Can a Man and a Woman Be Just Friends?
Nothing can kill a relationship faster than when a woman says, "Let's just be friends." That signals a non-relationship. The only way a man and a woman can be friends is if the man is gay. Otherwise pretending that you are friends is sick and abnormal.
For hundreds of thousands of years, men and women have had normal relationships and by normal, I mean there was sex, lots of sex. Even before we became Homo sapiens, if a man of the species Homo erectus grunted to his male buddies that he was just friends with Boombah, the cave-girl across the way, that there was never anything erectus between them, he certainly would have been thrown off the nearest cliff for harboring such dangerous, abnormal, sick and non-procreative thoughts about a woman.
William Deresiewicz in a New York Times Opinion piece tells us that friendship between the sexes is a rather recent phenomenon and unheard of in earlier times (1).
The question, "Can a Man and a Woman Be Friends?" is the wrong question; actually there are two separate questions, each with an opposite answer:
- Q: Can a woman be friends with a man?
A: Yes. - Q: Can a man be friends with a woman?
A: No.
The above is not my opinion:
Psychology Today, 9 Nov 2012, Can Men and Women Be Friends?
Is it possible to be friends with someone of the opposite sex? Oftentimes, the answer you get may depend on who you ask. Women are inclined to respond with a hearty yes! ...
Males, however, appear to endorse an emphatic no, as their female friendships may reflect default relationships that developed in spite of or instead of romantic aspirations they may have had with those very same women. In fact, one male source shared with me that he would be happy to ruin a number of his friendships with the women in his life by having sex with them. Similarly, when posing the question to a female source, she gave an emphatic no, with the disclaimer of, "unless he is gay!"
The reason for this is that men and woman have completely different ideas about their friendship. Recent research (2) indicates that men felt twice as much attraction to their female friends than vice versa. In fact, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends (3).
So while women may imagine they are just friends, the men's testicles will be roiling with delusional lust.
For my male readers, here is my advice: Never, ever become a friend with a woman unless you enjoy having blue balls - or even worse, a broken heart.
Caption for photo: Harry and Sally have known each other for years, and are very good friends, but they fear sex would ruin the friendship.
ENDNOTES
(1):
NYTimes, A Man. A Woman. Just Friends?
Friendship between the sexes was more or less unknown in traditional society. Men and women occupied different spheres, and women were regarded as inferior in any case. A few epistolary friendships between monastics, a few relationships in literary and court circles, but beyond that, cross-sex friendship was as unthinkable in Western society as it still is in many cultures.
(2):
Men's Health News, 17 Sep 2012, The Small Problem with “Just Friends”
A study team from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire recruited 44 pairs of college-age guy-girl friends, separated them, and asked each a series of questions about their attraction to their “buddy.” The average length of the friendship was two years, though some had been friends for 10 years or more.
The findings: Regardless of the length of the friendship, men were roughly 24 percent more attracted to their friend, and were 17 percent more interested in dating. But, even among women, the average desire to date was rated about a 4 on a 9-point scale—not exactly just-friends territory.
Researchers then repeated aspects of the experiment with older adults, and found similar results across all age groups: On average, men felt twice as much attraction to their female friends than vice versa.
(3):
Scientific American, 23 Oct 2012, Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends"
Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.
New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment.
...
The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.
