hm… let me put it this way, i wouldn’t just call up a friend (male or female) to set up a dinner “date” just the two of us at a nice restaurant…
it’s more like, “hey, what are you doing after work? i am in your neigbourhood wanna grab something to eat together?”
or on the weekends “are you leaving the bar now? where are you? let’s meet up and have a drink somewhere!”
If it’s a planned dinner, i usually do it with a group of friends.
I am very careful i have to say, i would go call up a male friend i have just met at a bar to go out alone.
but if i have known them for a while ang hungout in groups before and they seem fun and normal, ya, why not see each other sponteneously?
So I think you missed the part where I said that men can be friends with women, even if they are attracted to them. And they can definitely be friends with women if they are not attracted to them - assuming that there are other things that are enjoyable about their company.
As for “wouldn’t guys like to have some down time where they don’t need to charm and seduce people,” the answer to that is also yes. And the people you discover you want to do that with just kind of bubble up naturally out of one’s associations. My point is that guys chase girls for sex. They don’t chase girls for friendship. They can become friends by just interacting, but again, they are not chasing that interaction.
So if you measure what guys want or are willing to be with a woman by what they chase, you’re going to find that they chase sex. If you measure what relationships guys have (friends/gfs/whatnot) by what actual relationships they find themselves in - you’ll get a different distribution.
Women chase friendships more. “I want to be friends with HER” is a much more relatable thought for a woman than it is for a guy. A guy might want to be buddies with some guy because they want to be in the pack, or because that relationship might be useful in some career or other way, but women are the ones who are much more worried that their girlfriend hasn’t called in a while and does that mean she’s been friend-dumped. Guys tend to assume that if we are friends with someone, we will continue to be friends with them unless there is a very specific fight and falling out. So we can go a long time without calling and have no problem assuming that we are still friends.
We may call after a few years and find that we don’t have as much to relate to any more, and maybe decide that we won’t make as much effort in the future, but up until that phone call, we won’t assume that anything has happened or gone wrong just because we haven’t talked. And that’s one of the reason that frienships with guys tend to bubble up out of experience, and aren’t chased the way we chase a woman that we find attractive.
You did mention if a guy is attracted to a girl, it makes it more complicated to be friends. In what ways? like being jealous if the girl has a bf?
I don’t know, i mean, i am sure these things happen, and i am not saying ALL men can be friends with women, and vice versa.
I am just speaking from my experience that, some men say aboslutely not, i am just wondering if i am living in my own world???
This is the post of the thread so far.
Nana seems like the naive type…thinking that the guys around her have good intentions.
A comedian said it best. Guys put in the QT (quality time) for the Booty.
There’s no way your future BF or husband will let you go on dinner or watch a movie with another straight guy alone. They might trust you. It’s the other guy they don’t trust.
Interdasting, my answer is most definitely yes because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Guys can easily be friends with a woman they are not sexually attracted to of she’s cool.
if they are sexually attracted to her it depends on the guy, most guys will take sex where they can get it and that will prob harm the relationship in future but if the guy is confident in his ability to attract women and himself then it can easily be done provided they have some common points.
Besides most girls now go to college, want a degree, career , to get laid, travel etc…there are your common points .
Sounds the same as guys minus the sports and immature part if you ask me.
to be fair if the guy was half confident in the relationship and himself I doubt he’d care. If a girl wants to cheat, she will cheat no matter what you do.
also in addition to the previous post, music. There is a lot of value in having female friends. Good for break ups and the like, guys are pretty much useless there.
Obviously if the girl speaks about her nails most of the time and the guy about getting swole or whatever it’s going to go tits up.
Nana, don’t worry. I’ll be your best friend 
I have lots of female friends. But since I’m fairly flirty, they always seem to develop complexities at some point on the female end.
Nana, don’t worry. I’ll be your best friend
I have lots of female friends. But since I’m fairly flirty, they always seem to develop complexities at some point on the female end. But we still get along fine.
LOOOOOL
I know it’s going to sound awfully academic, but why don’t people define what they mean by “being friends,” and then figure out if you can still be one if you are sexually attracted.
I defined it for me in an earlier post. To me, the main challenge of being friends with someone I am strongly attracted to is that it is hard to be a good friend to someone with whom you have an agenda. Instead of interacting and giving advice with their interests in mind, you are constantly tempted to give advice that is biased toward whatever your agenda is. To some extent, if your agenda is known or transparent, you may be able to interact with them and they can judge what you do based on the knowledge of your agenda.
When you are sexually attracted, there is definitely an agenda (to get them into bed), and most of the time, that agenda can be suggested but not be transparent. So whan your female friend is fighting with her hubby or boyfriend, maybe she’s overreacting and maybe as a friend you’d tell her not to worry about it and cut the guy some slack, but instead, the part of you that wants to shag her may be tempted to say “that guy is horrible, you should definitely be banging me,” or something less obvious, but similarly motivated. That’s what I meant by saying “friendship when you’re attracted is more complicated, and more work, and a lot of people just can’t be bothered.”
I think it goes beyond having a motivation to get someone into bed. What the definition of “same sex friends” and “opposite sex friends” is very different. The dynamics between men and women are simply different. Take note of what you talk about one on one with your same sex friends and your opposite sex friends. If the opposite sex friend gets married, a lot of topics and activities are now off limits. I’ve gone skinny dipping, just two of us, with women that I have completely platonic relationships with. For some reason that has never happened with my guy friends, unless there are women included. “Hey Frank, that water looks great. Want to strip down and take a swim?” Yeah, don’t think that will ever happen. And if the opposite sex friends are married, good luck explaining that to their spouses. This all goes back to an attempt to argue that men and women aren’t different. This lack of acknowledgement definitely brought down one airliner, the Colgan crash on the way into Buffalo. Not mentioned in the NTSB report of course, but read the CVR transcripts. They distracted each other because they had different plumbing. Quite a few people may have been sparred if airline training included some discussion of some additional distractions that might occur if you are sharing the cockpit with someone of the opposite sex. The guy might be more likely to show off. The woman might start laughing at jokes that aren’t funny. Mixed sex crews have been killed at disproportional rates to their occurrences. Recent UPS crash. Colgan crash. Learjet in South Carolina. Beech 1900 in North Carolina. But why acknowledge the differences??? Oh, did I get off topic? But, sure, if anybody’s wife is looking for a friend, I’m available. I have a good eye for lingerie. I’m sure you’ll be happy when she tells you I helped pick it out.
I don’t think there was ever an argument that here women and men aren’t that different, or that the way men and women relate isn’t different than the way men and men relate or women and women. But even among my male friends, the way I relate to them is different - some are my computer friends, some are my finance friends, some are my academic friends, some are my fellow tanguero friends, some are my Brazilian buddies. What I talk about and laugh about with each of them is different.
I think it comes down to what does it mean to be a friend. And to me, that means:
you enjoy their company,
you trust them with more information about yourself than you would an ordinary stranger,
you can offer advice and feedback to them sincerely desgined with their best interests at heart, and
you are willing to offer help to them when they are in difficulty (this can vary with the depth of the friendship, and may be a useful measure of the depth), and
you feel you could ask them for help if you need it (again, how much help depends on the depth of the friendship).
So ask yourself, can you act this way toward someone you’re sexually attracted to but cannot be with? My answer is “generally, yes, but sometimes if the attraction is really strong, item #3 in that list can be difficult or inconvenient to manage and/or requires levels of personal integrity that many people don’t have.”
Some people disengage from frienships where they are attracted because item #3 causes emotional discomfort. I’ve found that women sometimes disengage a friendship if they are attracted to you but you’re with someone else, for example, and they will say “it’s just too uncomfortable to watch them together and to suppress my own desires/jealousy/etc., so I’m not hanging out with them anymore.” I unfortunately seem to be losing a good female friend to that right now, and it is painful.
I have lots of female friends I have never fucked nor wanted too. None of them are unattractive either.
word son
Infatuation passes… Would you put money on her coming back once she’s over it?
Also, How long have you known her for?
I am not naive T_T
I am not saying i can be friends with every man i meet, some of them, for various reasons, remain acquintances. Just like the German guy who asked me on the coffee date, i would not hangout with him as friends because i know he is not interested in being just friends.
But many of my guy friends i know they are just interested in being friends, there is nothing awkward between us, i have met their girlfriends, we have hungout in a group or just the two of us casually…
All jokes aside, this is a big point of contention between my wife and me. In so many words, she’s said that husbands are not allowed to have female friends who are not also friends with the wife. She believes it’s inappropriate. Of course, she thinks it’s perfectly fine for her to have male friends. I have female “friends” that are a part of our circle, mostly wives and girlfriends of my male friends, but I don’t really consider them my friends. I’d never hang out with them without my male friends also being there.
My only real female friend I met at work, and she essentially functions as my work wife. The only reason I ever approached her was because she is attractive. At different points in our relationship, we’ve wanted more from each other (read: sex), but it never happened and now we’re just friends. So now I have to deal with her crazy on top of my wife’s crazy, without the sexual tension being there. If I could do it over, I’d have stayed away.
You could still stay away?