Best Friends Forever - Irene S. Levine [10]
Women tend to have and need a greater number of best friends with whom they share their lives than do men. One social scientist described female friendships as “face-to-face” and their male counterparts as “side-to-side.” There is growing evidence that the different ways in which women and men experience friendship is ingrained and may have a genetic basis. Some say these differences are evolutionary, harking back to the days when men went off to hunt and women stayed behind to support one another during times of extreme stress, such as war or famine. UCLA psychologist Shelly E. Taylor speaks about how women are more likely to “tend and befriend, as opposed to men, who instinctively ‘fight or flee’ under stressful conditions.”
A study of infants found that baby girls pay more attention to facial expressions than do baby boys, suggesting that even soon after birth females are more in tune with other people’s feelings and emotions. As youngsters, girls prefer the exclusivity of best friend relationships while boys tend to play in groups.
These gender differences remain as boys and girls get older. As females mature, their friendships become even more tightly interwoven. Many women are inseparable from their best friends: attached at the hip, talking to each other multiple times during the day—sharing confidences about their bodily secretions or fears of exposing their bodies in a bathing suit—things they would hesitate to share with their lovers.
As we learn more about the human brain and genetics, we may discover the extent to which our friendship choices and the number we need and can juggle simultaneously are predetermined by biology as opposed to environmentally influenced by choice and opportunity. It is likely that both factors affect the type of friendships we make, those we retain, and those that flounder—and that there are innate and learned differences between the sexes.
THE ESSENCE OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP: SHARED INTIMACY AND RECIPROCITY
“Friendships are discovered rather than made.”
—HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
The willingness of two women to become increasingly open with each other, to reveal their true selves—with all their frailties and foibles—is the essential ingredient that turns acquaintances into good friends, and good friends into best friends. Both of them need to be willing to step out of their comfort zones and risk exposure. It means taking off a public face, or the social façade they present to the rest of the world, and allowing a friend to get to know the real person underneath.
But intimacy isn’t entirely a matter of choice or volition. Some women let down their guard more easily than others; to them, self-disclosure to a close friend feels instinctive and natural. Other women are inherently more guarded because of their innate temperament and personality style. Still others are cautious about self-revealing due to a range of experiences that have shaped them, which can run the gamut from traumatic childhoods to the personalities of their parental role models to the disappointments they’ve had with past friendships.
For example, if a woman’s mother was narcissistic and aloof, or if she is just recovering from a best friendship gone sour, she may hesitate to open up and be vulnerable to that hurt again. Or if she lacks confidence and self-esteem, and is embarrassed about an aspect of her life situation (personal demons such as alcoholism or drug abuse, a relative with a stigmatizing disability, a recent divorce, underemployment,