Maybe it's just me being a male. But when I'm around the opposite sex my personality changes. Genuinely.
I get softer. Like I regain some innocence I forgot I had. I'm not posturing. I'm not on edge. I'm not scanning the room for who I gotta out-alpha. None of that animal kingdom male competition energy. It just turns off. Like a switch flips and I'm a different version of me.
I don't act hard. I don't feel like I gotta prove anything. I'm just nicer. Calmer. More patient. More present. I listen better. I crack different kinds of jokes. The whole vibe changes.
And lowkey is it even still me. Like if I have to act softer to be there, is that the real one or is the harder version the real one. I don't know. Probably both are real. Probably we're all just shapeshifting depending on who's in the room and pretending we're not. That's natural I think. We all do it.
But here's the thing nobody talks about. Mixed groups hit different. Like fundamentally different.
When it's all guys it's a low key constant pissing contest. Even with homies. Even when nobody's saying anything out loud. There's a hum of competition under everything. Who's funnier. Who's smarter. Who's eating better. Who's got the better girl. Who's got the better job. It's exhausting and we pretend it's not happening but it is.
The second a woman walks into the room the energy shifts. Not because anybody's tryna impress her necessarily. It's something else. The competition drops a notch. The cohesion goes up. People start collaborating instead of jockeying. Ideas flow easier. Nobody's flexing as hard. Everybody's a little more human.
This is why teams need both. Like for real. I don't mean it as a diversity slogan or whatever HR is saying this year. I mean it as a felt thing. There's more fluidity when the sexes are mixed. Less power posturing. Less ego. More actual work getting done because the room isn't a battlefield anymore.
We should study this more honestly. Not in a hand-wavy way. In a real way. What happens to group dynamics when you mix vs separate. What happens to creativity. What happens to conflict. What happens to honesty. I bet the data would be wild if anyone actually dug into it the right way.
All I know is when I'm around women I'm a better version of me. Softer. Realer. Less performing for the room. And maybe that's the version that should be running more often.
it is what it is twinski.