Among the things we value most in life is friendship and we often place it on the same level as family. Sometimes we put friends above our partner and other times we forget about them when we fall in love. But friends and girlfriends are always there thanks to that magical bond that is created. And speaking of magical bonds, can women and men really just be friends, or is there some other interest hidden in that friendship?
Friendship between men and women, is it possible?
- In principle the answer is yes, of course men and women can just be friends with no trace of love and/or sexual interest. Why couldn’t they be? The truth is that it is a very enriching friendship because it brings some new aspects. Men and women do not relate to friendships in the same way.
- And here it is about contributing and adding in a matter of social relations. Men relate to their friends in a different way than women do to their female friends. Men share more activities and women share more confidences. Action versus emotion.
- Have you ever seen a man cry to his best friend because his partner has left him? It is possible, but it is not usual. Nor will you see two friends talking about how they feel, their internal conflicts or their existential doubts. And all that is precisely what the friends share in addition to trips, parties and shopping.
- We are not in favor of maintaining stereotypes in terms of gender roles, but the trend is like this until we decide to change those roles from childhood. And as long as we continue to relate in this way, the truth is that a friendship between a man and a woman can contribute to both very enriching aspects that do not exist in friendship with people of the same gender.
Are you just friends?
- A man finds in his best friend a different point of view, more emotional and more empathetic. A man with his best friend is relaxed without having to prove himself as an alpha male, without competing to see who in the group best embodies manhood. He will have the peace of mind of being able to be with a person who listens to him without the need to prove anything to anyone.
- For her part, a woman finds in her best friend a different point of view. A man’s advice is usually more practical because it is stripped of the emotional side, so it is the voice he needs to accompany those other voices of his friends, more similar to his own.
- We are talking about enrichment, without a doubt, when we talk about friendship between women and men, but is it possible to just be friends? We can affirm that some achieve it, but we can also assure that it is not easy to maintain that friendship without the intention of something else. The most common is that this friendship leads to a friendship with benefits and once there the thing can lead to emotional torment, in a relationship or in the breakdown of friendship and friction.
Friendship problems between men and women
- Here we come to the main problem that stands in the way of that friendship between men and women. The moment one of the two is involved in a different way in the relationship, someone is going to get hurt and it is probably both of them. It’s tempting to sleep with your best friend when you’re both single. Who better?
- Your friend knows you, you have fun with him, you feel comfortable with him and in the possible lack of sexual relations, and there he is. Why not? Why not sleep with a friend and still be friends? And then friendship with benefits is created, friction becomes habitual and we want to ask you something: a friend you trust, who you like the way he is, who respects you, who supports you, with whom you laugh, with whom that you go on a trip or to the movies and with whom you sleep, isn’t that a couple?
- No, no, you’re just friends. And suddenly one day one of the two realizes that so much friction has made the friendship go one step further and mix with other types of feelings. This is Love? Congratulations, you’ve just found your ideal life partner, only there’s a problem: he doesn’t see it that way. To him you are his friend. We warn that this can also happen the other way around, but we are already in an asymmetrical relationship that is the complete opposite of that relationship of equality that defines friendship.
- Friendly relationships are not exempt from typical couple problems such as jealousy, a feeling of possession, dependency or arguments. And when a couple faces a problem in the relationship, it is evident that they try to solve it, but when we talk about a friendship, because these problems are not recognized as problems between friends, they usually hide, look the other way. And to wait until the problem explodes into something bigger.
The attraction between friends
- And what about the attraction between friends? It is that the closeness of people sometimes gives rise to confusion. Or maybe it’s not a confusion, maybe it’s that you feel attracted to your friend, that you’d love to sleep with him, that you can’t resist his smell when he hugs you like friends hug each other, that at night you have fantasies about him. Or him with you.
- The most usual development of this friendship between women and men is to reach friends and something else. And then? Then God will say. Those friends and something else realize that theirs is more a relationship than anything else, but for that you need a lot of honesty with yourself. And they decide to formalize their relationship. They have gone from a happy friendship to a happy couple.
- And then there is the other outcome, unfortunately more common these days when love is not in fashion and the couple is a kind of monster to be avoided. Friends and something else remain in that situation indefinitely, but the relational limbo is unstable and sooner or later a more stable point of support is sought. That something else becomes impossible to maintain and it only takes a misunderstanding for the friendship to also blow up.
- We do not want to leave a negative vision of the possible friendship between women and men. Of course it is possible. But it is easier when one or both of them have a partner than when they are both single. Because? Because as much as we try to open our minds to new forms of relationships, we are not yet mature to understand love in its thousand possibilities and assume the degree of love that friendship contains.