Come on. How many of your platonic male friends would categorically refuse if you offered them a little friendly oral sex? You seriously believe the answer is “all of them”?
Note that I didn’t say all of them would accept. Just that a lot more would accept than you think.
I do know peole with morals, ethics, and good relationships. If a female friend of mine offered to sleep with me, I’d like to think I’d turn her down, because I value my marriage. But that wouldn’t change the fact that I’d WANT to sleep with her. I’d only turn her down because the potential negative consequences would be too great.
It may be hard for women to believe, but as a man I have never once refused a woman who wanted to have sex with me. Not once. Now, the number of women who have offered to have sex with me isn’t exactly large. And the number of women who have offered to have sex with me when it would be inappropriate for me to accept is zero. But there have been a few cases where it was inappropriate for them to offer, and I have to say that I didn’t say no at the time.
If you’re an attractive woman with several male friends, I can guarantee that there is at least one of your male friends who wishes you’d sleep with him, and would jump at the opportunity. If you don’t believe me, just start offering and see what happens.
While I can’t say I agree with the methodology of the experiment Lemur866 has proposed, I second his argument and would add that “at least one” is probably an understatement.
But isn’t that kind of the *point * of the argument many of us are making? You don’t refrain from sex with your friends because you don’t find your friends attractive. You refrain from sex with your friends because you’ve chosen to be in a monogamous relationship.
Attraction, even mutual attraction, to one of your friends, is not “dangerous” to your relationship with your SO. What’s dangerous to your relationship is lack of discipline and self-control. And that’s a problem that’s likely to affect your relationship in lots of ways beside infidelity.
And I’d add that sometimes you refrain from sex with your friends because you would rather keep them as friends, even if you aren’t in a monogamous relationship.
It has been my experience that “friends with benefits” sometimes doesn’t work out too well. The risk is losing one of your friends. If they are a good enough long-standing friend, that may not be a risk you want to take.
This is just not a fair thing to say, because of course, no one will test your thesis, and if someone denies its truthiness, she’d be accused of being naive, with a knowing . So it’s an untestable hypothesis based on speculation.
I’m friends with them men I’m friends with because I’ve known them for years (all of them I’ve known longer than I’ve known my husband) and trust them. I’ve hung out with them alone, while all parties involved were single and could have fucked each other’s brains out if we’d wanted to. We didn’t, so why would we do that now? Now that I’m married, that is-- no chance.
So I feel safe in saying, none of the men friends I’d hang out with alone would ever do anything to make my husband uncomfortable. If they did, they would not be my friends anymore. I don’t need to make totally inappropriate offers of sex to them to assess their intentions.
I’m not saying that your male friends are going to make a lunge for you one day. Mostly because they know it wouldn’t work, with you so committed to your husband and all.
But if you made a lunge for them?
The men who refuse your lunge would do so because accepting would have negative consequences for them. Not because they have no sexual interest in you.
Sometimes when I read threads like this I despair at how little women understand men. Of course men are able to keep their hands off you if they have no good reason to believe you’d want their hands on you. You say you hung out with your male friends in the past and didn’t sleep with them. All that means is that you weren’t interested in THEM, not that they weren’t interested in you.
I gotta ask. Earlier I mentioned that never once in 41 years have I refused a woman who wanted to sleep with me. Is there a human female over 16 who can claim that they’ve never refused a guy who wanted sex? Never once?
This difference between men and women seems very difficult for women to understand.
Harry Burns: What I’m saying is - and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form - is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Sally Albright: That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.
Harry Burns: No you don’t.
Sally Albright: Yes I do.
Harry Burns: No you don’t.
Sally Albright: Yes I do.
Harry Burns: You only think you do.
Sally Albright: You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?
Harry Burns: No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.
Sally Albright: They do not.
Harry Burns: Do too.
Sally Albright: They do not.
Harry Burns: Do too.
Sally Albright: How do you know?
Harry Burns: Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
Sally Albright: So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
Harry Burns: No. You pretty much want to nail 'em too.
Well, all I can say is that I’m male but I don’t agree that your notions of male behaviour are universal.
For example, I’ve turned down flirtatious offers before, where I thought acceptance was not appropriate.
I’d agree that any man would find a reasonably attractive woman attractive, friends or no. I would assume that the same was true of women. The issue is whether you act on it.
This is exactly what I thought you would say-- that I don’t understand men because I think my male friends can be trusted. If a woman went around saying that all men are horndogs who would fuck any woman who offered, that’d be sexist. But if a man says it, it’s true regardless of evidence to the contrary, and anyone woman denies it just doesn’t get men. Obviously nothing anyone says is going to convince you.
However, I will say this-- if a person’s conduct has always been trustworthy and non-sexual in the past, over the course of years and decades, then how or why should I care what sinister but secret desires may or may not take place in their hearts? If they have always conducted themselves as trustworthy friends, and pose no threat to my husband whatsoever, then that’s all that matters. Being suspicious of them after they’ve amply proven themselves trustworthy seems wrong to me.
I’m glad my husband isn’t jealous over stuff like this.
I don’t get it. Why do you equate “trustworthy” with “non-sexual”, and “sinister” with “sexual”?
Your husband isn’t and shouldn’t be jealous of those guys, not so much because he trusts THEM, but because he trusts YOU.
Obviously people can have sexual attractions and not act on them. That’s my whole point! You and some of the other women seem to believe that your platonic male friends don’t have sexual attraction towards you. All I’m claiming is that lots and lots of them do, they’re just polite enough to keep it to themselves.
In general, I would not equate them, but in this instance, they are equivalent. They wouldn’t be trustworthy if they were sexual with me. It would be sinister if they were too, now that I’m married.
However, if he didn’t also trust them, I could understand why he might have an issue with me hanging out with them alone. If you know someone isn’t trustworthy and might do something inappropriate, but you spend them with them alone anyway, then you are not doing right by your husband, even if you know that you are 100% trustworthy, IMO. That’s why their trustworthiness is also an issue, not just mine.
It’s equally obvious (to me, anyway) that some of my male friends might actually not want to have sex with me. Some of them might and are hiding it very well. In that case, it’s really moot if they do, because they are keeping it totally hidden, not letting it affect the friendship, and I don’t know about it. Functionally the same thing-- unless I learn to read minds, it’s also irrelevant.
“Women say they have sexual thoughts too. They have no idea. It’s the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it. If they knew what we were really thinking, they’d never stop slapping us.” - Larry Miller
He never said your male friends couldn’t be trusted. In fact, right here:
I think that leaves plenty of room for all of your straight male friends to refuse your hypothetical approach because their sense of morality and their respect for your marriage would suffer for it, and they don’t find that acceptable. Perhaps I’m being too charitable, but that’s how I read it, and I was genuinely surprised that you read “my male friends can’t be trusted” into it (at first, anyway).
So there’s no way it’s possible that at least some of my male friends don’t want to have sex with me? That seems a bit… weird. I mean, I’m totally hawt and all but still, platonic friendships don’t really exist, is the contention here, only friendships that are forced to be overtly non-sexual because the woman isn’t interested. Also, how trustworthy are you if the only reason you don’t do something is because you fear negative consequences for yourself? That’s pretty low on the morality scale. It seems like a shabby way to view your friends.
Sory to say, this conversation is pretty futile. You insist that they all want to fuck me and I’m naive for thinking they don’t. You can’t prove this except to say that you’re a guy and that’s how you feel, and make generalizations from that. I can’t prove my point either, since I’m not a mindreader or a man, so I’m just going by people’s actions toward me across many years. It’s all anecdote, very little evidence on both sides. So the conversation is really quite pointless.
Where did you get that from? Nowhere has anyone said that all of your male friends undoubtedly want to have sex with you. Some could be gay, and attraction is a nebulous beast anyway; I’m sure that there are lots of straight men for whom you are not their type, and vice versa.
If you read the part of my post that you quoted, you’d know that the way I interpreted “negative consequences” left room for more altruistic motives than that. Please re-read it before we continue this discussion.
If you’re going to put words in my mouth, then yes, this is pretty much a lost cause.
Lots and lots of them do, according to Lemur. He contends he’s never turned down sex when offered, and that the only reason male friends would is because of negative consequences for themselves, not because they don’t want to. So while you may not be claiming that ALL of them do, others in this thread pretty much have.
Your interpretation differs from that of the person who wrote what you quoted. You and I are probably much closer in our take on things than Lemur and I are.
I feel it would be conceited as hell of me to think all my straight male friends want to have sex with me. Some might, or maybe used to. But I’m pretty sure that, if I lunged for them, all of them would say no, and think I’d lost my mind. Not just because of negative consequences to themselves, either. If you can agree with that assessement, then you and I concur.
Out of curiosity, I just asked my husband about this. His response was, your male friends do indeed have sexual thoughts about you. It’s a testament to their gentlemanliness that you have no clue about this.
I have sexual thoughts about some of my male friends, too. Hell, I have sexual thoughts about random men I pass on the street. There’s a world of difference between “have sexual thoughts about” and “would like to have sex with”, or “would have sex with, given the chance”.
. So it’s an untestable hypothesis based on speculation.