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I think the main feature male friends can't provide is being the confidant of deep secrets and more purely emotional revelations from the inner reaches of your psyche. Intimacy, as you say.
For that, you want a partner that has some buy-in and is committed to sticking around for the long term and thus has a greater familiarity with your personal foibles and hangups and struggles, and has accepted you 'in spite' of those. i.e. they make you comfortable enough to be open.
So in that case yeah, you'd want somebody who is emotionally mature and a decent communicator, which would be rarer to find among 18-20 year olds.
But it also doesn't take too much experience to just let someone put their head in your lap and talk about their inner world while providing the occasional constructive response or affirmation, and remember enough of the details that they can build on it as you go.
That's interesting that you say that. I'm incredibly lucky to have some male friends where we have essentially no secrets (or close to it, at any rate). But I recognize that that's unusual and most friendships (regardless of gender composition) never get to that level.
There are a lot of blackpilled guys who feel like sharing secrets and being emotionally vulnerable is one of the things that they explicitly can't do with women, because any perceived display of weakness could cause her to lose attraction, even deep into a committed relationship. I'd like to tell them they're being overly cynical, but I also can't say that their fears are entirely baseless either.
I have some really good male friends too. They know a lot of things about me that could be used to destroy me if they wished. But I trust them to not.
And vice-versa.
But you see, what happened is they all got married and so acquired a partner that could serve that role better than I could.
Which has left me with not many options aside from finding a good therapist if I really want to unload. Although my brothers (as in, actual biological brothers) are still very good for commiseration.
Yep. And that's one hell of a tradeoff to make to achieve reproductive success. I'd want to have a partner who I could occasionally vent to with the understanding that I would always get back to work and make shit happen, but had the basic, I dunno, decency, to get that part of their role was to help take the edge off the stress every now and again so I can be the person they need me to be.
(also, from very direct experience, I have much less need to vent about emotions when I'm getting laid on the regular. Almost no issues feel overwhelming when that primal urge is satisfied)
I'd also gently point out that it was safer to do this when divorce laws weren't as lenient.
I hear what you're saying, but it's still possible to have friends like this. I have a cousin with whom I've always been very close. We've both been married for a while now, but we make a conscious effort to stay in touch and check in on each other. It's a little more awkward to open up now than it was when we were both freewheeling teens, but it's possible.
There's a pretty direct duty to the spouse to not disclose stuff that would possibly make them upset if it were known by others.
At least in my book.
I get it. Once you're married, you necessarily have to prioritize the spouse. This intensifies when kids arrive.
This is generally good. If people were still getting married at similar rates as before, then the problem of not having a trustworthy confidant would be easier to solve.
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