At any point from UPK to high school, my friends were always girls. While there may have been a few guys I would talk to there was never a person of the opposite sex I considered a friend. Having only female friends was not something I considered out of the ordinary.
However, my sophomore year of college changed my long trend of having only female friends.
Through my on-campus job, I gained a few friends that I quickly became close to. But…there’s a catch. Before becoming friends with some of my coworkers, I was attracted to one of them. And so began the complexity of being friends with not only a guy, but a guy that I soon found myself having feelings for as I started to hang out with him. Little did he know that his introverted coworker whom he started to befriend was attracted to him first, as opposed to becoming friends first.
Flash forward to a little over a year, another one of my guy friends has broken up with his girlfriend, and is very open about meeting new girls, and what he is attracted to in specific women. At this point, my friend and I have become very close and we tell each other everything…including stories about having sex with other people. But, regardless of the type of friendship I have with both of these men, they both lead to a change in how I view one thing.
Sparing you the long story of details and outcomes of both of these situations, there are some changes in myself that I noticed through being friends with men that I never expected to realize.
Before becoming friends with the opposite sex, I think I was the girl who believed having sex with someone was NOT an experience that could or should be shared or told to others. I think doing so is unnecessary and is a violation of trust one has with another they are in a relationship with, etc.
I think most women are aware of the long-held notion that the only thing men think about is sex. And, to be honest, through being friends with guys, I realized how many conversations, both serious and joking, I either had with my male friends or witnessed along this topic.
Somewhere along the line, the instance where one of my male friends is asking me about my sexual preferences, dislikes, and anything else sexually related now seems completely normal to me and is something I feel comfortable sharing with the people I am closest with.
While there is a lot I could say about what it’s like to have romantic feelings for a friend, I think it is important for women to explore and consider what their sexual preferences are. Furthermore, openly discussing potential sexual likes and dislikes made me take the taboo away from the topic and think about what those might be for me. A part of growing up and being an adult includes the act of having sex, therefore it shouldn’t be something we can’t talk about with our friends or who we are closest to. However, I do think there is a proper way to have these discussions as well as a sense of respect for the other person involved. Having these open conversations isn’t for everyone and it’s important to remember that’s okay too.