let ‘em have it

I caught a couple moments of Good Morning America yesterday morning. GMA is and has been a guilty pleasure for over a decade now. Being able to watch a little morning news every once in awhile, which is really less news and more fluff, with a steaming cup of joe in hand is like taking a few “me minutes” before the day begins. It doesn’t serve any real purpose and heaven knows doesn’t count as productive, hence the label “guilty pleasure”—well and also because it’s a show that B abhors for it’s lack of substance.

Anyway, they’ve been on the hunt now for at least four months for what they’re calling the next “Advice Guru.” After some 15,000 applicants, they’re down to the final four and this week each one of those is getting a chance to answer some audience questions on the air. Yesterday morning a single mother of 3, who’s a former actress and author, made a very interesting comment that I’ve been chewing on since. One of the audience questions she picked had to do with some sort of female friendship issue. I can’t recall exactly what it was just that her advice was for the owner of the question to be straightforward with her girlfriend and have an honest, no-dancing-around conversation. Then here’s the nugget: she added quickly before moving on to the next question, that women historically don’t talk to other women that candidly. She laughed and said that we do with our men though. “We let ‘em have it,” she concluded.

So here’s what I’ve been noodling on--Are we more honest, candid, raw even with the men in our lives? If so, is it easier to talk straightforward to men because we assume that’s their preference as a gender and/or that they can handle it? Does it have something to do with our internal understanding that we need other women and our simultaneous fear that other women will always find us lacking and we’ll be left alone, an outsider to the feminine circle of trust? Female relationships are imperative to women. Like air. And yet truth be told they are also one of our greatest sources of heartache and confusion.

Maybe the guru candidate had it wrong or maybe it’s just been her personal experience. I do know that nobody gets it as “straight off the press” from me as B. But I’m willing to bet there’s a number of women out there that would say their gal pals get the uncut version as opposed to their man, who let’s face it, has a completely different set of wires, especially in the area of communication. And what happens if we broaden this to not just our girlfriends vs. spouses but all our female relationships vs all our male relationships? Do you talk differently (and by differently I mean = more candidly, matter-of-factly, no beating around the proverbial bush) with brothers, fathers, husbands, guy friends and sons then you do with sisters, mothers, girlfriends and daughters? Perhaps in the end there’s no sweeping generalization that will make it all neat and tidy.…Thoughts???