get that. also Ive always had issues with confrontation. and generally males are more prone to be confrontational. but unfortunately Ive only had male bosses. not sure if that helps. Im actually more uncomfortable around women in the workplace. but not in personal life I can hang with the girls all day. Cheers RC
@kendrawhite Kendra I have had a similar experience and in my life have had many platonic women friends - I enjoy the comraderie and connection from these friendships, yet no intent for anything beyond it. None of these friendships approached the gal pal level that I so long for these days with my evolution but they were great nonetheless. In my career I have worked more for women’s than men - just by luck - and I find it to be such a blessing.
@kendrawhite I have a lot more in common with women than guys and enjoy their company more. I can hang with the guys but I don't follow sports much and my political views are more liberal than most of my guy friends so I don't often have much to add to the conversation. Sometimes when my wife is with friends I get invited into the conversation and I really enjoy interacting like one of the girls.
Great topic Kendra, very thought provoking. I am also way more comfortable around women. I like to hang out with my male friends too, but there is something to be said for being around women. I completely enjoy their company, and seem to be interested in things that they talk about. But sometimes it gets awkward when they start to compliment each other on clothes or makeup or other feminine things. I so want to join in, but then my brain kicks in and reminds me that hey, you are a guy talking to a bunch of women, so any comment there would be really awkward. I guess except for us, it’s difficult for anyone else to understand what goes on in our dual male and female brains.
One last comment too, not only do I appreciate women for how they act, but I am certainly attracted to them, which I don’t see changing.
@jennconn I always felt the same way that commenting on a woman's clothes and makeup would be weird and awkward for a guy. I had a rude awakening a couple of years ago when my wife was getting rid of some clothes that no longer fit her. I commented on how pretty some of them were and that I would like to keep them for myself for a while. She was very hurt and asked why I never said that when she was wearing them. That really struck home and I have tried to change my behavior and make sure I compliment her a lot more. It is coming more easily to me now and I feel quite comfortable complimenting any woman on her clothes, makeup and appearance. I guess it's another reason I feel comfortable chatting with the ladies.
My childhood household consisted of me, my mom, and two sisters. My dad left because he just had to chase some tail. Classy. As you can imagine, I don't have great relationships with men, but I also am very uncomfortable around women as well, especially when I'm all dressed up. I don't have a great relationship with my mother or sisters, so perhaps that's colored my social interactions with women. The result is that I feel awful trying to make friends with anyone and am much more comfortable staying home, away from everyone. In the end though, this is my fault, and it's my problem, and the only one who can fix it is me.
I get on with most people and my relationships with men and women are both fine. The only people that know Anna are all female as I have major doubts telling any of my male friends about Anna as I wouldn't want to risk any such relationship.
The female friends are all supportive and know me as Anna - one of them has never met me in drab.
Anna xx
Hi Kendra,
I prefer talking to women more than men. I always have. I didn't come from a "broken home" but usually I wished my mom would take me and my 2 older brothers and leave my dad. I loved my dad, but mostly I despised him. He was frequently very mean when he wasn't busy being uncommunicative.
I think my mom, my aunts, and my grandmother played such a large part in my social development I naturally gravitated to female friendships. I had plenty of guy friends, and usually my best friend at any given time was male, but I still just loved talking and hanging with girls/women. Even when I spent much more time with men. Luckily my wife has been my best friend for nearly the last decade.
My favorite job was right after I got married the first time. I was the I.T. person in a small office that had one other male (the boss and owner) and 4 female workers. The pay was lousy and I was only able to stay there for about 18 months before I had to move on. I had a female boss for a while on the next computer job which was for a largish company. I loved working for her. Unfortunately after 6 months she took a lateral job change and they hired a new guy to run her department. He was a "product" - the kind associated with feminine hygiene. I am surprised I lasted another 6 months before I quit.
Still all in all I so preferred those environments to the 30+ years of construction that came later on. Construction was 99.9% interaction with men and it sucked 10 times more often than it was good. The number of women to interact with was very few but there was one who actually made me a cake for my birthday one year and gave me some presents for my grandkids when they were little. I will always remember her fondly for that.
Men are fine. Men are good. I prefer the company of women. Including CDH women 😉
Hugs,
Autumn
In my childhood I grew up with two brothers and three sisters, I don't remember my mom and dad saying I love you when I was growing up. I was always bullied by the other boys in school. Never really had close male friends if I confided in a anybody it was usually my female friends. With my female friends l wasn't judged.
Alexandria XX
I have always had better friendly relationships with girls and women as those feminine traits have always been with me. I didn't like 'macho' culture so am quite at home among women.
Now that I am socially transitioned, I do find that I prefer the interactions that I have with women, in their acceptance of me they also feel so much more inclusive. I do wish I'd had more in the way of female friendships over the years though.
I've always stayed clear of macho dominant types, since they were the bane of my school life. But with a single-sex secondary school and a career in software development, I've had relatively little female socialisation. Most of the women I've known in my life are the ones I have been in loving relationships with, which themselves have tended to preclude having other females as friends.
Just as well that my male friendships, while also in small numbers, have mainly been the closer sort where we can confide in each other and open up emotionally. This has stood me in good stead in terms of being fully accepted by them as Fiona 🙂
During all my teaching years, looking back, I always took lunch with the women. I would arrive either at the teacher's lunch table, or a spot where the teachers were, and sat down with them. We would jabber away. The women and me. All of us happy. Even when a good share of teachers were male. Huh.... Going back even to the 1990's. I didn't realize... Yeah... I always sat with the women. How about that? You know what? I feel fantastic about it. Sweet validation. Oh Dani dear, so awfully long it took for you.
Dani
@kendrawhite My father passed when I was 13, so I grew up with my mom and sister from that point. Maybe that had some effect...maybe not, but I am very comfortable around women.
However I also went to an all-boys Catholic HS and so got to learn the Guy Rules of the Road quickly. That said, I'm also quite comfortable around guys.
I dunno how it all works or what has an effect on how someone feels around one gender or another, but I would say that being aware of how something makes you feel is always a good realization to have, because then you can work with it. 🙂
I had a great childhood, but in terms of "parental time", it was almost exclusively with my Mum. Eg. In spite of the "stereotypes", whe was the one who taught me to love fishing. My Dad thought he was doing the right thing, by building a business and when on holidays he was working on our first seaside holiday home.
It was either there or the Pub. He did not make the same mistake with my younger brother!!
He was a five nights a week pub man, so we never saw him until dinner time .
Strangely, maybe he helped start my "CD Career"He used to tease me about buying me a pair of pink panties. Perhaps that was the "genesis" of it all, cos it sure eventually turned me into an "upscale lingerie lover".
So I spent a lot of time with Mum and I think this resulted in me, (like so many others in this thread) being able to easily relate and talk to women. This has resulted in some extremely..... deep platonic friendships with some wonderful women. Some go back as far as the early 90's years. Trouble is the closest one is in Toronto Canada and I'm down herein Oz. We are both well past international travel....but we have been like "brother and sister" for at least 3 decades. (We both lack a sibling of the opposite gender)
I told "sis" about Caty very early on, she never batted a (carefully made up) eyelid.
"Caty.
@kendrawhite I think there is definitely a pattern forming Kendra. And no - it's definitely not just you! 🙂
I was raised in a very matriarchal household with my father gone when I was just an infant. I've also never felt comfortable in environments of machoism and 'bro-culture' despite efforts to fit in over the years before I finally realised that they were not who I am.
As Robyn Hitchcock wrote in his song "Uncorrected Personality Traits":
"Lack of involvement with the father, or over-involvement with the mother
Can result in lack of ability to relate to sexual peers
And in homosexual leanings, narcissism, transexuality
(Girls from the waist up, men from the waist down)
Attempts to be your own love object..."
😲
For myself, I was a late addition to the family, and my parents were more like grandparents. My only brother is 15 years older than me: I have the same age gap with his sons, but have far more in common with them than him.
I have always had male friends, usually through hobbies and interests, although I now work in a 99% female environment, which is great. My (female) employer and colleagues know about Joanna and are supportive. Some have met her.
Two weekends ago, I was suffering quite a bit with my depression, and decided that enough was enough, and it was time to be open with all my friends about who I really am. The amount of support and love I received from those guys has been truly humbling. The biggest surprise being the reaction from a hard-as-nails former coal miner, so you never can tell.
It feels liberating that Joanna isn’t a secret any more.
Thank you for this topic and to all those who shared.
I grew up with 3 sisters, my father worked alot and we would do things together but overall females had a bigger influence in my life. I wasn't very good at sports though I did try. I was bullied in school for wearing glasses and braces and being a skinny scrawny kid. When at home I played with my sisters, so it was a lot of Barbie, dolls, tea party and stuff - yes even a little dress up. When we went school shopping I spent what seemed like hours in the girls department while my sisters tried on dresses, skirts and tops. I find it much easier to talk to females. I am a nurse and needless to say spent a lot of time with females at work. Those were some interesting conversations sometimes - no holds barred. To this day I am very comfortable talking with females. When I was looking for a therapist I wanted a female as I felt it would be less embarrassing to talk with a female about not only my dressing but sexuality and it has been. I do wish I could open up more to the women I encounter but I'm not sure how accepted it would be. So instead I look at what they wear and wish I could compliment them on it and wear it myself. I wear earrings 24/7 and have some really pretty earrings but usually only wear studs or hoops out of the house, partly because of my wife's request and partly because of what people may say. In the summer I get jealous of the women who are wearing sundresses as I would love to be wearing one myself. I think you get the idea and I'm sure some of you can relate.
Maybe someday the world will change and it won't be such an issue for girl's like us.
XOXO Suzanne
I definitely feel more comfortable around women, but I can't really put a finger on why that is. My early home life was as normal as a 1950s upbringing could be, Dad was always there when not at work, Mum was always there & I had a younger brother. At aged 11, I was thrust into an all boys boarding school, followed by a 12 year stint in the Navy. No women in the navy back then. My engineering career after service, and up to retirement, was mostly male dominated.
However, I always felt more comfortable in the company of women, and even today, living on my own after raising a boy and a girl in my first marriage, losing my 2nd wife and getting to know two stepdaughters, I still feel out of place in the company of men.
AND... I didn't put on any womens clothes until I was 52!
