Can men and women really be friends?

I can already see the eyebrows raising to this question. It’s a funny old question isn’t it? Most people from the old school of thought (like my parent’s generation) would say ‘no’ but the modern generation would beg to differ because a number of us do believe that we can maintain platonic relationships with the opposite sex. Perhaps I need to define ‘platonic’ to be absolutely clear – it means no strings attached, not friends with benefits but just purely ‘hang out buddies’ type of relationship with a member of the opposite sex. So this means that if you have a ‘friend’ that you’ve slept with once, they cannot really count as a platonic friend because that non sexual bound has been severed.


What makes the lines of platonic relationships blurry is the intention of the people involved. I’ve had instances where guys would ask for my number and after I tell them I don’t give my number out (strictly true nowadays anyway) they tell me that they just want to be my friend with the cheeky ‘what’s wrong with that’ question to complete the statement. Like hell they want to be my friend!! They mean friends who go on dates and roll around the sheets with each other. Of course I don’t for one minute buy their excuse suffice to say that that particular line never works on me (I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work on 90% of the female population so guys take note).

I strongly believe that men and women can be friends but there are certain exceptions to the rule. I mean why can’t we just hang out and catch up or even go to a restaurant or the movies without sex playing on the brain? I don’t think it’s that difficult but hey you may think otherwise. Here are 3 of the exceptions where men and women cannot be friends:

1) When you are attracted to or drawn to them.
Forget it, I don’t care what anyone says but it’s extremely difficult to be friends with someone you think is fine. All that will be going through your head when you see them is how good they look in ‘those’ jeans and you might even find yourself wondering how soft their lips would feel if they kissed you…total distraction (not that I’m speaking from experience of course). Why put yourself through the agony? May be worth it if you get what you want (whatever it is) out of it but other than that what’s the point of fooling yourself?

2) When they are attracted to you.
Take it from someone who’s been there worn the t-shirt and even bathed in it, when your ‘friend’ likes you and it’s unrequited, it’s really uncomfortable after they make their intentions known to you. It can potentially ruin a good friendship but I suppose it’s a risk some people are willing to take. The problem here is as the person who is not reciprocating the feeling, most of the actions you take are likely to be misread by your friend. Even smiling at them for pretty random reasons can land you in hot water. Talk about watching every single thing you do. If you call them to catch up or just say hi, they misinterpret it as ‘he/she really wants me’.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine today and she raised this topic about platonic relationships because she has a male friend who she really just wants to hang out with but she’s a bit apprehensive to call and ask him. The reason being down to the fear of been misunderstood. She’s has a boyfriend and is new to London (so she doesn’t know a lot of people), she wants to go out and new make friends without having to drag her boyfriend everywhere but she’s not very sure how to play it with this guy. In the end she decided to ask him anyway and if he gets the wrong end of the stick, well that’s his problem because she has no intention of leading him on in any way. What would you do if you were in her shoes?

3) When you’ve had sex with them before.
I know I briefly touched on this in the first paragraph but I feel the strong need to elaborate because quite a number of people think they can maintain a normal friendship with someone they’ve had sex with but I think this is bloody difficult (excuse my French). Ok, so some people are able to pretend nothing happened between them and can return to having a somewhat normal friendship but in majority of the cases, the friendship suffers. This is especially where there were feelings involved by either of the party e.g. ex boyfriends or girlfriends and after they break up they remain ‘friends’. I think it’s important to be able to draw the line somewhere especially when you’re in a relationship with someone else. If you ask me it’s a bit insensitive to say that you’ve been hanging out with your friend who also happens to be an ex who inevitably had some type of emotional ties to you in the past and in some cases may still do. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that you should not stay in contact but don’t go pub crawling or having dinner with them every other Friday because that line between friends and lovers will start to look blurry.


In any other circumstances outside the 3 mentioned, platonic relationships are quite normal and could actually be quite fun because there are certain insights you can get from a friend of the opposite sex that is hard to obtain from your same sex pals. You may however run into a slight problem if dynamics change somewhere during the course of your friendship and the ‘friend’ may end up liking you romantically or vise versa. Think about a scenario where your ‘friend’ who on a normal day looks like Chris Rock suddenly starts looking like Denzel after a few drinks and the unthinkable happens – you sleep with them. It’s going to be pretty awkward to look them straight in the eyes afterwards because quite normally most of us tend to see people differently after getting physical. What happens then? Will the friendship survive? Can you go back to having a normal platonic relationship? Maybe the safest bet if you're really unsure of befriending the opposite sex is having gay friends because that way there is no risk of them hitting on you.