New man "all my best friends are women"

[Calculuses]

I'm not generally the jealous type and as far as I know there's not one special friend, just that there 's something that just makes me wonder if this is a bit off. A bit like women who are "not like other women" and claim to enjoy the company of men more.

Or is it completely different in reverse?

He's a warm, caring, emotionally intelligent man who has spent his whole career in an industry where staff are predominantly women. He also doesn't enjoy football, which he says has excluded real friendships with the few men he's come across in his working life. He has a couple of male friends from school, but his main friendship groups are mostly women. He's 50, so from a generation when mixed friendship groups weren't quite as common as they are now.

I'm not jealous exactly, more wondering if this is a red flag? I'm being pre warned I'm going to have to accept other women, or.....?

I don't have see a problem really. He does have male friends and also female friends which probably means he relates well to women. My DH has lots of female friends. I've never seen it as a red flag. He has 4 sisters so I just assumed he was very comfortable with women.
I'd actually find it a bit more worrying if a man had no female friends. It would tell me they perhaps saw women as sexual partners and nothing more.

A bit like women who are "not like other women" and claim to enjoy the company of men more.

Why does this sound mocking? I'm one of those women who 'claim' to enjoy the company of men more than I do women. Why did you write claim as though it couldn't possibly be true?! I have one female friend. The others are male.

You haven't been on MN long if you haven't seen the suspicion whose women are viewed with.

Since when were mixed friendship groups not a thing for people 50 plus. DH and I were in a huge mixed friendship group in our twenties and we are just past mid fifties. Still in touch with parts of that group.

It wouldn’t bother me at all because he does have friends both women and men.

My best friend is a man. We know others find it weird but my husband is totally fine with it. They have their own friendship now and I will sometimes stay with my friend without my husband. I think it depends how much you are welcomed into those friendships.

@Calculuses Oh I've been on MN a while! I'm fully aware of what some women think but I'm asking if your tone was mocking towards us that do prefer male company?! That's all. As though you don't believe it and we've got an agenda! I don't think you've got anything to worry about in regards to your man. He just has female friends.

@FML83 Why do you prefer the company of men?

I am his age and mixed friendship groups v common (in my cohort anyways)

I think it’s SLIGHTLY different to women who have no women friends, simply because far more men have few friends. Anyway he does have a bunch of male friends from college. I don’t think I’d worry about it.

My best friend is male. We've been close friends for 34 years. In that time we've house shared, both had long term relationships, got married and we are still best friends.
Absolutely no attraction - we just get on really well and have supported each other through all kinds of things. We laugh a lot. None of our partners have ever had a problem with it.

I was simply referring to the MN view

Most of my DPs friends are women. A few of them have become my friends too. One of them he sees 1:1 fairly often as they share a hobby. Another he went out with last week to dinner and show as I couldn't make it. I did feel a bit insecure about it at the beginning of our relationship, especially the hobby friend, but he's had plenty of opportunity to cheat if he wanted to, and has never given me any reason to distrust him.

He's 50, so from a generation when mixed friendship groups weren't quite as common as they are now. they really were! My friendship groups though the 80s and 90s were very mixed. Once I settled though, it didn't seem appropriate to have male best friends, and I know this often caused unspoken concern with my dh. I think it just depends on how priorities you when the relationship progresses. A good way to test is to ask to meet up with them and see what the vibe is.

Well you must have moved in different circles to me. Groups were exclusively male/female here when I was at school.

Because I share the same sense of humour as the majority of my male friends, I work in construction and I enjoy the on-site banter I have with them which I simply do not get with female colleagues. I find men easier to get on with. The interests & hobbies that I have seem to attract males more than females. I've never had a night out with women that i've enjoyed, yet I love going out with my male friends. The last occasion of organised fun I had with women was my cousins Hen do, cocktail making and then drinks in a wine bar place. It was hell. The last one I had with men was watching Sheffield United getting hammered as we usually do and then for a curry.

I wouldn't normally see it as a problem but l remember my best friend telling me her husband said the very same thing shortly after they met and sadly he was the biggest cheat going.

My exDH has always had female friends, and I've known him since I was 17 (we're mid-40's now). There was never anything in his behaviour that made me feel uncomfortable about it. He sees women as people, unlike a lot of men who see women as 'other'.
Without knowing what your chap is like, it's hard to say whether he's a decent bloke who likes the company of people he has common ground with, irrespective of gender, or if he's a player.

It would depend on whether he seemed to be making a big thing of for some reason, or whether he considered himself an honorary woman as a result and decided to mansplain menopause or some such aspect of the female experience to you.

I'd be more focused on why he was single and available at 50.

In my experience always an Amber flag.

Often they use women fir ego boosts, mothering, occassional shags or for triangulation purposes.

Hell be running to them at the first point of any disagreement then quoting them at you telling you youre wrong.

No reason to end things but definitely something to keep an eye on.

There is absolutely no problem with this as long as they are normal friends, with appropriate boundaries (not all exes/women he finds sexually attractive).

There's nothing inherently wrong with getting along better with women or men.

Separated in the last year after a 25 year marriage. According to him, they just drifted apart and wanted different things from life.

Maybe he grew up in a predominantly female household and extended family and just feels more comfortable with women.

Interesting because he doesn't actually talk about them much at all.

I'll hear he went to a quiz night with people he knows from xyz. Or he saw the group he worked with 20 years ago, only one of them is still married and they've all supported each other through the hard times, but I don't hear Sandra said abc, Jane's having a rough time with her ex or Susan thinks I should do 123.

No, he has a brother and a sister. Dad around until he died in his 50s.

I think its just part of the parcel of working in a role where the majority of your colleagues are the opposite sex. I work in a male dominated industry and did a male dominated course prior to that and naturally have lots of male friends. It's not a preference, I've always had close female friends too but just have more opportunities to click with men from the circles I'm in.

I've always worked with men too. I like men and I get on well with them at work. In a long career there aren't many that have become "best friends" rather than friendly colleagues.