Christmas is fast approaching. This is a holiday that I don't much celebrate except for some of the socializing that happens ...which means that I've been making an extra effort to connect with people, have coffee, catch up. And in the process of doing that catching up, I've become once more very aware of the great divide that seems to separate women and men: friendship.

Now maybe it's because I'm a woman, but I keep hearing from men how their wife is their best friend. And I keep hearing from woman that while they love their husband and have a friendship with him as well a marriage, his friendship isn't at the top of their list of friendships. For many, it doesn't even make the top 10 list of friendships!

I got talking with one woman in particular this week about this phenomena and we agreed that there is a whole generation of bommers out there who are heading for some very interesting "retirement" situations where the men have this fantasy of having their wives all to themselves in retirement and the women have this fantasy of having their friends to play with and their husbands to come home to at the end of a playful day!

It really has me curious about what the future holds in store for many marriages as retirement looms. My good buddy (and business collaborator) Mike and I are getting ready to launch a new weekend workshop called RetireMyth™ (www.ouicoach.com). One of the top 10 myths about retirement that participants will be able to explore will be "Your close relationship with your spouse/partner will sustain you in retirement". I am very much looking forward to this male/female friendship conversation coming up during those workshops and seeing what insights people gain for themselves when they begin to connect with the fact that all may not be what it seems to be on the surface.

I know that this is about to become a major adjustment factor for many couples as they move into retirement. I wonder how many women will quietly let go of their dream of spending quality time with their girlfriends and will devote themselves exclusively to their man, patiently awaiting the day when they are on their own (because we all know that it is much more likely for women to be left widowed than for men). I wonder how many couples will discover a whole new vibrancy to their marriages because the woman finds the courage within herself to claim her right and her need to maintain friendships outside her marriage. And I wonder how many men are going to find, possibly for the first time in their life, the joy that friendship can bring to their experience.

What I've become aware of as I write this posting is that in my own friendships with both women and men, I only have male friends who have frienships. I don't know many men, even amongst my coaching clients, who only have their wives as friends. Yet amongst my women friends, I have a number who are living with men who have no friends. Some of these men live the delusion that they have friends, but typically these are what I call 'fantasy friends' ...people they perhaps used to have vibrant friendships with but with whom they now stay in occasional contact with, usually via e-mail or the occasional card. In their day-to-day life these are men who don't meaningfully interact with any human being other than their wife. These are men who have reduced the horizon of relationship to only one other human being. Kind of sad when I stop and think about it. I'm glad for myself that I attract the other kind of men to myself, the kind of men who have learned that they have more to offer to a woman when they stay connected to other people.