Situationship to Soulmate
This podcast is for YOU if: You're feeling stuck in the cycle of hurtful and harmful dating and intimacy experiences. If you feel like no matter how hard you try, you just can't stop making the same mistakes over and over again in your romantic relationships. If you are over "hookup culture" and "situationships", but seem to still attract people who can only give you that level of commitment. If all the people you date and sleep with have one thing in common: they inevitably leave you feeling hurt, confused, and betrayed.
Situationship to Soulmate
Can Men and Women be "Just Friends"? Challenging Stereotypes About Gender and Friendships
In this episode I'm tackling the popular and often controversial topic of men and women being "just friends." You've heard the idea that it's a "red flag" if he has a "girl best friend" or if he has a lot of female friendships. But is that idea actually based in reality or in your own insecurities or lack of trust in your relationship?
I share how I navigated through my own insecurities and doubts when I started dating my boyfriend, who has many platonic friendships with women. This involved challenging the societal norms and notions that men are unable to view women as anything other than sexual or romantic prospects. We'll also explore the realms of platonic friendships between men and women, emphasizing the importance of trust both in your relationship and also trust in your intuition. We will candidly delve into how our past experiences can influence the way we perceive friendship, and discuss the heteronormative and gender-focused aspects of these ideas. So, buckle up, and let's bust these myths together, as we try to navigate the convoluted world of gender stereotypes, toxic masculinity, relationships, and friendships.
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Welcome to the Situation Ship to Soulmate podcast, your guide to navigating the complicated world of dating and sex in your 20s. I'm your host, shelly content creator, mental health counseling graduate student and a trained sex and relationship coach. After going through a lot of traumatic, unhealthy and toxic experiences throughout my 20s, I'm finally ready to use what I've learned over the years to help those of you who are still experiencing it. I went from situationships, bad hookups and settling for less than I deserved to finding my soulmate, all within one year. Let's help you get there too.
Speaker 1:Is it a red flag if he has a lot of women friends or if his best friend is a woman? I see videos talking about this on TikTok all the time, and I feel like TikTok in general has a lot of very black and white thinking and almost toxic, in my opinion, thinking around relationships and dating. I think people like to talk in extremes or in absolutes, which makes sense because that kind of stuff is what typically catches people's attention, but I don't necessarily agree with a lot of it, and one of the sentiments that I see floating around TikTok a lot that I don't really agree with is this idea that it's a red flag if a man, particularly a man who you are interested in dating, is friends with a lot of women or has a girl best friend, quote unquote. Now don't get me wrong. I get it. I understand why people have that view, and I myself had that view for a very long time. For many years I was convinced that men and women just couldn't be platonic friends, because I had never experienced it myself. I still struggle with that to this day. I still sometimes feel almost angry or resentful towards people who do have strong friendships with a man if they're a woman, particularly if both are cisgendered, straight men and women.
Speaker 1:I have had a lot of really negative, toxic, manipulative and at times traumatic experiences with men, some of whom were men, who I thought were my friend or men who I just wanted to be friends with. So I totally understand this idea of thinking that men are just not capable of being just friends with women, especially if you've experienced that firsthand. But something that has been really healing for me personally has been realizing that maybe the problem was not that men in general are not able to be friends with women. Maybe the problem was that I was trying to be friends with men who were just toxic, manipulative, messed up people in general.
Speaker 1:My boyfriend has a lot of women friends and he always has or not always but he has had close female friendships since college and when we first started dating. I will be honest and say it was difficult for me At first and my mind just automatically went to that place of like has he ever had feelings for any of these women? Have they ever had feelings for him? It was difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea of a man having all of these truly platonic friendships. He has literally never been interested in dating or dated or hooked up with or been interested in hooking up with or even felt attracted to any of his female friends, because he is just a good human being who's able to not sexualize every single woman that he comes across. But, like I said, when we first started dating, I struggled with that a lot and I will be honest and say like there have been multiple times where I have gotten really insecure or jealous or just questioned his relationships with his female friends, completely unwarranted, just based off of like again, like TikTok videos that I saw, where it was like if he has female friends like blah blah, that's a red flag. Or based off of experiences that I'd had where I thought I was friends with a guy and then it turned out that he had feelings for me or he ended up being creepy with me or whatever.
Speaker 1:So something that I've had to learn throughout my relationship is that there are men out there who are able to have completely platonic friendships with women, and there is nothing wrong with a man having female friends. It's actually more of a red flag, in my opinion, if a man is unable to have friendships with women because he just automatically sees any woman as a potential sexual or romantic partner. Like, shouldn't that be more of a red flag if you're dating someone who just can't even be friends with women because he just only objectifies them? But I think that our society likes to put people in general into boxes, and we like to put men into the box of constantly horny, constantly looking for sex or constantly wanting sex, constantly being turned on, always being attracted to any woman that they see or that they spend time with. And that's obviously not actually the case, just like it's not the case that men and women are unable to be platonic friends. It's just a stereotype that our society has, just like we have stereotypes of a lot of other things around gender and sexuality and relationships. So let's talk about that kind of stereotype for a second.
Speaker 1:So, as a girl and woman, I feel like, from definitely at least middle school on, but it probably starts earlier You're basically told that you know, you're told things like oh, if a boy is mean to you or teases you, that means he likes you, that means he has a crush on you. Or, like you know, we're told certain things that we should or should not wear to school, for example, and if we wear something too revealing, like, that's going to be distracting to the boys. For those of you that don't know, I'm in a master's program right now. I'm in grad school for mental health counseling. I want to become a therapist and one of the classes that I'm taking right now is human growth and development, and so we're basically going through every stage of development for a child, and this week I learned about middle childhood is what they call it which is basically like elementary school, like seven, eight, nine year olds, and one of the things that we covered was the fact that, like gender norms, gender typing, as they called it gender stereotypes really start to like kids in that age range, start to become very aware of those kind of things. They start to become aware of, like, what kind of games or what kind of sports or what kind of activities boys usually do versus girls, or what, how boys dress or how girls dress, or, you know, different things.
Speaker 1:I feel like I remember back to elementary school when, you know, we would call a girl like a tomboy if she dressed a certain way or if she liked to run around and play games with the boys on the playground, whereas you were like a girly girl if you, you know, wore bows in your hair and if you wore a lot of pink or if you like to play with dolls. So, literally, from like the age of like eight or nine years old, we're starting to get these messages around what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl, which is a whole other topic we could obviously cover. But the reason I bring this up is because I think it just starts at such a young age where we're starting to get these messages around, like I said, what it means to be a boy, what it means to be a girl, but also like what, how boys and girls interact with each other and like the example I gave, like. I'm sure we've all heard that kind of phrase of like, oh, if he is mean to you, if he teases you, he has a crush on you, he likes you, like.
Speaker 1:So from a young age, as girls, we are basically taught that like, boys are going to have a crush on you and sometimes you need to do things to to make sure that you don't distract the boys, like with the dress codes which dress codes are bullshit. I could do a whole episode on that too. But like, we're basically told, boys are going to have a crush on you no matter what you do. Of course, we grew up to be women who think that every man that we come across might have a crush on us, or that every man that we want to date must have a crush on his female friends, because that's literally what we're told from a young age Men think about sex seven, every seven seconds of the day or whatever. I don't know if you guys ever heard that one. I feel like that was like a statistic that was thrown around when I was in high school. I don't know where that came from. I don't know if it's true or not. I just remember people saying that, like did you know that boys and men like think about sex every seven seconds? So again we're being told like men are constantly thinking about sex, men are constantly being distracted by women and what they're wearing. So that's kind of one aspect of, I think, why we as a society seem to still have this idea that men and women either can't be friends or at the very least, to kind of distrust or like be a little bit wary of a male female friendship. But I think there's other reasons too. The other, you know.
Speaker 1:Another example that I wanted to touch on was the fact that a lot of people do genuinely Start out as friends and then end up dating and married. My boyfriend and I started out as friends, you know, and so I think like that can make it confusing too, because people think, well, a lot of couples do start out as friends. So how do I tell the difference between, like, someone being in a true platonic friendship and someone being friends with with someone but Maybe secretly wanting to date them? I remembered that was a fear that I had with my first serious relationship. We started dating when I was in college and we started out as friends. We were friends for like almost all of college before we started dating. And so I remember I'm constantly having this fear of like, of when he had he had a few different female friends and I remember constantly thinking like what if he develops feelings for them? Because he and I started out as friends and neither of us had feelings for the other person and then we realized we wanted we actually did have feelings like years later and we decided we wanted to date.
Speaker 1:Like what, who's to say that that's not gonna happen with him with one of his other friends and, like I said, with my boyfriend now, like, especially the beginning of our relationship, I just had such a hard time believing and understanding that he had these long-term friendships with women where they had always been platonic, he had never had any interest in them, they had never had any interest in him and he never will have any interest in them and they never will have any interest in him. Like that concept just seemed so Foreign to me and I think part of it is like that idea of like. Well, what if he just wakes up one day and realizes that he has feelings for his friend? You know, and I think what it comes down to ultimately is trust. Trust in both your partner and in your relationship, like I know, with me and my boyfriend. Like I just I do like genuinely completely trust him when he tells me that he has never and will never have any feelings for any of those friends. And I also trust in our relationship and I trust in the fact that, like we have such a strong bond and we love each other so much, like I genuinely Just believe and know that, like he would never feel that way about anyone else and I would never feel that way about anyone else.
Speaker 1:And looking back on, like my first series relationship that I talked about a minute ago, for example, the relationship wasn't right at the end of the day, and I think that was why I was having these fears. At least part of why I was having these fears was because I think something Within me knew like something isn't right in this relationship, but I couldn't figure out what it was, and so I was like trying to pinpoint Reasons why it wasn't right, and so I would find things like oh well, maybe he has a crush on this female co-worker that he keeps talking about. You know, it was just my brain trying to find what was wrong with the relationship when really there wasn't anything necessarily like there wasn't like one thing that was wrong. We just weren't right for each other. And finally, I think the third kind of a reason why people have a hard time wrapping their head around male female friendships is because those of us who are women have I Mean, I think I think every woman, if not almost every woman has had some kind of negative experience with a man where she felt like he Took advantage of her or she felt harassed or she felt like he was, you know, being creepy, being weird.
Speaker 1:Like Every woman that I know has had some kind of experience like that with a man who they thought Was just their friend, or a man who they just wanted to be friends with, and even, a lot of times, a man who they had explicitly told, like I just want to be friends with you, and then that man turns around and Says something sexual to them or harasses them or, you know, tries to hook up with them, and it's like it gives us this idea and this, this fear that like, maybe it is true, maybe no man is able to view us as a friend because we've had these negative experiences that taught us, like men cannot control themselves or men just see you as an object, and with this I think it comes back to trust again, like I was talking about with trust in your relationship. I think you also have to have trust in the male race in general, which I know is really difficult. Trust me, I have been called an angry feminist on TikTok. I've made videos where men got mad at me, saying that I hate all men and blah, blah, and like, yeah, sometimes it feels really difficult for me to have faith and trust in men in general, or the majority of men in the world, because there are a lot of really shitty men out there, but, granted, there's also a lot of really shitty women, you know. So I think my point with this is to say, like just because you've had bad experiences with men, just because you've been hurt by men, does not mean that every single man is incapable of treating you with respect or that every single man is going to try to take advantage of you when you just want to be friends with him.
Speaker 1:So let's go back to kind of the first question or the main question that I'm posing with this episode, which is can men and women be platonic friends, specifically cisgendered men and women who are both straight or I guess this could apply to bisexual people as well Can they be friends? And I am saying yes, they can. But if you are feeling unsure of this, or if any of the different topics that I've brought up so far in this episode resonate with you, you might be wondering how do I know, like how do I know if a man that I'm interested in, a man that I've been on dates with, a man that I am dating, how do I know if he is able to be just friends with women, and how can I trust that his friendships with women are platonic, when I've had these bad experiences, or my friends have had bad experiences, or I see these videos on TikTok telling me that it's a red flag if he has female friends? I think really, the core question that you have to ask yourself is is this man someone who is able to view women as more than just a sexual object, or as more than just a potential sexual or a romantic partner? Is he, in general, respectful to women, able to, you know, have? Does he have good relationships with women as far as like his mom? How does he treat you and your friends If he's met your friends, like, how does he act around them? Does he seem to treat them like any other friend, or do you sense any sort of weirdness or like tension or awkwardness? And I think your gut will tell you the answer to this. Like, I think we kind of know deep down whether or not the person we're dating is the person who, like, only views women as objects, or if he is actually a really decent human being and he actually is probably someone who's able to have female friends and maybe we really don't need to be worrying about his female friends. Maybe that worry is really more of our anxiety talking, you know. So I think the only way to really answer this question is to take it on a case by case basis.
Speaker 1:And if you're dating someone and you feel yourself, you know, feeling kind of wary of some of his female friendships, I think you just really have to trust your gut and ask yourself is he someone that I really need to be worried about around this? Does he seem like someone who has been conditioned to believe that women are only sexual objects? And is he someone who doesn't seem to be able to separate the idea of women being sexual or romantic partners to him and women being just other human beings that are no different than his guy friends. And then obviously, trust. I feel like I've said trust a lot in this episode, but like, if you do feel good about where your relationship is, if you do feel good about where things are with this guy that you've been dating, then you kind of sometimes have to just tell your anxious voice to shut the hell up and be like you know what. I know I have a tendency to feel anxious about male female friendships, but I really feel in my gut like I don't have a reason to be anxious about this right now, so I'm going to choose to let it go.
Speaker 1:Now. You may be wondering what about the women? Like, we've talked a lot about men and men who are not able to be just friends with women, but there are also women who have a hard time being just friends with men. And maybe you are dating someone and you feel like he has a female friend who just is giving you bad vibes and your gut is telling you that maybe she is interested in him, maybe she has feelings for him. I feel like I see this a lot on TikTok as well, of people talking about, like women trying to steal their man or whatever.
Speaker 1:And with this I just my my two cents on this again, not to keep harping on this idea, but like it again comes back to trust, right? Because if you truly feel like your boyfriend or the guy that you're dating has a female friend who is interested in him, it basically comes back to like, do you trust him enough to not act on that? If she were to, you know, confess her feelings to him? Do you trust that he doesn't have feelings for her? Because if he really doesn't have feelings for her, then it shouldn't matter how she feels about him, you know. But on the other hand, I think you also deserve to have boundaries around, like if you really do feel uneasy about this friendship, you can talk to him and tell him like that you don't feel comfortable with him spending time with her one-on-one, for example.
Speaker 1:I just feel like in general, that doesn't tend to go well, especially if this is a friendship that has, especially if this is someone he's been friends with for a while. I think trying to control your partner's friendships is just never a good idea. So, again, what I would focus on instead is like, do I trust him? Do I trust that he is telling the truth when he tells me that he doesn't have any feelings for her? Do I trust that? Like if she were to make a move on him he would shut it down immediately? And if your gut is telling you that you don't trust him or you don't trust this situation, then I would follow your gut. But again, sometimes it's not our gut, sometimes it's just our anxiety.
Speaker 1:So my last piece of advice around this is really get to know yourself and your own triggers, because I know again for myself, I have had some really bad experiences around friendships with men and that is something that I have. You know I've talked about in therapy. I've tried to reflect on and work through. I've also talked about it with my partner to just let him know like, hey, sometimes when I feel this jealousy or this, this like uneasiness or anxiousness around you know you having female friends like it really is probably coming from me being triggered or thinking back on past experiences that I've had. You know. But I can also logically realize like those past experiences have no reflection on this relationship. So if you're someone who has had those bad experiences in the past, I want you to just Be open to both reflecting on that and really getting to know yourself better and getting to know what exactly is it about men and women being friends. That really what is the core of the issue for you? And then, if you are in a relationship, I would encourage you to talk about that with your partner so that they're just aware of both what you've been through but also what you feel like are the main triggers for you, so that they can help you and support you and give you reassurance and affirmation when you need it.
Speaker 1:And for me, what's really helped has been to actually start believing that, yes, men and women can be just friends. And just because I had these really shitty experiences in the past that made me believe that those kind of friendships were impossible, because I have had men take advantage of me, that does not mean that it is a black and white rule that, like no man is able to be friends with a woman, or no woman is able to be friends with a man, or if you are dating someone who has a female friend, she is always going to try to steal him from you. Those are not. That's not the reality, just because that happens in some situations, and that's not even the majority, if just because that's happened to you before, if that makes sense. So my overall verdict on can men and women be just friends? I say yes, they can. But I also say I have a lot of empathy for you if you struggle with this idea and I hope that me sharing some of my own personal struggles around it has helped you.
Speaker 1:I think it's very normal to feel these doubts and this confusion around this topic, especially because of how society has been basically training us to view boys and girls and men and women since we were kids. And the last thing I want to say about this before I wrap this episode up is I do realize that this topic is very heteronormative. It also is very focused on gender, you know, in the way that a lot of people for a long time viewed it, which was like there's girls and boys and women and men, and obviously we all know now that that is like those are not the only ways that people identify or view themselves. I think gender identity and sexual orientation, you know, are topics that I'm so happy people are talking about more now. I feel like there's more understanding around all of that now, and I think with that comes the realization that topics like what I talked about this episode seem kind of silly almost when you think about the fact that, like, not every man is romantically or sexually interested in women and vice versa, and not every person even identifies as either a man or a woman. So I think when we're talking about topics like this, it's almost assuming that a there are just two genders, which obviously I don't believe. So I just wanted to kind of make that disclaimer.
Speaker 1:But also it's kind of assuming, like men and women can't be friends because every man wants to hook up with every woman and that in and of itself is obviously very heteronormative, and assuming that everyone is straight or everyone is attracted to, you know, the opposite gender, when we now know there are not just two genders and I don't know. I hope this is making sense. I just wanted to kind of acknowledge that because I realized as I was recording this episode, like I don't want it to seem like I am supporting like these, like kind of heteronormative views on the world. But as a cisgender, straight woman, I do talk on this podcast like from my own personal experiences, and so if it ever seems like I am, you know, focusing on men and women as, like, the only two genders, or if it seems like I'm focusing on, like women dating men and men dating women, and that's it. I just want to say that that is not my intent, but, again, I do just come from like my own experience and my own worldview, which is from a you know this gendered woman who is straight.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, with all of that being said, I hope you did enjoy this episode, I hope you got something out of it and I would love to hear from you. I am very curious to hear what your thoughts are on this topic. If you have any questions or need any advice from me on this topic or really any topic and, yeah, I always would love to hear from you and I'd love to hear if you have any requests for topics for me to cover on this podcast. So, yeah, thank you for listening and I will talk to you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Situation Shift to Soulmate podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone you think would enjoy it, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast so it can reach other people who need it. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Situation Shift to Soulmate and feel free to shoot me an email at situationshiptosoulmate at gmailcom. See you next time.
