the complications of male/female friendships: a primer

My Bruin friend Lisa once told me that a boy had told her that girls and boys can’t be just friends. This boy also said that boys will be friends with girls they like and only stay friends if the girl doesn’t like the boy that way. A few weeks later, Lisa and the boy were dating. Despite this evidence to the contrary, I feel that platonic relationships between boys and girls are possible.

When it comes to guy/girl friendships, there’s definitely a thin line between platonic and romantic. As a girl who has been on both sides of the unrequited feelings coin, sometimes it looks very tempting to cross that line. When I was younger, my friends and I thought that the best relationship with a guy would start out as a friendship first. For me, that has not been true. I’m not quite sure why, but every relationship I’ve had with a boy that was first a friend has ended horribly. For Jesse and me, the friendship came second. I’ve never felt closer to any guy in my life before.

Whenever I tell Jesse that I have plans to hang out with a guy, his first question is, “Is he gay?” And for the few times the answer to that question is “No,” Jesse gets just a little bit worried. Sure it’s true that a lot of my straight guy friends abandoned our friendSHIP when things started to get serious between me and Jesse, but I refuse to speculate on their reasons for doing so. After all, denial is often a safe place to be. But for those guy friends who decided to stick around, I feel as though our friendship is of the purest form—one without an underlying motive.

Back when I was anti-boy and anti-relationships (a long phase that lasted almost 3 years), Johnmichael, a co-worker, once proposed this theory—the reason why I have so many gay male friends is because they are safe. At the time, I dismissed his theory by claiming to be a ‘gay man magnet’. But perhaps, there is some truth to what JM said. Besides the great benefits of gay friends (awesome make up, fashion, and home decorating tips, etc.), there is no pretense, no motive. I did feel safe and secure that this boys were being friends with me for me and no other reason.

I’d hate to think that Lisa’s boy could be right. But I feel that the male/female relations are much more complicated than that. It’d be best to leave that up to the experts and that most certainly excludes me.