H – Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.
S – So you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?
H – No, you pretty much want to nail ’em too.
S – What if they don’t want to have sex with you?
H – Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.
Hands up who has never had, or at least assisted, to a conversation like those in “When Harry Met Sally”.
Did anyone raise their hand?
I doubt it. However, if so, then congratulations!
And in fact it’s a widely held opinion (and sadly) common that a man and a woman can’t be friends because for at least one of the two (implied: usually the male. But not necessarily) there is always a bit of sexual attraction. Ergo there can’t be a sincere and disinterested affection. You can’t just feel like you want to see someone to have a beer together at the park while sharing your existential doubts, speaking of the last movie you saw at the cinema during the catastrophic date with “the friend of the best friend of my university course mate, who in the beginning seemed to be really nice, but after the first half an hour we spent together I realised he/she was a crazy collector of goliath tarantulas, a foot fetishist and moreover he/she supports Juventus!”, discussing about what alternative career to embark on after you graduate with a literature degree as you will definitely end up unemployed and eventually in the end you agree that Axl Rose has aged very badly!
And then let’s not even mention the equally numerous cases in which one of those two falls in love with the presumed friend! The worst case of all. A real catastrophe.
No, sir. This can’t be done. The friendship between men and women does not exist! It is biologically impossible.
Personally speaking, the person writing this thinks that it’s all utter nonsense. For a number of reasons.
First of all, if you really want to be precise and analyze the reasoning behind the so-called nonsense, we must first enlarge for a moment our horizons and extend this reflection to other similar contexts, but for this reason no less important. So: gay men can’t be friends with other men, and lesbian women can’t be friends of other women. And bisexuals? Well, it seems obvious, bisexuals can’t be friends with anyone! We are really sorry, but your sexual feelings keep you from being friends than any other human being. We strongly recommend a pet, maybe a dog (because it’s basic knowledge that cats are small profiteers who fill you with love and attention only when they want to eat!).
Now, given this premise, we must admit that the matter starts to get complicated: heterosexual women can be friends just with gay men or other women, unless they are not themselves homosexuals, in which case nothing there is nothing to do. Heterosexual men can instead be friends with only other heterosexual men or lesbian women. Ah no, I guess not… Just with other heterosexual men, you’re right. Homosexual women can be friends instead with just gay men (I was going to be wrong again and write that they can be friends even straight men but NO, we’ve already agreed on that). Homosexual men can be friends of both lesbian and straight women (lucky them!). And bisexuals are left lagging behind, as above. Now, honestly, do not you think that this theory is out of this world? It’s already difficult to remember this theoretical scheme, let alone when it comes to putting it into practice.
How do you recognize at a glance the sexual orientation of a person? Okay, there will also be cases where it’s more easily understood than others, but the reality is not always so predictable and stereotypical. And even if it were possible, I don’t think it is a tremendous force to separate mankind into compartments and stick these rigid restrictions? Is this how things really go? Does experiencing sexual attraction to a certain category of people really prevent us from being friends of anyone who is part of that category? Are we really so constantly preys to our basic instincts?
I like to think that the answer to that is NO.
I’m of the opinion that, it’s true, the sexual sphere is a significant part of the human being, but it’s not ALL of it. I’m of the opinion that there is no universal law written in our DNA that prevents us from being friends with another human being with a particular chromosomal sequence.
Am I delusional? Am I romantic? Am I utopian? Maybe. But I don’t care. I don’t care about labels, just as well as I’m not interested in rigid thought patterns such as the one above. Life is too short to learn by heart what the categories of people with whom I can and can’t be friends are. I prefer to give a chance to every relationship.
I prefer that my best friend falls in love with me or be super attracted to the blue eyes of my fellow high school classmate. Of course, my “friendship” with them will be different from that which has bound me for six years to my girl best friend, probably if I were to be picky it could not even be called “friendship, but I don’t care, that’s okay. Every relationship is unique and different, with each person you share different things, but that’s the fun part. Otherwise it would be really boring.
It’s part of the game that some friendships rest on something other than those of fraternal love, if we want to call it so. It’s physiological. But by no means it must always go this way.
So sticking to all this nonsense, what the point of this reflection is the following: we fall in love and experience sexual attraction because we are humans. It’s part of our nature and it’s only right that it happens. But it happens as individuals and in relation to other individuals, not as entire categories of people. In my opinion it really is an incredible waste to exclude a priori the possibility of becoming friends of someone else only in the name of a label, giving up in the first place because “Anyways it’s impossible!”.
You could be starting to not have fun anymore when discussing whether “Appetite for Destruction” is infinitely better than “Chinese Democracy”, laughing and joking in the shade of a plane tree in a pleasant afternoon in late May. It would be very unfortunate.
