> Platonic friendship between men and women is a myth

This is a not unusual opinion amongst Americans, and one I questioned myself, but I can assure you after moving to Europe its a cultural issue(especially in the south).

Europe also has much higher infidelity rates, with France reporting over 37% of women (using women as an example since the data came up more easily) having had affairs compared to 13% in the usa.

(Not an expert) That stat would seem to show only that more French women admit having had affairs, not that more have had them.

I'm friends with most of my friends wife and most of my co-workers and honestly not super interested in banging any of them.

I also have two female friends since childhood and we never done anything and we keep in contact even though we live in different states. Yey facebook!

> Platonic friendship between men and women is a myth.

I must tell my friends about this, they will be distressed.

I bet at least some of them will actually agree with me.

I disagree but I am curious, what makes you think it’s a myth?

First, thank you for asking, I already appreciate your constructive approach.

Now I would like to be more precise: I assert that, at the very least, male-female-friendship is a deviation from the rule. I.e., it is not expected to work, but it can in some instances.

Why?

Because male and female are by default and by nature sexually attracted to each other, and if not then that is simply unexpected.

In fact, there are studies where they made strangers simply look each other in the eyes for a little while. What happened was that some of them fell in love just by doing so.

Put another way: Friendship means affection. There is no reason why such affection between a heterosexual male and female wouldn't eventually cross the sexual level of affection, at least for one of the two. It is simply to be expected more often than not. Thus it is expected that at least one of the two will - at least occasionally - have sexual fantasies about the other.

Oh, thank you for mentioning that. That’s why HN is the only place where I interact with other users, civil disagreement is appreciated. :)

Ok, I kind of agree with what you are saying. But I come to a different conclusion. I hope my text below isn’t a long unintelligible rambling.

Maybe it boils down to how one defines friendship and if friendly affection and sexual affection can coexist. I sorta see a Wenn diagram for this.

Say that I have sexual fantasies about a friend but my friend doesn’t share those fantasies. There is nothing from letting these feelings coexist inside me.

Is it easy? Not necessarily, but I believe it is it possible. One might even have to go see a therapist, so what?

I could even be so honest towards my friend and say: “Look, we are friends, but I also have romantic feelings towards you and it’s hard since you don’t feel that way. Which is totally ok! So I need a couple of weeks where we don’t hang out and it will pass”.

In that scenario, are we still friends? I believe we are. I am making an effort to make the friendship work. But I also need my friend to respect me and my boundaries.

And once those feelings has passed, because my experience is that they do, then we can continue being friends. If I wasn’t able to let those feelings coexist inside me while hanging out with that person.

One last thing. I cherish friendships, it gives me so much joy. And true friendship, that affection you mention, is also rare. So it’s not the best route to automatically exclude half of the population from being friends with you. So there is a lot to be gained from framing these different feelings of affection in a way so that they coexist. Then we get to reap the rewards of many great friendships.

I understand that you can view friendship the way you described, and yes perhaps that's how many people view it.

But for me just friendship is the type that exists among hetero men or hetero women, where there is no possibility of sexual attraction.

So I'm not denying that the type of friendship you describe can exist, but it's not "just" friendship then, like "we're just friends".

I think a metaphor that describes this well is the two magnetic poles. You can of course keep them close to each other without them touching, but that requires some constant force. This necessary constant force, that is needed to keep the distance, is a compromise to friendship as I envision it.

Now here is another crucial point I haven't even mentioned yet:

It is very well understood, that males tend to eagerly and overly interpret signals from females as sexual advances, whereas on the contrary, females tend to underestimate the sexual signals they are giving to males.

It could be a mundane joke or a wrong, unintentional move. This creates a constant granular level of tension and uncertainty that needs to be perpetually overcome, which is incompatible with "my" understanding of just friendship.

Not romantically or sexually attracted to my sister, my auntie, anyone too old for me, anyone too young for me, anyone who smokes, anyone who belittles waitstaff, peopke who overindulge (fillers, etc), people with hairy armpits, people who have strong masculine traits, people who do not wash to my standard etc;etc;etc;

There's limitless numbers of people I am genuinely not attracted to, are you saying they can't be my friends either?

Even the study you cite says “some” of the people started catching feelings.

I much more readily believe that you are either attracted or you're not, and while thats subject to change with appearance changes and so on, it is basically normal to have people you’re not (and are extremely unlikely to be) attracted to.

Obviously excluding family, since I'm appealing to nature. You're not naturally sexually attracted to your immediate family members, i.e. it would be a deviation form the norm if that occurred.

But I can't believe that's your best retort to my argument, when it should be quite obvious that's not what I'm referring to.

And yes you may not be attracted to them, but that doesn't mean some of them aren't to you.

Also it's important to understand I'm not saying you're immediately attracted to any female. That is not my argument. So it's pointless to point out you're not attracted to some random girl who smokes.

I'm simply saying that given a male and female forming a friendship, there is every reason to expect that OVER TIME, at least one of the two's affection will reach sexual levels.

My point was that there are plenty of people I’m not attracted to, not just family, whole entire categories of people.

I am also not exactly attractive. So I see no reason to believe they are attracted to me.

You just assume too much here for me to take it seriously.

If you are saying, sincerely, that every woman I am friends with is secretly attracted to me then I’m going to have some really awkward conversations.

I have plenty of friends who are women, it feels so ordinary that I can’t even imagine a world where this is not normal.

Agreed. But you can have sexual fantasies and still be friend, no ?

Not if you're married

Don't mistake your own failings for universal ones.

Cmon, what are you - a jellyfish?

I thought your initial comment—the one you deleted a minute after posting it, where you were boasting about how sexually attractive you are—had more personality tbh

You know I agree with you, but I figured the public wasn't ready for it.

Thanks though!

That's not how confirmation works.

I mean you're right, but what I really meant is that exceptions don't disprove the rule which is based on sound reasoning (see my answer to the guy that actually asked)

> Platonic friendship between men and women is a myth.

Despite all the examples to the contrary? If anything you're telling on yourself, here.