Two years ago, I started working at a very social tech company, and all of a sudden, I had all these amazing guy friends my age. Around the same time, all my girl friends were getting engaged, getting married, having kids, or settling down with their boyfriends. So after work and often on weekends, I hang out with my bros.

In our Sunday Irish Breakfast Football Club (basically, an excuse to meet at a pub, start drinking at 10 AM, and watch football all day), I was often the only girl. Ray, from the podcast, has me in his “Bros” group on IM. Gary calls me Brosephina. And I get invited to (some of) the bros nights out (if it involves sports, strippers, or more serious broing out, they wisely don’t invite me).

I kind of like it. I mean, I love these guys, so I love hanging out with them, but I also like being one of the bros. Lately, though, I’ve seen the downside of being a girl bro.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out for a Friday happy hour with some friends, and I was joking around with one of the guys there, who, by the way, is ridiculously hot. Like insanely good-looking. At one point, after I had been talking to another guy, he put his arm around me for a second. I wondered if it was the “marking his territory” move that guys do.

That Saturday, I ended up meeting up with that same group, and at the end of the night, he said, “It was really fun hanging out with you this weekend,” gave me four fist bumps, a high-five, and a hug. I didn’t really read anything into it (he was pretty done-zos by that point and I’m absolutely not his type), but still.

I saw him again at a happy hour the next week, and he immediately started talking to me about the difference between flings and hook-ups. And that’s when it became clear to me: I’ve become a bro, even to guys who don’t know me that well.

This is not a good development for a number of reasons:

• I am horrible at accurately reading guys’ signals. I always think guys who just want to hook up actually like me and that guys who like me just want to be friends. When D.D. and I were hanging out as friends, he said, “So, are you having fun hanging out?” I thought, “Oh, he wants to make it clear that he wants things to stay as they are, that we’re just friends.” No, he meant that he wanted to hang out more. So when he went in for the kiss at the end of the night, I went in for our standard hug. Faces collided, awkwardness ensued. Although, that did make it my most memorable first kiss.
• How am I ever going to meet a guy when I’m surrounded by bros? Before the BRT recording session on Thursday, I met the bros at a bar down the street to watch the last two (of three) overtimes of the Bulls-Celtics playoff game. It was me and three dudes, watching sports. Even if some guy gives me cred for watching sports, the natural assumption is that I’m dating one of the three. It’s like that Seinfeld episode, when some guy hits on Elaine when she’s out with Jerry, and Jerry gets offended. They guy didn’t know they weren’t together, so why would he assume they weren’t? Most guys would guess they were together.

I do love my bros, but I also need to make more of an effort to hang out with my dwindling pool of single girl friends. Also, I need to stop immediately referring to guys by their last names. That might be part of the problem.