I love my friends. I think I have hand-picked a wonderful group of people who have proven their quality and worth to me, and their existence in my life enriches my own existence. They subsidize me when I have shortcomings, they set me straight when I’m off-balance, they give me emotional, intellectual and psychological support. They’re great company, and they’re a mixed company. Which leads me to some thoughts bouncing in the back of my head.

Teenagers and young people today have platonic friends of both genders. There are things one gender gives you that the other gender doesn’t, and sometimes the best minds and compatibility happens to be in a person of the opposite gender. And it’s totally acceptable these days. Looking one generation up, however, I see that my parents have “their” friends they hang out with in a married group, and of course that’s co-ed. But my mother does not have men that are exclusively “her” friends and not my dad’s, and my dad doesn’t just go out and do lunch with some chick he says is his friend. In fact, if I were to come home one day (we good little Asian kids still refer to the parents’ house as “home” whether we live there or not) and my dad’s home alone, telling me that she’s out having dinner with Mr. So-and-so, I’d be extremely uncomfortable. I’d have awful pictures in my head of my mom at some white table-cloth date with some sleezy man determined to undermine my father’s place in my mother’s life. I’d want to drive out there and glare at them. And I’d hate the man, no matter who he is. But first and foremost, I’d shake my dad until his glasses fell off for letting his wife go out to dinner with another man. Luckily, this has never happened. The few times my parents weren’t together due to a social reason, it was because my mom was out with her coworkers (all female) for their monthly gaggle, or my dad was out fishing with his fishing buddies (all family friends).

Now I turn to myself. I’m 30. That’s a grown-up! Sure, I’ve never been married and I have no kids, so I still categorize myself as a single person with single person habits and lifestyle and friends. I can be a little irresponsible and go out late, and have tons of friends. But is this supposed to be given up if I enter the next stage of life? If I got married, would it be no longer appropriate to accept Dwaine’s spontaneous invitations to go wine-shopping with him, or to go on an impromptu run after jujitsu with other dojo-mates, or to grab a drink or bite with James after we wash our cars and work out at the gym?

Or is the difference that my parents have entered this country as an established married couple, so all friends they have, they met together, whereas I grew up here so I had plentiful time to establish long-term bonds and friendships as an individual?

Running these self-induced guilty thoughts by Mr. W, he waves the whole thing off simply with, “Well, I trust you and your judgments. If you had inappropriate feelings about these ‘friends’ that’d be a different story.” I think one saving grace about my male buddies is that they have always only been just that — buddies. I am not in regular contact with men I’ve had a dating or non-platonic relationship with. I think that’s unnecessary stress on the relationship to have my significant other think, “She found him attractive before, and they gave in to temptation before, how do I know it won’t happen again?” But I am on civil enough terms with my 5-year relationship ex so that if we needed information or something, we can call the other and they’d help (Gary, for example, gave me the connections for my recent car purchase), and he’d called me for some legal guidance a few months ago, too. Although we don’t communicate on a regular basis and we don’t make plans to see each other, I think that it’s pretty cool how we are.