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Close friends of opposite sexes—is it possible for it to be platonic? Or will there inevitably be some sort of uncomfortable subtext of attraction?
Researchers surveyed more than 80 man-woman pals. They found that men were more attracted to their female friend than vice versa. Men also consistently and mistakenly assumed that their female buddy was attracted to them more than they actually were.
And perhaps more surprising, men’s attraction to their women friends was not deterred if they, or the friend, were already romantically involved with another person.
Women, on the other hand, reported having much less desire to date their male friend if they, or he, were already romantically engaged with another. The study is in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
So how to handle the conflict of attraction between friends? In another survey the researchers found that, overall, the participants were five times more likely to see it as burden than as not. Although the scientists spotted a gender difference here, too. Turns out men felt there was more to gain from attraction in friendships, and women felt there was more to lose. So much for the fantasy of friends with benefits.
—Christie Nicholson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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4 Comments
Add CommentThis information strikes me as almost backwards. I have been out of this "scene" for years, but it seems to me women seek ever to maintain an "attraction" that won't be acted on while men prefer to resolve such potential. This is more in concert with our roles in society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think, as with many "polls" regarding these Cosmopolitan style hot buttons, the questions could be worded more carefully to proffer a more illuminating result. Men necessarily take it on the chin in many social circumstances, but with women in competition for top business positions, I think a lot of that "science" seems jingoistic.
This, to me, seems like common sense. I've been saying for years that it's almost impossible to have a strictly platonic relationship with a female, and vice versa.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is almost ALWAYS some subtext of attraction between the two.
If they are both homosexual, then it can work. Otherwise...forget about it. A guy doesn't run to his female "best friend" when she gets dumped by her boyfriend. He runs over there with the hopes that he will comfort her...right into the sack.
It annoys me when a girl gets all up in arms when she "suddenly" finds out that her "omg best guy friend in the world because I only have guy friends cause girls are bitches!" has a crush on her, or admits that he would date her. I know what these girls think, because I see a number of them (usually it's the younger ones who haven't learned yet) post on facebook on a regular basis.
"HOW DARE HE BE A MALE AND BE ATTRACTED TO A MEMBER OF THE OPPOSITE SEX! HOW DARE HE! IT'S ME FOR CHRISTS SAKE! I'VE NEVER DONE ANYTHING TO PROVOKE HIM OR MAKE HIM THINK WE WOULD BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN FRIE...oh wait..that time I paraded around in my underwear while he was there cause we're totally just friends (he even said so!), or that time I called him at 2 in the morning to bitch about my life, and that time I asked him to hang out with me all day at the mall..maybe, just maaaaayyybbeeee that made him think i'm a cool girl who likes him? hmm..."
For shame, people. For shame.
Based on my perusal of only the abstract of the referenced journal article, contrary to the summary article, the authors do not appear to be attempting to measure attraction between friends of opposite sex as a matter of thesis, or at least they do not appear to be claiming that self-reported measures of attraction are objective. However, the author of the summary article here claims that the authors of the journal article "…found that men were more attracted to their female friend than vice versa," [sic]. This statement appears to be a misreading of the cited literature. More correctly, and critically so, she should have written that the journal authors observed that, "men reported more attraction than their female counterparts in opposite sex friendships."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMoreover, the journal authors' thesis, in my reading, is basically that mating strategies affect cross-sex friendships in ways asymmetrical with regard to gender, and all of this is based on interviewee self-reporting. The self-reporting based nature of the study may itself be a problem there too, but that is beside the point.
Though it may seem like pedantry to some, there is a critical distinction between saying that interviewees *are* something versus what they are *reporting* they are, unless the two happen to be one in the same, as may generally be the case for, say, degree of happiness--if you say you're happy, you generally are, unless you are lying to yourself or the interviewer.
However, even if we suppose that the study cited truly attempts to measure the relative degree of attraction between opposite sex friends, or at least suggests something to the effect, self-reporting would clearly be wholly the wrong investigative tool to that end. The reason is that the study would then implicitly assume that both sexes are completely or equally aware of their own motives in the context of attraction. What if men were more aware of their own romantic or sexual desires than their female counterparts? Then such a study would be comparing apples with oranges.
Having been a single parent, I found that most of my friends were other single parent mothers, and at no time did I find myself attracted sexually to any of them, I considered them close friends that I could discuss all sorts of problems with and they with me, including their boyfriend problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI did however find myself in one situation with one lady that admitted she was attracted to me, and it became a "sticky" situation, especially after she had broken up with her husband, and we shared a house together for awhile, something I should not have done after she had already admitted she was sexually attracted to me, even before she broke up with him.
For me I have always preferred woman friends, I have been able to open up and discuss things with them that I would never tell a male friend, and I have found they in turn will discuss things with me that they would not normally talk to their female counterparts about.