Is a genuine friendship between a man and a woman possible?

Do you really believe that men are from Mars and women from Venus?  I do not.  Not all men and not all women behave identically.  This type of categorization is unreasonable and counter-productive, because it creates a scission between the two genders.  Since men and women are from the same planet, does it signify that they can be real friends?  Well, I do not believe in this eventuality either.  I think that there is always a degree of sexual implicitness between a man and a woman that prevents a true and healthy male-female friendship from existing.  If travesty of friendship there is, it cannot be entirely fulfilling, because this unavoidable sexual tension needs to be suppressed at all costs, and this is frustrating.  Both individuals who are involved have the obligation to conceal what their true motives are, so the platonic relation can be given a chance to survive longer. 

Do you currently have a friendship that is completely drama-free with someone of the opposite sex, in the sense that there is absolutely no unspoken expectation whatsoever?  If you answer yes a bit too rapidly, I would encourage you to take a truthful look at your feelings and to open your eyes wide, so you can assess what your friend’s true motivations are.  Maybe is he a “friend with benefits?”  Under this scenario, sex is not taboo, which represents a significant advantage.  However a challenge still subsists.  The man and the woman must not judge themselves for mixing friendship and casual sex, and neither one of them must secretly seek a relationship.  Good luck…         

::: Is it that reprehensible to be sexually attracted to a friend?  

A platonic relationship is always possible but, ultimately, isn’t it destined to be short-lived?  What primarily creates this attraction that generates the desire that a man and a woman have to connect?  Is it a physical attribute, an intellectual proficiency, a social or a professional status?  These are superficial viewpoints that you have been trained to embrace, so you can make choices according to constructed and often times imposed standards.  But if you erase such programming from your mind, the element that truly triggers your interest to connect with someone of the other sex has nothing to do with a measurement or a judgment.  In reality, it is an energy that captivates your attention and that fills your body and your mind with a sensation that only euphoric sex can produce.  If you truthfully choose to be in tune with all your senses when you meet someone with whom you want to develop a friendship, regardless of the gender, you will experience this very particular sensation.  It feels good, warm, nurturing, safe and orgasmic.  So the exact same energy that is experienced during euphoric sex is the key-element that attracts you to another individual.

As soon as you or your friend acknowledges that the friendship was built on the premises of an energy that replicates the sensations that only great sex can offer, the friendship becomes totally biased.  The pretense of maintaining a platonic relation cannot hold any longer.  In this case, what are your options?  Do you come clean and reveal the content of your realizations?  Well, this can be quite risky.  First, the decision to confess that the friendship was in reality based on a sexual energy can have one major dreadful consequence: that your friend refuses to admit that he or she had the same motives and now blames you for opening-up.  In all two-way interactions, it takes two to tango.  What you initially felt is no different from what he or she initially felt as well.  No one was forced to commit to a platonic relationship that was certainly not one from the very beginning, anyway.  However, the utter refusal to acknowledge a reality led to a farce.  Second, your friend who refuses to openly admit his or her true feelings, certainly out of shame or embarrassment, will use your honesty as a tool for emotional extortion.  And how can you react to someone who says, “How could you do this to me?  I thought we were friends!”?  Don’t you feel compelled to do whatever it takes to appease your accuser?   

In this day and age, male-female interactions cannot be avoided, whether they happen in a professional or in a social setting.  In this world, to be involved in a romantic relationship is viewed as an absolute necessity, because of the heavy judgments that are directed toward those who have not found their mate yet.  In this society, most marriages are utterly horrendous and the courage to walk away is quasi-inexistent.  And such cowardice pushes those unhappy souls to seek comfort in the reassuring words of a friend, with the hope that it will soon turned into the arms of a lover.  Now who benefits more from those types of interactions?  Is it a win-win situation for all parties involved?  Can everyone be rewarded emotionally?  Or does it rather tend to be a one-way street, where the individual who is convinced of the pertinence of his or her unspoken feelings has a definite edge? 

::: Ultimately, is a man-woman friendship no different from a man-woman relationship?

Aren’t the expectations exactly the same, at least in the beginning?  A man-woman relationship starts on the exact same premises as a man-woman friendship, excepted for the fact that in the relationship, sex is supposed to quickly become an intrinsic part of the equation.  How often have you claimed that you had finally met your best friend on the day you thought that you had met your life partner, or the other way around?  Both types of relations cannot be dissociated.  They originate from the exact same energy.  This is why the sexual desire, whether it is cognitive, is omnipresent in the friendship, whereas it tends to disappear over time in the relationship.  It is in most individuals’ nature to crave what they cannot get.  Consequently, when they are unable to gratify their sexual appetite because the friendship does not allow them to be open and forward about their true desires, they stick around, hoping that intercourse happens one day.  When it does happen, the unspoken goal has been reached, and the choice to maintain the friendship does not make much sense any more.  There is a progressive loss of interest, and the interaction slowly dies.  This is also what happens in a great majority of relationships.  One party grows tired and disinterested, and the relation ceases to exist.  To avoid loneliness, it then becomes urgent to construct a friendship with someone of the opposite sex, hoping that this relation includes sex at some point down the road.  This is the extra-marital affair.

Most men and women are ashamed of their feelings and desires, especially when those revolve around sex.  For reasons that only their upbringings and self-imposed beliefs and values can explain, the reluctance to acknowledge and own such feelings and desires is utterly painful, if not totally impossible.  So it generates interactions that are toxic before they even start.  If we consider that all male-female friendships are based on a sexual energy, can you sense the level of intrinsic discomfort that systematically rules the lives of those friendships?  Behind the laughters, the discussions, the commonalities and the activities, there is a lot of resentment since the sexual desire is suppressed.  And any glitch in the interaction, certainly because of something trivial that was said but surprisingly misinterpreted, is in reality a reflection of this sexual desire that is so difficult to continue suppressing.  This is when all the emotional baggage that was accumulated from all past failed relationships and friendships emerges again.  And it is fueled by all the vexations inherent to a friendship that is not going the way it was implicitly expected to go.  The person who becomes the recipient of the other’s sudden anger and frustrations cannot choose any other alternative but to be defensive and defiant, in reaction to his or her own inability to express his or her true intentions.                  

For what reasons do most individuals refuse to create clean interactions with people of the opposite sex?  They are in relationships, they have circles of friends, and none of these relations is healthy.  Is it because of the presence of an insatiable sexual desire that cannot be revealed?  Is it because of a sexual desire that was finally satisfied, and now there is nothing exciting left to look into?  If you take the need for physical sex away from all these equations, then a new possibility can emerge that will not disrupt the dynamic.  When contemplating your involvement in a healthy relationship or friendship, the sole alternative is the necessity to be totally judgment-free.  Without it, either one is deemed to fail sooner or later.  This certainly goes against all the programming and conditioning to which most folks have been subjected and the way this world functions, where judgments must be an intrinsic part of all interactions.                           

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Platonic love does not exist.  Friendships with benefits work as long as all parties involved get their share of the benefits.  Beyond that, it is important to note that all friendships are based on an initial attraction that carries a strong sexual energy.  It does not necessarily mean that it is a desire to have sex.  It is nothing more than just a sexual energy.  And anyone who judges sex in any shape or form cannot have healthy friendships and, of course, relationships.  If you assume the entirety of your thoughts, which means that you do not judge them, then the male-female friendship is possible.