The Psychology of your 20s - 270. The psychology of male-female friendships

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

It's an age old question - can men and women ever actually be friends? In today's episode we explore the social psychology and studies that help us understand why the genders sometimes have so much difficulty being close friends, as well as how to assert boundaries and keep friendships platonic, including:  The differences in male vs. female friendship style Why we prefer friends of the same gender  How romantic attraction ruins things  The checklist for healthy male-female friendship  How gender is creating more divide The benefits of having friends who are different to you + much more  Listen now!   PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/general-clean Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. There are some episodes that I do just for me. You know, no one is really asked for them. I'm just super fascinated by the topic or it's just really showing up in my own life. And I feel like I can't move past it unless I do an episode on it, like that sort of thing.

So like the recent episodes that I've done on how to pursue your creative passion, that was one of those, as was the one on hobbies. and then there are the episodes that you all, the listeners, are almost begging me to do. And any time I ask for topic suggestions, anytime I ask people to guess what episode is coming next, overwhelmingly I get this response. Please talk about the psychology behind male, female friendships,

why they seem so rare, why they can be so hard, what makes them work, what makes them doesn't. And today, my friends, is the day that we talk about it because, you know, I have to give the people what they want. And I have to also give you all the psychological answers behind this big question. Can men and women be friends? I think the reason that it's taken me so long to do this episode is because I don't want

it to be like surface level so as not to offend anyone. I don't want to make general claims and like gloss over the facts and the research. I wanted to really go deep into this question of whether men and women can be friends, the age old when Harry met Sally trope. And in doing that, we are going to explore so much. We're going to explore how societal expectations around gender and friendship have changed over the past 60 years, what the key difference is between male to male and female to female friendships, non-binary and queer friendships, before really jumping into what makes male-female friendships

in particular so tricky, whether it is just romantic attraction or something deeper, like communication or expectations, but why also these kinds of friendships when they work are really important and really fulfilling. We'll also touch on what happens when one person gets feelings, how to reassert boundaries, and some stories from the listeners. I asked you guys to submit your opinions and your stories on this, good, bad and ugly about your experience with male-female friendships. One thing that I got out of all of those DMs is that there is not a general consensus when it comes to this question.

I definitely have my own opinion because I do have quite a few really close male friends that will always be platonic, but you all, the last. listeners, you also had opinions and there was not a single, you know, overarching, overwhelming answer. So we're really going to dive into some of the fascinating studies done on this in social psychology, debunk some of the misconceptions, but also provide a bit of a checklist for what makes male female friendships work. If you can't already tell, you are in for a treat and a big discussion. So I hope you are strapped in. I hope you are excited to learn. or perhaps to maybe confirm something that you already did know.

But without further ado, let us talk about the psychology of male-female friendships. I want you to do a quick exercise for me right now. How many friends do you have that are the same gender as you? I want you to keep counting until you reach maybe maximum of 15. Now, how many friends do you have of the opposite gender? They can't be partners of friends. That's a big one. They can't be related to you.

They can't be people that you have previously been romantically involved with. Chances are that the second number is much smaller than the first. For most of us, our friendship preferences do tend to be skewed towards people of the same gender because there is a lived experience there that we share, but also we've been socialized by society in the same way. So we are more likely to enjoy the same activities, like the same things, have similar language and a way of communicating. And research really does show that people often form friendships with those of a similar age, religion, education, occupation, and also gender. With some exceptions, of course, one study did find that younger gay and bisexual men are more likely to have cross-gender friendships while lesbian women are not. they're more likely to have more female friends.

I think it's also worth noting that not a lot, actually very little of this research has been done on this population and very little has been done on non-binary people as well. So that is a big research gap. If anyone needs a PhD topic or a thesis idea, non-binary friendship preferences by gender or something like that, would be very interesting. But as a general rule, women tend to be friends with more women

and they express greater closeness to their female friends, and the same goes for men. There are a few reasons for this, some of which we've already mentioned, but I think a large part of this gender divide is actually quite historical, and it's remnant of a time where male-female relations could not be platonic. You were either courting, married, or family, and even then, there was still a great deal of separation. We had male quarters, female quarters as an example. A woman couldn't be alone with a man who was not family or her husband. That's still the case in some parts of the world.

So that makes it kind of hard to be friends with someone of the opposite gender, doesn't it? It's not very likely. We can also trace this general pattern back to potentially things like the division of labour, so men historically went out hunting, women participated in. in child rearing and, you know, women only recently, and by recently, I mean in the last 100 years, entered the workplace where they actually had a chance to make friends with men and had a chance to exit the home. That's only like three to four generations of progress. So this long historical division has also, like I mentioned before, changed how men and women were socialized

or conditioned, basically just a fancy word for how we were raised and the values and personalities that were instilled in us. Women are typically seen as more vulnerable than more feeling, giving, nurturing, that is the traditional consensus, whereas men have been seen as more adventurous, tough, less emotional. So that has dictated how they relate and interact with those of their own gender. So let me explain this a little bit first. So there was this really cool research study done at Duke University in 2016, and it wanted to see the difference within female-female friendships and male-male friendships. It found that women, we tend to lean into self-disclosure when hanging out.

So when we, you know, catch up with our friends, we're more likely to tell them about things that have happened in our life that have hurt us or excited us or that have caused us to be angry or sad, whatever it is, we're more likely to be vulnerable. Whilst men, when they get together, they often do a shared activity, or they're helping each other with a project or a task. I have seen this with my own boyfriend, where he prefers to play three hours of video games with his friends, whereas me and my girlfriends will go out for like a three-hour dinner and a three-hour chat.

And after he has seen his friends, it's like very typical. He's going out for a beer, they've gone to the beach. I'll be like, oh yeah, so like how is so-and-so's girlfriend like what's happening there like are they still together she's so nice i really like her like what's happening and he'll be like i don't know we didn't talk about it or i'll be like oh you know your friend how is his terrible job going like has he been able to find a new job i don't know again we didn't talk about it and it leaves me so confused because i'm like what else are you meant to talk about other than each other's lives like that's what a friend is for but obviously that's not

really the case for him and like he has a preference or maybe a conditioned preference towards more of a hangout than a catch-up. So there was another 2017 study done on this from none other than Robin Dunbar. You may know him from Dunbar's number, which basically tells us how many friends we should or could have at a particular time. But he does a lot of research on like, he's a social psychologist. So a lot of his research is on how we interact, how we learn each other's behaviors, how we hang out, how we talk, how we gossip, all those things, how relationships are formed. And his research from 2017 found that women also tend to prefer to socialize one-on-one whilst men prefer to socialize in groups. Again, I see that

reflected in my own experiences. What's also different between women, women friendships and male-male friendships is that women tend to have higher expectations of their friends and they express greater disappointment upset at last minute cancellations of plans not seeing their friends for a while that sort of thing whereas men are kind of okay with their friends having agency even if it doesn't match what they want from them one final big thing that i found really really interesting and then i promise i'll i'll stop but women are more likely to have a best friend compared to men which again, checks out. So for a long time, friendships exhibited something we call gender homophily. Women were only friends with women, men are only friends with men. That has changed a lot recently.

I want to explore how that shift took place. So the big factors trace back to society just becoming gradually more liberal, women entering the workforce more after World War I and World War II, the rise in co-ed schools and just more rights for women in general to exist in the in the public sphere rather than just at home so there was just more opportunities for exposure and for meeting and for friendship making but this really you know takes us back to this big million dollar question for all this progress for all the male-female friendships that we do see can men and women ever actually be friends without romantic attraction getting in the way, despite all of the progress,

does romance still always find a way in? So I wanted to hear from you all, the listeners, before I reveal what the psychology says so far, and I asked you all over on Instagram, give me your perspective, what do you think, what have you seen happen in your own life? And the answers, your responses, they were split perfectly 50-50,

right down the line, right down the middle, And also, no one who DM'd me had a neutral opinion. What I mean to say by that is that no one was messaging me saying, oh yeah, sometimes, yeah, sometimes no. It was either some of my best friends are men or women or the opposite gender, and I trust them and I love them more than anyone else, or this always ends in disaster. Stay away.

For example, I heard from one woman who said, her closest friends are all men, she has deep trust for them, they've known each other for almost a decade. And she was also in their wedding parties. I got a similar message from a guy who said he had recently emceived one of his female best friends weddings, how he will eventually include his female friends as part of his groomsmen. How he, and this was actually a really refreshing message.

He was like, my female friends have changed my worldview compared to some of my other mates. You know, like I see the world and I see life differently, which I was like, can't. This is actually quite beautiful. And that was reflected in another message from someone who was like my male friends have taught me what it means to be considerate and caring for someone in an unconditional way, which how beautiful is that? I also did get a few messages of like, men are just easier to deal with compared to women, which yeah, I'm sure that's the case for some people. I don't find that to be the case. Like, I think it's just different, but that was a common message. I also got. And then the other side of the coin, the DMs about male-female friendships that were

destroyed by someone catching feelings by deep betrayal in some cases trauma and hurt, jealousy and unrequited love, all very common. A surprising insight was that a lot of the DMs from women who had male friends actually said most of their male friends were gay or queer, which kind of supports the common argument, the male-female heterosexual friendships. They don't work because of sexual attraction, but when you take out that element, it can flourish. All of that aside, we are going to take a quick break and when we return, I want to talk about what makes male-female friendships so hard, why they fail, but also how to set boundaries, how to approach the friend zone and perhaps keep the friendship and so much more, so stay with us.

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In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Gillespie and Michael Marantini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until Justice. served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we're going to talk about the romance, the lust, the feelings, the Harry Met Sally situation, which is a great movie. I actually showed my boyfriend that movie the other day, and that's really, like, as

research, and we had a really interesting discussion about it. But firstly, I want to touch on some of the other reasons, less known, less thought of reasons, why male-female friendships may be a bit harder. The big first one is gender differences in emotional expression and communication styles. Try as we might. Men and women do emote differently and they have been socialized to show vulnerability, compassion, empathy in different ways. For men, empathy is often seen as a sign of weakness.

For women, it's a sign of kindness, a good soul. It's a strength. So when you combine these reactions when you put them together, sometimes there can be this divide between what either party wants and what the other party gives. So I will say one of my closest friends, Jack, he's a guy and I've never experienced this with him. In fact, I think sometimes he's more sympathetic than some of my female friends. But I have seen this in other instances where a male friend is like, you know, they're there, like don't cry. child, and I can see that he's really struggling because he's never had to practice this skill. And so that does make it difficult if time and time again you realize that going to this person

for emotional comfort isn't necessarily going to give you what you want. There was a DM I received from one person that matches this assumption. She said, I don't feel as comfortable around men. They don't show empathy. They have no idea what struggles. Women often have to face. I don't relate to them and I don't feel validated, which might be what some people feel

and they just tend to find more support in people who get their lived experiences. And gender does influence how we experience the world. The second difficulty comes down to jealousy and insecurity from partners. And I think this is the problem with assuming all male-female friendships automatically have an underlying level of sexual attraction, it can ruin the friendship in other ways.

It's the assumption that they do that ruins them, i.e., you know, when the boyfriend or the girlfriend or the partner of your friend feels insecure or jealous of your platonic bond, or they have a low, you know, residing level of competition. It's like a form of platonic retroactive jealousy almost and doubt. Even if there isn't no, there is no sexual attraction there. Some people do worry about emotional cheating. And they do see platonic friends of the opposite gender as a threat in that way. Like, why do you need to have female friends now that you have me?

Why do you need male friends when you have me as if, you know, gender is the only thing that defines the bond? I received a message from someone who said that she had been friends with her guy friends for over a decade. However, when they started getting into relationships, they stopped talking to her. her and now they have no relationship at all and I think the assumption there is that their girlfriends probably maybe weren't comfortable with them having such a close female friend. One woman said, and this actually shocked me when I got this, she said, my male best friend's ex used to accuse me of hit and running her car so that I would get in trouble with him. Like when I read that message, I was like, oh my God, like the image of that, like this woman showing up and like somehow

finding a way to dent her car to blame this friend of her of her partner is just ridiculous and I honestly think that does indicate already a general insecurity or lack of trust that is goes far beyond a male female friendship but for some people they just can't understand again why you need friends of the opposite gender when you have a partner I'm going to say this and I don't like to make hot takes like this, but I don't think that's particularly socially intelligent to have that assumption. But I also respect that if you've been burned by past experiences, maybe this does feel like a natural protective reaction. Like I don't want to be hurt again. This is a past, you know, a past situation that has hurt me. So I'm going to have boundaries and rules for myself,

which if it works for you, it works for you. I do just think that it's nuanced and it's case by case. it is something I used to be very aware of in my male friendships because, you know, I didn't want to come off as threatening. I didn't want to come off as like someone anyone had to be worried about. But as I've gotten older, you know, I've expected more maturity from people. Like, I've known this person for eight years. Of course, if either of us had any kind of feeling, we would have figured it out by now. Like, you're okay. Like, I do really think that as you get older, it gets easier as well because you're like, yeah, again, if it was going to happen, it would have happened.

so we're in the clear. But if you do believe male-female friendships always end with someone getting feelings, it is a hard intuition to move past. So let's talk about it now. Let's finally get to this point. I want to talk about one study in particular from 2012 published in Scientific America. So for this study, they wanted to see male-female friendships, possible, not possible. What is the threat of sexual attraction?

So they brought in 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite sex friends into a science lab, and they separated them. But before they did, they made both friends promise verbally in front of each other that they weren't going to talk about the study with each other afterwards. Anything said in the separate rooms would be private. Have a guess what they asked them. Well, they took them into separate rooms and they said, all right, this friend that you brought today,

would you ever consider dating this person? Have you ever felt attracted to this person? Would you like your future partner to have qualities like your friend? Do you want to ask them out? Do you think they feel the same way about you? That your feelings are reciprocated? Here is what the results said. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa.

So they were more likely to say, yeah, I think she's really hot. I would date her. they were also more likely than the women to think that their opposite sex friend was attracted to them, even when it wasn't the case. So a lot of the men were saying, I have feelings for her, I think she's attractive, and I think she feels the same about me. And really that had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt. Most of the men would just say it in general.

There was no pattern. Like it wasn't like they were picking up on cues. They just assumed romantic attraction, and they assumed that it was mutual. Women, though, they were also a little bit blind, and they were blind to the mindset of their opposite sex friend. So some of them were attracted to their male friends. Most of them, though, weren't. And when they were, they didn't assume that their attraction was mutual.

So they weren't being like, oh yeah, he would totally. date me. They were a bit more cautious. They were also more sensitive to their male friend's relationship status. They were more likely to say that they were uninterested in pursuing their friend because they were already involved with someone else. Men just didn't really seem to care. Basically, the age-old wisdom may be true, but it's not women who struggle with being just friends. it's the men, which is perhaps why the friend zone often is filled with a lot of guys and not so many women. Now, before we jump to conclusions, I really want to say a lot of people do and will look at this study and be like, well, there you go. That's it.

It proves it. It's impossible. Men and women can't be friends. It's in the science. That's simply not true. Not every person or every man or every woman in this study. answered the exact same way. There were male participants

who did see their friends completely platonically and as did their female friend. So one thing we need to understand about any kind of psychological research, no one study is going to prove something. And it's definitely not going to give you a result with 100% significance. And the same is to be said about this study.

We cannot take those findings and apply them to everyone, also because there were only 88 people involved. So only 44 groups of friends. I also think that if attraction was the only issue, lesbians wouldn't be able to be friends with straight women, yet they are. Gay men wouldn't be able to be friends with straight men. Bisexual individuals wouldn't be able to be friends with anyone. And that's obviously not true. Just because you may think someone is attractive, it doesn't mean that you'll necessarily act on it. We do have self-control, so we want to take a

nuanced approach to these findings. But it does really lead me to my next point. What does it take for men and women to be friends? Is there a bit of a checklist or common factors that unite successful platonic male-female friendships in some way? Well, I want to find out and report back my findings. And this was the kind of checklist that I came up with. The checklist for a successful male, female friendship. Number one, I think neither party can be secretly attracted to the other because this creates a pining, unrequited love situation where someone is bound to be hurt whilst, you know, either they're waiting for the other person's feelings to change or they're also waiting for the feeling to go away. Like when you're in that situation, in that emotional limbo, you are just going to be

repeatedly hurt, I think. And you're going to have expectations for the relationship that aren't the expectations that you would have for a purely platonic friend. The other thing about unrequited love is that it makes it really hard to walk away, even when you know you should because the possibility of the what if or your hypothetical feeling about the situation feels so real. Like you are waiting for things to change when it might not and it probably won't. If you cross that line as well, if you do have sex or if you do say, I really feel for you, I want to date you. It can be hard to come back from.

It is very difficult, and I want everyone to hear this, it is very difficult to come back from being friends with benefits to just friends unless it is purely transactional. but of course it never is because you're friends you know you already had a prior emotional bond so you obviously at least in a slim sense like them you've kept up a friendship with them so you can't kid yourself and say it's just sex it's just physical because you know the feeling most likely originated from a more mental place one of kinship friendship mutual respect liking like you were friends for a reason and that blossomed into it. sexual attraction. Now it's more than just that. You know, it's two things combined. Think about all the

movies that have been made about this, all the storylines in television shows like friends, like the office, like parks and recreation. I could literally name dozens. They all have a predictable ending. Either they end up together, which is the best case scenario or the friendship disintegrates because it can't remain in that ambiguous whatever we are zone forever. And when you have to be, to either move on or commit. What if both people aren't on the same page? One of you wants to move on. One of you wants to commit. The friendship's done. So yes, no attraction, definitely no sex. Second, a successful male-female friendship or any friendship for that matter needs to be respectful, gender aside. And honestly, that's what I really heard from a lot of women who damned me.

it was that their male friendships ended because of a lack of respect and a failure to learn or understand their perspective. So there has to be respect for each other's opinions, perspectives and individuality. And I'm going to say it again, like any friendship can end from a lack of respect. But since men and women have been socialized to show respect differently, I think it can be a learning process for some people.

And so, yeah, again, gender aside, you need this. And kind of links to the next thing, which is emotional safety. You have to feel emotionally supported and safe in confiding in them. And if you're perhaps a woman who has previously had bad experiences with male behavior, that emotional safety can be hard and that can make male friendships difficult following a betrayal. With that, we also need mutual trust as well and equality in the friendship. So both parties are putting in effort, both are putting in attention, time, that can be difficult because as we discussed before,

differing expectations between men and women when it comes to friendship can cause this to become a source of friction. And finally, I think for male-female friendships to be successful, there has to be an absence of jealousy, particularly around others' romantic relationships. So partners of these people cannot be jealous, people within the friendship cannot be jealous of the partners. And I think that jealousy in this case, like when a guy gets a girlfriend and suddenly, you know, his female friend gets quite upset and distressed, that reaction is really just a proxy, again, for romantic interest.

So it links back to that big umbrella point. You can't be attracted to each other. Basically, I think a lot of these points go beyond gender. If they're a good person, they'll be a good friend. And I don't think, at least I hope those aren't hard criteria to meet. and in all honesty I think it's really worth finding friends of the opposite gender that you can trust and care about and vice versa. Obviously it's not a necessity for some of us, but if you can get it right, it is really rewarding because you do see a whole new perspective.

You may even see the world differently. I also had one message from someone who was a woman and she has autism and she says, you know, being around men allowed me to finally learn how. how people interact because they're so much more straightforward. So I learned a lot of social skills from them. Men may also experience less judgment and more validation and emotional safety with their female friends. So we are getting things from the other person's perspective.

Even if it does look different to how you would hang out with friends of the same gender, i.e. it's more activity based or it's coffee and a chat rather than playing soccer or whatever. I think everyone does bring something new based on themselves as individuals and gender is a facet of who we are. So bringing a different perspective, whether you are male, female, non-binary, like that is important and allows people to see things differently. I will admit, for many, a lot of the comments I received said it is becoming harder because of how gender has been weaponised in politics and in our circumstances. society recently. It does feel like there is a bigger social and psychological divide between men and women. So this amazing article from Vox actually interviewed people about this after the US election and found that there is a lot of social momentum pushing men and women apart, you know, from

reproductive rights to which parties young men versus young women choose to vote for, how social media has become more intense and pushed men into these weird corners of the internet that nobody, quite frankly, needs to be in. Like, it has made it harder to see eye to eye. And I get it. If you're in the US and you're a woman whose basic reproductive rights have been squashed and you have a male friend who just doesn't really seem to get it or doesn't really seem to care how serious this is, it can take a toll. You don't feel seen. And that's not good for any friendship but furthermore the difference has become more apparent because of you know how society is currently being i don't know how it's being manipulated and how it's different from how it was before

it's harder to overlook and i think a lot of resentment can also arise but i also don't want to see us go back to pre-1950s or 1960s when male-female friendship was even more rare and strange and I think that will occur if we continue to believe that men and women can't be friends, if we continue to suggest that there is always romantic sexual attraction. And I think that just stretches the divide further and it means that we are less able to learn from each other. But I'd also love to hear your opinions as well because I do believe men and women can be friends if there is no sexual attraction. And I do think that there are a lot of situations where that isn't the case.

And I also think that it's possible to have really respectful male-female friendships that are reciprocal, that are, you know, work for both people, where there is emotional validation and emotional safety and listening. All those things are possible. I do want to hear your opinions, though. I would also really love to see more research on non-binary, bisexual, transgender friendship preferences, because I think that could just give us such an amazing insight and more. more knowledge about why we do see a divide between genders when it comes to friendships. And I think it could also undo so many assumptions about, you know, attraction, friendship, preferences, lifestyle, like dating, jealousy, all those things. So if anyone needs a fun research project, you can have that one.

That one is for you. Please do it. Report back your findings. I would love to hear about it. But just to summarize, again, I think male, female friendships are possible, but they don't come without difficulty. Some of the difficulties are attraction. They are that men and women have been socialized differently. They are a difference in lived experiences that can create a divide. But if there is respect, if there is, you know,

no interest in a romantic partnership, if there is emotional safety, mutual trust, an ability to listen to each other, I think it's beyond possible. And you can, learn so much. You can learn so much. It always reminds me of those like videos that I used to watch on YouTube back on the day of like questions women want to ask men or the biggest questions girls have for guys answered. And I think that like when you have friends of all genders, either gender of just a variety of people, your worldview is more expansive. So yeah, that's what I hope for at least. Thank you again for listening to this episode. If you have feedback, thoughts, questions, please drop a comment below. I would love to hear from you. If you have made it this far,

what's the emoji I'm going to choose today? I'm going to choose the little friend emoji, like the two people holding hands. So if you've made it this far, drop that below. So I can say hi and I can see who are the true listeners, who are the loyal listeners. If you want to suggest an episode, this episode was very hugely massively suggested and that's why I did it. So I do obviously cave into public pressure. You can DM me on Instagram at that psychology podcast. Just make sure that you're following along there as well to get episode summaries to see what's coming up next, to vote on future episodes and give stories like the ones that were provided

here. Make sure you're following along. Give us a five-star review. And until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself above all else. And we will talk very, very soon. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Keir Games.

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