The trouble with being friends

Dear TTB

What does your academy entail? Are you hoping to monetize this? Your most urgent task should perhaps be to educate woman in realising when they're entering Bermuda? Should the academy then not be for them? The "okes" will then not be able to get away with playing around in Bermuda so easily. No?

My biggest question. How should an "oke" treat a girl who he honestly only wants to be friends with? What should he avoid doing? Should he act even more cautiously if he realises that the girl likes him?

Regards
Anonymous

Dear Anonymous

Thank you for asking these questions. The truth is both men and women need to enroll in Emotional Intelligence academies. When that John Gray wrote his book, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” he really knew his stuff! TTB agrees that her main task is to educate women about the perils of Bermuda. Indeed this is the very reason her blog has gone global. TTB figured that only women would be interested in reading her blog and hence she suggested the academy for men. However, since receiving such an overwhelming response from a number of briefcases, TTB is happy to have been proven wrong and perhaps her blog will suffice as a crash course in EI 101? She is so pleased to hear that briefcases also think about these deep but confusing relational realities.

The simple answer to your question is: treat a friend like a friend and a girlfriend like a girlfriend. So, give a moment of thought how you would treat a woman you were dating and then make sure that you are not treating any female friends the same way. Be careful of too much affection, text messaging, emailing and one on one time etc. TTB is not suggesting you cut these off from your friendships with women - everything in moderation. Be mindful of how women are just wired differently and do become more emotionally attached and “read into things.”

So for example, men tend to be more likely to tell women about deep, meaningful things than other men. It is kind of one the things that make relationships work – men look for nurturing, encouraging women and women look for decisive, task oriented men. TTB has often observed how this plays out in friendships between men and women. A guy over shares on all sorts of deep things that he can’t tell his guy friends (because they might laugh at him) and a girl reads this as, “He wants to share his life with me!” And then gets all ahead of herself and starts dreaming about big, diamond rings and white, wedding gowns... Rather find a guy you can have a real DMC with, or save it for your mom as this is classic girlfriend and not friend territory.

Another strategy TTB approves of is just coming out and saying it, gently, “I just want to be friends with you.” I know, it does sound a bit presumptuous. She might be offended for a week or so, but she’ll get over it and it will at least save you from entering that dreaded triangle or having a situation where you have to address the fact that she’s into you. So keep lines of communication clear with your lady friends when establishing a friendship and especially if you suspect she might be interested in being more than compadres. The other strategy, when you think a girl likes you but you’re not feeling it, is to just wait it out, distance yourself and hope that the crush will turn into nothingness. It does avoid the awkwardness of having “the conversation” but there’s always a risk that she may be even more hurt and offended by your ignoring her. So, TTB thinks it’s probably best just to face it head on.

I’ll leave you with a question: Can men and women ever really be “just friends”. TTB’s jury is still out on this one and she’ll leave that to be answered in a later blog entry.

Yours sincerely
TTB

PS TTB is giving your second letter some intense thought. She will have an answer for you shortly.