"The benefits of girlfriends"/ "Men should make friendships a priority"

Feb. 17, 2018 "The benefits of girlfriends": Today I found this article by Kayleen Schaefer in the Globe and Mail: 

Kayleen Schaefer is the author of  Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

I wanted to call my book BFF.

It was going to be about the evolution of female friendship, an idea I came up with when I looked around me and realized who it was I most depended on. My girlfriends were as essential to me as any other relationships in my life, but these friendships weren't respected in the same way. 

There was always a feeling that the ties were tenuous, that they shouldn't matter as much as ones with romantic partners, relatives or even bosses. I wanted to do what I could to solidify these bonds that made me feel loved, encouraged and at peace in a way I knew I could count on.

The title BFF, I thought, was cute, clear and direct.

When my agent called to tell me that Maya Ziv, the executive editor at Dutton, wanted to buy the book, she said, "She loves it, but one thing. She wants to change the title."

"What does she want to call it?"

"Text me when you get home."

I disagreed. If that were the title, no one would understand the book was about female friendships.

It's not that I didn't say it to my friends. I did, usually as we hugged goodbye after a night out where I felt understood, inspired and reluctant to leave my pals. But moms say, "Text me when you get home" to their adult children, too. It's about safety, I thought.

I started asking women – sources for the book, friends, strangers – what they thought of the title. All of them said, "I say that." But it wasn't until I asked my friend Lauren which title she liked better, mine or Maya's, that it dawned on me why I was wrong.

"I like the editor's title," she said. "It's emotional."

I realized that when women say "Text me when you get home," it's not just about safety. It's about solidarity.

I was telling my friends – on street corners, in parking lots, as they were getting into Lyfts – as we got ready to leave each other that I knew what it is like to be a woman alone. There's the unwanted scrutiny and attention ("Why is that guy staring at me?"), the unsettling thoughts ("Am I too drunk?") and the overwhelming loneliness that can take you by surprise when you get home ("My place is so empty").

What I was telling my friends is that they weren't by themselves. "Text me when you get home" is a guarantee: I'm here for you, whether you're standing in front of me or miles away. 

Whenever you need me, whether it's because you're scared, heartbroken or just bored, I will be there. It's a reminder that we have each other, even if nothing official binds us.

As I kept working on the book, the reckoning over sexual harassment and assault in the workplace began, and I watched as the sentiment and support behind "Text me when you get home" became #MeToo. 

The care between women went from a private text to a public hashtag. What had been a quiet promise, said in the safe spaces of our goodbye embraces, had turned into loud, proud, public propping. Our buoying of one another has been lifted out of our internal networks and catapulted to the national news cycle.

But it's the same message. What we are saying – on red carpets, in social media posts and at women's marches – is, You're not alone. I'm here for you, only now we are telling anyone who wants to listen in. Our friendships have never been the stereotypical, hair-yanking, undermining relationships they're often depicted as, but women used to keep that to themselves. We didn't bother to correct the record.

Not anymore. Women are telling their own stories and proclaiming that other ladies are essential to our well-being. Our devotion to each other has come out of the dark. The women around us, we're affirming, are inspiring, brave and not alone.

My own friends were like a life raft I didn't know I was looking for before I got on it. I heard this echoed by the women I interviewed for the book, but now, I hear it everywhere. We're taking a stand with each other and for each other – and not letting go.

"Text me when you get home" has another meaning. When women say this to each other, they're also saying, Let's keep talking.

When we get home, we're going to keep the conversation going. We'll text another twist in the joke we've been making all night, or send along a recommendation we said we would – for skin care, a good bra, whatever – or simply write our friend again about how much fun the night was. We're still hanging out, even though we had to go home.

I think the idea of continuing the conversation also applies to the grand statement of support women are making now. It's not that liking each other isn't equivalent to political organizing – this open backing of each other won't guarantee us equal rights or treatment – but it does give us a good place to start.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/how-women-are-taking-a-stand/article38005482/

Apr. 3, 2019 "Men should make friendships a priority": Today I found this article by Heidi Stevens in the Star Metro.  It talks about men and women friendships:

Adult male friendships are the laboratory mice of our time.

They’re poked and prodded and researched, analyzed within an inch of their lives, held up to the light and studied, pinned to the table and studied some more.

Heterosexual, white men have the fewest friends of anyone in the United States, according to a 2006 analysis of two decades of data published in the American Sociological Review.

In 2017, the Boston Globe famously declared, “The biggest threat facing middle age men isn’t smoking or obesity. It’s loneliness,” based on research from Brigham Young University.

Slate once called friendship “American men’s hidden crisis.” But are we doing much to help?

We talk a fair bit, as we should, about keeping boys and young men from feeling isolated and at odds with the world around them. Psychologist Michael C. Reichert’s upcoming book, How to Raise a Boy: The Power of Connection to Build Good Men is fantastic. 

But once they reach adulthood, men are largely on their own to figure out when and how to squeeze friendship into their lives, now that the teams and clubs and free time of their youth have largely dissipated.

Add in the fact that modern dads spend triple the time raising kids as dads in previous generations, according to Pew Research Center data, and the “hidden crisis” doesn’t seem so hidden. 

But what about women? We also spend more time with our children than moms of previous generations, according to Pew Research Center data. We’ve also watched the teams and clubs and free time of our youth dissipate. And yet, we are, on average, finding more time than men for friendships. I have a theory. When women become parents, our friendships are woven into our parenting and our parenting is woven into our friendships.

We become friends with the parents of our kids’ friends. We encourage (force?) our kids to become friends with our friends’ kids. 

We email other moms about our kids’ team sign-ups and afterschool clubs. 

We group-text playground meetups and, later, when our kids stop playing at playgrounds, we still group text one another, but to meet for coffee or wine.

It has been this way historically. It remains this way today. (In many cases. Of course there are exceptions.)

Male friendships, on the other hand, have historically been built around time away from the kids. Poker night. Beers after work. Softball leagues. (In many cases. Of course there are exceptions.)

Weaving parenting into their friendships, friendships into their parenting wasn’t typically modelled to them by their dads. I know men who weave them together beautifully, but they are the exception, not the norm.

So men who want the richness and intimacy of a close, time-intensive relationship with their own kids can find that it comes at the expense of the richness and intimacy of close friendships.

I ran my theory by family therapist John Duffy. We do a weekly podcast together, On Purpose: The Heidi Stevens and Dr. John Duffy Podcast, and male friendships sometimes come up.

Duffy called my theory “really sound.” He has a doctorate, so I’m sticking with it.

But what, I asked him, can we do about it?

“I suspect there is a balance that men can strike here,” he said, “one that allows for plenty of time to connect with and parent their children, while also saving some time, here and there, to connect with adult male friends.”

The first step is acknowledging it’s important.

“Fostering male friendships tends to bring out the best in us men,” he said. “We are more connected, available, playful and emotionally present in our relationships.

Second, we are modelling positive, mutually beneficial adult relationships for our children. No downside there.”

Duffy suggests his fellow guys schedule friend time the same way they would commitments for work or parenting.

“I think protecting this guy time on a family calendar, as sacred as any other family-related time, could only prove helpful,” he said.

“Men I know make this time superfluous and negotiable, instead of setting it in stone. As a result, months can pass between connecting with pals.”

My suggestion to my fellow moms is to recognize the value in these friendships and encourage their cultivation.

“I find that we men, myself included, need the support of our friends just as the women in our lives need the support of theirs,” Duffy told me.

Can men have it all — close friendships and close ties to their kids? - Chicago Tribune