Can Men And Women Be Just Friends? Science Has The Answer
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“I totally want him to be my best friend,” said the woman. “I totally want to sleep with her,” said the man. In most cases, women say “yes” to Can Men And Women Be Just Friends? While men say, “no.” Please note, I said in “most” cases. However, when Science has an answer, what all men and women say won’t matter anymore. Go ahead and read those differences in ideals and ideologies of men and women that make it difficult for them to remain just friends.
1. The Problem With The “Friend Zone”
Men wait patiently while they are in the “friend zone” because they, at some point, feel that they would be promoted to the boy friend position. However, women might want to continue the same friend tag. When men can make friends with other men, why do you think they’d need a woman to play that exact same role? Obviously, because women have something more to offer. It needn’t necessarily be sexual in nature (although it is, in most cases) but still, there is something more a man expects from a woman in such relationships. It is this difference in the perception of the word “friendship” that makes it impossible for a man and woman just to be friends.
2. How FWB Works Differently For Both The Sexes
Although it is the way men and women define “friendship” that becomes a problem, it is sex that creates the hitch too. In a research conducted on men and women and how they approached friends with benefits relationships, it is said that women enter a relationship like this for emotional reasons but for men, sex is the motivation (1). Either of the approaches is neither good nor bad. That’s just the way each gender is wired owing to social or evolutionary reasons.
So, a woman is constantly searching for mental catharsis in every relationship – in a same-sex friendship, cross-gender friendship, same-sex marriage, or even cross-gender marriage. Men, on the other hand, also look for catharsis but via the means of sex. And this is what makes it impossible for him to remain in the friend zone forever. Don’t you believe me? Ask him if he ever fantasized about you, he will say, “yes.” Ask him if you had given him a chance would he have a sexual or at least a romantic relationship with you, he will again say, “yes.”
3. The Monogamy-Polygamy Battle
Science says that women prefer more intimate dyadic relationships while men prefer clubs (2). The roots of this difference in social behavior, they say, lies in our evolution. Men made larger groups to stay safe during hunting while women confined to more intimate and close relationships. Women exhibit similar patterns in both same-gender relationships and cross-gender relationships. They make friends for emotional purposes and not just for bodily satisfaction unless they specifically choose friends with benefits kind of a bond.
Also, when they are already engaged in a romantic/sexual relationship, they prefer maintaining platonic relationships with other men in their lives. While men uninhibitedly portray their polygamous nature, they don’t mind having sexual relationships with more than one woman simultaneously. Since there are no social, emotional, or ethical reasons stopping them, they just can’t pretend or convince themselves that they want to be “just friends” with a member of the opposite sex.
4. The Ultimate Truth – Monogamy In Humans Is Unnatural
If humans weren’t controlled on psychological and ethical levels by social and racial conditioning, we are all polygamous. The primal us is polygamous like most animals are. However, being territorial is a sign of evolution. It would be sheer bias to say that men and women can’t be friends because men are looking for sex all the time. Sooner or later, women tend to think along those lines too. In many cases, a purely platonic relationship could be turned into a romantic or sexual one because the women have desired it too. One of the primary reasons for this is that there’s a thin line of difference between emotional and physical intimacy. An intense emotional connect quite often than not evokes a physical camaraderie too that eventually ends in something more than friendship.
A man and a woman, like I would like to call it, represent the two opposite components of the same entity symbolically. There is always an underlying force that is trying to bring these elements together. It is this dance between the extremes that wants to retain the union, the coherence. Although that sounds philosophical more than scientific, look around you – the poles are always waiting to meet. What’s your take on this? You believe there can be platonic relationships between man and woman? Comment below to share your views.
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