Every person that has a friend of the opposite sex has heard at some point in their life that “girls and guys cannot be friends”. You either hear this from your friends or from your family, and sometimes hearing them makes you question if it’s true, even though you know that you are just friends and it is platonic.
According to research, women and men can be friends, but at some point during this friendship, at least one of them question if they could be more than friends and have a romantic relationship. It also appears that between both sexes, there is a higher probability that the men will want more out of the friendship, although women are not excluded. At some point the jokes, the great times and memories may turn into something more. The feeling that they were just like a sibling turns into sexual tension or into feelings that are not just about friendship. That being said, it does not mean that it happens to everyone, that is part of a cross-sex friendship.
Even if you do not get a romantic relationship out of friendship, you always gain something. When you are a girl and have a guy friend, you get things that you would not gain out of a same sex friendship. The same thing goes for the guys. Sometimes you do not feel comfortable talking about a certain subject with your girl friends, but you can have a full conversation with your guy friends. In other cases, you can have an opposite sex opinion on a topic or situation.
Sometimes both of friends can get confused with their mutual relationship. One of them could have liked the other one at the beginning, but the other friend did not even think about that at the time. Later, one day, out of nowhere, the friend that felt nothing (or did not think about it at the time) starts feeling weird around the other person. They feel a little nervous around their friend, then start daydreaming of them together, and what would happened if their friend just pulled them close and kissed them. Those feelings last a couple of days, until they realized that maybe they are better of as friends. In this type of situations some people believe that nothing other than a close friendship would happen and so to avoid any awkwardness they keep their relationship platonic.
Men and women can be friends without the awkwardness of one of them feeling like they want more out of the friendship. Maybe it takes a while for them to be on the same page at the same time, but if they really want to be just friends it will get to that. However, a cross-sex friendship can turn into an amazing romantic relationship. At the end of the day, an opposite sex friendship can happen, it just depends on the individuals that are involved in the relationship. As we get older and start to have our own romantic relationship, it becomes harder to make cross-sex friendships or keep the ones we already have. If you have an opposite sex friendship that it is important to you, do not loose them over time.