It’s a Friday night. Your girl friends are out at a bar and your boyfriend is playing soccer with his mates. Two text messages later, you’re eating pizza and watching action movies with three guy friends. Perfect. “Guy friends” have the potential to enrich your life in ways that female friends and boyfriends just can’t. For starters, they provide an insider’s perspective on how men think, feel and behave. When dealing with male relatives, coworkers and even boyfriends, another man’s point of view can be incredibly useful. Three hours spent analyzing a situation in a café with your girlfriends can’t compete with a quick chat to a guy friend. Many women find that time spent with male friends can be a liberating and somewhat refreshing break from spending time with the girls. Without the judgmental gaze of other females, there is less pressure to dress up and compete for attention. Traditionally, girl-guy friendships are seen as hard to maintain. Most relationships between males and females that we come across in our day-to-day lives, whether in movies or books, are romantic by nature. These cultural images make girl-guy friendships seem impossible. Yet in reality, as gender roles loosen and equality becomes a norm in the workplace, it has become much more common for platonic friendships to blossom. “The belief that men and women can’t be friends comes from another era in which women were at home and men were in the workplace, and the only way they could get together was for romance,” explains psychologist Linda Sapadin to Psychology Today magazine. “Now they work together and share sports interests and socialize together.” “My boyfriend has met all of my guy friends so he’s quite accepting of me hanging out with them,” says Nellie. “Because we’ve been dating so long, there’s a level of trust where he knows I will make the right decision when choosing who to be friends with. “He understands that the kind of time that I spend differs between guys and girls. When I’m out with the girls, we’re gossiping or talking about clothes but when I’m spending time with the guys, it’s different. I think their carefree and ‘whatever goes’ attitude can sometimes be exactly what I need.” 小题1: What is the best title of the passage?
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