How to Maintain Male Friendships

It is possible for women to maintain healthy, fulfilling male friendships.

For a woman, maintaining male friendships may be difficult, especially if the men are looking for romance or she is already involved in an exclusive relationship. She may wonder if it is realistic to have casual friendships with males, or if there will always be too many differences for a real friendship to happen. Whatever the case, it is possible for a woman to maintain male friendships whether she is in a relationship or single, looking for a romance or content being alone.

Instructions

1. Be open about relationship status. It is important for a woman to be open about her relationship status if she wants to be in a fulfilling friendship with a male. The reason for this is the fact that the man may always be wondering if she is open for a relationship, interpreting things she does as signals or hints that she wants to go further. If a woman is open about her relationship status and her desires, the man will not have to wonder, and will understand that she will approach him if she wants a relationship with him.

2. Maintain a separate identity. It is important for a woman to maintain a separate identity from her male friends if she wants to keep the friendship healthy. Spending too much time with a person of the opposite gender suggests the desire to be in a relationship or to move further physically; becoming intimate makes maintaining a friendship harder and more complicated. A woman needs to have time and space to develop her interests and her identity as a person. She may hang out with her guy friends a few times a week, but take the rest of the time she has to keep to herself or be around her girlfriends.

3. Do not offer what you will not give. For a woman, this is a vital element of maintaining healthy friendships with members of the opposite sex: She should not offer what she is not truly going to give. This means that being suggestive to the man she is hanging out with through her clothing choices, words or flirtatious smile is off-limits for a woman who wants to keep the relationship strictly platonic.

4. Do not treat men as girlfriends. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, the majority of males spend time bonding by activities that involve less verbal communication and more physical activity, such as sports or games. If a woman needs someone to talk to and is simply using a man to listen to what she has to say, he will wonder if she wants a deeper relationship with him and not realize that she simply wants someone to talk to. This sort of intimate connection should be saved for a romantic relationship.

References

• Psychology Today: Can Men and Women be Friends?