Friendships with Men, Jokes about Men, and Spiderwebs for Catching Men
By: The Hairpin
Tags: Advice, This Is A Safe Space, Ask A Dude

by A Dude

How would you describe your friendships with other men, and do you wish they were different?

Hah! Ugh. This is a timely question, because I am currently making a concerted effort to develop more male friendships. Not an easy thing for me! I’m not really sure why that is? I mean, I have theories. Among them: men are mostly terrible. The only thing worse than a man is a group of men. I should know! I am a man, and I’ve been a man in a group of men, and I’m sure I’ve been a terrible man in a group of terrible men. It happens! Anyway, the point is — I have a difficult time relating to other men. That is not to say that I am not close with any men at all — just the opposite, in fact. But I’ve had a much easier time befriending women than men.

(If I want to be more cynical in my self-analysis, it could even be suggested that I’ve found more validation from the attention of women than from the attention of men — and, frankly, as a tall, good-looking, apparently pleasant person, that attention has usually been pretty forthcoming. I’M A MONSTER, LOL. It’s fine, though. I’ll get my comeuppance when I’m old and fat and nobody will flirt with me anymore.)

So, okay. Most of my friendships have developed, I think, in one of two ways: some friendships are born of experience and some are born of conversation. Basically. I think. In Friendships of Experience, you come to know someone through sharing the process of accomplishing or enduring some external thing — you know them through their actions and reactions to the thing, rather than, necessarily, their feelings about the thing. Friendships of Conversation, though — if they are to become heartfelt and serious — require a much more willful vulnerability. You have to chose to reveal something of yourself to another person, rather than have it revealed through circumstance.

In my experience, these two different ways of getting to know people seem to track along gendered lines. (Haha, how much am I hedging right now? “In my experience.” “Seem to be.” THIS IS A SAFE SPACE, RIGHT?? SMH. Just come out and say it, man.)

Right, so, my best dude friend is a guy who I went to college with — we drank together, lived together, played sports together. Our girlfriends were best friends and we went through the post-college break-ups together. Now we’re both writers, living in different cities, and we talk on the phone every couple weeks. Sometimes we even talk about our feelings! With him though, we generally only talk about our feelings when it’s, like, an emergency.

My best women friends, meanwhile, have all been people with whom I was pretty emotionally honest from a very early stage. We talked about our feelings, which was much easier for me to do with women than it was with men. Like I said, though, I don’t really know why? I mean, part of it is probably an internalized expectation that women are more willing and able to take on emotional labor like that. But then again, that may do a disservice to the mutuality of my friendships with these women! For whom I am, regardless, truly grateful.

It may also be worth noting that, for me, drinking was for a long time an essential component of male friendships and probably made up a good percentage of the “shared experiences” (hmm) of those friendships. When I stopped drinking, it became a lot more difficult to find ways to relate to other men. I think to go on about it at any length might just obscure the issue for anyone who isn’t in recovery, but this process has largely been one of learning how I relate to people — or don’t — and why I relate to them that way — or don’t — but I think it is relevant in that it has revealed, to me, the necessity of a willingness to be vulnerable in truly adult friendships, and the relative difficulty that presents with respect to my relationships with men and with women. So, take all of that for what you will.

Anyway, the sooner I allow myself to be forthcoming and forthright with other men about my emotional experiences, the sooner, I think, I will feel a little bit more at home in the world, generally, and a little more comfortable around other men, specifically. The prospect of this is abjectly terrifying.

How do you feel about misandry jokes?

Well, as we’ve established, men are terrible. And if someone’s feelings are hurt by jokes about men being horrible monsters, they should probably try — just try! — to unpack why that may be the case? Rather than, you know, lashing out. I mean, a good habit for everyone — but especially (ESPECIALLY) men — to practice is, like, if a tweet is making you upset, maybe try to figure out why whatever the tweet is about is a sensitive subject for you, rather than screaming like an overtired baby at that woman you don’t actually know. Just a suggestion! Also: it’s just a tweet, bro!

(Misandry and misandrist jokes of course extend beyond Twitter/The Internet but I feel like that their salience in that realm is probably what this question is about? I apologize if I am misinterpreting.)

Now, that having been said, I also need to be particularly careful with my own reaction to misandry jokes — and, more broadly, misandrist jokes — precisely because I feel like “I get it,” like I’m in on the joke. Because like, okay, yeah, sure, maybe I am, but that feeling can very easily translate into, “I get it and we’re on the same team and now I’m butting into this conversation because I want to be validated for ‘getting it.’” Which is its own kind of inappropriate!

There have definitely been times when I’ve thoughtlessly indulged that impulse and been reprimanded or received a snarky response in return and been oh so very offended and hurt until I took the time to realize, “Dude, you’re just being kind of silly and obnoxious, and it’s fine, but like, maybe save that one to drafts next time?” Again: it happens. And there is, as we know, never any downside to Not Tweeting.

I am a messy person. An extremely messy person. If there’s someone else to consider, I’ll make the effort, but since I live alone, my apartment looks pretty much like the inside of a sock drawer except with way more hair and spiders. (Once I let a spider hang out in the doorway to my kitchen for many months, because it took care of my ant problem, but left a giant ant graveyard mere feet away from my bed.) I don’t mind mess, I’ve accepted messiness as part of my character and normally I’m only mildly embarrassed about it. The only time I ever feel ashamed is when I have company, specifically sexual/romantic company. I can clean up a little, but not so much that it hides how essentially messy I am, and while the stereotype is that men are way messier than women, most women are not as messy as I am. My strategy so far has been to apologize profusely and serve a strong drink as quickly as possible, but I am a grown-ass woman dating increasingly grown-ass people and I guess my question is — how long, and how much, can I get away with this?

Ehh. I mean. I personally am not trying to date somebody whose roommate is a spider? But like, that’s just me? And I especially I do not think you should necessarily change the way that you live in order to trap a person in a web of your own making. (Women! They’re like spiders.) (LOL, KIDDING.)

Seriously, any lifestyle change that you make has to be for your own sake, otherwise you will just resent the heck out of whoever comes along and for whom you feel like you need to maintain the charade. Be who you are! If that means you are messy, be messy! Someone will love you for it, I promise.

You say you have “accepted messiness as part of [your] character” and are normally only “mildly embarrassed about it.” And I am sure that’s true! But also you feel like you are getting away with something. I think that that is not actually such a good feeling? At least, not in the long-run. Getting away with something is gratifying, so far as it goes, but in my experience it doesn’t end up going very far. I want to do an analogy about WonderBread and a nice baguette, but for whatever reason the words are escaping me oh well.

The reality is you can “get away” with whatever you want for as long as you want to. But! The trouble I have found is that when I have felt like I was getting away with something, and I kept getting away with it, it stopped feeling good a lot sooner than I would have anticipated. So generally, now, when I feel like I’m getting away with something, I try to figure out whatever more difficult thing (“Difficult” here being a relative term — is it really so difficult to put my clothes away after I do laundry? No, it’s not. And yet…) I could be doing something instead that might actually be more gratifying in the long run.

I mean, personally, I’m like, not exactly clean, but I’m not exactly messy, either. I guess I’m like, aspirationally tidy? I am in a constant state of trying and failing to be neat and orderly. Maybe eventually something will click over and I will be the tidy person my mother always wanted me to be, but for now I will continue to oscillate.

All of which is to say, being a grown-ass person is a lot of freaking work but may actually be worth it in the long run? Maybe? MAYBE??? Ugh.

A Dude is one of several rotating dudes who know everything. Do you have any questions for A Dude? Email notes@thehairpin.com (300 word max, please.)