I can still remember as a teenager having to explain to my mum that the boy who was coming round was a boy friend – two separate words – not a boyfriend, which meant something else entirely.
Perhaps because I grew up with a brother, I never really had an issue counting boys among my mates, though it wasn’t always an easy thing to negotiate with my parents. I remember my father actually trying to ban me from talking to boys in the run up to my O’ levels (obviously, he failed, unlike me with those exams).
But those friendships between teen boys and girls work best when both have decided, consciously or unconsciously, where they stand. Of course, sometimes that distinction only emerges after a romantic relationship – “we’ve just decided we’re better as friends” is something I heard often from my mates. In other words, they tried the alternative and it didn’t work out – an early version of “conscious uncoupling”.
I’m glad that both our boys have some very firm and loyal (two words again) girl friends, as well as their actual partners. It was the same with me at the University of Liverpool in the late 80s: we had a friendship group of men and women who lived in separate houses, but who regularly went out to clubs or house parties together as a group of eight. Occasionally, the rules of engagement became blurred, but we were a gang of equals and, mostly, our genders didn’t matter.
The reason I’ve been thinking about this? The seemingly unstoppable rise of the “manosphere” – where at one end of the spectrum women are objectified, to the other end, where they are physically attacked. In this world of vile and gross distortion of how men and women should relate to each other, I wonder if these guys perpetuating these messages online ever had friends who were girls when they were growing up. And if they had, how could they see them as inferior in later life or see them as people they want to dominate and abuse?
My boys have an older sister who is my husband’s daughter: they look up to her, respect her and have asked her advice at times. She lives abroad and, in some ways, is like a loved and trusted friend as much as a blood sister.
That brothers/sister bond also helps with their understanding about what it means to be female right now. From the big issues of the day, to the more practical. One of my sons as a young teenager said that he learned, as he put it, “about periods and stuff” from his close female mates, while the other son said that the women in his friendship group give him a different take on life – especially with things like safety, something perhaps my sons don’t have to worry about quite so much.
With our own sons, from about year 6 onwards, we talked to them openly about all sorts of serious stuff: me having a miscarriage before our elder boy was born; my husband’s mum and dad splitting up when he was just 11. And the important things they needed to be aware of as young men when it came to the opposite sex – respect, the meaning of consent (the tea video is still brilliant) and how to treat others you might fall in love with.
Crucially, it seems to me that my boys know how to talk to women. They have learned that from me and my husband, their sister, their teenage cousins, their friends and their fantastic teachers at both primary and secondary school. They have also learned that women are not solely attracted to wealthy, aggressive, muscle-bound men. That actually, we really like blokes who can talk about their feelings and relate to other people’s experiences with empathy, understanding and even decent levels of ribbing. We can take it! It’s funny! That when we talk openly about our own feelings, or call late at night because something is bothering us, or invite a male friend out for a drink just to catch up, it doesn’t mean we want to sleep with them. It means we want a chat or a laugh. Or both.
You may be reading this with understandable cynicism. You may even have heard the line, “I can’t be sexist, my best friend is a girl”, or “I have three sisters” or felt that, occasionally, a man thinks being kind and friendly is in itself a kind of chat-up method. Fair enough. I won’t do the “not all men” cliché, but I keep reading pieces or hearing conversations about how difficult it is for people to make and keep friends. One US academic called it the “friendship recession”: how the younger generations are roughly twice as likely to feel chronically lonely as the over-70s.
Social media is no substitute for the kind of friend you can sit and laugh and cry with over a bottle of fizz or a pint: the kind of mate who has put the hours in and been there when it matters. And if they are of the opposite sex, then you also get a different angle, they probably aren’t competing with you and they know the things that get you down – or fire you up.
Being a man and having no female friends certainly isn’t a crime of course, but it might be a small fluttery red flag.