Going for a beer/coffee with members of the opposite sex

Where did you meet your male friends (I’m assuming you have some of those?) That’s where you’d meet them.

I’m not sure if we’re trying to make the wrong point with you here, as I wouldn’t necessarily expect you to make friends with people you meet in the way you describe there. But then if you have male friends then I can’t see why you couldn’t meet women in the same way and you seem insistent that you find it impossible to imagine making female friends.

If FB friends count, then I actually have a few females who are 20 years younger than me (a couple who are almost 30 years younger, which does start to feel a bit weird, but no more weird than the lad who I think is my youngest FB friend) – and on the level at which I have friends I would consider them to be, so I’m not sure why that should be an issue. I’m fairly sure all of the friend requests came from them as I tend to be a bit awkward about that.

I struggle with long sentences.

In which post does he try and put his eclair in her doughnut?

Edit – love the auto correct to ‘Struggle with long sentences’ thanks mods. 😆

Most of my current friends i met through motorbike racing and motorbike forums. The racing paddock is very closely knit and riding and crashing in the same dangerous circumstances often bring a very close bond.

I don’t do FB. I don’t have an account. Nor a great desire to have one.

Like others have said. This is a very depressing (yet fascinating) read.

I don’t do FB. I don’t have an account. Nor a great desire to have one.

No don’t. I’m two weeks into getting rid of mine and not missing it. Interestingly, a friend of mine sent me a message which invoked a conversation last night about trying to get me back on it. She fails to comprehend how I don’t need to know the business of hundreds of people I don’t really know.

Hmm – things that I can remember talking about this week:

Why my brain still struggles to understand Dependency Injection
How a 12k service on my motorbike could possibly be £250
Going to Seville on Friday by motorbike
What on Earth I’m going to say in the talk I’m giving at the tech conference in Seville
What on Earth I’m going to say in the talk I’m giving at the tech conference in Yorkshire on my return

Looks like 4-out-of-5 of your list are how you’re struggling with subjects you don’t understand… My advise would be to stick to girly subjects like nasty blokes and diets… 😉

Regularly meet up with lady friends for a drink, be it tea, coffee, wine or beer, just as my other half regularly meets up with gentlemen friends. I don’t see a problem with it, unless you think your other half is untrustworthy (and vice-versa).

Most of the lady friends I meet up with are from one of two categories, they’re either old friends from a long time back or they’re students that I coach. In the former category, if sleeping with each other was ever on the cards, it happened back then when we were single – if it hasn’t happened by now, it’s probably never going to. In the latter category, if any of them ever came on to me, the first thing I would do is laugh and point out that they could likely do a lot better than a fat beardy git twice their age.

I dont really like going for a beer with anyone. Get halfway through a pint and wonder what we are supposed to be doing. I can get by if theres rugby on but otherwise I just find it awkward. Coffee, well again I quite like going for a coffee and reading the paper not really a team sport though is it.
I’ll go for a bike ride with anyone though male, female, gay, straight I couldnt really care.

I used to have quite a few female friends at uni & when I house shared in Cambridge after graduating…..

It was all platonic stuff and the main issue was blokes at work/friends saying things like ‘you must fancy X/Y/Z though?’ or ‘are you sure you’ve not banged her….?’ etc.

I found it all a bit weird to be honest that people can’t understand how you can have a friendship with someone of the opposite sex that doesn’t descend into trying it on with them or them with you…..

I’ve always found just as much to talk about with women as men – I’ve never been into football, so the default male pub talk of ‘did you see the game last night…..?’ would pass me by anyhow….

The last two conversations I had with female friends were about artificial intelligence and it’s impact on society and rearing livestock on a small farm. Two very different women with very different life experiences both chats were fascinating and fun. Both were without their respective partners/husbands and neither involved any sort of innuendo or sexual tension because we are friends.

I can understand how people don’t have friends of the opposite sex, some environments make those friendships unlikely to form but I’m failing to grasp the idea that anyone could think that cross gender friendships have no value or that there are solely male or solely female subjects and that the opposite gender can have nothing of interest to add to those.

The last two conversations I had with female friends

US politics and the rise of extremism with one and which powermeter gives them the best VFM and easy movement from one bike to another (Road to TT) with an other.

Sorry if i sound blinkered, but i’ve not met any girls who have interests the same as me.

Shallow? me ? Sure, shallow as they come

There’s your problem: insufficiently interesting to have female friends.

I dont really like going for a beer with anyone. Get halfway through a pint and wonder what we are supposed to be doing

Glad i’m not the only one.
The only exception being post ride beers when on holiday.

This thread is weird. Of course I don’t socialise with men, they smell, obsess about football, and carry boy germs. Eeeew!

In all seriousness, most of my friends have been guys since my mid-teens. I work in an industry where bepenised folk make up 94% of the workforce. If I head out to lunch with one of them, I’m don’t see them as being someone else’s husband, I see them as a colleague and friend, because I generally treat people as individuals and not possessions.

One of my bestest mates/partner in crime, who I regularly go out drinking lots of beer and watching the footy with, is female.

Mrs Binners doesn’t mind or worry about her, as despite the fact that she’s extremely attractive, intelligent and funny, she’s also…..

a scouser!

There are some lines that will never be crossed. 😀

I’ve got loads of other girly mates, about 50% of whom bat for the other team. Gender, or sexuality are non-issues as far as friendships are concerned, surely?

Seems perfectly normal to have female friends. I probably have more day-to-day female friends than male, but that’s also a factor of my daily environment. But ever since my student days I’ve always preferred a mixed social and living environment. Every shared house has been mixed, pub nights are usually mixed. It just means that drink or coffee with a female friend is nothing out of the ordinary. A lads night out is more likely to be unusual for me.

It’s almost like Cougar got possessed by the spirit of Junkyard.

I think I need a shower.

I don’t need to know the business of hundreds of people I don’t really know.

The problem there isn’t the medium, it’s a lack of quality control on the part of the user.

I have friends of the opposite sex, so does my wife. I have never seen it as an issue.

I cycle with one of my wifes friends as her husband doesn’t like cycling. I go running with my mates wife as her husband hates running.

I have 2 or 3 female work colleagues that I see outside of work as I enjoy their company.

So far, I have managed not to sleep with any of them 😯

It’s amazing that all these blokes with limited social skills actually think that any women who was unlucky enough to find themselves in a social, one on one situation with them would want to be “nailed”.

Tubby middle aged MTBers do not make a good catch.

+1 – maybe it’s blokey blokes who do just talk about stuff like that who feel no need for female friends (though I’ve news for you, some women also like talking about footy). Then again it’s not a topic which comes up in conversation with any chaps I know, I guess those I get on with aren’t into that either.

😉

maybe it’s blokey blokes who do just talk about stuff like that

indeed…

I can see this thread being the basis of some-ones PHD.

As we all know there are only two types of men:

1. Knuckle-dragging monosyllabic footie-fans (alpha)
2. Flagrantly camp girlie-boys (beta)

As for women, well, yes, you guessed correctly – just two types:

1. Tiresome giggling air-headed purse-collecting princesses
2. Militant feminist lesbian tomboys

I have lots of male friends, and I meet up with them for MTB rides and/or coffee. Sometimes Mr Pea is with me too, sometimes not.
I have female friends too, but rarely go on all-female nights out. Not wishing to stereotype my own sex, but past experiences of girls nights out have been “mixed”.

weeksy » I just still can’t grasp why I’d want a female friend.
Does that help at all? It’s just a friend who happens to be of a different gender. Why would you want to limit the pool of potential friends to half what it could be? My experience of female friends is that they talk about all the same sort of things as blokes do – at least when they’re in my company they’re polite enough not to do boring girly topics

Christ on a pogo stick! I guess I must be lucky indeed in that I have a close circle of friends, male and female with whom I can talk on a wide variety of subjects. My friend Fi, who I first met when she worked in the restaurant of the pub that was my local when I used to go out for rides and got chatting to has a wide variety of interests, including bikes.
She asked me out for a drink, eventually things went a bit further but we backed off and kept it as friends. Then we became an item for about a year, but felt things just worked better as friends, and that’s been the case for nearly twenty years!
She now manages a Youth Hostel in the Lakes, has been all over the place doing environmental work, Tanzania, Turkey, Norway, Iceland, and we can chat for hours about walks and such, looking at OS maps on my phone, photos we’ve taken when we’ve been out, music, books, all sorts of stuff.
Same with my other female friends who I see occasionally.
Same with my best mate who I go out drinking and to gigs with, our pub conversations take in tanks, music, aircraft, cars, animé, comics, books, robot wars…
Never football, hardly any of my close friends have the slightest interest in wendyball.
It’s perfectly possible for two people of different gender to have intelligent conversation about a wide variety of subjects without the issue of sex getting in the way, provided you’re capable of holding an intelligent conversation on more than just one specific subject, that is…

[like]

Elvis understood (wo)men.

I ride bikes, ski play music, dance, swim, mountaineer etc. with ladies and Madame doesn’t flinch, but if I said I was going for a beer with ****** or ****… she’d wonder 1/ why she wasn’t invited 2/ why she wasn’t invited.

Their insecurity is their own issue and absolutely not my responsibility.

… that’s the attitude that’s ‘depressing’.

Kryton57 – Member

To be fair to Weeksy allthegear, if my understanding is correct your not really playing with a fair bat are you…

I know why you said that, and initially the same thought briefly occurred, but I’ve been thinking about it some more and I think that actually it’s probably a pretty hurtful thing to say (although unintended I’m sure).
My feeling is that Rachel has as much, or maybe even more of a right to be respected as someone who absoloutely should be treated and thought of as you would expect of her gender. Afterall she felt so strongly about it, that she realised that biology had taken a left when it should have taken a right and has taken the steps to make it clearer to others how she identifies herself.
Without wishing to patronise or speak for others, it has crystalized in my mind now (probably should have thought about this a bit more before…) that Rachel is not a man who is now a woman, but a woman who was temporarily housed in a mans body and is now a woman again.

@CountZero

You’d gotten the sex out of the way already with your female friend. Lots of it if you were a thing for a year.

Yep, can be friends with women, especially exes. But I just find it easier to be mates with men.

Is there a difference here between people who’ve lived with women In a non-romantic/family relationship situation (i.e. shared house) and those that haven’t?