When looking for friends, do you gravitate towards women or men?
Look back on your own friendships and compare the kind of friends you had as a child with the kind of friends you have now. Are there any themes or patterns? Perhaps you had more female friends as a child, and less so today?
Or have you always preferred to be friends with men?
One Scientific American article even details a study that tried to figure out if men and women can truly be friends at all.
The Spiritual Wanderer reveals his own tendencies, and sheds some light on where his friend preferences come from.
How do you go looking for friends?
“Even my wife observes that it takes longer for me to become friends with a guy than it does a woman,” Curtis writes.
Rodney Curtis attributes some of his preferences to a spot of bullying he encountered at the hands of those he considered friends, back in grade school.
Growing up, many of your friends may be made by proximity, whether in classrooms and grades, or simply because you live right down the street from them and walk to school together.
The downside, of course, is that if you realize they’re not nearly the friends you wanted, it may be a little difficult to get away from them.
Luckily, as we mature and grow older, we have full control over who our friends are, and it could be time to put away old leanings and feelings by focusing on the individuals, not their gender or where they live.
“I’m even discovering that, while everybody’s so focused these days on changing our future, there’s a lot to be said for changing our past … at least our perceptions of it anyway,” Curtis writes.
Check out a sample chapter of Spiritual Wanderer.
