So I often read or hear that women and men can't *just* be friends and...

I think that in some aspects of life, social aspects haven't caught up with physical aspects. You know how sometimes, people date humans who are muscular, but are jerks. It's about mating. A muscular being looks like they could bear good children. It's in human nature. Same thing goes with your examples. People assume you should be mating. It's a mechanism to keep human life going. Even if someone is not attracted to the same sex, the mating mentality of 'who would be the best mate' lingers. It's up to people to overcome some of the physical aspects of humans that aren't useful anymore. We need to focus more on what WE want, not what others think.

 

People only say that when they think the hetetronormative way

 

I don't believe that at all. Most of my friends are women and I don't go around falling in love with all of them. It depends on the people and their dynamic.

 

I've been friends with plenty of men when I identified as female that I didn't date or even have an interest in.

 

I have many friends in both sexes that I wouldn't date or have sex with in a million years! So in definitely in camp just friends in this.

 

Most of my close friends are males.

 

I have loads of male friends. I never got why people think it's not possible to be friends :/

 

By that logic bisexuals couldn't have any friend at all, so it's clearly untrue : p

 

Though most of my friends that I feel closest to seem to be female I do have trouble maintaining long term friendships with women. It seems that they get a boyfriend and boom I cannot hang out with them or they get accused of fucking me.

A great example is my female friend that I had a huge falling out with about two weeks ago. For the sake of privacy I'll call her Sally.

She started working where I worked about a month after I did. By the time she started I had made several friends at work and we sat in one area of the break room. She was a friendly person and sat near us and fell in the group quickly. She had herd me mention from time to time the I live just off Main St. (changed).
One day she approached me and asked if I could give her a ride home because she herd me say I lived off of Main and she just moved off main herself. Come to find out, without knowing exactly where I live, she moved 5 houses from me. We started riding to work together which meant we had an hour to chat before work, an hour to chat on the way home, and usually hung out at each others house for a couple hours afterwards (not to mention most weekends).

Then she met "Joe". Joe worked at the same place we did but his schedule was 4 hours different. Joe was jealous that I spent more time with her than he did. He even asked her if she was sure I'm gay right in front of me! He didn't even get the words out his mouth good before she replied Psh..OH-hooooo yea.". Dude just kept on basically accusing her of fucking me. We have since kinda grown apart. A couple weekends ago I actually needed her to help me out out of a bad spot and Joe wouldn't let her. That lead to us having a huge fight that ended with "Forget where I live and don't worry about me ever calling/texting you again".

Damn, I'm not having sex with your girlfriend! Yea, you see a pretty girl but to me all I see is Sally.


This is similar to what has happened multiple times throughout my life.

Then there was the girl I grew up with from the age of diapers. We were friends growing up but next thing we knew well.... Yea you know what happened... It took us twenty years but nope not "just friends" anymore. Wish I never married her...stupid way to lose a life long friend.

So I don't know can guys and girls be just friends?

---------- Post added 20th May 2014 at 05:16 AM ----------

Wow. Didn't mean for that to become an essay!

 

My best friends are 2 girls and a boy, and I wouldn't date any of them. Everyone thinks that we're just like, couples who hang out together.. :dry:

I don't get why people can't see that we are JUST FRIENDS!

 

I have had a few guy friends come and admit they've had crushes on me, but a lot of them I haven't returned. Most of the time I just went back to being friends with them. Then again, I don't really think of gender as anything really important. I have guy buds and girl buds and we all get along just fine.

Heck, I give the majority of my guy friends dumb nicknames anyways. If being called "Vladimir" or "Ishmael" by me in the halls every day isn't a major sign of being in the friendzone, then I don't know what is.

 

I've got guy friends, mostly gay guys or straight guys that are deeply committed in a relationship. It seemed like most unattached straight guys I knew had the hardest time just being friends.

I met my current BF about 4 yrs ago, and he and my former same sex partner and I were all good friends (we met at a special interest club that we belonged to) I never had any attraction to him at the time, and he didn't have any to me. We remained just friends even after I lost my partner and then later on his wife divorced him. It wasn't until we started "hanging out" together to combat the loneliness, doing fun things together like movies, sporting events, or dinners and dvd watching at home, motorcycle riding, that we developed a romantic relationship with him, and eventually an intimate relationship. I never expected anything to develop because I never knew that I was bisexual, and he didn't know either. If I'd actually been a lesbian I could've remained just friends with him, but I don't know if he could've been just friends with me.

 

It can be true in some cases that one falls for the other, but it doesn't have to be. In that case gay people couldn't be friends with the same sex at all.

 

I think this idea is wrong cause:

*Im not sexually or romantically interested in everyone...

*Being sexually or romantically interested in someone doesnt have to destroy or nullify a friendship... People can even stay friends with their exes, its rare but it happens sometimes succesfully... Friends can have sex or any sort of phisicla intimacy, it might in some cases complicate things but it doesnt mean the friendship is over... Its possible to be in love with a friend and stay just friends and stay happy.

In fact i prefer being' 'just friends'' than being 'just a random people i met once'', if instead on focusing on what you didnt get (sex/relationship) you focus on what you have (friendship) with is a rare, precious great thing, you can even be grateful, even if you would prefer something more.

*some people rather than focus on sex nullify friendship focus on the friendship nullifies sex chances... Bt i dont hink this is true... The problem is when not wether you are or not her friend, the problem is when you are just that. You need to create the sexual tension from the beginning, you need to flirt, you need to create anticipation,it would be awkard if you where acting asexually, not-interested, platonically and suddely you become a lustfull entity, she is not specting it, she will get confused she will run for the hills. Or worst, she will think you where pretending to be her friend to get her in bed, it doesnt matter if you where just to scared and awkard to flirt or act sexual, she is likely to interpretate this as you being manipulative and dishonestly... If on the other hand you act friendly but flirtatious and subtly sexual, showing that you have nothing to hide, things mighht play a lot better.

Im not an expert of this whole dating thing, but i think everything i said is kind of obvious enought. So no, being friends doesnt instantly friendzone you, for stating such thing we would have to assume friends never have sex... With is not true at all.

 

i only ever liked one of my female friends, but it didn't happen right away and it's gone now, I could see she wasn't into me and moved on.
But I don't have any ill will towards her, I am a weird guy lol If a girl doesn't like me it's, well I sort of expect that, doll weirdo's aren't sexy lol
guys, well that's a different kettle of fish, I've not liked a guy in some time, and have no guy friends

 

I rarely have any guy friends and the guy friends I do have are gay. I usually try to stay away from most straight males. I have nothing against straight men but I had a prior incident where I was really good friends with a guy. Our friendship was pretty great up until he confessed his feelings for me even though he knew from the beginning that I'm a lesbian. After that things got awkward between us. He started to get jealous when I was dating and even flirted with me numerous times. I had no choice but to end the friendship. The only way I were to ever become good friends with a straight male is if he was in a fully committed relationship.

 

If the whole "straight men and straight women can't be friends" thing was true it would mean gay men could not have any straight male friends, straight women could not have lesbian friends and....bisexual people could have no friends.

My friendship group is a bit like Friends - mixed sex group, a couple of who had brief one-night stands but nothing serious, generally all platonic though and there isn't sexual tension (most have partners outside the friend group).

 

I think that the reasoning behind it is fairly ridiculous. I'm equally capable of being attracted to people of any gender. Am I incapable of being friends with anyone? Of course not.

 

My close college circle includes me and three other girls. One of those girls I talked to about going out on a date. We are both kind of nerdy, but we have some quirks that get on each others nerves sometimes. She spent the night over here with me alone and slept on the couch after new year's eve which did make things slightly awkward. She is a true friend. I didn't want to date her just because it could ruin our friendship, but I do care about her emotionally. I am just not sexually attracted to her enough to make it work for a relationship. There just has to be some type of infatuation. And yes, I have felt it before with girls/women.