To think women with sisters are often better at female friendships?

[Tartanchair01]

I only have 1 sibling, a brother.

I would say I’ve struggled with female friendships my whole life. I do now have lots of good, female friends but this has taken years of work and I still now am not good in a group of women.

I’ve observed over the years that my friends who have sisters all seem to also have lots of female friends and don’t seem to struggle in big, female groups, in fact I’d say they are the people I know who do have big, female friendship groups.

I’ve always thought perhaps it’s because they’re so used to how to be around other women and can navigate the common issues surrounding female friendships and female friendship groups better than women that have grown up with a lot of male siblings (well, can navigate them better than me anyway 🙈)

Obviously this is a purely anecdotal observation lol, but it’s got me thinking.

I'm not sure I agree. I have 3 best female friends and they all have brothers and I am an only child.

When I was younger I always felt that I was more of a boy's girl and got on better with boys, it now I'm in my 30s, I get on far better with women

I kind of agree. I grew up having a close relationship with my dad and brother. I have lots of female friends but my closest relationships have been with men. I find them more straightforward and easier to get on with. I think my sense of humour, taste in music etc is a bit more 'bloke'.

I have 2 sisters and I have more male friends that female ones.

I don’t think so honestly. I’ve never noticed it in anyone else (I have plenty of friends with only brothers) and personally I had good female friends long before I got along with my sister. We’re good friends now but only from our 30s.

I'm an only child and have lots of great female friendships.

Not for me. I have 2 sisters and prefer male company.

I have 2 brothers and have loads of strong, close and lasting friendships with females.

I am down to one male friend because all the others either made a pass at me or showed themselves to be extremely sexist.

It could be but hard to say. I have no trouble making close female friends. I do have a sister and we get on well enough but I'm much closer to my brother. One of my closest female friends has had an uneasy relationship with her sister and gets on better with her brothers. Another couple are only children. Thinking about it, most of the others do have sisters. But some also have brothers....

I don't have many close male friends and I miss that as I like male company, but my job is mainly female dominated as are my hobbies, so it's mainly down to circumstance.

I struggle and have sisters and brothers. Lots of factors at play

I have a brother. At school I had two or three girls I was friends with, but when it comes to bigger friendship groups they’ve always been mixed for me. My closest friend, who I consider to be like a sister, also only had brothers.

I do think there’s something to the idea that ‘men are straightforward, women aren’t’, because of how the genders are socialized. Men are encouraged to be direct, whereas women are expected to be ‘kind’, demure, and never ever offensive. I am generalizing, it certainly doesn’t universally apply, and the politics of interpersonal relationships are in fact complex, but imo those ideas have had an impact.

no it dosent work like that.

Thinking on this, I'm leaning more towards having good women relationships modelled.

My mother had no women friends that I can recall. When she worked, she hung out with the men, her only friends I can recall being around were me. Similar with my father, though he kept his social life a lot more private so I only saw his friends that were also friends with her. The only women relationships I saw modelled growing up in person with parent-child/elder-younger dynamic or the very performative 'because we're in the same place and we have to appear friendly'. As an adult, I can do the performative low-level socialness, but I struggle to get past that, I often feel I'm not sure what the next steps would even look like.

I have a sister and a brother, but our relationships were terrible as our parents basically had us be competitive to each other from the start & we haven't really talked since leaving school.

I have 3 sisters, and still struggle with female friends.

To be fair, I was not close to my sisters growing up and still aren't.

The problem with your theory, is the assumption that sisters are friends. Or even speak to each other.

The thing for me is because I have a sister I'm close to, I put less effort into maintaining my friendships. Let's say I wanted to try out a new cafe or restaurant or needed a second opinion when shopping, my first option/thought would be my sister rather than asking a friend.

I had a female colleague who was just awful with other women. Amazing with the men we worked with. She had three sisters and no brothers.

I've got fairly deep and close relationships with four women (one sister, three friends), and pretty close longstanding friendships with another half dozen, then a wider circle of about fifteen - all of whom I've been friends with for over ten years.

The only women who've more or less dropped out of my life include a couple of home friends - and my other sister.

I also have a brother I barely see, because he's a raging misogynist.

Result: I think it's a duff theory.

As you said yourself, it's anecdotal. I have two sisters and I'm terrible at creating bonds and maintaining relationships with females other than those in my family.x

Nope, I had three sisters and had to completely relearn normal friendship as our dynamic was so dysfunctional, lots of bullying, mind games, verbal abuse.

I find now that I have female friendships that are based on shared interests (one I walk with, one we share a career, one I swim with) and chatting around those activities. There are more boundaries and I like that.

I think a lot of women struggle with friendship because we are conditioned to see each other as rivals but once you get beyond that to a respectful friendship they are wonderful. I actually found being on MN made me a lot more comfortable with other women as the honesty and sheer brilliance on here made me see how being a woman and sharing that experience with other women is actually the best. Also relatively how comparatively shit a lot of men are, but I get a skewed picture on here, I know that.

This isn’t a pattern I’ve noticed in my friendship groups. I have a brother and no sisters and I’m friends with lots of women and didn’t struggle with teen friendships. Some of my female friends are only children, some have only male siblings and some have sisters. I don’t see anything different in how good they are making or being friends.

I'd actually say the opposite in my experience. There are 4 of us who have been best friends since school. All of us have brothers. I've always thought that it's made us closer and more like sister's ourselves

I have no idea if this is the case on a big population level. Anecdotally I’m not someone that tends to have a big circle - I tend to have a very, few close female friends at a time. I don’t have a sister and so many of my close friends (so people who are clearly able to form deep friendships) only have brothers or are only children.

I don’t think you can really generalise about sibling relationships. So much depends on personality, age difference etc. My two (boy and a girl) are very, very close but the boy is the oldest and there isn’t a huge age gap. People often say that boys mature slower than girls and I think perhaps this is the case - mine seem to meet in the middle somewhat and I often think of them as practically twins, especially in terms of emotional maturity. The older (boy) is mikes ahead academically but they are pretty much at the same point regards knowing how to make friends and behave in public etc.

I had 4 sisters. I'm fucking awful at female relationships. So are 3 of my sisters.

The one who wasn't has sadly passed away.

I have a sister & a brother. I don't get along with my sister but I have lots of female friends

Nope. I've got a sister who is 14 months older than me plus 2 older brothers.
I've aways got on better with males and am far from being feminine (still female tho'). My sister and I are very close but I never had close female friends growing up and only a couple now.