“Can Men and Women Ever Truly Be Friends?”
The pseudo-question is asked by iffy science, popular culture and real people. If one of these real people asks and you’re not up for the foundational claims of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, skedaddle. Now.
When a human forms “Can man and woman be friends?” in their mind, then propels it through the air with their body, what they hope to hear is some version of “men and women are not just from different planets but different galaxies!” or “who knows how the ancient sexual energies of man and woman collide at the Victorian Bridge Association”.
When a human forms an interdisciplinary approach and pops the word “evolution” somewhere inside their academic specialty, they get very similar answers. We are destined to be separated as friends by “prehistoric urges!” or “galaxies!”.
Maybe Oxford’s Robin Dunbar didn’t hope to find that men and women have different “friendship styles”. I could hope to find his work persuasive if not for (a) my most stress-tested bond being with a bloke whose “friendship style” has been compatible with mine for 28 years, and (b) the word “evolution”.
To offer an evolutionary account of people as we find them is not only to offer it post hoc, but to turn the theory of evolution inwards and on its head in an effort to explain mass society only as the consequence of a past. Which strikes me as a bit non-evolutionary, as it excludes the fact of society, a mass organism that mutates.
Maybe it is true that most women in the world have “intense close friendships” and most men prefer “a group of four guys that they do stuff with” then promptly forget them for weeks. Maybe, women are compelled to preface any report on cross-gender friendship with a nod to When Harry Met Sally. Maybe, blokes are, too. Maybe, they shouldn’t have sacked all the copy editors, because this Harry-Sally stuff is starting to grate: taciturn men who don’t give a crap if you call them and prefer the football to close conversation; women whose “friendship style” is to share lady-secrets in pyjamas as they, “bolster your fertility”. Harry. Sally.
My oldest bloke friend is in Sydney so we talk on the phone about food, comedy and how much we love each other. My best friend, a woman, is a menace. She is very, very dear to me, but so true to the work of forming ideas that this close friendship attends to that activity before itself. My newest bloke friend is a philosopher, but the chief work of our friendship has not become the formation of ideas. It is establishing a closeness.
I think about these friendships, the friendships of others and the friendships my parents had or retain. I can’t think of a friendship that conforms to the sexed Dunbar description. Which is not to say his work is folly or does not represent certain tendencies, even though I’m yet to meet people who have them. It is to say that friendships, like love relationships, are only understood by the people in them, and if they could be seen by others, they would be considered odd and nonconforming.
But, the male-female friendship is immediately considered nonconforming, and is even a bit of a threat. If we can be friends, then sex cannot remain an insoluble mystery or a reassuring division to others.
Meantime, the Gwyneth Paltrow newsletter doesn’t rate the chances of “clean” male-female friendship, and we are reminded that the US Vice-President doesn’t take that dirty chance at all. Then, Pence appears again, prefaced by a When Harry Met Sally complaint. As though the great and now deceased writer of romcom, Nora Ephron, was making a case, and not a perfect escape. As though Pence shows that cross-gender friendship is improbable, when it is improbable that anyone of any gender wants a friend like Pence.
“Can men and women be friends?” When asked by younger people in its newer Me Too context, the question is better. They take it as read that men and women form close friendships. These have been changed by the immeasurable matter of consent, which is quite the mutation. But evolution in its merest context brings us mating dances.
Attraction in cross-sex friendships occurs. Big whoop. So does attraction in same-sex friendships — surely several thousand of Dunbar’s lady-on-lady pyjama friendships have aroused something other than fertile endocrinology. Frequently, there is no attraction at all in friendships and now I think about it, no bastard friend has ever had the decency to fancy me. But within the entire arc of a friendship, surely, two or zero hornivore moments will count for almost nothing.
The assessment of friendship as a cost-benefit analysis to human reproduction cannot be worth much at all. Friendship has its own utility, which scans can neither capture nor predict. The difference or the sameness may be inscribed in two friends by God or genes or Gwyneth. Doesn’t matter. What matters is the bond that saves you from the estrangement of everyday life. Which makes all good friendships truly nonconforming.
Whatever you do, don’t strike up a friendship with anyone at any Saudi embassy.
As to men and women being friends…yes you can be friends unless you are attracted and happen to give in to the urge. If that happens you’ll bugger the relationship and probably end up marrying.
Peter Abelard made the same point circa 1110 – 1115 AD; not that it did him any good in the long run.
Well at least he didn’t go bald in old age. (His punishment being the perfect cure for male pattern hair loss.)
As a long term office worker I have close friends of both sexes. My female pals tend to be hilarious.
The idea that we can’t be friends because as some level one or both of us supposedly wants to bonk the other is ludicrous. I well understand that that can happen, and does, but respecting boundaries prevents that destruction. It would kill me to lose some friendships, men and women both. They are to be treasured, not frittered away.
The assumption that men and women can’t be good friends, and just that, is silly and wrong.
The only hurdle I have found in my friendships with men as opposed to women is the not 100% acceptance from romantic partners (mine and the male friends) when they have been acquired. This has meant the dwindling of some very good past bonds, and the hesitation to forge new ones.
I’m sorry to learn of this, A.
I think you should be sorry for writing the article.
Men and women are never friends. They are either lovers or nothing.
I wasn’t going to mention it but being Sunday night I’ve had a change of mind. Cast an eye over the life of Dora Carrington (the artist). If
having done so and you are of the same opinion I shall be happy to offer you a few score more examples.
Although sex can be blamed for ruining a good friendship, it can also be used in self defence against a bad friendship. An initially exciting friendship, sharing intellectual insights and mutual flattery, can so easily end up suffocating, domineering, or stupefying. The problem can be terminated quickly by offering to share sex. If the answer is no, you have been relieved of their oppressive company. If the answer is yes, the relationship has been refreshed and elevated.
Yes. Can be an effective means to hasten the end!
Correct because women hate sex.
All women are frigid and that is why we have the #Me Too program so women across the world can stop having sex, even to have children. Women only want sex to have children. I have two sisters and nine months before our births is a significant day of the year, so my father only got sex on Fathers Day on his Birthday and New Years day. According to our birthdays he only got sex three times a year.
It has often been observed that mothers Day is 9 months after Fathers Day.
If women hate sex and only have sex when wanting a child, don’t you find it odd contraceptives are so popular?
It is a bit ignorant, Margaret, to claim “women hate sex”. Some women clearly do hate sex. Your mother, I suppose, might have been one of them, although you don’t really have proof that your father had sex only 3 times a year, if you think carefully about it
My wife loves sex. I know others who clearly love sex though, of course, I do not mean to say that they love it with me, as I have had sex with no one but my wife for many years.
It is silly to say that men and women can’t be friends but are “either lovers or nothing.” My wife and I are friends as well as lovers and I have had female friends over the years.
Has it occurred to you that you should look into why you know so little about men and women?
You want to be negative and abuse people for what reason Ian? To feel good. Do you feel good now you are being negative. That good. I want you to feel good then you might be more human. Fire away Ian. Feel free. Get all that hatred out into the open
Now that we know there is a wide distribution of libido all the way to asexual, and no level is “right” or “wrong”, I am quite prepared to believe that lower libido people can form cross-sex friendships with sexual attraction never occurring. And as in this article people give testimony this occurs. But for higher libido people, is that possible? Of course, the existence of sexual energy, which I think is almost entirely genetically determined, does not mean it needs to be expressed or acted upon, which is where societal factors play a strong role as does level of personal development. The more socially evolved man can indeed enjoy those small everpresent surges of energy (that feeling of being alive) without feeling the need to express it or act upon it. And of course can have cross-sex friendships, which are nothing but friendships.
“the existence of sexual energy, which I think is almost entirely genetically determined, does not mean it needs to be expressed or acted upon, which is where societal factors play a strong role as does level of personal development. ”
I am not so sure about the genetic determination claim. I think the need to act sexually has a strong cultural component. Part of that is family/upbringing, but the other part is the wider culture you live in. In Australia most people are used to interacting with the opposite (or same) sex in almost all social environments. In particular the work environment can lead to friendships (and relationships).
In other societies the level of segregation by sex can be quite high. In some societies it is so extreme men do not get to see women unless they are family (by birth or marriage). That can lead to extreme sexualisation of in particular male- female contact outside the normal context – which is what any male – female friendship would be.
Working in the Middle East I have been amazed at the perceptions of western women held by men I thought had reasonable exposure to the outside world – based on the sexual interpretation of what would be normal behaviour in the western culture. So friendships in this context require a great deal of personal overcoming of cultural baggage.
So, like everything else, I suspect it depends on the people and their background.
I agree that socialisation is far more relevant than natural predilection.
Sex amongst male cohorts is extremely common throughout the muslim world though it is not due to homosexual inclination, purely available orifices.
The same applies to bacha bazi in Afghanistan, previously known as “travelling wives” who grow up and go on to marry women.
And probably, if they can afford it, have their own bacha bazi.
Sir Richard Burton (not the actor) wrote comprehensively on this for a Parliamentary report which decided, on his evidence, not to interfere.
Yes of course socialization and context modify the expression of libido. But men with low libido can’t be socialized to be wanting lots and lots of sex. Ask all those women suffering in sexless marriages. And similarly, men with high libido can learn, and hopefully do, to be respectful and appropriate and not necessarily need to act out every sexual thought (socialization, etc) but definitely can’t simply turn off the sexual energy, much as they may want to. Ask all those men suffering in sexless marriages. My observations of life tell me that internal level of libido is not something that people can voluntarily change substantially, although circumstances can change it, but expression of libido is something a mature and evolved person can have a lot of control over.
I think you are barking up the wrong tree with level of libido having much to do with whether men and women can be friends. It is more about how you exercise control over whatever lust you do have, a maturity that you can have a special bond with someone of the opposite sex without it leading to the deed. I’ve enjoyed platonic friendships with men and I’m not a sexless being and nor were they. Plus having a high libido doesn’t mean you want to go every man or woman you see does it? What about opposite sex friendships between different generations, or when one or both people are same sexual attracted. On that thought I’m straight and have long term friendships with lesbians who don’t want to jump my bones.
I think you are agreeing with what I wrote, at least when I read what you wrote I agree with it all and thought I was expressing a very similar view. So puzzled why you think I am barking up the wrong tree. I guess what I was trying to say was that Harry was partially right, that for people beyond the bottom tail of the libido spectrum there will always be an underlying felt sexual energy. However, it is perfectly possible to be only friends and stay that way for more evolved people who can have control over expression of that energy and choose to exercise it.
I disagree with the main point of your original argument, that one’s level of sex drive determines their suitability for friendships of the opposite sex. I don’t think how much you like/crave sex has anything to do with how well you form friendships.
Libido varies with age. And Andrea is perfectly right that people with high libido can control what they are sometimes but not always tempted to do. A male with high libido is not drawn to every woman in sight. And most men have declines in libido after their forties.