Yesterday, I found myself venting with one of my closest cis-guy friends about my confusion and disappointment: the gay climber (another cis-man) with whom I had seemed to connect so nicely over the holidays and who seemed to genuinely enjoy my company & to care about my friendship has ghosted me. He didn’t reply to a direct question in a text message a week ago and then never wrote back. My friend validated my disappointment but he also offered an alternative viewpoint from my interpretation of ghosting and/or not caring: he suggested that maybe the gay climber had lost track of my text with the direct question, between being sick and going back to school, and then once he realized how much time had gone by, he felt guilty or awkward and didn’t know how to reach back out. I’ve heard this viewpoint from several other of my cis-men friends (gay or straight but anyway AMAB): “I missed your text, lost track of time, and then felt guilty and didn’t know how I could get back to you so late… I guess I was just unable to say, ‘Sorry, I messed up, want to hang out?’”, they explain.
A few days ago, I sent out an email to several of my climbing buddies & the people on my climbing team suggesting an event. Of the dozen people to whom I sent this email, all cis-men apart from the four cis-women on my climbing team, four people have replied: three of the women on my climbing team (one of whom replied also for her boyfriend who’s on the team, too, although he’s the one who usually interacts with me more since we’re both “guys”) and one of the older cis-men on the team.
In general, of the six very close straight guy-friends I have and even within my broader group of about a dozen cis-men who are buddies, only two of them ever initiate communication with me; the others always leave it up to me to reach out.
One of the biggest problems and sources of disappointment for me in the gay men’s chorus was the incapacity of even the guys who actually liked and/or connected with me genuinely to reach out and keep in touch.
What is the problem with cis-men (or AMAB people more generally, since I know a couple of trans-women who do the same) and communication? I find it to be particularly bad here in the U.S. (at least within white American culture); my cis-men friends in Europe weren’t (& still aren’t) as bad.
This isn’t a question of “female vs. male brain”. The excellent book “Inferior” by Angela Saini, among others, shows ample scientific proof and data that human brains are pretty much the same for males and females, the differences being really social and/or cultural rather than based on sex or gender. And I believe that the data I have in my own life with my friends & relationships proves this, too: although I’m a guy, I’m generally good at communicating or, at least, at maintaining communication and relationships, as I generally put effort into caring for the relationships in my life. And most of my other AFAB friends do the same, regardless of their gender identity. Part of the reason is our characters; but I’m sure the main reason is the way we were socialized: as AFAB persons, we were socialized to be care-givers, to be “in charge of relationships”, to “do the emotional work”, while our AMAB peers were not. Which in practice means we do the lion’s share of the work in maintaining the relationships and communication even when we shouldn’t.
And this is getting to be a nightmare, a real problem, for me. I love my cis-guy friends and I know they care about me, too. They’re all really nice guys and they are caring and responsible both with me when we meet up in person and with their partners or families. But the responsibility or weight of maintaining the relationships with them always falls wholly on my shoulders. It’s a catch-22 (& I feel particularly cursed because I tend to like cis-men a lot): it would be painful for me to not have these cis-guy friends in my life but it’s almost just as painful to have them in my life because of the constant effort I have to make to keep the communication (or relationships) alive.
The Little Prince and the Fox 