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Originally posted by ThurgreedMarshall
1. Stating a thesis on how friendships begin and work and expecting people to disprove your "general" conclusion or "usual" result is just plain dumb. No one on this board is going to point you to empirical evidence proving or disproving your brilliant thesis. All other theories will be based on anecdotal evidence.
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This isn't the PB. I wasn't expecting to defend my thesis from an embattled position, but I'm not afraid to, either. It was just a thought I had. I won't think any less of me for having been wrong.
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My closest friend is male*.
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As is mine, also excluding the wife. However, I have read about surveys in which men identify a woman as their best friend and closest confidant. I would surmise that those men are thinking of their spouses (as you and I are not, because we're lawyers and compartmentalize things to make specific points), but it's interesting that married women don't ID their spouses as their best friends at the same rate --- they point to a third party, usually a woman.
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There have been times, like college, when we weren't in touch as much as you would think best friends would be, but it made no difference because we were as thick as thieves on breaks. That's the way it is with guys. It's a different type of friendship than the one your wife believes makes up a close friendship. But it is no less strong and we are no less close than your wife and her best friend.
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I take it you recognize this is exactly the point I made about male-male friendships in one of my posts. So at least one of my generalizations is supported by TM anecdotal evidence. I say this not to be snarky about it, but because it's important to me to be right about at least one thing today.
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I would say that of the people I know who have gotten married, the best man (if not a brother or something) goes farther back than college or law school.
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You chose the one indicator of best-friendship that automatically favors men. I think I've been to one wedding where there was a wedding attendant of the opposite sex. And I'm from
California, man. Another point to make is that best-man selection is a highly political moment and might skew toward older friends and against better friends.
That said, I'm willing to admit that the survey I read about might have defined "best friend" as a confidant or some shit like that, which caused a disproportionate number of male survey respondents to think, "Shit, dude, I can't say that I confide in a guy, 'cause that sounds totally gay." So they said wife or girlfriend.
