Friendships – or Platonic Love
There are friends… and then there are friends.
Here are some types:
- Acquaintances,
- Work friends,
- School, college, Uni friends.
- Occasional friends,
- School gate friends
- FB and other social media ‘friends’.
- Hobby or activity friends…and the rarest and most excellent of all ‘the best friend’.
and probably a tonne of other kinds of friends you can think of, without trying very hard.
Men and women traditionally tend to ‘do’ friends a little differently.
Men often bond over sports or shared interests whilst women tend to share more intimacies and heart-to-hearts.*
Obviously, the whole ‘men do it like this’, ‘women do it like that’, is a bold generalisation – and there is any amount of cross-over, but one thing that’s universal is:
close friendships are some of the most treasured and valued relationships of all.
When partners come and go, children grow up and leave – it’s friends that share that history with you.
What we hope to encourage you, over this topic, is that it’s worth putting in the extra energy to cultivate all types of friends in your life.
You never know when you’ll need each other, or be able to add value to each other’s lives.
Or join together and smash the patriarchy, overthrow capitalism, arrange a flash mob or go and see the Abba tour together.
We are going to look at the concept of friendship in more detail and we’d love to know your thoughts.
* [People I interviewed about this topic, of other genders, including those who have changed their birth gender – may find themselves identifying more closely with one or other of the traditional binary genders ‘friendship modalities’.
Others tell me they find themselves beautifully straddling the gender divide and having a unique perspective and the best of all worlds
Others again are viewed with suspicion and have the worst of them, feeling like an outlier, finding it harder to break into existing friend groups.
That’s another conversation for another time.
(The term ‘beautifully straddling’ was used by someone who knew I was going to write this and that it sounded vaguely mucky. I’ve kept it in.)
While we are on the subject – people with various neurodivergences may experience relationships. and friendships in particular. differently to those who are neurotypical.
So all that being said – we’ll crack on with the understanding that no two of us are the same – take what’s useful, ignore the rest – feel free to write and educate us on your particular experience if you don’t feel represented or we’ve got something wrong, and we’ll update things)]