To think this comment about women with no female friends is problematic?

[Newlifeincoming]

I saw a comment recently that said “women who don’t have any friends that are women are red flags. I don’t care what anyone says.”

I find this a bit troubling and potentially judgemental.

AIBU for thinking that this perspective is unfair and doesn’t account for individual circumstances or preferences? What do you think about this kind of statement?

I havent had a friend (female or male) in almost 15 years. But I am a really nice person and wouldn't consider myself a red flag.
Throughout school and college I had a close group of friends.
We all had plans to go to university after college (at the time there wasn't any universities in the county where I lived so it would mean moving away).
When the time came I was the only one to go to university.
All of my friends decided they would rather stay close to each other rather than moving away to university.
They felt like I chose university over them and they all stopped talking to me.
I then started a relationship with someone a year later.
He played darts a lot and I started going with him.
I met a lot of new people and made, what I thought, some really good friends.
We spend a lot of time together outside of playing darts and went on holiday with each other a number of times.
When me and my ex broke up 9 years later, I stopped playing darts, because I never enjoyed playing darts myself, that was his thing. I mainly played to make up numbers.
These people who I had been really good friends with for 9 years all stopped talking to me because I no longer played darts.
I tried to maintain a friendship with them but after a year of trying and getting no where I gave up.
Rather than trying to make new friends I then turned to Internet dating for a bit of fun.
I met my current husband and we have been together for 14 years.
I never bothered trying to make new friends again because it isn't worth the hassle.
I have been much happier just me and my husband than I ever was when I had friends

This sounds like a series of classic instances of 'Don't put all your friendship eggs in one basket' and 'Don't adopt your boyfriend's friends.' Most people who move away fall out of close touch with their childhood friends, so I wouldn't take that to heart. University is a brilliant place to make lasting friends, but you seem to have confined yourself to your boyfriend's darts friends, even though you didn't like playing darts, and the friendships ended with the end of the relationship and your dart-playing. Now you have your husband as your only friend. Hasn't this taught you anything about the foolishness of making all your ties be about one relationship?

University was definitely not a good place to make friends 25 years ago. Everyone on my course believed that I didn't deserve to be there because my parents didn't go to university and didn't have professional jobs. This was one of the questions my maths lecturer asked in the first lesson. When I said my parents didn't go to university, my dad delivers newspapers and my mum doesn't work, the lecturer said "then why are you even here". After that the students all thought I was beneath them.
And considering the last 15 years is the happiest I have been in my life I do not think I have made foolish decisions.
I think I finally made the right decision

I went to uni 44 yrs ago.

I remember during Freshers' Week, some people asking "What does your father do?"

It seemed like a strange question to me - I couldn't see the relevance - but I dutifully answered "He's a coalminer."

That seemed to stop the conversation.

The last 2 posters seem to have had the misfortune to have gone to very snobby universities. I went in the 80s and wasn't once asked what jobs my parents did, either by students or lecturers.

If I had been asked, I'd have probably down graded my dad from pit deputy (actual job while I was a student) to miner (his job many years previously) as miners were respected in my circle of friends as they had stood up to Thatcher.

I would have reservations about women who seemed just to have male friends. We all know how devastating emotional and physical affairs are so a woman (maybe a little older) who deliberately seeks men as 'friends" is a red flag. Men on their own have sexual banter (not great but it happens) but if you add a woman to the mix this can soon turn to flirting. What are women looking for in these frienshsips?.If it's banter then men can be pretty gross on a night out for instance or if it's something deeper then you question whether emotions are invariably touch on that friendship.

It's really quite basic nature for women to be suspicious of women hanging out with their other half and given the number of affair posts here I think that suspicion can be justified and not dismissed as paranoia.

I think this is why women who serially befriend men lose trust amongst women.

It like the phrase 'work wife'. Well that's going to make a lot of women really happy! The work colleague who shares a man's thoughts on the work place, banter over coffee or lunch, maybe a bit of a stroll though town. Often you have a woman at home taking on domestic pressures and the man is using the friendship as a bit of an escape valve. I am going to get flamed but it is not a great look.

I agree with the sentiment. I've had a wide social circle and there are two or three who clearly preferred my husbands company, and that of everyone else's partner, to the women in the group(s). This has been proven as all of them ended up having affairs with men in relationships, one being my exH and the woman in question was the wife of his BF.
There a reason why our gut instinct is there. Mine has been right every time.

When women seek out male friends then friendship is made through finding common bonds, enjoying similar humour and providing support. However this is precisely how romantic relationships start. When we say initially it's about finding out if the person has a shared interest and you get along with them.

A women going out to find male 'friends' is going through part of the same dating ritual even though apparently unintentionally. If a friendship for instance with a married man becomes deep and the man and woman are emotionally supporting each other surely this has to be a red flag?

@abracadabra1980

It nearly primeval instinct isn't it? Every generation thinks we can find new social models but at the end of the day women are quite right to give women who hang around their men suspiciously the cold shoukder. Affairs are devastating and unfortunately many men are sexually driven and in my opinion we aren't changing human nature.

You might get some mixed groups say at uni but in time you have mainly make and female separate groups. This is not to say obviously men and women can form breast working relationships but there is a difference between the skills to develop professional relationship and seeking 'friends'. It because when we seek out a friend we are seeking a person we want to spend time with , form an emotional bond with, and generally enjoy their conapny. Surely though the male in this scenario should be doing all of the above with his partner or wife?

By the time of the strike, I was a probationary teacher, still going out with my uni boyfriend, by then a trainee accountant.

We were in Sauchiehall St, Glasgow and trade unionists were collecting for the miners. I stuck in a fiver from my first pay.

”Why are you supporting criminals?” quoth the ex.

Just to add that we’d attended Glasgow Uni.

I recall getting a shock when I realised how few working class young folk attended there. I was there ‘78-‘83, including my year abroad - I did an MFL degree, so my experience was in the Arts Faculty..

I went to Plymouth University but was based at the Exmouth Campus.
I wouldn't have ever thought that Plymouth University would have been snobby but I was made to feel as it I didn't belong by staff and students for the whole 4 years I was there.

A friend of mine was in the year below me. He majored in English Lit. I only did it as minor, for two years, but was aware of how awful some of the staff were.

At a dept soiree, a lecturer/famous poet asked my friend which school he'd attended. "X Tech - I went back to do my Highers."

"Oh. I don't really approve of people like you coming to university."

I shan't name the poet, but his nickname was Hog's Arse.

I went to Oxford in the 1990s as the child of a cleaner and a mechanic, from a family where the latest anyone had stayed in school was 14, and didn't find that. I just went on holiday this summer with friends from my college, a couple who met there and subsequently married (despite very different backgrounds and nationalities, actually, come to think of it). I won't say I didn't ever encounter prejudice, and my moral tutor clearly found me chippy, but it wasn't in any way the defining aspect of my student days.

I was going to say exactly this.
Yes those videos sound horrendous
But how on earth do you think men/boys carry out rapes - involve holding a woman down and tearing her clothes off while others watch/film - and then join in.
You say you'd rather be beaten up but rape is essentially the shame/humiliation/psychological dehumanisation and distress of those videos AND then further physical violence.