I have to admit that friendships with other women tends to baffle me. I've had so many missteps and disasters over the years, I tend to step extremely careful in this particular area. In some ways, I wish it were more politically correct for married women to be friends with men.

Friendships with men are so straightforward and you never have to walk around on eggshells because with a man (even with a gay man) you always know pretty much where you stand. They either like you or they don't and if they don't like you, it's generally because you've given them some good reason not to.

With women, it's a whole different ballgame. Here are a couple of examples. At work, my only co-worker is out on medical leave for several months. A lot of people on my floor work from home and out of the few that are there, only a handful of them actually take a sit-down lunch. So, after a couple of weeks of eating lunch all by myself, I got up the courage to ask a couple of the other ladies if I could eat with them. They said sure and I had lunch with them several times. We got along perfectly fine and seemed to have a nice time together.

That was about a month ago. Since then, neither one of them has said a word to me. What the heck! I have NO idea if they just got tired of having me around, or if they are waiting for me to ask to go with them again, or if I've offended them in some way. It's very puzzling and kind of uncomfortable because if I ask them, I feel like I'm putting them under obligation to eat with me whether they would like to or not. So I've just kind of left it. It's just kind of puzzling.

Then a couple of weeks ago, some other ladies asked me to come over and stamp with them. I was a little hesitant because I don't know them very well, and they've never been particularly friendly to me, but I thought it might be a good way to get to know them a little better. Plus I figured they wouldn't have invited me if they didn't like me and want me to come - wrong!

So, I get there and they're all snippy with me. What the heck! Why on earth would you invite someone over to your house and then be all frosty to them like you wish they hadn't come? I walk in and no one says hello to me or even acknowledges my presence. No one seems to like the food I brought. They're all chit-chatting between themselves and I feel like I'm kind of the fly on the wall. Every time I attempt to join in the conversation, I get slapped down in that subtle kind of way. Like you know you've been sort-of dissed, but it's not quite blatant enough to speak up and say anything about it, but you know it wasn't a very friendly response. So, it was just an uncomfortable night where I felt like I wasn't quite welcome, but felt like it would have been bad form to just storm out of there and leave.

See what I mean about eggshells? Women are strange creatures sometimes. Maya Angelou has a saying "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time". I think that really applies here. The ladies from work didn't like me enough to voluntarily invite me to eat with them, so I guess I should have left well enough alone and just brought an interesting book with me, or tried to make friends with someone who actually showed a liking for me. The other ladies showed me from the first that they weren't very nice people and I should have believed them the first time and not expected them to get all chummy with me just because I'd come to their little party. It is confusing though. Kind of like going into a minefield without a map.

Maybe it's not to late to scout around and find some gay guys. Hey fellas.....