Can men and women just be friends?
I’ve always been one of those people who’ve had more male friends than female. There’s just something about being friends with men that feels more effortless for me. Of course, my closest friends with whom I share my deep dark secrets, cry, and whom I ask for advice, are most often girls.
The first time this bizarrely debated question was posed to me was when I was 18-years-old by one of my good friends who said she didn’t believe men and women could just be friends. She believed that there was always something more than just an innocent non-romantic friendship between a man and a woman who were both close and single. At the time, I found this concept silly and pessimistic. In fact, I found it offensive that she was able to reduce all human beings to their most basic primeval desire: sex.
But after a couple of friendships with men gone wrong, and several people asking me that same question again and again, I’ve started rethinking it myself.
In opposite-sex friendships, are people always looking for something more? Is there an ulterior motive or hope for something in the future?
In my personal experience, it’s quite possible for friendships to begin based on the hope of something more. It is also possible for friendships to unexpectedly turn into something more. In such scenarios, you will either end up laughing about a little crush you developed on your friend or cherish the fact that a romantic relationship is built upon a secure friendship. And of course, in many instances, simple friendships turn into something more, after a profound friendship has already formed.
But, this does not signify that a man and a woman cannot simply be friends.