Girlness

I have been thinking over my life of the last few years and I am realizing that I am entirely surrounded by women. People I talk to at church are generally women, Bible study is predominantly women, my friends and largely women, I work for and with women. The only times that it evens up or the male count overtakes the female count is on mission. This is 9 days long, for the rest of the year, women.

I like women, I learn from women, I enjoy the company of women, however I am feeling the lack of male friendship. Except for on mission, the men seem to huddle up together and ignore single women. Most of the men I know are married and have wives to care for and children to bring up. However That does not mean that they are a different species to me. There is a tendency, when I go to a married friends house, that the husband thinks to himself "Here is my wife's friend, I will let them do girl stuff together and go off to do my own thing." This is unhelpful to single women who then begin to think "Maybe I am single because there is something wrong with me, even the married men won't have a conversation with me"

Because of the total lack of men my own age in my life, I noticed that the first time I went on beach mission, I was over excited and silly about being near and getting to know single men. It was not helpful to me to not have had practice relating to men, single or otherwise. I was relieved to find some of my female friends at church had found the same thing themselves when relating to the single men. As the years progressed, and we got more practice, we became more natural. However 9 days in a year is not very satisfactory. It would be like having one day of eating per week. Massive pig out, then nothing.

Location has had a lot to do with this situation, last year not only was the congregation female, and bible study female, but they were old as well. The only blokes I got to speak to were to two young men who worked in the co-op. When I did the shopping, they would come and talk to me, probably similarly thrilled at there being a young interesting person in the town.

When I went to karate last week, the entire class was male. They were polite and took an interest in me and were generally friendly. It was this more then anything that made me contemplate and realize the lack of men in my social circles