Can men and women just be friends?

[Sal316]

Poll question: Can men and women just be friends?

Help settle a debate here, please. Amaya and I are having a discussion about whether or not men and women can be just friends. She says no way, I say yes way. Please note that I'm not discounting the relevance of this in the GLBT community, just that it wasn't brought up in the discussion.

The main premise of her argument is that a man cannot be friends with an attractive woman because he will always want to have sex with her. On women, she says they can because they can control their urges.

I say it's entirely possible for men and women, attractive or not, to be friends and have nothing sexual between them. Hot-ness does not necessarily equal sexual attraction.

What do you all think?
(btw.. this is all in fun, so have no fear!)

[molly]

1. I have many platonic men friends - a lot of them

I've known for years.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

14. I have plenty of platonic female friends

and I want to have sex with all of them.

[GOPisEvil]

2. I have several attractive, female friends.

However, we all worked together when we met, so they were off-limits. Plus, I was not the stud-muffin I am now, so it didn't matter anyway. :D

I think it is possible for attrative men and women to be friends; not easy all the time, but possible.

[Booberdawg]

3. Yes of course

Just cause you think it would be cool to have sex with someone doesn't mean you can't be friends with them and still keep your hormones in check.

[trogdor]

4. When Harry Met Sally

Did I win?

[THUNDER HANDS]

5. I have a ton of female friends

But that's because I've banged all of them at one point or another.

:)

But I can stay friends with a woman and still want to bang her. It certainly helps if you're currently banging someone already.

Banging = lovemaking (just so nobody gets offended by my language).

[Aristus]

6. It is possible to be friends, but for me anyway, the sex issue

is a frequent stumbling block. Especially if you consider the desire to have sex, whether or not you follow through with it. I'm married, so other women are obviously off-limits, but that doesn't change the nature of sexual attraction. I'm platonic friends with many women, but I still find myself wondering what it would be like if......

[KCDem]

7. good question!

I tend to be of the opinion that either HE wants HER or SHE wants HIM. I've had a lot of male friendships over the year, but the majority of them ended in some sort of physical encounter. :spank:

It would be interesting to break down your poll to include: Male: it is possible; Male: it is impossible; female: it is possible; female: it is impossible.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. Lots of men want to have sex with me and are my friends

I don't think what one wants factors into what is possible unless one party or the other allows it to get in the way. The men i know don't allow it to get in the way and either come to regard me as "one of the guys" or just deal with it. They tell me things they can't discuss with other women and appreciate that they can be themselves around me because I don't care anyway.

[THUNDER HANDS]

11. lots of men want to have sex with every woman

it's kinda why we hang around you ladies so much.

:evilgrin:

[catzies]

13. I'm also a "one of the guys" type of gal and I love it that way.

I have more men friends than women friends, and they are both married and single. I haven't slept with any of my male friends, and I don't want to either or I guess I would have by now. If any of them want to sleep with me and said so, it was long since vetoed and never affected our friendship.

They know they can always count on me to go out and drink beer and watch a game and I get both Sports Illustrated and ESPN magazines and consider myself sports-literate. Which, next to politics, is my favorite subject.

edit: plural noun agreement

[bicentennial_baby]

9. All of my best friends

have been men, and I'm an attractive woman. I can't deal with girls, so I like to hang with guys.

[cmf]

10. Here's my theory.

Men and women usually become friends with each other because one of them has an attraction to the other. When the other doesn't reciprocate, the relationship morphs into a friendship. One can find another perfectly attractive-looking, yet not be attracted to them. It's only becomes more than friends when there's mutual attraction.

[Aristus]

12. Good points. My best friends have always been women, not just

because of my insatiable sex-fantasy life, but more because I can talk about things that I couldn't with guys. I mean, guys like to talk about sex, but I also like to talk about music, theater, books, politics, religion, and humanity in general. Women, on the whole tend to be more receptive to those topics.

[SOteric]

15. Absolutely they can be friends

rather than romantic partners.

A sexual attraction is not something we have to act on every time it occurs to us. Sometimes it can just be enjoyed.

I can't speak for what goes on in their minds, but I have several long-term male friends who are not romantic partners and have never given indication that they wish to be. I'm not particularly oblivious, so if they had hinted at it, it's likely I'd have picked up on it.

Also, most all of my former flames, beau's, ex's, whatever you want to call erstwhile romances are friends. Really friends, not just the kind of 'friends' where people agree to be polite to each other in public. Only one has ever indicated he'd like to try it all again. That's not going to happen but the footnote is relevant to the discussion.

[pmbryant]

16. Most of my friends are women

And that's the way it's always been. I'm clearly not alone, based on the responses here.

--Peter

[gyopsy]

17. Maybe...

but I voted not even if I'm sure it does happen sometimes. I think even if a guy and a girl hang out, there "might be" some underlying sexual attraction that the two of them may not even be aware of. Not that they would even act on it.

[pizzathehut]

18. I've tried, but women use guys who just want to be friends.

They want you to do everything for them. Take them out, listen to all their deep thoughts. But then when you want the relationship to go further, they dump you out of their lives. Dont dare call me sexist because every guy knows this is true.

I have and do have female friends. But he females I've been friends with it worked out becaue she was in another relationship and we were friends through work.

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. abso-friggin'-lutely

And it's a damn shame when I see people, espeically after they are married, whose spouse refuses to allow them contact with the opposite sex. Damn shame, all the way around. Pure shallowness, and oddly, seems to be usually the women who don't want their men associating with their female friends (as we saw by someone who posted earlier in this thread).

Thank God my partner is cool with me hanging out with other women, and I'm cool with her hanging out with her guy friends. Heck, I don't even feel threated when she goes off to semninars with her male friends who have been her friends for twenty years. And she doesn't care if I go away with female friends, or even - gasp - have one of them come stay in the apartment when my partner has been away!

But, I know she's not romantically linked with the guys (though some are former boyfriends of hers) and I'm not romantically linked with any of the women in my life.

I've had a slew of female friends over the years I've hung out with, chatted with, kept in contact with, yada yada yada.

Anyone who says men and women can't be friends is either sexually dysfunctional, sexist (in either direction), or has a serious esteem problem.

[Amaya]

22. Guess I'm sexually dyfunctional?

Because I just think when you need to hang with someone to the point of 'going away' together, something is up.. You're just 'friends'. Nope I don't buy it. Something is missing in your relationship then.

Being friends and hanging out at a coffee shop is one thing, but going away together? Hmmmm don't get it. Maybe I'm just an old fashion girl.. somethings are sacred.

[Rabrrrrrr]

25. going away for conferences together,

that is. Not vacationing joy rides. I should have been more clear on that one.

[Rabrrrrrr]

29. No, I take that back

I have done psuedo-vacations with female friends, and my partner has done them with her male friends.

Why the distrust on your end, anyway? I've never hanky-pankied with my female friends, and I'd be brilliantly surprised if my partner has. I think that's why I'm still friends with the females, and she's still friends with her male friends.

I'd hate to get to the point of stopping my partner from associating with men. How untrusting. How positively junior-highish. At that, might as well end the relationship, since there is no relationship any more.

[BigMcLargehuge]

20. Females can't be just friends with males

My marriage has already suffered through a whole mess of these "friendships" that went further than anticipated. The instigator of the escallations was female.

[Booberdawg]

21. If you don't mind my saying so ..

it takes two. Getting an offer doesn't mean one has to accept it.

[BigMcLargehuge]

24. Indeed

but it was the female making the offer to her "friends".

BTW, BigMcLargehuge is a male (who speaks in the third person apparently).

Marriage councelling, it works.

[Booberdawg]

33. I see

I knew you were male. :)

And I was choosing my words carefully because I though said marriage was suffering because the writer was the one accepting the offers. My mistake.:hi:

[SiouxJ]

23. I've always had more male friends than female

it's never been a problem.

[catpower2000]

26. Of course they can...

The problem in relationships is when one person has such low self-esteem that they need to be "everything" to their partner. They want to be their "whole world". Anyone who lives in reality knows that you can't get all your needs met by one person. It's just not possible.

It is not only normal, but necessary and healthy to have platonic friends of both sexes. It is unhealthy to shut yourself off from the world and have this "you and me against the world" mentality.

Cat

[tjdee]

27. Depends on how friendly, and one 'friend' will ALWAYS fall for the other..

in some capacity, or wonder "what it would be like"--and it doesn't have to be expressed. If they're heterosexuals.

Some people like to stretch 'friendship' and some people are really prudish. I don't mouth kiss my men friends, though I've seen it done.
I know some people who call people their "friends" even though they have sex every now and then.

[Kat45]

28. Most of my friends are men,

and I've stayed good friends with several old boyfriends, including my college boyfriend (and I'm 48.) I'm also friends with their wives and I know their kids. It's perfectly cool. My most recent ex is a very close (platonic) friend; we hang out together all the time.

Many of my friendships with men have been strictly platonic. Others have been "friends with privleges" (ie, friends who bang each other). Several men have said that men always want to do women who they're attracted to; well, it can work both ways because this woman tends to want to do the men she's attracted to. (I'm not very good at 'controlling my urges,' as women are supposed to do.)

As long as both people are unattached and on the same page, it works out fine. It's just when one person turns to another page that things get tricky.

[Nikia]

30. Yes

My best friend is a guy. Now he has become friends with my husband and I am becoming friends with his wife but we are still closer. We, both being married, know how much our spouses mean to us. If my husband were to die or leave me and I were to find myself attracted to my friend, I still would not pursue it because I know how much his wife means to him and he feels the same about me. It is an issue of respect and truly caring for one another. I think there is a perception in our society that men and women must be having sex if they are close. It is not true but I think some men and women who are friends do have sex because they think that they are suppose to if they feel close to one another.

[Karenina]

31. I was neutered at puberty

being the lone black female amongst all my lifelong white friends. Our 8th grade class president (a handsome sailing fellow who tanned quite well and was mistaken for a "nigger" when walking through Annapolis with his porcelain girlfriend) wrote in my book: "To my dearest friend who but for a certain "handicap" would be the most popular girl in our school." The boys confided in me, mostly cuz I never blabbed to the girls who called to pump me for info. Some of those boys are still good friends these many decades later. And so shall we remain. We are FRIENDS. We compare notes as adults in the same way we passed notes as kids in class. We have our own understanding and are FRIENDS.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

32. None of my male friends has ever hit on me...

Though one or two confided that they thought my husband was a hunk.

[Kamika]

34. Unless either one or both are homosexuals or married.

No its not possible.

From my own experience ive found that guys can *not* only be friends with a girl. From what ive experienced there was always some sort of sexual goal

[catpower2000]

35. I don't understand your "married" statement...

In other words, I don't understand why you think men in a commited relationship *can't* be friends, and married men, somehow, after they've stood at the altar and gotten the piece of paper, *can* be friends with a woman. Why do you make that distinction?

Cat

[Kamika]

36. because

Once a guy is married its likely he doesnt look at women like he did when he was single.. but im sure guys (and girls) thats been married for a long time might

[Rabrrrrrr]

38. I very much disagree

The sexual urges - or one could even notch them down and call them aesthetic urges - do not change after marriage. We are human beings - we are who we are. if we looked at women (or men) before marriage, we'll continue that way. Hopefully, after marriage (or some kind of commitment, anyway) we won't ACT on those urges, but to deny that those urges disappear after marriage is disingenuous and fallacious, and especially, dishonest.

[Rabrrrrrr]

37. That's a rather odd statement that buys into the fallacy of "marriage"

as something makes people "sane" and "right with the world".

Pfagh.

It might help in some ways, that yes, indeed, a number of people will look at the married person and respect that they are with someone, and thus not hit on them; and some who are married will also think, "I'm married, so I can't hit on someone else."

But plenty of married people do stray.

Plenty of single (or living with SO types) are rocksteady monogamous and would not think to stray and/or hit on someone else.

Marriage is NOT the panacea many think it is, neither is it the "oh so noble" tradition that many think it is, either. Good marriages are, yes, but just becuase someone is married doesn't mean they actually bought into the idea of marriage.

Sad you've had the experiences you've had - you are either so amazingly hot that the men can't help be lustful around you, or else just unlucky enough to sem to find only bozos.