I have had this conversation a lot within the past few
months or so, so I figured it was something worth addressing. Can men and women just be friends? No
tension, no awkwardness, no flirting, just a platonic friendship.
Most men I talk to say ‘No. Men and women cannot be just friends;
there is always some underlying sexual tension at the base of the friendship.’ Well, the neighborhood I live in goes against
that 100%. A good portion of my friends
are male, and the same goes for the friends of my girlfriends. It
might be because we all have worked in bars for the past 10 or so years, but to
us we do not see anything weird about having male friends. Friends are friends, no matter their
gender. At least that’s how we (my girlfriends
and I) see it. I do think, mainly in my
case, that it makes a difference because my friends are older. My friends have always been older than me;
some by a few years, some by more, but with most of my friendships, there was
never a feeling of anything other than friends.
If I needed them there, they were there, if I needed a talk or a
drinking buddy, whether I was single or not, they were there. However, in my [then] newly single-ness I
realized that some of my ‘friends’ were not on the same page of friendness that
I was. I wouldn’t have called them my
closest male friends, but I certainly didn’t see anything more than a platonic
relationship there. Yet I have found
myself in an awkward one-sidedly drunken conversation where I had to politely
decline a drinking date invitation by someone I thought was just a friend.
So that brings me to my next point . . . The best explanation
I have gotten was ‘it has to be a two way street,' meaning both parties need to agree
that there is nothing there. Though as 500 Days of Summer will tell you, guys
and girls cannot just be friends, someone will always fall for someone, whether
for a minute or for a lifetime. Well I
certainly do not take that stance in this argument, but I do agree with the two way street comment; in the sense that if one person has even the slightest bit of
feelings, the friendship is probably not legitimate.
Working in a bar for the past 7 years, I have met a lot of
people and formed a lot of relationships through my trade. Maybe they aren’t the strongest friendships,
maybe they are just ‘bar friends’, but I still would refer to them as ‘my
friend __.’ While I am wary of girls who
ONLY have guy friends [if you can’t play nice with at least 1 other girl, you’re
probably a horrible person] and guys who ONLY have girl friends [what are you
trying to do, start a collection of prospects?] I do think it is healthy to
have a nice mix of friends, only friends, who are both men and women.
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