The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Carl Heintze

Friendships are to be savored, not figured out

Should men have women friends? Or, conversely, should women have men friends? I suppose this question has vexed marriages off and on over the ages.

Clearly, men and women do have friendships these days. We live, after all, in an enlightened age and nation.

But friendship between the sexes isn't always easy. Indeed, in some countries it could be impossible.

In many Muslim nations, for instance, where the sexes are segregated and sex itself seems a big mystery, it seems unlikely that male-female friendship would flourish.

And, let's face it, even in "enlightened" America. many men are still threatened by women. They find it difficult to forge friendships with the opposite sex.

Many American men still seem to think women are somehow less capable (not to say inferior). If this isn't so, why haven't we at least had a woman vice president?

Moreover, many men are uncomfortable with sex. They treat it with a certain fear in any male-female relationship. They seem to expect sex to rear its ugly head.

And yet what's wrong with having women friends? As far as I'm concerned, nothing.

I know at least two women whom I consider to be good friends.

One I've known for more than 30 years, the other for about half that time. I suppose we're friends in part because we share a common interest--writing--and a sort of common history.

And for reasons I can only ascribe to fate, in life we seem to bump into one another every so often without really trying.

I don't think it's that we've sought each other out. It just seems to have happened. Whenever it is, it's always been a pleasurable experience, at least for me.

We have a number of common topics to discuss, but more than this, we just have a good time when we talk. I don't think that has anything to do with our long and common histories. But we never seem to have any trouble talking to one another.

I'm not sure what we talk about--writing, for one thing, but often it is nothing very specific. Indeed, most of what we discuss is of little importance.

Although we know something of the joys and sorrows of our individual lives--and there have been some of both for all three of us--that's not what occupies our meetings.

Indeed, it's hard to say what occupies our getting together. We certainly don't talk about our mates, and although I must admit it's flattering to have two attractive women who are willing to sit down and talk to me, sex is not a subject on our agendas.

Men don't seem to make friendships with other men easily--I certainly don't--and men don't often find it easy to sit down and talk for an hour or so without talking about much of anything

So what do we talk about?

I guess we discuss work--which in our cases is writing and editing--what we've been doing or not doing; in short, the items that would occupy conversations we might have with anyone.

And yet I find both friendships to be singular ones, simply because they exist. I never sought them; they just happened, and I've seldom had the same kind of friendship with men.

Men don't seem to make friendships with other men easily--I certainly don't--and men don't often find it easy to sit down and talk for an hour or so without talking about much of anything.

Men also tend to confine their discussions to what I guess you would call masculine subjects: cars, football, fishing, politics and the weather. Probably because these (with the exception of politics) are safe. Men tend not to delve deeply into themselves with one another. Like skaters on a frozen pond, they don't want to know what's below the ice.

I don't find it that way with my two women friends. Perhaps women are more used to being intimate than men, or perhaps it's just my two friends. They don't demand anything, yet they're willing to listen. They're apparently not uncomfortable with whatever it is that exists between us; they seem to like who they are as much as they are willing to like me. More than that I can't tell you, for, in the end, it seems to me friendship is a mystery.

Whatever it is, I cherish them as friends, I look forward to our talks and I'm very glad we met.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Willow Glen Resident.

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