Danny ChaiWe got into a discussion last night about whether it’s easier for the husband to get along with the wife’s friends or vice versa. In the end, I think it’s so dependent on the particular personalities of the spouses and their specific friends that one can’t make any sort of general statement about it at all. It’s entirely situation dependent.
Therefore, I offer this general rule of thumb: it’s much easier for the wife to get along with the husband’s friends. I mean come on, let’s be honest. The reason is this. The majority of men want one thing: to be left alone. And how hard is that? Whereas women want conversation, validation, keeping in touch, all these things that quite frankly I don’t do for any of my guy friends.
I do get along with Jieun’s friends – they’re all good people. I get along with their husbands/S.O.s more though. Just again, easier. Jieun’s married friends came to stay with us a while back and the women spent all this time talking about feelings and issues. The men spent a significant amount of time talking about video games. Oftentimes, we men just play video games and our conversation consists almost exclusively of sound effects. Shallow, superficial, easy.
I dunno, just my opinion, and totally skewed by my personal experience of Jieun’s social competence and my ineptness. Maybe actually men and women just have different standards of easy to get along with. For men, it’s related to effort. For women, it’s related to friendliness? So we view who is easier to get along with in different terms? I dunno. What do I know about relationships. Essentially nothing.
Oh, while I by and large really like Jieun’s friends, there is one situation that is really tough for me, and that’s when Jieun and her friends all start talking about Friends. I was once caught in that situation – we were even playing the Friends Trivia Game. Isn’t that one of Dante’s circles of hell?