I had gay friends in from out of town this weekend, and it was interesting.

One of them asked me about my straight friends, and after doing to quick review of my friends, I honestly told him that (in real life), I don't have any straight friends. Seriously. All my friends are either gay men, or else, okay, they are straight women who like gay men (what we used to refer to affectionately as 'fag hags'). He said that in San Francisco (where he's from), straight men will have platonic gay male friends. I found that remarkable.

Do you have straight friends, and if so, are there relationship problems which you have with them that you do not have with gay friends, as a function of their sexual orientation or else as a function of social expectations, i.e., 'straight men are not allowed to have gay male friends!'.

many close straight (male) friends. I think it is a function of age. The older we get the more we mix.

Although I am a lesbian most of my friends are straight men and women. I have, also, always had a lot of gay male friends so that makes me a fag hag.

I actually get along very well with lesbians, too. :) But since I just don't circulate in the same sorts of social places, I don't really know many.

One of my best men at my wedding was an old gay friend of mine.

I used to hang out with a gay guy extremely often, several times per week for a few years. He is a Buddhist monk now so we don't hang out much anymore.

I don't see what the big deal is.

I would say that particular social expectation can create humorous situations. When my gay friend would introduce me to his gay acquaintances, there would be puzzled looks as though they had thought we were some sort of a couple. He would then have to explain the situation and how it was that he could actually have a straight friend -- "No, we're just business partners, not 'partners'".

I think the problem results from people not wanting to have much diversity in their circle of "close friends". They want to pal around with people a lot like them, so they unconsciously exclude foreigners, different sexual orientation, intellectuals if they are athletes and vice versa, etc. Part of it is simply not having much in common with people that are "different". Even if you have a diverse work environment, you tend to create friendships with like people who have like interests and like tastes, not the ones you consider "oddballs".

Though in my case, because I always was an outsider myself (due to my 'sissified' ways), I have always been drawn to oddballs.

On edit, the comment I had but took out was my claim that 'you can't control who you're attracted to.'

You CAN control who you are attracted to, it's done all the time. The most numerous examples are by bisexual men who have a lot of social pressure to be straight. They control their attraction by limiting the available choices to just women. Blinders, and constant social conditioning help to convince them that they don't want to look at men, even though they may be 60/40 gay/straight.

Society doesn't tolerate sexual ambiguity or people who like to walk on both sides of the street. Bisexuals are always getting asked to fish or cut bait and stay and pick which side they want to be (for example, Freddie Mercury). When they do end up picking one or the other, they have, in effect, controlled who they are attracted to.

It's always nice to meet new people from somewhere else and talk with them - it highlights differences between your everyday assumptions about people that make you realize that you really don't have all the answers, lol. :hi:

Had as his best man and the groomsman after him a gay man, and the gay man's life partner, as it was known back then. Then after him was an atheist. The groom himself was an atheist, and the bride was a lapsed Catholic, but they got married in the town's biggest Catholic church to help her dad save face. Even went to Catholic marriage boot camp where he caused no end of problems for the priest.

TlalocW

I never knew a gay man until college and he wasn't out. Afterward I spent 13 years in rural Mississippi where I had 4 or 5 gay friends over the years (only one close). At 35 I moved to a large town where I made lots of gay friends but after I met my partner we quit going to the bars and they all drifted away. Today I have a half dozen but only two of them are close.

I've always had many straight friends, male and female. Have there been relationship problems? Oh hell yes, but none that we didn't work through. I've often been infatuated with (mostly) unattainable sexy straight(ish) men. Hell, I almost (unintentionally) broke up two marriages when I was young and very stupid. We all partied way too much and sometimes things happen....

I've never lost a straight friend over my sexuality.

Its not that I didn't want more gay friends. The times were different, FAR fewer people were out, and my location limited my options. And I have to admit, my straight friends have been awesome. Three go all the way back to 1972-we've all grown and learned from each other and I know I could trust them with anything.

Now somebody please stop my before I start telling embarrassing stories

who I hung with in the navy who knew i was gay and didn't give a shit. also, I was stationed in San Franscico two different times while in the navy and met several straight guys that were regulars in the gay bar scene and hung in gay clicks. sometimes they would mess around with the "fag hags"...

to correct a misspelling. clicks = cliques. :crazy:

I didn't come out til I was in my thirties, and all my friends were cool with it, so I never had the impetous to go out and make new ones. I hate clubs, and I don't live in the city, so I don't get to meet too many out gay folks. I'm very happy with the group of friends I have, though.

qualities in your circle of friends. By that I mean, if I really wanted to, I could probably live so as to encounter almost nothing but gay people 24/7. If I lived in a small town, though, I would have to adapt, and would probably have straight but liberal friends in my inner circle. Maybe even some heterosexual women.

But that evil shedevil he married has been in the way for about twenty years now.

Just kidding, actually she's very nice and has only once complained about our friendship after he and I went on a 24hr binge in the netherworld without calling to say he wouldn't be home. But families being what they are, and a rather sizable distance between us at this point means we don't see each other much. He spends all his time with his family and I spend all my time with mine. Those gutters don't clean themselves.

I have always maintained that the idea that a gay man's natural best friend is a straight woman is incorrect.

I think that straight women are conditioned by the way in which social power is conferred (a married woman with children wields more influence than a single woman or even a married woman without children), and gay men can thwart their aspirations, if they rely upon the institution of the nuclear marriage to the exclusion of their own intelligence and skills.

But let's not forget that for every Anita Bryant, there is a Katherine Heigl or Vanessa Williams or Charlize Theron.

hanging out with a straight person will not make you catch teh straight.

It's perfectly acceptable to hang out with straight people, even though they're different than we are and are attracted to things that we normally don't think about. I mean, give me a six pack and beer goggles and I might consider having sex with a straight dude, but other than that they're quite harmless. The only thing is if you're in a relationship your other half will start making barbed jokes about you turning straight, but turns out it's good for your sex life having to prove yourself over and over.

:silly:

I had a lot of strate friends in my job, but I left Norcal seven yrs ago and basically have been dropped by mostly all of those people. the only LD friends That stuck were the Gays. The closest have always been Gay, many now dead weve made few friends in this new half Gay town, all Gay. I still have a few strate friends left in the old country (NY)We talk regularly but haven't seen in 25 yrs or so. From what I can see I'm different than most here. My family provides enough strate for me and Partner's family does too. My best friend and Union protoge' dumped us when she found a strate man.. the whole affair was tacky.

For various reasons. I had more gay friends when I was more interested in clubbing and bar-hopping. Once I started outgrowing it and drifting out of it, I became much less close to my gay friends. Nothing in common outside of socializing over a drink. I also grew a little tired of the constant drama of their apparent unachievable platonicism. My gay friends were always dating each other, breaking up, sleeping with each other, breaking up, cheating on each other, breaking up. I often ended up refereeing or put in a position where I was asked to choose one over the other. Lots of awkward social mess. I just grew tired of it over time.

Over the past three years or so, I have tried cultivating platonic gay relationships, but no matter how upfront I've been about having a boyfriend I'm very happy with, the attempts have invariably ended in the person wanting more than platonic friendship.

Now, almost all of my friends are straight. My boyfriend's in the same boat. He doesn't have any gay friends either, for reasons similar to my own.

i lost interest in straight people.

now i have some straight women friends -- but as a rule -- i just lose interest in straights after a while.

We're from the same neck of the woods.

for a horrifying drab place -- but it's not.