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Page 2 of 2
She says:
Ok, I’ve got to admit that with attractive men, it is hard to just be friends.
Women are naturally very affectionate, otherwise known as touchy-feely. We’ll hug our friends, lie on their shoulder, hold their arm and in general, be comfortable with human touch. With our girlfriends, it's completely normal and everything is cool.
But with our male friends, (yes, we do have male friends. We, unlike men, are not inclined to want to sleep with every man we meet) this touchy-feely habit sometimes changes things.
 For instance, if we jokingly punch them only to collide into a well-muscled and toned set of abs, it’s pretty clear what we’ll be thinking about for the next couple of hours. It’s unlikely we’ll act on it, but from time to time, the thought of being “more than friends” will cross our mind.
For most girls, we tend to categorize the boys in our life. There will always be some boys we meet that for various reasons (too immature, too silly, too superficial, too in love with someone else, too –insert any negative adjective-) we will NEVER be interested in dating, or going further than friends.
These are the boys we refer to as “not my type”. As long as the boy doesn’t fall in love with her and make things complicated, these male-female friendships can survive pretty well. It’s always platonic, brotherly-sisterly at most.
Then there’s the other extreme category of boys who are totally your type from the get-go. For this bunch, girls will permanently be attracted to them; sometimes it’s a superficial physical thing, sometimes it goes beyond just looks. But whatever the reason, these are the boys that girls will never be able to be good friends with, at least not deep inside, simply because they keep pining for that “something more”.
But as in any spectrum, the trickiest part is the in-between category. Most boys in our life are unclassified. We occasionally feel spurts of great concern for them and worry on their behalf. But then we also know that nothing beyond friendship seems to be happening, yet the possibility never dies.
This is what makes such friendship a very confusing mix of platonic and romantic. The key to making a transition into either category on the extreme ends is very situational.
For instance, you’re having a crisis, say you just had a nasty break-up. The reaction of this boy is critical in deciding whether you fall head-over-heels for him, or whether he reminds you of a fatherly-figure instead. The more comfortable you get with sharing your private demons with this person, the more likely that your friendship becomes less and less platonic.
On the contrary, when the boy is having his crisis and you have to be there for him, sometimes him over-sharing his personal issues plants him firmly in the platonic category. There’s always a fine line between knowing someone very well (and it's still vaguely romantic) and knowing someone too well (that you are quite sure you don’t ever want to date someone like him).
The male-female friendship is a strange relationship, sometimes fraught with sexual tension, but mostly, sisterly tolerance for his stupidity.
The bottomline: there really is no clear-cut answer, because complicated creatures that we are, we can actually straddle both and self-delusionally ignore some of our own feelings too.
I guess that’s why Meg Ryan struggled through the entire movie to make her point. Hooked
Images courtesy of Google Images
Do you believe in platonic relationships between men and women? Comment and tell us!
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Y Not??
Written by Lils88 on 2007-08-20 09:52:22
I honestly think there is nothing wrong or impossible with 'just being friends'.... Or m i d odd 1 out? |
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