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Come on and join author Melissa Bradley as she sets off on her latest adventure...

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If you are not 18, please exit stage left. While there is normally nothing naughty here, I do write and review erotica so there are links to spicy stuff and the occasional heated excerpt.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Men and Women: Just Friends?

As someone who has had male friends her entire life, I find it extremely disturbing and completely unenlightened when someone says that it is impossible for men and women to be just platonic friends and never take anything into the bedroom. Now, I know as an erotic romance writer that there are all kinds of stories out there about friendships turning into romances and that the friends to lovers thing is a staple theme in the Hollywood romcom world. Jason Bateman seems to agree with this notion. Check the article here.

In my own life, my two oldest friends are both men. Men I've known since we were five. And before you say a word, no neither one is gay. You would not believe how many times I hear that when I tell someone my oldest friends are both men. Well, they must be gay, Melissa. Either that or they find you ugly. Yeah, that's the other thing I hear all the time. They or I must be completely unattractive. Really? Nice to know that men and women will only be friends with someone they find physically unappealing. Never mind about things like brains, common interests, sparkling wit and genuinely cool personalities.

I've also heard tell that men and women will only be friends with one another if one or both of them is in a relationship. I see. If they are single and pretty, they won't be able to help themselves if they remain in the same room long enough. Wow, I had no idea that hormones trumped good conversation and a few good laughs.

I'm not saying that more can grow out of the seeds of friendship or that I have never found one of my male friends attractive. I would be lying. I have had and still have some male friends who are damned hot. Had any of them ever found me attractive at one point? Maybe, I don't know. There's also this little concept called friends with benefits. Whereby single male and female friends do sexual favors for one another when they get an itch that needs to be scratched. It happens and so what. Just because you have one particular friend like that doesn't negate platonic relationships with other men/women. When I look at all my guys friends in my life at this point, they are all like brothers. It never crosses my mind to think of them in a sexual way and not all of them are in relationships, some of them are quite single.

Maybe I'm just weird because when I meet a new man, I'm not automatically thinking of dating him. I just like meeting new people and widening my circle of friends.

In my opinion, men and women can and are strictly platonic friends all the time. There is nothing sexual about these relationships. When someone tries to read more into the friendship or dismiss it as a "yeah, right, you just haven't acted on it" situation, they are projecting their own issues, insecurities, jealousies, etc. on to it. I think if one doesn't have friends across the board gender-wise, they are missing out.

15 comments:

  1. You're one of the lucky ones. I've never been able to be 'friends' with males. When I was younger, they would always try to kiss me at some point. Just recently I became friends w/a male trainer, we were like soulmate friends, and my marriage ended b/c of it. Of course, that wasn't the only reason, but it was a big part of it. I think it's b/c I'm such a girly girl. I see my friend's teenage daughters hanging with boys who are 'friends' all the time so maybe it's generational. I just do think, though, once ur married, it's harder to do and have all parties be cool w/it.. If ur pullin' it off girl, I say go for it. I just haven't been so successful...

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  2. Some of my oldest friends are men. Some I had "benefits" with years ago, when we were in college...but our friendships survived because we all understood that was all there was to it.
    I really believe that it's possible for platonic friendships to be a wonderful thing, but usually one or the other secretly wishes it was something more. I'm not saying that they will allow it to ruin the friendship. But that it may be a secret desire they carry to their graves, rather than ruin a good thing. And as for a close woman/man friendship ruining a marriage, that's why I really cannot understand the interest in menage romances, where we are supposed to believe that 2 or more men are willing to share one woman. I mean I understand that it's a fantasy fiction, but puh-leeze! Men are just not wired that way! At least not any of the men I've ever met! I'd more easily believe that vampires and were-creatures really exist! I guess I like a little more realism in my erotic romances.

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  3. Thanks for your candor, Word Actress. I appreciate your stopping by and being so forthright. The generational aspect isn't something I'd thought about before. You could have something there.

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  4. Fiona, thank you for coming by and sharing your thoughts. I appreciate the honesty on both the issue and erotica writing. My most recent work, Maxie Briscoe: Werewolf has a menage relationship, but I definitely see what you're talking about in terms of two men sharing one woman.

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  5. While I think it is possible for men and women to be just friends, being a romance author, I'm not really satisfied with it. I'm a big fan of the friends to lovers scenario so when I run across people who are just friends with a member of the opposite sex, I tend to wonder under what circumstances that friendship would evolve into something more.

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  6. I met one of my oldest and dearest friends when he transferred to my school when we were in the ninth grade. He's been a touchstone in my life. We've never been physically intimate, but we are intimate human friends with a lot of love and respect for each other. He's straight, he's still cute, but I don't have "those" feelings for him. If he's ever had them for me, forty years is a long time to keep a secret.

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  7. I agree with you in general, though I have little personal experience to draw on. I have male friends at work, but they are basically just "work friends"; we don't see each other elsewhere. (But, then, I don't have any non-work female friends either except the female halves of the couples my husband and I socialize with -- only friendly acquaintances.) It's worth mentioning that C. S. Lewis in the chapter on friendship in THE FOUR LOVES maintains that if a man and woman are close friends, find each other physically not-unattractive, and aren't attached elsewhere, the relationship is more likely than not to develop into Eros. He had some female friends but mostly male friends -- and his closest female friend did eventually become his wife. So no doubt his own experience (he wrote that book after he got married) influenced his opinion.

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  8. I agree with you wholeheartedly, Melissa!

    My entire live, starting when I was an infant, really, I had more male friends than female (until I became a writer). My first best friend was male. I got along better with the guys in my classes in high school than with the girls. I was shy, studious, nerdy—not the hot chick they might secretly be hoping to get something going with. We just had fun. That was true all through college.

    In adulthood, I've been around fewer people, so it hasn't been exactly the same. I've been very close friends with a guy I worked with and another who was a writer, and it didn't matter that we were all married, none of us would have ever had a non-platonic interest if we were unattached. Now 99% of my friends are writers, 98% romance writers, so they're all female, so that skews things. I'm just not around men as much. But I don't know why it would be any different.

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  9. Good post, Melissa, and one that really made me think. I've had and still have straight male friends without once considering sex and neither have they. I agree with you that males and females can be good friends and nothing more.

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  10. KC, I like that concept, intimate, human friends with a lot of love and respect for each other.

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  11. Margaret, thank you so much for coming by and sharing. I'll have to check out the C.S. Lewis book. I remember reading about his wife.

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  12. Bernadette and Jennifer, as a fellow writer I hear you. I love figuring out people and under what circumstances they would do things like become lovers. In fact, I have quite a few fave books that explore that scenario. Thanks for coming to the Imaginarium.

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  13. Natalie, I remember growing up around tons of boys, too. I got into football because of it and have a small group of guys that I watch and discuss the games with today. Some are married, some are not and we are all just friends. I love it.

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  14. Hi Sloane. Thanks for coming by as always. I love my guy friends and feel like I appreciate them more after writing this post and reading that article.

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  15. really really liked this post. I have a lot of female friends, and so does my brother especially, and hes married with kids and he adores is female friends as just that, as do I. For people to say that men and women can't be friends without an alterior motive is madness. Thanks for sharing, Dempsey

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