Can Men And Women Just Be Just Friends?

In the video lecture presented by Deborah Tannen, He Said, She Said, Tannen emphasizes that men and women grow up in very different social worlds. When boys grow up, they learn that there is often going to be an inequality of force in any conversation. For girls, however, they feel that equality is very important and that it needs to be enforced through sympathy-based bonding. As adults, these different messages behind socialization can often lead to confusion, miscommunication, and, sometimes, hurt feelings. Tannen explores the difficulties of cross-gender communication and how we can overcome them by understanding where these conversational rituals come from. As a reflection on Tannen’s lecture, this paper will analyze how the different developments of boys and girls lead to the different views men and women have on the world. First of all, childhood and friendship is perceived differently by each gender.

There are over six billion people on Earth today. Each of those people has countless relationships, which extend further into an immense network of relations among thousands of individuals. These relations can be romantic, professional, unconditional, mutual, or the strongest of all, friendship. Friendship is a term used to denote co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more beings. In this sense, the term connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection and respect along with a degree of rendering service to friends in times of need or crisis. Friends will welcome each other's company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of altruism.

People need companionship to help them in times of hardship. Women tend to confide more in their same sex friends rather than men who, most of the time, find competitiveness in their friendships rather than telling them things that may show signs of weakness. People who have friends of the opposite sex at this time in their life, usually share some sort of romantic bond. These types of friendships normally come from school or work, but decline after the person is married. All friendships often decline after marriage because the people involved in the relationship find the closest bonds between themselves and spend most of their time together. During marriage people find friendships with their siblings to be closer than most.

In the passage, How to Be Friends with Another Women written by Roxane Gay elaborates on relationship with friends with various type of women feminists.Roxane Gay also talks about how women are daily regarding to their social culture but also their lifestyle regarding with friends. Roxane Gay guide us females on how we should be more honest and aware of our friend choice in their taste of lifestyle on the other hand, I truly disagree.

Friendship is one of the most valuable components in life. Friendship has the ability to change lives in a positive way. Friendship changes people’s views on life to a more positive outlook. “True friendship is when someone knows you better than yourself and takes a position in your best interests in a crisis. Friendship goes beyond sharing time together, and it is long lasting.” (Friends.com). As we spend a lot of time with our friends, friendship opens our minds to different ways of viewing the world. Unfortunately, sometimes strong barriers may be placed by those who see two people’s friendship as a threat; since people are influenced by their friends, friendship could make people question what

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, that is a last drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindness there is at last one which makes the heart run over” (Bradbury, 71)

Throughout this essay I will be evaluating the contribution of an ethnographic approach to research on friendship. I will be looking at, and including evidence to support both sides of the argument as to whether or not this research method is in fact useful when it comes to gaining knowledge about friendship. As well as evaluating this method, I will compare it against others to reflect on the strengths, weaknesses and the typical data collected. I will look at some of the questions about friendship that have been addressed, and then whether this is the best method or if there are others that could have been more suitable.

From humanity comes friendship, but friendship may not be as one-dimensional and simplistic as the common person believes it to be- it may not stop at the surface level. In David Whyte’s book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, he writes on friendship, exposing the true facets of an authentic friendship that oftentimes are overlooked by many people. In Whyte’s opinion, friendship is an eternal experience, or at least an experience in which people take part over an extended period of time. The need for continuous support and forgiveness from and for both parties in a friendship presupposes this prolonged temporality. Naturally, as friendships take constant conscious effort, they require interest

Ethnographic approach to the research on friendship provided data which couldn’t be obtained using other approaches. Therefore, it extended our knowledge in this topic beyond the limits that constrain other methods of research. On the other hand, its shortcomings make its results questionable. Yet, some of these can be verified using different approaches or discover things that other approaches wouldn’t find that easily but can research them further. Concluding, the benefits of ethnographic approach overcome it shortcomings – especially when

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

"There is a sense in their friendship that by viewing one another's lives, they were better able to formulate their own futures. Each has been enriched by his ability to explore their thoughts and feelings together, and each has been enriched from experiences with the other's father” (Napierkowski 49). Pokot shows how friendship can help better people’s lives by being more mature as individuals for conflicts and encounters people must go through in life as people grow to be

The friendships form because they lack care from other people in their lives and need the friendship to compensate their loss of emotion. Although two people in the friendship have different genders and ages, they have similar life experiences and living background so they can understand each other’s feelings.

Differences in childhoods can impact individual’s communication with each other in relationships. At a young age, children tend to play with other children that seem to be of the same gender as them. Both groups of genders have different ways of building a friendship. Tannen says that, “Little girls create and maintain friendships by exchanging secrets” (276). It is important to girls to share secretive things to get closer to one another and to get a mutual understanding. Unlike boys whose bonds are, “based less on talking, more on doing things together” (Tannen 276). Boys do not talk a lot unless the need to prove something. While girls are comfortable about talking about their feelings, boys feel uncomfortable because it is not something they discuss much.

A friend should be one’s biggest supporter, biggest cheerleader, and biggest fan. Jane Collingwood, author of article The Importance of Friendship, shares the work of author Tom Rath. In Rath’s book, Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford To Live Without, he explains the psychology and his mass study of friendship. Collingwood summarizes some of his intriguing findings: “If your best friend eats healthily, you are five times more likely to have a healthy diet yourself. Married people say friendship is more than five times as important as physical intimacy within marriage. Those who say they have no real friends at work have only a one in 12 chance of feeling engaged in their

In life there are many changes that can cause a true friendship to go wary such as marriage, divorce, birth of children, new careers, and sickness. However, through each of those events the two must remember to keep the intimacy, the letting down of emotional barriers and the expression of innermost thoughts and feelings, “that which makes friendships thrive must be an enjoyable one” and to “always interact” (Karbo 3). Although psychologists continue to research the formation of friendships the great philosopher Aristotle knew exactly how friendships formed and how the lasted.