What is wrong with men?
Can heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”?
Is the idea of a platonic friendship still alive?
The age-old question is still unsolved. Non-romantic friendships between men and women appear to be both likely and as seen by the fact that they coexist peacefully like at work or school without ever getting into something more than friends. Still, this seemingly platonic relationship may be all a front for many sexual urges that are cooking under the surface.
I have created a collection of research from mainly women, along with some men as well to test whether men and women can be platonic. The three questions I asked each participant were:
Have any of your female friendships been ruined because of a guy?
Have you been in an uncomfortable situation where some guy said a comment or joke that was misogynistic and thought you were going to agree and play on?
Do you believe men and women can be JUST be friends?
Some women have changed the way they act around men which is of course not the same as when with their girlfriends. Also, women have been competitive when a man that they find attractive is around and that might change their character which affects their friendships. They might even see their friends as a threat to some guy they like even if they don’t express interest.
A brighter side to this question is hearing that a lot of women are very careful when it comes to liking a guy. They put in the research to know whether or not he is tolerable to be around. Sure he’s hot but what else is there to him for there to even lead to a conflict where friends would be bothered by the boyfriend?
For the second question, women have been more silent when it comes to being in on a joke told by a guy and are supposed to laugh as well, or so that’s what the guy wanted. Some women did not correct them because they did not want to come off as rude or annoying or some girl who can’t take a joke. Making fun of women has always been something that society has tolerated and it passes now as the norm. Especially surrounded in a male-dominated space, some women have to play it off and laugh at comments because they are scared of any bad reputation that may follow them. In my research, all of the women I asked gave a big Yes to the last question. However, all the men I asked said no. Big yikes!
When viewed as a team, it can be that men and women have somewhat different ideas about what it means to be “just friends” and that disagreements could cause a falling out. Men can’t seem to suppress their yearning for anything more even when women seem sincere in their friendship. Men are less likely than women to believe that attraction between platonic friends is more harmful than beneficial.
The findings imply that men and women experience opposite-sex friendships in very different ways depending on their gender. Compared to their female friends, men were significantly more drawn to the latter. Men are more likely than women to hold the obvious false assumption that friends who are the other sex are attracted to them. In short, men believe that the kind of romantic attraction they experience is mutual and are blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Men’s evaluation of their attractiveness to their female friends had hardly anything to do with how these women were feeling and practically nothing to do with how men individually felt.
So, men: think, daydream, and plot stupid men's shit.
So the big question… Can men and women JUST be friends? Very likely, if the population thought like women.
We would be living in hell if everyone thought like men.
Written by Daniel Rojas