.png)
Hi queens. I have, sadly, 0 female friends. In my childhood I was always the weird kid that got excluded a lot, but I was lucky to still have a handful of close female friends through the years, usually other girls that were also somewhat outsiders, eccentric but cool girls. I was also always in classes that were majority female and in general didn't interact much with boys and men.
That totally flipped when I grew up and started studying computer science and later made it my job. Suddenly I was almost only in very heavily male dominated spaces. You'd think that if there's few women, they'd bond especially, but I found the opposite actually- the fewer women there are in the group, the more likely they are to totally ignore each other. It brought me to today where I'm 29 and have basically no women in my life except for my singing teacher. I have male friends and its easy enough for me to socialise with men but yeah I'm tired of having just men around.
Here's my problems tho:
- My hobbies are all either solitary things or heavily male dominated. The one exception is singing which tends to be mostly women.
- I already have a bunch of hobbies and creative projects ongoing so I don't have that much time currently to join some female group or something in the hopes it will lead to friendships, but I'm willing to try
- whenever I have tried to befriend women in the last years they always seemed quite flaky and uncommitted. I had it happen several times with different women and groups that they would frequently cancel meetups or never follow up on suggestions and just altogether seemed like they really wanted to be friends at one point, then again distant later. I understand cancelling sometimes ofc, but I'm not gonna stay around if someone always is undecided or constantly cancels on short notice. It makes me feel rejected and like I'm maybe trying too hard with someone who isn't interested.
- This may sound stupid but I find it a bit hard to connect with women nowadays. Maybe because I've been around so few women for a longer time now, it feels like it's easier to interact with men. I don't know why it is exactly.
- It's somewhat hard to find women around my age who are not very libfem-y or otherwise part of some cringy woke subculture.
I don't know. Any tips? Can you relate to the struggle? I just wish I had even one female friend who I can just talk to about stuff sometimes (in real life).
Just validating that it can be hard to find genuine female friends when we live in such a PickMe saturated culture! I hope you find your tribe and don't settle for any less until you meet people you enjoy spending time with and who genuinely support/are happy for you and also decenter men from their lives in healthy ways. I think it depends on the setting too. For example, I met some really empathic/wonderful/smart women in one of my past graduate classes on neuroscience and trauma. That was one of the first times I came across women who didn't center their entire lives around having a boyfriend (which is sad that this is rare?) and also supported other successful women/cheered them on! But I've met some really awful people through Meetups (not to generalize everyone, some people do meet kind people through Meetups) who demonstrated a lot of PickMe and also internalized misogyny vibes or envious of other women's success or beauty or whatever else they were jealous of - a few were just straight up bullies who infiltrated an otherwise decent group later on.
I feel this and had to cut off all of my female friends who were toxic libfems. I’m also going back go school for computer science and not looking forward to being around a bunch of crusty men.
i’ve met a few amazing women on here who give me hope that good female friendships are out there
It's hard when people don't like to-the-point, no-bullshit people. There was a reddit post about how you'll be lonely if you follow FDS and it's right insomuch that lots of people are shitty and being FDS-aligned means not tolerating shit.
I resonate with your feelings and sympathize. I try to appreciate the gift of being unburdened by bullshit and toxicity rather than seeing loneliness to be an affliction, but it's hard. I think of the writer of Sailor Moon, who wrote about girls she wished were her friends because she was alone. I think the lesson there is that we can both create internal worlds where we imagine having it to feel less lonely, as well as create external environments that will attract the friends we're trying to make! The FDS pod about making female friends had many suggestions.
for someone who has been in an exactly same situation, I'd say volunteering,public service, NGO part-time positions, healthcare volunteering (like blood bank) that tend to be heavily female-dominated. search for motivated and inspired women.
it helped me make female connections and be invited into new circles where i can make friends with more women.
other than that my field and network is male-dominated.
You said your singing teacher is female, can you join a choir? Building new friendships is really hard as an adult.
I’m honestly considering joining my sons school PTA to pursue a friendship with this great woman- her son and mine were great friends and now are just acquaintances- so it’s a bit hard.
Hi! I'm a woman in IT and don't really have female friends. My only "friends" are a few coworkers but it's more like surface level work friends. No hanging out outside of work.
I also have trouble connecting to a lot of women. They'll be friendly and all, but it's like there's this divide that I just can't breach. They'll either be too talkative for me, or I just can't relate to their main interests. Admittedly, I'm a bit flaky in that I like my alone time, so I feel like a lot of women demand too much of my time when I need to be left alone. Again I TOTALLY know this is not their fault and entirely a me-thing.
During the pandemic I tried joining a few female-only discords (not related to FDS) and honestly it was awful. The women on there were "terminally online" and extremely attention seeking - and this was a radfem discord! I know that can't be all discords, but it turned me off them.
I've tried an app similar to Bumble BFF once. I've since uninstalled it and I can't remember the name (sorry), but it's probably very similar to BBFF overall. It also had a STRONG emphasis on flirting being forbidden which is part of the reason why I chose it, but on the other hand its main problem was that it was a small indie (?) app and unless you set your parameters to worldwide, you didn't see many profiles in your area at all. It didn't stop me though, I actually met a couple of very good friends on there (in my area), despite - or should I say "thanks to" being extremely picky. I was constantly swiping left on everyone except for a couple of times where I strongly resonated with the other woman's bio and (forgive the term) general vibe, and each time it was a match.
These women I swiped right on and I are very good friends today. I guess if I ever feel like trying OLD (which I've never done) I will instantly know to trust my gut and to swipe right only if I'm at least 90% sure this person would be a good match, no chances given to randoms who "may surprise me". The difference it made on the spot was crazy though! In an ocean of "meh" bios that were either non-existent, low-effort, follower-bait, too generic ("I like food and wine!"), incompatible or low-value (a lot, and I mean a LOT, of them were using mental illness as a quirky trait/personality type, or just advertized not having their act together: "I'm a complete and utter mess, I have ZERO idea what I'm doing LMAO" and stuff like that) reading these women's unique bios was like a breath of fresh air!
They were fleshed out, creative, really long and descriptive and they gave me a good idea of who the person was. But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if I were to see actual stats and realize I have swiped right on less than 1% of the profiles I saw.
Another problem with the app that I used was the fact that people could message anyone without matching. There might have been a setting to deactivate this feature though, I can't remember, but I guess I didn't turn it off. I received a bunch of messages I ignored, but I still replied to a few from women I hadn't matched with but thought "eh, why not?". These attempts never led anywhere, which reinforced my decision to stick to the few profiles I've swiped right on and ignore the ones that have attempted to match with me and, despite the lack of reciprocation, still attempted to contact me.
I do recommend trying this, even just to see if it works for you as well, but I'd keep in mind that a lot of people were complaining about being ghosted/ignored and whatnot so maybe don't take it too seriously either. As a non-user of OLD I was also not used to the swiping thing, and I found it very dehumanizing in the long run, so I stopped altogether. But I got what I wanted out of it!
https://discord.gg/kUZetyDb I have a discord for the gamer queens of FDS 😊 it could be a start