2005-09-22 - 4:26 p.m. Girls/Guys: Can Girls and Guys be Friends? First, another disclaimer. Generalities are like big fishing nets as a writer. You end up catching the most fish (ie striking a cord with a great number of people) but you also kill a few dolphins. _______________ Jennifer Aniston was dumped for a better model. What? Is Angelina a better woman than Jennifer? Yes. She is 1) Younger 2) Adopts orphans (children Brad wants) 3) Is an ambassador for the U.N. 4) More attractive, and 5) More sexual. It's an almost universal fact that men would prefer Angelina to Brad. And yet, people blame Brad for doing it. I�m not excusing Brad, I mean, he made a promise, but I think the real problem here isn�t the fact that Brad was unfaithful, but that it stuck a similar cord with women as to an inert fear that I think they have. To be replaced by a better model. I think women unite on this fact, that once a commitment has been made, men are NOT allowed to trade in their original girlfriend for a better model. Tom Brady did it. His old girlfriend was replaced by Bridget Moynihan. Kurt Warner didn�t do it, and got stuck with his wife�and probably a couple �on the road� hookers. Anna Benson, Mets pitcher Kris Benson�s wife, said she�d eff every member of the Mets organization from GM to bat boy if he ever cheated on her. And she�s an attractive obviously sexual lady. But she still has fear that Kris might trade her in for a younger, prettier, and sluttier girl. I�m not gonna get back to that. I�m just going to dangle it out there. __________________________ Can girls and guys be friends? There are two ways to approach this. I shall explore the first, and then dive into the second. The first way is to analyze human nature. To do this I must make an assumption. This is that creationism is wrong. We did not come from Adam and Eve, but evolved from animals, as per Darwin�s idea. Sidenote: Voyage of the Beagle is dreadfully boring. Seriously. Don�t bother. So tune out Kansas, because this is evolutionary theory. If we are evolved, then at root our base in animal. If we are animals then the meaning of life, at root, is to survive. Survive as a species. Wolves, tigers, sharks, vultures and other carnivores don�t eat their own kind. Why? Because it does not promote survival as a species. We have to live to have children, and grow, etc � So can Men and Women be �friends� � friends to me meaning a plutonic relationship in which there are no sexual energies? Absolutely not! We are animals and our nature, our core tells us to procreate. Hell, even the bible tells us to have unprotected sex to have many children. Sex feels good, so that we want to have it. Love exists to keep stability to raise children, and women feel needs to create homes and stable environments to raise the children. All bonds felt are means to survive. Good feelings exist to give you benefits to survive, bad feelings and guilt exist to prevent you from killing your own kind, or doing something that would endanger the species or family unit. Fast Forward 100,000 years or so, and put these very same animals in a self-aware society, and surround us with distractions, technology, no real evolutionary opponent, religion, rules, and it�s a whole new ball game. Were we in the wild, there is no way that men and women would be friends. That�s not to say they wouldn�t play and do friend things, but they would also have sex. And the biggest/only difference between being �friends� and �not friends� is sex. So let�s go to the future, because as animals, there are only mates. There are not friends. If we are talking Straight Men and Women, let�s start with the Dog of the bunch. The Male. Men are sexual creatures. I don�t know any male who doesn�t recognize a female in a sexual way. What I mean by this, is no matter the man or his situation, he will naturally divide females into two categories. A girl he would have sex with, and a girl he wouldn�t have sex with. I�m not making a big statement here. But when a woman walks into a room, a man knows if he would have sex with her or not. ***Also being attracted to someone isn�t always physical. Keith Richards could lay more people than I could dream of, and he�s 5�2� and part Zombie. Attraction not always physical.*** I believe that women can do the same thing, although it might be a bit different. All that means is that men can identify whether or not the girl is attractive, that�s not a bombshell of a statement. However, it does imply two things. 1) It means the gut/core reaction that men have is sexual. 2) That shapes the interaction between the man and the woman. Do prettier girls get more attention? Yes. That�s not really deniable. So what does that say? If a man becomes friends with said girl, was the relationship at one point not sexual? So I suppose that is easy. Now comes the hard part. The male�s relationship with the unattractive female. I had this friend that was not attractive. She had an unflattering nickname, but I will call her �Mutalisk�. Mutalisk and I were friends via a group I was involved in. We hung out a lot and were friend with the same circle of friends. This is how I came to know her. We were friends, and I had no sexual attraction to her. Ah-ha! But wait! What about her attraction to me? Perhaps the relationship wasn�t based on my attraction to her, but rather her to me. There is no way to prove this, however. Are their examples of girls and guys who are friends and not sexual. Harold and Maude like relationships typically are not sexual. Although plenty of older men, and young girls certainly have sexual implications. Also pre-puberty relationships of two people that grew up before they reached sexual awareness can also occur. These are sister/brother relationships. Also, there comes a point when two people have been non-sexual friends for a length of time, that the tension and the notion of it have worn off, and they are just friends and would laugh at sex after that point. However, at one time, it was sexual. People at work? Affairs all the time. The restaurant industry is famous, in particular, for torrid sexual flirtations and relationships. So what we need to see is a girl and guy who are not attracted to each other, be friends. Does that even make sense? It seems like they would become enemies. Think about a non-sexual relationship. Think of two single people you know, and put them together. Would they be friends if they weren�t attracted to one another? I say no. I think they would hate each other. I think the hardest part about this is the female perspective. It�s really hard to pinpoint what the female mind is looking for in a relationship. Would you prefer men as friends that weren�t attracted to you? Would you prefer to have men as friends you weren�t attracted to? Sidenote: There was this really good article in the Dig written by a gay man, telling women to get the hell out of Gay Bars. He is sick of them saying things like �Gay men are so hot� and �I want a gay friend�. He talks about he�s going to the bar to meet another guy, not a fag-hag girl looking for a new best friend. He hates that the girls are taking up the space there as a sanctuary from men hitting on them, because it�s a space that a single gay man could be taking up. I have heard this from other Gay men, it was just really funny to see it in print I think that the Gay Man is the perfect friend for a girl, because 1) They are not attracted to her, but won�t reject her 2) They can talk about men. 3) They can be attracted to him without fear of stepping over bounds. Sure there are a ton of other reasons, but honestly, I think women are a rare beast. Even thought they make up 51% of the population. Let me boil this down. Guys and Girls genetically are meant to have sex with one another. Friends don�t have sex together. Hence, for the most part, girls and guys can�t be friends. This doesn�t mean that they aren�t. Married men and women have plutonic relationships all the time thanks to divided boundaries. I think when these boundaries exist, it takes away the reality of a relationship. This makes becoming friends easier. But I doubt that two friends have ever though in some way about dating the other at some point. This entry was mostly rambling. Lets try to bring it together. In a different sex relationship these are the possibilities 1) Man attracted to Female, Female attracted to male. --> Result in affair or close friendship since the two people find each other compatible, since its not just physical attraction --> And that�s the bottom line. If you aren�t attracted to someone, and you have a *choice* why would you want to be around them? Pity? But remember, he doesn't like you, so where is the Pity? Men and Women can be friends and not have sexual relations, but I think that women and men that are friends have some level of sexual attraction. Its human nature. | |||||||||||
