HeartBrakeHotel

TRUTH #1

Friend­ship Is Not Equal Oppor­tu­nity

Not until high school does puberty really draw boys and girls together, which then con­tin­ues into col­lege. But as peo­ple develop seri­ous roman­tic rela­tion­ships or get mar­ried, mak­ing and main­tain­ing cross-sex friend­ships becomes harder. “Even the most secure peo­ple in a strong mar­riage prob­a­bly don’t want a spouse to be estab­lish­ing a new friend­ship, espe­cially with some­one who’s very attrac­tive,” said Monsour.

The num­ber of cross-sex friend­ships con­tin­ues to decline with age—not sur­pris­ing, because most older adults grew up in an age where con­sort­ing with the oppo­site sex out­side of wed­lock was taboo. Accord­ing to Rose­mary Blieszner, at Vir­ginia Tech and author of Adult Friend­ship, elderly peo­ple rarely form new friend­ships with mem­bers of the oppo­site sex. Her research shows that only about 2 per­cent of the friend­ships elderly women have are with men.

TRUTH #2

Men Ben­e­fit More from Cross-Sex Friend­ship

There are proven—and apparent—distinct dif­fer­ences between female friend­ship and male friend­ship. Women spend the major­ity of their time together dis­cussing their thoughts and feel­ings, while men tend to be far more group-oriented. Males gather to play sports or travel or talk stock quotes; rarely do they share feel­ings or per­sonal reflec­tions. This may explain why they seem to get far more out of cross-sex friend­ship than their female counterparts.

In Sapadin’s study, men rated cross-sex friend­ships as being much higher in over­all qual­ity, enjoy­ment and nur­tu­rance than their same-sex friend­ships. What they reported lik­ing most was talk­ing and relat­ing to women—something they can’t do with their bud­dies. Mean­while, women rated their same-sex friend­ships higher on all these counts. They expect more emo­tional rewards from friend­ship than men do, explained Sapadin, so they’re eas­ily dis­ap­pointed when they don’t receive them. “Women con­fide in women,” noted Blieszner. “Men con­fide in women.”

TRUTH #3

…But Women Ben­e­fit, Too

All that shar­ing and dis­cussing in female-female friend­ship can become exhaust­ing, as any woman who’s stayed up all night com­fort­ing a bro­ken­hearted girl­friend can attest. With men, women can joke and ban­ter with­out any emo­tional bag­gage. “Friend­ships with men are lighter, more fun,” said Sapadin. “Men aren’t so sen­si­tive about things.” Some women in her study also liked the pro­tec­tive, famil­ial and casual warmth they got from men, view­ing them as sur­ro­gate big broth­ers. What they liked most of all, how­ever, was get­ting some insight into what guys really think.

TRUTH #4

Cross-Sex Friend­ships Are Emo­tion­ally Reward­ing

Although women dig men’s light­hearted atti­tude, most male-female friend­ships resem­ble women’s emo­tion­ally involv­ing friend­ships more than they do men’s activity-oriented rela­tion­ships, accord­ing to Kathy Werk­ing, at East­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­sity and author of We’re Just Good Friends. Her work has shown that the num­ber one thing male and female friends do together is talk one-on-one. Other activ­i­ties they prefer—like din­ing out and going for drives—simply facil­i­tate that com­mu­ni­ca­tion. In fact, Werk­ing found, close male-female friends are extremely emo­tion­ally sup­port­ive if they con­tin­u­ously exam­ine their feel­ings, opin­ions and ideas. “Males appre­ci­ate this because it tends not to be a part of their same-sex friend­ships,” she said. “Females appre­ci­ate gar­ner­ing the male perspective.”

TRUTH #5

It’s Not All About Sex

Many peo­ple have seen the Meg Ryan and Billy Crys­tal movie “When Harry Met Sally.” The most mem­o­rable part is their dis­cus­sion about if women and men can be friends. When I was younger, I didn’t believe that they could. There is always the man or the woman who falls for the other. I remem­ber in my early twen­ties, one of my best friends was this guy. From the moment I saw him, I liked him. We started spend­ing every moment of our time together. We would meet in col­lege around 7 a.m., and not leave one another til 1 a.m. We never kissed or had sex, and I didn’t want to. I think he felt the same, but we didn’t want to ruin the friend­ship. Even now, I com­pare my rela­tion­ships to that friend­ship. We never got bored with one another, and I could spend all my time with him with­out want­ing to run away. I think I even fell in love with him.

Now, my feel­ings have changed. I have many guy friends, and I do not have an inkling of sex­ual attrac­tion towards them. They are my buds, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. There are a cou­ple who have started lik­ing me, but they never over­stepped the “point of no return.” I can talk to them about my “men” prob­lems, and they can put things in per­spec­tive, and I can do the same for them. Women and men can be friends. Maybe some­times one of them will crush on the other. How­ever, if the bound­aries are not over­stepped, it can be a won­der­ful friend­ship to have.

What do you think? Can women and men be just friends?