Can’t guys just be friends because they’re, you know, your friends? Does everybody sleep with their friends who are sufficiently hot and non-nosepicking? I have plenty of guy friends that are just friends because they’re my friends.
Interesting.
Not trying to put words into the mouth of anyone, but what I´m reading is that if a “friend” has all the qualities of a “boyfriend”, then the relationship must escalate to that level?
I mean, and I´m asking an honest question (not trying to sound ignorant here), can´t a guy and a girl be friends and nothing else just “beause”?
I have a “friend” of the opposite sex, she´s fun to hang out with. I don´t really need reasons as to why I don´t like her as a girl-friend because this requires added emotions not generally found in “normal” friendships.
This is not to say that you an´t “love” a friend of your same sex, in a familiar sort of way, but if everything is good enough with that person that he an be your friend (like any other friend you have of the same sex) why even think about a relationship?
I understand it an pop in your head, but if its something you think about often, then that friendship MAY be walking a delicate line…
Another one for being able to have guy pals that are just friends. I think that the same stereotypical way that some guys separate girls into “Marriageable” and “Just for Banging”, girls divide guys into “Friend Material” and “Working on it”.
I have had male friends for as long as I can remember. Even in Kindergarten, I had a best buddy (Mark) and a boyfriend (Jamie). Both came to my birthday parties, but when we played house Jamie was the Daddy and Mark usually ended up being the dog.
If I think about it, the boyfriends I always felt amazingly attracted to, but were not really indispensable to my happiness. The friends were indispensable to my happiness, but not really attracted to.
When I found a guy that encompassed both feelings (OhmyGodIwantthat and Ican’tseemyselfwithoutyou), I married him.
One long-term male friend of mine never became my boyfriend for the same reason he is now my ex-friend: his chronic low self-esteem and inability to read basic social cues. We were both single and looking for relationships, but he was so convinced that no one could ever love him that he exuded desperation like a stench. When he wasn’t moping or bitching about how *all *women only want good-looking rich guys, he was awkwardly throwing himself at women who were (and I hate this phrase/concept but it exists) “out of his league” – models 15 years his junior, for instance. He once hit on a friend of a friend at a party … despite the fact that her husband was across the room. He’d then use their rejection to fuel his self-loathing.
I was one in a long line of platonic female friends; other men’s company made him uncomfortable and competitive. After nearly two years of encouraging him to seek counselling to stop sabotaging himself (and/or discover that he’s as gay as the 1890s), I had to take a giant step back because he was alienating me from my other friends. People began asking me to not invite him to join me at parties and events because they found him irritating and depressing. Many arguments and heart-to-hearts got us nowhere, so I eventually severed ties. (For the record, if he’d shown any interest in improving his life as opposed to whining about it, I’d have hung in there.)
O.k., as a guy, I’ll take a shot at N.Sane’s question of why a girl might end up on the ‘just friends’ list:
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Every relationship you were previously in ended horribly. If we are casual friends and I want to stay friends, if we date and it doesn’t work out, we’ll clearly never talk again based on your ‘scorched earth’ track record of relationships.
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Every relationship you were in previously, you drove the guy to dump you because you were desperate for it to be serious/lead to marriage right away. Doubly so if you are in your late 30s and still single.
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You’re fine in a group, but one on one, you are quiet (maybe because you’re just nervous and you don’t want to say the wrong thing). Still, you let me do all the talking and have no opinions of your own. Maybe that works if you’re dating an egomaniac, but that’s not me.
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Were incompatable sexually, emotionally, financially, politically, or along some other key relationship parameter. That’s fine for an arm’s length friendship and may even lead to some very interesting conversations and debates that I’d look forward to…but those would just be an endless series of fights if we were dating.
Have we met? :o
Seeing as a couple of the qualities that are required to enter “boyfriend” category are “someone I’d like to see naked on a regular basis” and “someone who, once naked, can make me see stars”… then I suppose that the answer would be yes.
(note: that someone would need to have all the other qualities that I find desirable in a friend too… if he’s JUST someone I’d like to see naked and who can rock my world, I’m probably not going to consider him boyfriend material either)
From a guy’s perspective - I’d say these are seperate issues. When I was single, I’d make up my mind pretty quickly whether or not I wanted a sexual relationship based purely on “hot … would rock my world”; then, out of all the possible hot and world-rocking women, I’d narrow the focus - once I got to actually know them. The superficial came first; then the “spark”; then (thankfully) a discovery of mutual interests and a development of companionship.
With friends, the superficial doesn’t necessarily enter into it. Some friends (speaking of women only now) I have are very hot indeed, others not; that has nothing to do with the matter - friends is all about shared interests and experiences, reciprocity, companionship and mutual reliance – all stuff I want with a romantic partner to be sure, but not necessarily what actually attracts me to one in the first place.
My point here is that a friendship isn’t, in my experience at least, a second-class prize for those who cannot make the romantic grade; it is simply a different sort of relationship. I have had friends that, if thinks had gone differently, I could have seen as romantic partners - but the stars were not right for whatever reason. Once they are definitely “friends” it is generally difficult to imagine having a romantic relationship with them (though some people do, I would fear risking a good friendship for romance - my attitude was that there are plenty of other women out there whom I’m not friends with).
Oh hey, that was a former friend of mine. Not at all surprisingly, she turned out to be a psycho in general. In high school, if she was interested in a guy, asked him out, and he turned her down (even nicely!), she wouldn’t sulk or whatever. Oh no, she’d immediately start ripping on him behind his back, tell everyone who would listen that he was obviously ‘scared of a strong woman’, etc., and generally be a raging bitch about him, just because he dared not be deeply attracted to her. She even started in on some anti-Semitic comments about one Jewish guy who turned her down, but cut those off pretty quickly after she started getting a lot of WTF looks from us. I think we assumed at the time (being geek girls ourselves) that she was just hurting really deeply because of her unconventional looks/little weight problem/fellow geekness and was just acting out, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
This seems a strange way to think about it. I think it’s safe to assume that normal women generally don’t want to sleep with ALL of their male friends/acquaintances, unless there was a compelling reason to do so. It’s not the other way around.
That is, if you think that your lady friend should be sleeping with you, the onus would be on you, the male friend, to prove your case to the her.
No spark.
That’s really it. There may be specific and definable reasons behind the lack of chemistry (I don’t think I’ve ever been attracted to someone who has some sort of clear, fundamental incompatibility with me), but just as often there’s nothing specific I can point to. There are some guys I’ve known where we’ve even discussed how great we are for each other “on paper,” but the attraction just wasn’t there. In those cases I’m just not feelin’ it, for whatever reason.
Generally if he doesn’t turn my crank, he’s out.
Very few men turn my crank. Odd things will stop my crank from turning. Habits that were deal breakers in some men don’t bother me at all in other men.
I dunno. I guess that’s not super helpful.
How long does it take you to categorize a man as “just friends” material? Or more to the point, how quickly do you sort a guy into the “doable” category, even if might later filter out? I recall somewhere, probably in a bad movie, that a woman decides in the first few seconds whether she’d sleep with you or not. Is there any truth to that, or is it just movie bullshit? Has the switch ever flipped back from “just friends” to “doable”, or was a friend always in the potentially “doable” category from the start?
My sentiments exactly. And by “hot” I mean “attractive to me” of course. I have plenty of guy friends who are great and whom other girls find attractive, but I don’t feel attracted to at all.
FWIW, I usually know within ten minutes of meeting someone whether I find them attractive or not. I’ve become friends with people I disliked upon first impression and vice versa many times, but when it comes to spark, first impressions are usually accurate - for me, anyway.
All of the above…
When Brainiac4 and I met he was seeing someone else. We became friends. I was seeing someone else. He was immature. I was immature. He and I had different values. We remainded friends. Fifteen years ago, we grew up, were single, and our values had grown together.
Now, I think that there was always “chemistry” there…The chemistry thing is instantaneous. And chemistry might be looks (though the man I’ve been married to for fifteen years is not extremely handsome - and not even the physical type I find “hot”) but looks is overly simplistic.
I’ve actually been thinking about this lately, and I finally have an answer for myself. You know how they call a man “the strong, quiet type?” ***He’***s going to be my friend. Virtually every guy I’ve been attracted to has been more out-going than I am. The conversation between two introverts is exhausting for the one making more of an effort keeping it going - I can’t imagine wanting a more intimate relationship with someone knowing this was an issue.
I think you’ve touched upon the issue perfectly. There is such an emphasis on sex in our society, that I think a lot of men, when friends with a woman who won’t consider taking things to the next level, will see that as an indicator that they are severely lacking some important quality, and as a result will feel that they have lesser value as a human being in general.
This would be my (gender swapped) list, especially the first - that is for guys where dating ended with ‘let’s just be friends’.
Like Malthus said, I don’t view friendship as second prize. I’ve had far more good male friends than boyfriends, most of them were never expecting anything more.
My friends are people that I get on well with.
Some of the people I get one well with are men that I consider attractive and would like to date.
Some of those men also want to date me.
Some of those dates lead to more dates, or even sex.
Sometimes that leads to having a boyfriend.
If a guy thinks fucking me precedes or outweighs friendship with me, then fine - he ain’t my friend. Or anything else of importance to me.
Well, that’s true for me. Literally, 15 seconds. Which is not to say that I would bed you in 15 seconds but I can decide that fast. Of course, if a guy acts like a buffoon then no dice.
It’s kind of a drag, really. I’ve known some really fantastic guys on line or over the phone and really been into them and then I meet them in person and 15 seconds in it’s all over. It sucks and I really CAN’T get past it. (Believe me, I’ve tried).
No no’s:
Religious views. Sorry, I won’t be going to church, bowing 5 times a day, not using electricity on saturday, or any other ridiculousness.
Obsession with clothing: it’s cool you like vintage. It’s not cool you take longer than I do to get ready. Fine for friends, bad for boyfriends.
You don’t like food, or music, or the literature I do. I’m a bit of a foodie - if you see no difference in the best pizza in town and a frozen one, we have problems. If you think anything but classical music is smut, we have problems. If you read Dan Brown and think he should win a Pulitzer…
You drink too much. You smoke cigarettes in any capacity, or you smoke pot or cigars more than once in a blue moon.
You’re jealous.
You’re (culturally) Jewish, but you’d never ever bring home a non-Jew to your mother.
bit of a story…
My best friend in the world literally physically feels like a brother to me. His hugs, his kisses (on the cheek), everything just feels like he’s the closest thing to me, and that we’re related. It’s the way we interact with each other that made me once forget to leave the room or ask him to turn around while I impetuously changed shirts in front of him. And yes, I’m very certain it’s like this on both ends, it’s not just me leading him on or such. It’s not always the woman who categorizes.
I’m not a superficial person - I date guys who are funny, intelligent, and nice, in that order. However, I’ve always been physically attracted to the guys I’ve dated within the first few moments I interact with them - I find their height, their eyes, or their grin a turn on. It may be strong, it may be weak, it may be momentary before they open their mouth and insert their foot (true story in current relationship), but if looks are bland or turn me off entirely, it ain’t never gonna happen.