Ask A Woman: Keep it friendly, keep it clean.
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I remember in high school, it was super cool if you were a girl who had a boy best friend, who was strictly that, a friend. It made you seem like a girl who wouldn’t nag or whine, a girl who wouldn’t get pissed if the boys started talking about boobs, a girl who got the inside scoop on what dudes talked and thought about. I desperately wanted to be one of those girls, but it never happened. The few times I approached serious friendship with a dude, we ended up dating. Fail. It wasn’t until the end of college that I figured out how to have a platonic friendship with a guy. If you’re still trying to figure out how to navigate platonic friendships, here’s a quick how-to:
It helps if one or both of you is dating someone else
No brainer, right? If you’re committed to another person, you hopefully won’t have any interest in dipping a toe into other waters. Ideally you and your friend both would be dating other people. Double security.
An age-old debate…
Think before you drink
Maintaining a platonic friendship with someone you could conceivably sleep with requires that you do a little more preventative work. Don’t have her over to your empty apartment at 9pm after she just broke up with her boyfriend. Don’t get wasted just the two of you, especially not anywhere in the vicinity of a bed. With rampant emotions and lots of booze, people make mistakes. Hell, people make mistakes without either of those two variables. People look for comfort or distraction and end up in a situation they regret. Don’t assume you’ll make the right choice in the moment–avoid putting yourself there at all.
Recognize and allow for feelings of jealousy
You want a platonic relationship with this person, yes. But there must be a number of things you find very appealing about her or you wouldn’t want to be friends with her. So if you’ve developed a close bond with your friend, and then she meets someone and starts dating, it can feel kinda bad. Maybe she gushes about how handsome, how smart, how funny he is. Or she starts spending every waking moment with him. It’s totally natural that you’d feel jealous. Validate that feeling–“yes, I’m jealous that she’s with someone else”–so that you can deal with it appropriately. Remind yourself that your priority is to maintain a non-romantic bond with this woman. Try to spend time with your friend and her new boyfriend together. Get to know him, see them as a couple. It will help reinforce the friendship, as well as reminding you that you probably don’t really want to date her, you’re just having trouble adjusting to the new situation.
Incidentally, if you attempt platonic relationships with women and find them unsatisfactory, that’s totally fair. Though I have a number of men friends now, some I’m closer to than others, I still prefer friendships with women. Women are more likely to speak my language (you know, the old stereotypical standbys, feelings, emotions) and enjoy my sense of humor (big fan of bawdy female anatomy jokes that tend to make the menfolk cringe). Plus, I feel more quickly at ease with women than with men. It’s just a personal preference.
-Beth
Got a question for Beth? Send it to: askawoman@dappered.com
My experience is that better than 95% of the time, if a man and woman are platonic friends, one of them is “friend zoning” the other, who’d like to be more. I’m also thoroughly confused as to why you’d want to have a relationship of type X if you have to put all these rules in place to keep it from turning into type Y. If it wants to be type Y, let it be type Y and if it doesn’t work out, then that’s part of life. Why are you so determined to have a “non-romantic bond?” Because it was cool in high school and it makes you seem like a girl who won’t nag or whine or get upset if the conversation turns to boobs? If that’s the case, then aren’t you just using your supposed friend rather than just actually being friends with him? If that’s not the case, then what’s the point of all the effort to force the relationship into a particular mold? This may be one of those Mars/Venus things where, due to either nature or nurture, guys and gals look at things completely differently, but I completely and utterly miss the point of this post. That is, I understand what it’s telling you to do but I’m completely mystified as to why you’d want to do that.
Speaking from the point of view of a straight male, having a platonic friend or friends can be a big benefit to your life. You have a sounding board for dealing with issues regarding the opposite sex. You have a “date” to any event (work/family) which you might not want to take someone that you haven’t been seeing for that long. If you’re single, they can introduce you to their girl friends who are also single. Besides, if you go out with a group of 7+ guys and you meet 2 girls, they might be a little intimidated. They’re more likely to come join the group if it had been 3 girls and 4 guys in your group.
I’m not a woman, so obviously I can’t speak for them but, from my experiences, men who have women around them (friends or not) are more attractive to other women. It’s like the old theory on why guys who are “taken” are more attractive. If someone else likes you enough to date you, then you must have at least SOME good qualities right?
That being said, I’m lucky enough to have a good amount of attractive single girl friends who I would gladly sleep with if we could somehow manage to keep everything else about our friendship the same. However, I don’t pursue it because I know I’m not interested in anything serious. I’d rather not “shit where I eat” so to speak.
Oh, and a platonic girl friend also makes the best “wingman”
I echo Jose’s thoughts.
Let me clarify: I think that, in part, it depends on what you mean by friends. I have plenty of female casual friends. They’re women who’s company I enjoy, I can go out in a group with and enjoy myself, etc. But I can also go a couple of weeks without talking to them without it being a big deal. With none of them do I have to have special rules or to watch my behavior to ensure that the friendship doesn’t turn into something more. That seems to be the type of relationship you’re talking about but it doesn’t seem to be the type of relationship the article addresses.
I have two female friends. They’re called “sisters,” and the Westermarck effect does a great job of keeping it from getting weird. Can’t think why I should want any more than that.
I’m with Dan J. You COULD do all of the above… but why? What’s the point of forcing yourself through these mental gymnastics to suppress the very simple biological fact that if a man and a woman enjoy each other’s company that much, it’s likely because on some level they view each other as potential sexual partners?
There’s just no up side. If I’m currently single, then any energy I spend maintaining a platonic opposite-sex friendship is energy I could be spending on a woman who’s an actual or potential sex partner. And if I’m currently in an exclusive relationship, then if I’m to be perfectly honest, a platonic opposite-sex friend is a Plan B. So spending a lot of time and energy on one is a bit of a slap in the face to the woman I’m with, innit?
There’s just plain no function in my life that a female platonic friend would fulfill that can’t be fulfilled equally well by either a woman I’m sleeping with, a female family member, or a male friend, and with a lot less down side.
Being in a platonic friendship with someone allows you to enjoy parts of someone’s personality that you can relate with, without having explore deeper compatibility issues. To give an example, I have a female friend with whom I spend a lot of my free time because of similar interests (music, food, cocktail bars, the outdoors), sense of humor, and other personality traits. On the other hand, our views on key things like religion, sex, gender roles, and various other things would make a relationship short-lived if not impossible. We both realize this, and our friendship is easier and healthier for it, but clearly there have to be boundaries, especially when we are both in/looking for relationships with other people.
I can see your point. When you look at friendship as if it were economics, there’s very little reason to have a female friend.
That’s fine, but do you have to avoid drinking in their company? Do you get jealous if they’re with another guy? Are you keeping yourself from making passes at them by sheer, white-knuckled will-power? THAT’s the part that I’m not getting from this article.
To take each one in turn:
1. I don’t avoid drinking in their company, but getting wasted alone with them or being drunk at a bar and going to their place to “watch a movie” just doesn’t happen.
2. I’ll agree that jealous is an odd word to use. You miss their company, sure, but you don’t feel possessive and if you do, you need to address that.
3. Generally no. If you’re good friends, and you think they look hot, you can generally get that off your chest without it being a “thing”. It helps to have and understand the reason you’re not pursuing them in the first place; I find myself reminded often enough to have little-to-no issues dealing.
I dunno. Female friends have female friends. If you’re going hunting, the best person to know is a gamekeeper.
Wow, your life seems so neat and orderly. When I meet people and develop friendships, I do not analyze whether that role in my life could be better filled by a person with different outward characteristics. I generally will begin talking with them, something will spark, and we will begin spending time together (regardless of gender, age, etc). Perhaps this process is just effortless to me and others find that they have to work hard to build friendships… then maybe I could see weighing more variables. Your statements seem to read that a man would/should have a female friendship with someone that he wants to have sex with. If this is actually what you mean, it is pretty cold and even misogynistic.
This article is for the person who finds himself in a friendly relationship with a woman in whom he is not romantically interested, not for someone who has to deliberately try to develop such a relationship. If we have any questions about our own will power, then these measures could be helpful. There are many situations in life where a friendship is appropriate, but a sexual relationship is not (coworkers where there are policies against romance or there are significant differences in authority, for instance).
As a man in a committed romantic relationship with someone other than the platonic friend, there is a very clear duty to make sure that nothing sexual happens. If you want to submit to those feelings, then the previous relationship must still be ended first. From what you write, it sounds like you are saying that we should just follow whatever random sexual desires that we experience, despite the consequences.
Maybe I am misinterpreting your meaning…
I think you’re, um…… over-thinking this, man.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I’m saying we should just “follow whatever random sexual desires we experience.” I’m saying just the opposite: that a man in a relationship should avoid close friendships with women for whom he might develop an attraction. Likewise a single man should avoid close friendships with women who are in a committed relationship lest an attraction develop. I believe strongly that committed, exclusive relationships should be respected.
However, if neither party is in a committed relationship, you’ve got one of three situations on your hands:
* There is a mutual attraction. In which case, why not give it a whirl and see what happens? What’s there to gain by keeping someone at arm’s length for no reason?
* There is a one-sided attraction, in which case the person who’s been friend-zoned is better off moving on. Someone who’s on a diet doesn’t go down to the donut shop at dinnertime and hang out with the donuts without eating them. They go find themselves a salad. Why drive yourself nuts drooling over what you can’t have?
* Neither party is attracted to the other but they spend a lot of time together anyway, because this is Bizarro World. I’m not an expert on the protocol in Bizarro World. I’m a fan of the real world, and in the real world, I’ve never seen this happen. (-:
Understand, I’m talking here about close friendships, the sort of person you’d spend a lot of one-on-one time with. Would I hang out in a group setting and be perfectly friendly and personable with someone I had no interest in dating and/or had no interest in dating me? Sure! But I wouldn’t have a female best friend that I spent lots of one-on-one time with. If I like her enough for best friend status, I probably like her enough to sleep with her, so why wouldn’t I go for it?
I honestly do not believe there is such a thing as a friendship between a man and a woman if either one of them finds the other even remotely attractive.
Then I’ve got a lot of friends who think I’m pretty ugly.
Totally possible, but still.
I personally steer clear of them.
And vice versa!
you don’t hunt much do you?