Female friendships

[olivetree]

I am a woman in my early thirties. I am finding it difficult lately to make and maintain female friendships, at least where I feel really valued. These friendships just seem to be more fickle than my friendships with males. Not that my friends grow to hate me or anything, but I find as time goes on I'm often the one initiating plans. I'm not sure what I'm doing to put myself in this "reacher" position. It sucks because I prefer hanging out with other women and would love to cultivate lasting friendships.

 

My question is, what do you (women) find attractive in another woman that makes you want to be her friend? What puts you off friendship with another woman? I guess I'm looking for the not so obvious stuff that I should be aware of.

Edited June 23, 2016 by olivetree

[MsJayne]

I think that when women reach their thirties things change quite drastically on the social front for them. They certainly did for me, I found myself off the guest list quite often and could rarely find any other women who wanted to hang out and do stuff together, most of them were in relationships and were so busy clinging on to their partners that they didn't have time for other women. I was left wondering what was wrong with me, until an older female friend told me that 20% of the problem was that I was single, and the other 80% of the problem was that I was attractive. In other words, female friends didn't want me hanging around because they felt I was a threat to them. I also wasn't into gossiping, and I genuinely felt that not joining in bitching isolated me from potential female friends because I had nothing in common with them.

Aside from that, I used to settle for female friends who were fun to be around, liked to party and were available to go out, but as I've gotten older I've come to appreciate loyalty and integrity more and more, and am much less tolerant of bitchiness and selfishness, (two qualities which lots of women have in abundance).

Unfortunately, social isolation can be a by-product of being a single female over thirty, and other than imparting that bit of depressing news the only thing I can suggest is joining clubs or groups which relate to your hobbies and interests as common interests are a good starting point for building friendships.

[olivetree]

Thanks for your response.

 

I'm not sure if meeting other women is the problem. It just seems hard to become friends and then maintain that friendship. People seem to like me, but not enough that they're like... hey she's really cool, I'm going to pursue a friendship. Sometimes I think I even turn them off by putting more effort in. With men it seems so much easier! Women take so long to warm up. They also seem to prefer the group they've grown up with forever, even when they complain about those friendships and having nothing in common anymore. Maybe that's just it... I need to meet people that are also looking to make new friends.