Does anybody else feel more comfortable around the opposite sex?

[Kaplan]

First off, I'm a guy . . . and I'm straight.

 

Can anybody relate to this? I feel much more comfortable when I'm around members of the opposite sex than when I'm around members of my own gender. I'm mostly talking about making friends and that sort of thing. If I meet somebody interesting I feel much more comfortable saying, "We should hang out," if it's a girl. I don't make friends easily with other guys. And with the friends that I do have, I find it very natural to call up a girl and say, "Let's have lunch," but I almost never do that with other guys. It kind of seems like when I'm suggesting becoming friends with somebody or hanging out, I feel the sort of nervousness that you're supposed to feel when you're asking out a girl. (On a side note, this came to me in an epiphany while watching a Louis C.K. stand-up routine.)

 

Sometimes I think it might be homophobiaphobia, which is a term I just made up that means fear of other people thinking you're gay. If I say, "We should hang out," to a girl and she misinterprets it as some kind of romantic interest than that's not so bad. But guys, I think we can all agree, tend to be seriously homophobic. But I'm very skeptical that homophobiaphobia is the full story.

 

I also sometimes think that men are sort of naturally incapable of becoming close to each other (and I speculate that this is universal.) So we're always sort of distant from each other. Obviously you can hug a female friend but not a male friend (not that I want to hug a dude, yuck, ) but what I mean is if your female friend is sad or something you can show sympathy and try to make her feel better. But if it's a guy friend all you can do is say, "Damn, that sucks." There are lots of other examples of what I'm saying, but I won't go on about it because I think it's sort of obvious.

 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this distance between men, but I feel like the distance may be much greater for me. Maybe it's somehow related to me having serious loner tendencies? I don't know. I definitely never had a close male friend.

 

It's something I've been thinking about lately and just wanted to know if anybody could relate.