Krystal‘s post the other day about losing one of her best male friends touched a nerve with me.
I have a group of girlfriends – whom i love DEARLY – but don’t see all that often. My go-to friends are all guys. They’re the ones I hang out with, the ones I call my best friends. (Some of them, I found out, originally got to know me because they had a bit of a thing for me. Which was weird, but you know, it’s all in the past) We’ve never had a problem with them and girlfriends, but what about when we get round to the marriage stage? Is that going to change things? I hope not. I don’t think it will, but I suppose you never know.
I honestly believe men and women can be friends. It’s really not that hard.
That being said, I learned that the hard way. One of my best friends growing up was a boy we’ll call C; at one point we “went out” for about six months in which absolutely nothing happened, and I mean nothing. We “broke up”, I got a real boyfriend, he tried to get me to break up with him. Anyway….some things happened, I had to essentially choose between them, and I chose the boyf. (That relationship lasted just over a year. Both guys turned into completely different people and I’m happy to have neither of them in my life today) Looking back, I don’t really know if it was the best choice. Probably, as they both became …. I don’t know, *insert word of choice here*. I learned a lot from that year – my first serious relationship – and god knows where’d I’d be today otherwise, in fact.
Sometimes I wonder, what if we were still buddies? What if, what if? I was really sad to lose him as a friend. But now I think that just ran its course – he was a part of that period of my life, and that part only – and now I’m surrounded by people more appropriate for the now. I hope I’m not going to lose them to jealous partners someday. T knows he has absolutely nothing to worry about, and I hope my friends’ future gfs will be able to understand us better as to not feel threatened by our friendships.
For some folks, it’s a work in progress. I totally agree that men and women can be platonic friends, and dear ones at that.
It’s taken us some 15 years, but sushi pal and I are in a great place in our friendship where he’s learned to make it clear to his current GF that I am one of his best friends and that it’s entirely platonic. This means that for the first time in years, we are able to chat, text and hang out when we want/are able to, and the GF is present or not as she desires, without conflict in their relationship.
It helps, of course, that he never had a thing for me, we just adore each other in a siblingish sort of way. I hope, and I think it will, that our friendship will do well even when we both reach marriage stages.
A sibling-ish way, that’s a nice way to put it! That pretty much sums up how I feel about my friends. I’m sure we’ll keep being friends, whether we travel, move, whatever, we might not always be as close, but I would hope we don’t lose touch completely. Thank god for social networking…as long as we have the internet, there’s no excuses. I can see us getting together years from now with families in tow….like how my parents always used to socialise with other couples while we ran amok with their friends’ kids. Good times…
I don’t see why men and women can’t be friends without the pretense that there are underlying feelings. It’s helped me see another point of view when I’ve dated guys to bounce my concerns to my guy friends. They’ve either confirmed or denied my assumptions which helps a lot when you don’t have parents to lean on.
My now-distant guy friend had feelings for me that I was oblivious to for years. We talked about our secret crushes in college and joked about who would get married first. So it didn’t occur to me until he started holding the chair for me if went out to eat. And we usually just picked our own chairs and sat down. I felt the same way but was too scared to admit how much I cared. He was also living in another country which I knew would be complicated. I chickened out and he didn’t wait for me to figure it out. He moved on and fell in love with a girl at work.
But the point is if all you want is a platonic friendship then those boundaries should be clear, otherwise there’s a whole lot of confusion.
I thought this post was interesting and related to what you wrote – http://ben.casnocha.com/2009/01/how-friendships-evolve-over-time-and-the-quest-for-platonic-intimacy.html
Wow, yeah, that was a really interesting piece! All of my friends are still more or less in that personal sphere – not really having started a career yet, I don’t have a professional network. I guess I’ll have to learn how to manage those kinds of relationships when the time comes; obviously it’s going to be a totally new and different dynamic.
He says: BTW, I don’t believe it’s possible to have a friendship with someone of the opposite gender and have the relationship completely devoid of sexual tension.
I don’t know about that. If I was being totally honest, yeah, there are some moments with some of my friends, but on the whole it’s more of a familiarity thing – more like family, rather than anything else.