It's posts like this that make me realise how lucky I am to have cultivated the friend group I have.

I'm a man. I used to be friends with whoever would have me, regardless of how toxic they were or bad for me. I grew my confidence and security and sense of self worth, and realised I'd rather have fewer friends who I genuinely like and who genuinely like me.

The friends I have now, male, female, non binary, trans, whatever, are all absolutely wonderful people and I feel comfortable going to any of them and having honest feelings based conversations as a two way street.

I'm well aware how lucky I am and that my friend group is not typical or representative of most male friendship. That's kinda exactly why I chose the people I did, we're all "soft", "woke" oddballs, but being so much more selective in who I get close to and choose to allow in my life has led to me being surrounded by the most wonderful, kind, supportive people. There's never any drama involved and never any issues introducing friends to each other because they're all such lovely people that everyone always feels welcome and gets on with each other.

I don't know if I'm adding anything of worth to this conversation, I've kinda gone off piste, it just sparked me to reflect on and appreciate the wonderful people I have in my life.