Can Men And Women Just Be Friends?

Post Reply New Topic

I have a couple of woman friends with whom a fair amount of flirting takes place. It's harmless and can ease some of the sexual tension.

I'm more concerned that I don't really know what 'friends' are. My male romantic partners have been friends on pretty much all levels of my life. Other people I have friendships with feel so superficial as to be meaningless so much of the time. (not all of it but most of it) That said I left a marriage that I would not have left but would have remained in had my spouse been okay with me holding a romantic relationship with another man at the same time. But polygamy is not accepted.

"Attraction sometimes happens. Get over it. Otherwise, live without friends."

As I've said some of us males cannot be friends with someone we are physically attracted to, because as the friendships strengthens, our physical attraction turns to both physical and romantic attraction over-time.

Sure, of course I'd like to be friends with females, but I'm not comfortable with the idea I'll eventually, one day, just fall for each and every one of them, one after the other.

Why bother if I'm just going to develop feelings for all of them and 'ruin the friendship', thus losing them once again? Because even if I don't lose them and we stay friends, this causes me to continue a friendship I am hurt by because she doesn't feel the same.

Not all friendships last forever, but I'd rather have my friendships last in the long-term rather than the short-term.

People are thinking so black-and-white about this. So it's either you secretly want to get into the pants of all your opposite sex friends and/or fall in love with one of them over the years only to suffer unrequited love or have no opposite gender friends at all? Whatever happened to actually being 'just friends' with someone?

I guess the only way for me to ever be 'just friends' with someone of the opposite sex is for me to be in a happy relationship first, as even when I am single and they are not I may still feel a strong attraction to them.

This has been proven true - in both of my two short-lasting relationships so far, they were the only times I never thought about my female friends any more than friends.

I was friendzoned by guys plenty of times in high school and college, so doesn't that prove guys *can* be just friends with a girl?

Theoretically yes. In my experience, no. It seems to me that many men can't handle just being friends with women and like some self fulfilling prophecy end up wanting to date. Gay men aside, I've never had a male friend who didn't have a crush on me or ask me out at some point. This is a huge reason why I stopped befriending men for the most part. Bi/lesbian women aren't like that in my experience. Feelings can develop with them, but it isn't something that always happens. In some ways I think men are more likely to deceptively befriend someone in hopes of getting closer to them for dating and/or sex. I've developed feelings for my friends of all genders, but that's because I become enamoured with people easily, especially if they're nice to me lol. And I never bring my feelings up ever because I value the friendship more.

Depends on what you define 'friendzone' as.

It's possible they gave you the polite 'I only want to be friends' talk when they were just being polite not to hurt you.

Maybe they all had their eyes set on someone else at the time so they couldn't have given you a chance.

Besides, I never said all men cannot be friends with women, nor did I say all women can't develop feelings for a male friend.

Just that it seems more common men are attracted to their female friends while women find most of their friendships with males purely platonic and completely non-sexual and find great shock when they discover a male friend was attracted to them or wanted something more.

A person who ends up in the friendzone is stereotypically a male, and a female pursuing a male typically does not unless he is already in a relationship or strongly loves someone else. Why might this be?

My answer is simply males tend to fall for women, easier than women tend to fall for men.

I have been told often from women that they have to get to know a guy first and discover his personality, and can even end up becoming physically attracted to a male they weren't at first.

I rarely see no such things from males. From the get-go it seems we can determine if we are physically attracted to her or not, and even if we may want to pursue her for a relationship.

Every crush, every romantic attraction I have ever had it was essentially 'at first sight'.

I knew quite quickly I'd want to get to know them for the intention of a relationship.

For many of us males there is no 'friend's first', and if anything we consider it counter-productive.

If someone catches our eye, we want to attempt quickly to get to know them, go on a few dates with them, etc. before deciding if we'd like a hookup, fwb or relationship.

In fact, I'm not even sure what motivates other males to begin friendships with women in the first place. Why or how they do it without attraction, unless there always is attraction from the get-go.

The only way I have is if I have a crush on them and want to get to know them as friend's first, if I pursued them romantically but they rejected me and only wanted to be 'just friends'.

Every other female friend happened naturally without my effort but I was still attracted to each and every one of them.

That's how I made every female friend ever.

No crush has ever surprised me and some I saw coming from a mile away.

When I first saw my second ex-girlfriend, it was at the very start of my senior year in the first week of school or so and instantly I knew I would have loved to meet and get to know her and date her.

I only officially met her and discovered her name the very last week of school.

I predicated I'd love to date her 10 months before I actually did.

My first ex-girlfriend, same deal.

At first sight I was attracted to her and while of course at the time I never knew I actually would be dating her, I knew I would have wanted to someday. We ended up together around 2-3 months later...

I never tried to befriend any for the sake of just befriending any, attraction was always involved and (whether I like it or not, in which most often I don't) always has been.

That's just a key difference I've noticed between male-female friendships - women start friendships with a man to make a new friend, we do it because we were attracted to her but it couldn't work out, so we took the next best thing.

This is of course assuming the male is single.

If he's in a happy relationship already, then yeah, he is most likely befriending new women to actually make new friends, otherwise for single men this is much more difficult.

I envy any single/non-relationship male who befriended women for the sake of befriending them, and had no physical or romantic attraction in any possible way upon meeting them and never has ever within the first 5 years of friendship minimum, if such a man even exists.

lidsmichelle: THANK YOU. It looks like there's finally a woman on this forum who actually shares my views almost completely regarding this.

Generally no, but there are a few exceptions.

Men and women can be friends when:
- One or both are married
- A straight man and a lesbian
- A gay man and a straight woman

Of course, it's just an opinion.

I can certainly be friends with women, as long as they don't pull that "platonic friends/friendzone" BS, where I'm only allowed to talk to them for a limited time, and have to sit at least 5 feet away from them.

Of course men and women can just be friends.