Compared to past generations, it’s a little more acceptable (and common) these days for men and women to be “just friends” with each other. However, it gets a little weird when most of a person’s friends are of the opposite sex. It’s perfectly natural to be jealous if your partner has a lot of female friends, but there’s usually a reasonable explanation. Here’s what it really means when your boyfriend’s social group is made up of mostly women.
- He’s comfortable around women. For some of us, there’s a natural draw to female friends, especially if we were raised by single moms or other female guardians. In some cases, men may have grown up with sisters or a lot of female cousins. In that kind of situation, a lot of guys will just feel more comfortable around women and end up having a lot more female friends when they get older. Maybe this guy just gravitates toward women because he identifies with them more than men.
- He likes having a female perspective. Regardless of how they grew up, some men prefer to be around women or prefer to be around feminine energy. They like having at least a few female friends who can give them a different perspective on life. These types of guys can actually have a more mature approach to relationships because they have platonic female friends they can go to for advice.
- He’s attracted to them. Yes, there can be a shady reason why a guy will try to surround himself with female friends. It’s not necessarily creepy or a ploy to sleep with them, but he just prefers to spend his time with attractive people. I mean, some guys are just superficial and think along those lines. In the back of their heads, they think that something more could happen one day, and so they see a lot of benefits to having female friends.
- He’s outgrown his guy friends. Spoiler alert: some guys are a little immature and take a while to grow out of that. For guys who mature a little faster than their friends, it is sometimes natural to befriend more women. He might identify more with women than with men when he gets to a certain age. Odds are, a guy like this isn’t doing it on purpose. That’s just the way things have played out in his life.
- He wants to balance out his guy friends. Have you ever hung out with a bunch of guys over an extended period of time? It can be fun, but it can also be a little too much. As guys get a little older, they want to find a little more balance from the wild and wild group of bros they might have hung around with when they were younger. That can lead a guy to have a lot more female friends than expected.
- He’s not a man’s man. Guys who don’t fall into the “man’s man” category can sometimes have trouble maintaining friendships with other guys. He might not like a lot of traditional “macho” activities that are typical of male bonding. They tend to have more in common with women, which is why they have a lot of female friends. Stereotypically, you might think a guy like this is gay, but there are plenty of straight men who fit this description.
- It’s hard to make friends with guys. At a certain age, it’s not easy for men to make friends with each other. A lot of their closest friends are their friends from when they were young. When they get older, they tend to see each other more as sexual competitors for the women they want to date. Unless they meet through mutual friends or from being co-workers, guys don’t make friends with one another that often once they reach a certain age, and so most of their friends end up being women.
- Women make better friends. Nobody’s going to argue with me on this, right? Granted, I’m not going to get into the complexities of female friendships, but in a fully platonic situation, women usually make better friends for guys. They’re usually more sensitive and better at listening. They can also offer good dating advice and insight into what women want. What’s not to love about that?
- Women like him. This is something worth thinking about rather than getting jealous if your boyfriend has a lot of female friends. It’s not like the guy is choosing on his own to be friends with a lot of women. Remember that they’re all choosing to be friends with him too. In fairness, perhaps some of his female friends like him a little too much. But maybe there’s something about this guy that’s appealing to women, even if most of them just view him as a friend.
- He’s not a creep. Yes, there will be some exceptions to this, but for the most part, guys with a lot of female friends won’t turn out to be creeps. I mean, why would a lot of women choose to be friends with a guy who they find to be a little creepy? Sure, it’s possible that a guy is just good at hiding his creepy side. But more times than not, he’ll just be a good dude who gets along well with women.