ANOTHER REASON THE DOC IS WRONG.

I’ll preface this by saying that not every man is an insensitive jerk and not every woman is a sympathetic person, but, this ridiculous doctor claimed that not only should you not share experiences with a member of the opposite sex, such as what you bought your partner for their birthday, but, he also said that if you had a fight with your partner over the weekend, you shouldn’t share details of it with a colleague or friend of the opposite sex.

I remember, when we did Human Relationships Education at school, a teacher saying that girls tend to turn to their girlfriends in times of trouble, for example, if a girl finds that a guy she has a crush on has a girlfriend, and receive a sympathetic response. A guy will tend to keep things closed in, and if he shared with a guy friend that he had a fight with his girlfriend, he would probably laugh, OR, if someone innocently asked how his girlfriend was, at best, they would receive a snappy response, at worst, a punch. Now, I remember a case where a young man was having an argument with his girlfriend on his mobile phone, when a man who was a namesake to an a-hole I knew from school made a remark that he didn’t want to hear, in passing. The man in the argument with his girlfriend, instead of ignoring him, did something with his phone and punched the man, and then, when he was lying on the ground, kicked him in the neck. The man died, but the perpetrator was acquitted of murder and manslaughter!

If a man has an argument with his female partner, and he confides in a female friend or colleague, he is not putting his relationship at risk if the female friend is a true friend. Why? Well, a true friend doesn’t gossip, so details of it should not, by bush telegraph, get back to his partner. And nor, if the friend is respectful and has no hidden agenda, is she likely to be rubbing her hands with glee thinking that she wants him and if they keep fighting then they’ll break up and she’s free to make her move. Typically, a person who rushes to another person, once their relationship is over, is on the rebound, and there is every chance that the relationship will be short-lived.

Furthermore, friendship between two members of the opposite sex does not lead to romance as sure as Wednesday follows Tuesday. And sometimes, a man and a woman can be friends as that’s all they want from each other, and their friendship can outlast relationships on both sides. And let’s not forget, also, that if friendship leads to romance, and the romance falls apart, a beautiful friendship can be dissolved.

I know it might not be quite the same thing, but I remember an ABC show that I used to watch between the end of Stateline and the beginning of my Friday night UK crime drama called Strictly Dancing. It was a competition where four dancing pairs would dance off in three categories. I remember a woman who went on it and her dance partner and her husband were not one and the same. She even said that she saw more of her dance partner than her husband, sometimes (jokingly). To me, that suggests nothing more than her husband didn’t share her passion for dancing. And there was one episode where two women were dance partners and another where two men were dance partners and you could not necessarily infer from that that they were LGBTIQA.

So, no, it is not in rare cases that it may work, it is in MANY cases that it may work and the suggestion that you should not share things with someone of the opposite sex who is not your partner is more about projection than fact. There are some sensitive guys and there are some insensitive women, but let’s also not forget that just like some men may feel more comfortable sharing their experiences and secrets with women who are not their partners, some women may find it easier to share some of their thoughts and experiences with men who aren’t their partners for other reasons, too.