Member-only story
Men Screw up Female Friendships
But it’s our choice to let them
Today I played racquetball with a friend. We had a great time. She is a lot of fun, plus she’s cute as a button. Once it would have bothered me a little, how pretty she is. Now I enjoy it as part of who she is.
Our friendship feels as easy and fun as the ones I had when I was 11. Before puberty. Before all of a sudden boys loomed large in our lives.
This is something I’ve hated, the way women allow men to destroy the ease and joy of our friendships.
I remember in high school, all of a sudden our conversations started to revolve around boys. I remember college, and having women friends cancel on me because a man asked them out. The men seemed to expect this and that bothered me too.
And then I moved to South Carolina.
One of my acquaintances gave her friend bad advice on clothes. Another women steered her friend wrong about a guy who might like her. I saw variations of this repeated over and over. Women sabotaging other women. Why? So that they could better compete for men.
Being a student of history, in the South, some of this is an aftermath of the Civil War. So many eligible young men died that the competition for a husband became fierce. Southern women had to compete for men and the…
