The judging, it burns!
See post above re: it’s not just me, it’s everyone I’ve ever spoken to about this, many literature/films, etc.
But obviously that’s all regressive compared to the highly evolved attitudes that have left me behind. Yea humanity!
I better tell my straight male friends that I need to end our friendships now because one day I’m going to fall in love with them and it’s going to hurt TOO much to not be able to be with them! 
Better cancel the flight to Rochester to go see my ol’ straight (and married) friend from college I have coming up in July.
If anything, I think it’s harder to maintain friendships with other gay guys when there is an attraction between the two of them (unrequited or not).
Get different friends, speak to more people, watch better films. You have lots of people on this message board telling your their experiences and you seem to be dismissing them. Were you asking our opinions or not?
EVERYONE you have spoken to? Why are you getting so defensive? And we didn’t say we were “evolved”; you did. Why?
By the way in your OP you mentioned a woman you and others were friends with whom you all lusted after and she “acted shocked” whenever any of you mentioned this. I have to wonder exactly how this went; because I can imagine getting really really tired of people I thought of as friends making coarse passes at me out of the blue. Just wondering who was being “dickish” in this case. My personal life experiences lead me to suspect it was not your woman friend.
And everyone I have ever known didn’t believe this. So, yeah.
If you state something as a universal truth, don’t be shocked when other people and their experiences negate your belief. Certainly, becoming defensive about it probably won’t help you flesh out your thesis.
My SO and I have many friends of different genders and sexual attractions. We spend time with them both together and separately. Several of his best friends are men who are gay or bi, and a couple are straight women, one of whom is a former girlfriend. I know that two of the gay men he’s friends with have at least a crush on him (they admitted this to me in private) but it’s never affected the friendship (and in fact they may be over it now, I haven’t asked). I’ve always had a lot of straight male friends personally, and I’m also friends with a number of lesbians. Some straight men have made things uncomfortable in the past, to be honest, but it was a minority. I’ve never had a lesbian make me uncomfortable or hit on me. Maybe I’m not hot to gay ladies? I don’t know. We know a lot of bi people as well, and in fact I identify as bi even though I’m in a long term monogamous relationship with a man. It’s never been as issue.
All of this holds true for pretty much everyone I know. I’ve always thought the premise of When Harry Met Sally was silly, as most romcoms are. I mean, my goodness, if you took your cues from movies most guys would be stalkers, and most women would like that! I think there’s a kernel of truth there; romantic feelings can make friendship hard or impossible. But to say “you can’t be friends with someone if you fall into their preferred gender” is going too far, I think. You’d cut yourself off from so many awesome people if you did that!
Well, you spoke - so to speak (ha!) - to us, and many of us told you differently.
Concur with others above that Hollywood rom-coms are never a good source of guiding principles for everyday life.
So that’s two instances? Two? You’re basing this on two instances?
People often assume that my best male friend and I are a couple. Actually, that’s happened pretty much always when I’ve gone to a dating type of place (pub, theatre, etc) with a man or with a very obvious lesbian at a gay venue. People see a couple of friends and think they’re A Couple.
If you’re as adamant about your opinion in real life as you are on here, then perhaps your friends are just agreeing with you to avoid an argument. People on here aren’t more evolved, they’re just more willing to argue.
FWIW, I carpooled with a work buddy/close friend for years, and he never indicated the slightest interest. My wife, who doesn’t do backpacing any more, is OK with me taking backpacking trips with one of my ex’s (although we were more ‘friends with benefits’ for a time than we were madly infatuated lovers).
Many years ago I had a gay friend that I absolutely loved. (Platonically)
He once made a pass at me after copious consumption of alcohol. I let it go the first time but the fucker kept on doing it, so I eventually had to let him go.
I have to tell you, I felt really betrayed by him as he once told me it’s so hard for gay people to find a straight man who aren’t dicks to them. Yet, he found the one guy who wasn’t a dick to him and alienated him anyway? WTF?
That said, the premise of the OP is ridiculous.
And you can tell everybody
that this is your song…
Any two (or more) people can be friends. But from my own experience, if I’m friends with a guy who is drop-dead gorgeous, it’s going to be a very frustrating relationship. Other than that, no problem.
Of course they can. While it’s common for people to develop one-sided romantic or sexual attraction for friends, it’s certainly not something that can’t be communicated about, and resolved in a way that allows a friendship to flourish.
I’m a (mostly straight, serially monogamous) woman and have a bunch of lesbian/bi female friends. All of them have straight, gay, and bi female friends. Crushes may happen but it’s not at all a big deal.
Straight male here.
I think this all comes down to maturity. My gay friends don’t hit on me because I am not and they respect me(cept for drunken foolishness, you get a free pass or two). I don’t hit on my women friends (see above) but I have thought about it. I think the key here is respect of the mutual kind, there is a boundary once crossed that is very hard to uncross.
Or don’t think with the little brain too much, that thing will get you into trouble if you let it control your actions.****
Capt
Telemark has been giving you great advice throughout this thread that doesn’t seem judgmental at all to me. I think you’re reading an awful lot into his words.
If everyone you’ve ever spoken to about this (really?) agrees with what you’ve laid out in your OP then I’m not sure what to think because it’s honestly a little nutty to me.
But this:
This is just absurd. So what if a man’s preferred demographic is female and breathing? I guess I must tell him that I cannot be his friend because he might fall in love with me and then where would we be? Or “Excuse me Mr Co-worker, you seem nice and I want to be friendly but I must ask what is your preferred female demographic? I have to know because you just won’t be able to stop yourself from falling in love. You know, being a slave to your penis and all.”
So rarely is an OP misogynistic and misandric at the same time yet here we all are.
I get where you’re coming from, Spaz. I would guess – and this is mere conjecture – is that a gay guy and straight guy can work if the straight guy can handle it… but I’m not so sure a straight guy and straight girl can as easily, at least without avoiding complication or hurt feelings.
Personally, I’m straight, have a few gay “somewhat close” friends. I have one friend who’s bisexual, whom I am very close to and he confided with me back in college that he thought he might be have some gay tendencies. Having never had any known interaction with gays, it did unnerve me a little. Of course, I just needed to evolve some and the friendship got past it easily. And when he told me years later that I was the first guy he ever fantasized about, I just found it hilarious. And we’re still close.
On the flip side, I had a female friend (same age as me) for years, we were as close as two people could be platonically and I never imagined anything would happen in a million years (her husband was also a lesser friend of mine). Then, suddenly, 15 years after our friendship started, we find ourselves making out on my bed. I dunno, it just happened. And it marked the beginning of the end of our relationship. But I suspect if she were single we would have eventually gotten married.
I fail to see why having someone being attracted to you is inherently a problem. I’ve been on both sides, and, since we were good friends, it was obvious the other person didn’t feel the same way, so no one pursued anyone.
You do get that you can find someone attractive and not have sex with them, right?
I got nervous reading the OP, because his situation in grad school is almost word for word what happened to me in grad school, except I was the gay man.
People can absolutely be friends with those of their preferred gender (as has already been stated over and over again), even when there’s sexual attraction, or a sexual history, or a past romantic history. But if the OP’s circumstances were anything like mine, it wasn’t just sex or attraction, but love (of the unrequited kind). Which, it turns out, makes friendship unsustainable (or at least more painful and difficult that it’s usually worth).
Not only was I miserable, but my friend was unhappy that I was miserable, and since there was nothing to be done about it (the heart wants what it wants), I slowly cut myself off from him. I eventually fell out of love, but have yet to reconnect.
Thank god it happens so rarely.
I’m not going to worry about adding my experiences with friends of the opposite sex, as I’m sure I’m also not a true Scotsman.
The logic for the followup is what’s particularly interesting for me. It reminds me of a time I was complaining to an establishment that the system they employed was confusing. The guy’s reply was it couldn’t be because no one ever complained. :smack:
One simply can’t take universal life lessons about mating behaviors from college years.
As many others, I think that a straight man can perfectly be friend with a woman or with a gay guy.
In fact, what I don’t get is that a straight man can be friend with a straight man. I sometimes wondered why I never had a straight male friend, contrarily to the overwhelming majority of the population, and my best guess is that my conception of friendship (I use the word “friend” restrictively) requires some level of “platonic affection” which is unlikely to exist between two straight men. Basically, if I don’t want to hug you sometimes, you’re not a friend (and there won’t friendly stuff going on : being happy to hang with you, confiding in you, etc…)