I miss men
Throughout my school days, uni days, working days and early-married days, I’ve had some really good blokey friends. Just kicking around with my male mates, much the same as I kicked around with the girls. The long conversations over many glasses of many things, loving the easy banter than men seem to do so well. I like men a lot. I like their opinions on things, I like their ability to forgive and forget, I like their playfulness and I like their willingness to admit that they are always more open, interesting and talkative when a girl is on the scene.
My life these days is all about the girls. I’m girl-empowered. I work with women, I hang out with women and even when we got to a function with actual real-live men present, the women and men never seem to hang out together. It’s so frustrating! The girls are in the lounge room and the boys are in the backyard. I feel like I’m back in Year 8 when we were all too shy to hurdle our hormones and talk to each other.
Why is it that ‘older’ men and women don’t hang out together? It’s mainly the parenting circuit where I find this curious behaviour. It’s so rampant these days that the few times I’ve ventured over to hang with the fellas, I’ve received weird looks and once, memorably, an admonishment to stop ‘flirting with my husband’ (because you’re flirting every time you stop to chat to a man, right?) (Besides, have you met your husband?). But it speaks volumes about why the men and women I know don’t hang out together very much. It’s taking me everything I’ve got not to write, “this has got nothing to do with my relationship with my husband, etc, etc, etc.” It’s not about that. It’s about this.
There’s a fellow parent who does the school run who just happens to be a man and he’s great value. I find myself talking to him more and more as other man options dwindle. He’s everything I want in a new man these days: uninterested but interesting. It was actually a conversation with Owen last week that made me look around and see all the many wonderful women in my life and think, “I miss men”. I really, really miss them and I have no idea how to get them back.
Are you similarly man challenged?
