at heart, i consider myself a girls-girl. i prize my girlfriends and cherish my female relationships. in high school, my best friend, Stina, and i were inseparable. we lived “pretty little liars” style, blurring the lines between days and nights, her house and mine. no boy came between us. ever. we included others hosting big slumber parties. a treasured ritual i carried on in college. sometimes thirty girls packed into our sprawling State Street apartment. we stayed up all night, nibbling and giggling and sharing. those moments are among my most cherished.
i grew up in a bubble where female relationships were sacred, where strong women were revered and respected. above all, i was taught and believed in solidarity.
when i moved to DC as an adult, i was blindsided by a totally new (to me) female dynamic that was catty, competitive and driven by a quest for men. how totally bizarre i found it! i was beyond bewildered. i was dumbstruck. girls blatantly hit on my boyfriend in front of me, ignored me in their efforts to talk to him or were snippy and snooty to my face. i was totally unprepared for this world where women were not automatically comrades-in-arms. it made me sad and tired. i began to refuse invitations to parties and grew weary when going to the ones i did attend. i had never played this game and i wasn’t prepared for it and i certainly wasn’t going to engage.
it took me a long time to develop close female friends here. then, many of them dissolved as our lives progressed and marriage became the next step, followed by children and all the natural life stages that keep us busy in our advancing age. maintaining those friendships has taken on a different rhythm. one that moves in fits and bursts, punctuating the over-scheduled life of a dual-career-couple-with-kids. as i am still single, i am trying to expand my circle with new women and i am feeling some of the same things i felt when i moved here many years ago.
often, i find, women don’t like me. it baffles me very much and hurts me a little too. i am in no way threatening or unwelcoming. i make direct eye contact and smile warmly when i introduce myself at parties and gatherings…and invariably the women step a little closer to their boyfriends or slink away…off to survey the room for …men? i don’t know what, but they are not interested in me.
i have never had the marriage/man-panic i witnessed in so many of my friends in our thirties. i don’t know why but i have never felt a paucity of available men. nor have i ever gone out looking for them. when i go out to a party or meet friends at a bar, i am there to be with my friends or to have interesting party banter. there is something very sad-making to me about surveying a room for available men. i have always found that there is reliably some guy or other that will pop into your life. my mormor always told me…men are like buses; if you miss this one, there’s another one just ten minutes down the road; any of them will take you pretty much to the same place. i believed her. and just like waiting for the bus, i am calm in the certainty that i know where i am going and the bus will arrive in time to get me there. i just don’t see why i shouldn’t be friendly with everyone else waiting for that bus.
*photo rebecca and fiona grona lund via f***yeahrebeccafiona
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