can men ever just be friends with women?

[GraceAnais]

i know it's a cliche, but still a question i'd like some feedback on! as a woman i know that we can just be mates with the opposite sex, but i'm not sure whether it works the same for men. as my male friend said, 'yeah men can just be mates with a woman; as long as she's ugly.' any views?

[andy hughes]

Women are better at platonic friendships than men - they know they don;t fancy the guy, slip into the friendship, and all is cool.

Men oten make the mistake of seeing signals that aren't thre. If a woman feels relaxed with a 'friend' she will flirt with him. If he likes her, he wil see this as a come-on, and if he likes her a lot, he'll act on her 'signals' and the friendship is spoiled.

The trick is, as a male friend, if you really fancy your female friend, hide it from her, and hide it well. If it starts to affect you - making you jealous if she talks to you about men she fancies - and she will, you are her friend, then you must walk away, or at least distance yourself. Pretending you don;t mind is no good, pretending she's doing to make you jealous is fatal!

So yes, men and women can be friends, but they both have to know the rules, and stick to them.

[Andy008]

Only if she's minging. She might have a glittering personality, but your'e not shagging the personality

[rampart]

Yes, of course, whether ugly or beautiful. I've had many friends who were girls yet we were just friends. This includes some with whom I would take to dinner or a movie. It can be done, and it's perfectly fine, too.

Just because someone is the opposite sex does not mean it is an instant match for romance, even if she is beautiful. True romance and love go beyond looks, as does true friendship.

I can name a number of people of the opposite sex with whom I am friends at church, work, and clubs. They are fun and add to life.

[Chillum]

Providing that she's not, as Andy008, so eloquently puts it, minging, I think the man would always be willing to give it a go.
My wife is out with one of her male friends tonight, I know that, given the right encouragement, he'd try to get his leg over, and rightly so (proves she ain't no minger). Thankfully, I trust her not to give him that encouragement in the first place.

[jno]

perhaps the point isn't whether men make advances or not; they often will, on little or no evidence that it will be welcome. It's more whether, if they're politely rebuffed, they're happy to go on just being friends afterwards. I believe many are, once they know exactly where they stand. Ugliness isn't relevant - if any man does make that his sole criterion, you don't even want to be friends with him, he's a moron.

[GraceAnais]

it's not down to ugly or beautiful...that's too much of a grey area!!. but one has to admit there are such things as leagues!! it might sound childish, but there are some men that are out of my league, where others that i would class as below my league. it's not all to do with looks (personality, education, sense of humour,etc all play a role) but surely looks do matter. anyone that says they don't is lying. how does everyone feel on this issue of leagues. i have to say i do support it.

[GraceAnais]

p.s andy hughes....so true about seeing signals that aren't there. i think one of my male friends has been doing this. but then sometimes i hear myself say something and i realise that it probably did sound flirtatious, although i would never dream of anything between us. he keeps telling me all the men i meet just aren't good enough for me and that my perfect man is out there, i just haven't realised it yet...how gulliable do these men think we are??!!!

[jno]

Leagues... I think there are are a few people who are really striking: Johnny Depp, Cameron Diaz and so on; though exactly who is partly a matter of taste. (You may think all film stars look phoney, for instance.) There are far fewer ugly people - perhaps plastic surgery has made it easier to correct serious disproportion.

For the rest, there's a sort of spectrum ranging from plain to good-looking. In my experience, people anywhere on this spectrum seem to find themselves in relationships with more or less equal ease, and not necessarily with people in the same place on the spectrum. Of course we have this idea of plain girls who never find themselves a husband, and ditto for plain men; but in real life I don't think it's actually true. Look around you next time you're in a group and see if the plainest ones are more likely to be single. In my experience (quite long!) they're not.

[GraceAnais]

i completely agree!!! being plain or 'girl next door' is possibly the best one can be. too attractive causes problems (very threatening, people often too intimidated,etc), as does 'mingin' (!). and when it comes to good looking men, they tend to be arrogant and make little effort, whereas the plainer men work harder for your affections!! sexual attraction is about more than just looks...but there are some deal breakers in the looks department. e.g no matter how much i liked a man, i just don't think i could deal with him if he was shorter than me...(shallow or what, huh?!)

[jno]

Nicole Kidman managed it for years...

[GraceAnais]

she did, but look where that ended up!!! they're now divorced and he's got a 26 year old up the duff. the moral of this story...never marry someone shorter...it will end in tears.

[mimififi]

totally agree with leagues, and not just for girl/boy relationships. there are some other girls out there who perhaps are not in the same 'league' as me, mostly they are above LOL!, maybe league is abit harsh, rather more, just so far removed from my reality, they might have some kind of stroke if I asked them to join in (and not in a good way, in a more of a neurological way!)

Could not marry/see someone shorter than me either. I am 5'8'' so this was a bit of an issue especially as I also like wearing very high heels. My hubby is 5'11, which is frankly border line, but there was obviously so much more great about him that I just didn't wear toooo high wedding shoes. Then again tho, I don't like mega tall either that gives y ou a crick in your neck when you are trying to talk.

I think men can be friends with you, but My husband says I'm naive to think so. he reckons any single man trying to 'be my friend' is actually trying to get in my undies.

P.S when I fell in love with my husband, he was totally different to what he is now: was total computor geek (met in uni lab when my pc lost half my dissertation, he hacked something and retrieved it....)had bleached blond hair, played guitar in his band and was the most amazing musician (classical piano and guitar too!) I had ever seen. Now; total computer geek works for bank in city, often hacks my home pc to relocate files I've lost, often serenades me on our grand piano.....Ummm, maybe nothings really changed after all.

[GraceAnais]

he sounds like a real hero rescuing you from the dissertation crisis!!

i agree that leagues exist between friendships as well. hense the fact there's an in crowd and out crowd at school. also i have noticed that 'in' and 'out' crowds exist even within the adult world.

on the subject of relationships i have to say a shared sense of humour is fundamental. i was in a long term relationship with someone who never made me laugh (lots of good times, but we just never had the same sense of humour) since then i had a thing with a guy who was really funny (not enough sexual attraction, but hey,that's by the by) and it made me realise how important this is. surely then you can get through the harder times, and when when the looks fade and you can no longer walk in flats, let alone heels; you'll still be able to laugh together?

[mimififi]

definately a hero, still is, after all, he did buy the boots for me: I wonder how high they are?????

had guys at school though in my 6th form who I was friends with, same friendship crowd and everything, made me laugh like a drain, (and allowed me to copy their homework!) but as you say, absolutely no chemistry there, and I really believe that there was no chemistry there for them re me too. Lost touch with them when we left though, keep my eye out on Friends reunited for them, but nought yet.

At the end of the day, it's gotta be the whole package hasn't it, after all, as you said, when we are old, blind, deaf and crippled, what will we have, but what is inside and a shared lifetime together, and a damn good laugh at the lot of it. (Oh, i'm missing him now, he doesn't come home till Friday! :-(

[endoftheday]

I have lots of close friends who are female, and NO, i'm NOT gay !! It's really just a question of setting your own boundaries, which i think as a rule is harder for men to do than women. Sometimes i find it easier to talk to a female friend about one thing, but then just as easy to talk to one of the guys about something else. The fact that i have a friend who just happens to have different body parts to myself doesn't particularly make too much of a difference except on gender perspective. Having said all that, occasionally things can progress further than expected aftter a couple of drinks. But that doesn't make me a bad person does it !!????

[Chillum]

Ok..., can I go back to jno's assumption that basing relationships on attractiveness is a sign of morononoship(?).
Surely this basic judgement (of atttractiveness), is just Darwinian logic.
I used to see females who based their attraction to men solely on the cars that they drove, the money in their wallet, as shallow, and moronic. In hindsight, I see it as perfectly acceptable, as it increases the chances of their offspring as being well looked after, and having the oppportunities in life that would be denied to someone of lesser ambition.
From a male perspective, to mate with someone who is physically attractive, increases the chances of the offspring, not only doing well in a society which places huge importance on looks (carreer wise, an obvious advantage, whether you like it or not), but it also increases their chances of marrying well.
The moralhighground stance is easy to take, and hard to argue against, unless you are prepared to take into account, and consider, the realities of our lives, and the society in which we live.
I think the argument works for both sexes, though it does annoy me that I feel I have to put in this paragraph, to justify myself, and appease those who will see this as a sexist stance.

[shiznit]

My best friend is a girl or should I say woman. We have been friends for many years and although she is pretty dam good looking, I value our frindship a hell of a lot more than to try and have a relationship with her. We often spend the night at each others houses and sleep together always falling asleep cuddling with neither of us feeling the urge to do anything but. Its so nice to be with someone who you love unconditionally without it always coming down to sex

[mullein3]

i have had lots of male friends platonic of course..i like mens company ..you dont even think do i fancy them?? it doesnt come into it..you are just friends and have a laugh..and they didnt fancy me either we were just friends..and no i am not ugly!!..

[jno]

Chillum, agreed, I was only referring to men who make it their only criterion. If you plan to spend your life with someone solely because he/she is pretty, you're in for a lot of grief (not least because others may find him/her pretty too). Actually, I saw a news story this morning saying they've found that women who are attractive tend to have a higher sex drive too, which is interesting and adds more force to the Darwinian argument you made.

[hannah333]

My best friend for the last 10 years is male and I am female. He is 5 foot 4, I am 5 foot 11. I used to go out with his best male friend, and (at a different time) he used to go out with my best female friend. We laugh and joke about the fact that he is male and therefore wants to shag me and because we are just friends, and how because Im female, I dont. We have a fantastic relationship, but due to our pasts and the height difference, we will never get together, despite the fact you could say we are in the same 'league.'