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What do you think when people say "People can't be friends with the opposite sex"?


(Creative name)

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I'm a cis woman and most of my friends at uni were cis dudes??

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I think it also depends on how you use the word "friends".  Some people call almost everyone they know a friend, others only refer to someone they're close to a friend.  I've heardmany sexual, being intimate emotionally with someone of the attractive gender can lead to some level of romantic/sexual attraction.  At some level there is also the question of what does a romantic couple consider cheating. There is a grain of truth, but it's too broad of a statement.

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thecatcherintherye

I think it's probably because society is so fixated on relationships and the things that come with it that it's portrayed this way. People sort of expect you to be in a relationship with them because well, they would be a 'candidate' so to speak. I don't think it's right though. I have lots of friends with different genders

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I have never heard anyone say that in my life. I mean, sometimes people have teased opposite sex friends but no one in my life ever believed that.

 

But, my ex (an ace) was someone who was incapable of being just friends. During the period of relationship they literally either asked out or confessed love to every women they were friends with. And even dated few (aka cheating). So, your sister might have a reason to be jealous. Depends on her boyfriend's personality. If he is anything like my ex, then she isn't being unreasonable.

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I think it's completely foolish.  In some ways I'd rather be around females than males because you don't get all the macho BS and egos like with males.

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tis ridiculous. errbody need to keep it in their pants. 

 

i treat everybody as a "friend" unless they blatantly tell me otherwise. which has not happened yet. then again i'm not the best judge of whether they're really being friendly or flirting.

 

random side story: one of my closest guy friends now was calling me "bro" when we first met at a new job 5 years ago. at the time i didn't understand why until someone told me that he's putting up boundaries and i'm already in the friend zone.. not that i was interested but good to know i guess!

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krystal_muzik

I think it can happen if both parties are intelligent and mature.

 

But, since both qualities are rare in humans, a successful and fulfilling male/female friendship rarely occurs.

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4 hours ago, krystal_muzik said:

I think it can happen if both parties are intelligent and mature.

 

But, since both qualities are rare in humans, a successful and fulfilling male/female friendship rarely occurs.

I agree though I modified it slightly to make it more what I consider accurate

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JaxAlligator

I go: ???????????

 

Most of my friends are of the opposite gender and it works just fine.

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LonesomeCrow

A lot of times I feel more comfortable having male friends over female. I only have one female friend, the rest are all guys.  

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I think the speaker is either speaking for themselves (isn’t personally able to develop friendly feelings for people not of their own gender without also developing romantic and/or sexual feelings), or parroting back what their family/friends taught them.

 

There’s definitely some cultural pressure in some areas that encourages rigid division of gender roles, which could be extended to “people of differing genders don’t have enough in common to be friends,” but I don’t think that’s what most people mean when they say it.  I normally see it used in the sense of “they may say they’re ‘just friends’ but they secretly have the hots for one another” (or “he may call you his friend but he’s just waiting for an opportunity to do you”).

 

Regardless, I see it more as the speaker’s personal truth and less as a universal truth.  I’ve had plenty of friends of all genders over time.

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FiguredMyselfOut

it's 2019, can we all be friends with whoever we want and respect it? 

I am much closer to my guy friends and my boyfriend is closer to girls. We both respect this and trust one another. Although he is allo, we communicate about where the boundaries are (what is considered cheating) and everything has been great.

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Satsuriku_No_Tenshi

From my experience, I can't be friends with 80% of opposites I meet, who won't view a friendship as friendship. The other 20% I can be friends with but there is always the chance that some of those 20% will change their feelings later on.

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On 12/31/2018 at 5:21 AM, lilgroundhog said:

I think it also depends on how you use the word "friends".  Some people call almost everyone they know a friend, others only refer to someone they're close to a friend.  I've heardmany sexual, being intimate emotionally with someone of the attractive gender can lead to some level of romantic/sexual attraction.  

Exactly!

In my country the term 'friend' is generally used for a person that you know fairly well, that you trust and that you can also talk to when things get rough - not a random acquaintance you're friendly with.

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On 12/30/2018 at 9:57 AM, (Creative name) said:

I'm a boy but literally all of my friends are girls and I've never even thought about feeling sexually attracted to anyone of them, but apparently people dont think being friends with the opposite sex is okay. Like I'll see ads online called, "why people can't, "just be friends" with the opposite sex." And I'm just like what why not. Also I will constantly hear my sister talk about how her boyfriend has a new friend who's a girl and my sister always gets mad over it but I dont understand why she wont let him be friends with her. What do you guys think about this? Do you think ace people are okay with bring friends with the opposite sex but heterosexual people arent? Like what are your opinions?

Sure as eggs are eggs, for sexual people to be good friends with someone who’s gender they go for, it will often involve a degree of sexual attraction on one or both sides. This creates a dangerous concoction as cheating can become more appealing. It’s not the case every time though but I would say at least 70-80% of the time it would be the case.

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Guest Deus Ex Infinity

Such hollow statements are simply either based on gender bias or false / negative individual experience. There's absolutedly no logical reason to not be friends with members of the opposite sex. We're all the same but refreshingly different in social patterns and behaviour all at once.

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In my observation over the past 33 years, it seems that males and females can only be "just friends" if they are different sexual orientations such as gay male/straight female, gay female/ace male, ace female (homoromantic)/ straight male, etc.

 

I have yet to see an "opposite sex" pair with opposite sex attraction not get into each other's pants at some point, or at least try.

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I have mostly guy friends. For some of them I have been romantically attracted to them at some point but simply decided not to act on it and after a while my feelings went away. It works well enough for me.

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I think of all the classes I missed to play League of Legends with male friends that I still am not attracted to after 3 years.

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QueenOfTheRats

I have found this stereotype to be true, unfortunately :(

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I think it's totally okay and totally plausible and many people have a lasting friendship.

But it has also been the case for me online, more than a few times, before I knew I was asexual, that the whole friendship thing fell apart. I had very good guy friends, and then suddenly they were interested in me, and I didn't know what to do with myself(I suppose for various reason I'm totally oblivious to a good deal of social... stuff, so it could be it was blatantly obvious to everyone else). A couple times I tried to reciprocate or explore that(was the case with two of them, one of whom I actually dated for a couple months and we had actually been friends for years and in both cases talked about a myriad of things and had very deep discussions about whatever) but the majority it was 'out of left field'. And sometimes we would simply... cease being friends, because it became awkward and they sort of pulled away. I didn't want it to be awkward, I didn't want our friendship to vanish, it just sort of... did. And if they didn't see themselves as being able to continue our friendship, I didn't want to force them to keep it.
One sort of 'broke the friendship up' with me a particularly horrid snowstorm during which I was stuck at someone's house nearby after work/couldn't go home. Just boom, through DevArt dropped this bomb that he was actually in love with me and saving to fly over and see me and I was just. What?! And how he felt I had become distant and x and y and z, and I was flabbergasted. Spent much of the night crying. We tried to continue on as normal but... it just didn't happen.

So now I suppose there's a bit of trauma there and I'm in this weird conundrum where I agree its entirely possible and I know it is but have also experienced several times it was just... not. So now I'm a bit irrationally afraid any guy friends will say they like me out of the blue again and everything will be ruined which is rather presumptuous of me on one hand but on the other it has happened to me -__- (which is still to this day awkward and bewildering because, I suppose, asexual and it being so sudden and everything else. As well as making me slightly bitter because I didn't see it at all and friendships disappeared. I suppose Snowstorm following me on several social media sites and commenting and whatnot should have been a sign but to me that was 'oh he really likes art' 'oh hey we're friends, what's up!?'/supporting each other friend-like. He actually did literally... vanish from all the sites/delete me so... yeah that was a crusher).

so. ahem. yes. it's entirely possible, but so is the other, and the last sucks because yeah, friendships ruined. Unless of course everything works out between everyone then-either being in a relationship cause they wanted to, or successfully remaining friends, or there was never any attraction ever and so of course still friends-huzzah. And it is frustrating at times that in most cases the media/society in general/whatever cannot/does not just depict a really good friendship between a guy and a girl as just that, bffs. That oftentimes it has to become something, or that so many are all 'oh well. you know. guy and girl... so it's inevitable they will fall for each other or *something will happen*, because biology/uncontrollable attraction/somethingorother.' Like dude(ette?). I just wanna be friends. I might not always be particularly great at it but. It would be great if the church in general and other peeps would stop... presenting everything like that as inevitable. No, it's not inevitable, and if you constantly teach people that it is, you can end up with some very awkward/paranoid/touch-starved people(me, yay!).

Wow this is long >.> um.

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It's beyond stupid!! I have a guy friend at work and we get on really well, but there's always snide comments from others like I've friend-zoned him or something and some of my colleagues think we're "friends with benefits". Why can't people be friends with the opposite sex without being demeaned?! I just can't wrap my head around it!

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That's it's bollocks. Plain and simple.

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I'm seen as female (which is frustrating enough by itself) so I'm often told that I can't be friends with people they see as boys. Obviously I can, because that's exactly what I'm doing. I've got two pretty good friends who would be seen as male. In my experience male-presenting people are generally more likely to have similar interests to me. If this whole idea that "boys and girls can't be just friends" didn't exist, I would probably have a completely different friend group.

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I honestly think it´s ridiculous, sorry. But thinking two people can´t be friends bc they are opposite sex is somewhat illogical. 

Friendships happen with whomever they have to happen. It is deeply annoying when people think this way. Take as an example my mom. I love her, but whenever I introduce her to one of my male friends, she´s all over me. Saying that I like him and we´ll end up being a couple. I don´t know why people think this honestly. At first I thought it was because I had no boyfriend ( I got into a relationship with my best friend) but she keeps doing it so I´m starting to think its a deep rooted thought that some people may have. 

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The statement itself is inherently false, however I do believe a lot of social pressures are applied that make it seem that way. People often assume a guy and gal friendship is always "leading somewhere" but I think that's actually mostly just other people thinking it than that actually being the case?
Also I know some people are pressured into seeing those friendships that way because they must "want more"...

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Lucy in the sky

Honestly, I can't see why people of opposite gender couldn't be just friends from my personal pov - BUT

I have two female friends who've started being friends with guys, always saying "no, nothing's going on, nothing's gonna happen, we're friends, that's all"

and then bam, within a few months, both were dating their respectable "just friends"... they've also both already broken up with them and haven't remained in touch...

 

so tbh, i don't know. perhaps it's sort of like a part of "human nature" to suspect that if people of opposite gender are interested in one another, it must be for "ulterior motives". then again, most people whom i've heard say that people can't be friends with the opposite sex tend to be older generations, so perhaps the views are changing...🤔

 

tbh, i thought i had a good answer but the more i'm thinking about it the more confused i get xD

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I find that this statement says more about the sayer of it than anyone being friends with the opposing sex.

I personally have always been friends with boys, usually more often with them than girls. Only a couple have had a crush on me and exactly one has been unable to continue as friends. On him, I told him I would be happy to be his friend regardless, but maybe he didn't want to. Most, easily well over 90% have remained friends and have never expressed wanting anything more. I am pretty blind to flirting and such so it is possible that they have tried and I have just missed it though. In which case it has worked as intended as I would not be interested anyway.

Someone mentioned that some people value the word "friend" differently. That is a good point. Not everyone I call in friend in English I would call the stronger word "ystävä" in my native tongue Finnish. We have "kaveri" for people you hang out with but aren't good friends with. I'd say most of the guys described would be kaveri rather than a good friend. All the crushers have been friends though.

All in all, it is possible, even if one has feelings for the other. I've been there. The aftermath sucked but our friendship came through stronger. He's one of the few people who know I'm ace and I'm one of the few people from our friend group who have met his current girlfriend. We trust each other more because of the difficult time, not despite it.

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