AIBU to think men and women can be platonic friends for life, especially if they’ve known each other since childhood?

[Bellasblankexpression]

I was chatting to a friend last night - we both have a mutual male friend, I’m very good friends with him, she used to be but they had a fling and now they have a bit more distance between them.
Because of this she’s convinced men and women simply can’t be friends and remain just friends.

I have this male friend and my best friend is also male. And I can honestly say both relationships are completely platonic, and there has never been the slightest tension or anything between us.

However it got me thinking - I have known both of them since childhood and I wonder if that makes a difference? I don’t have any male friends that I met as an adult for example…

I’m happily married with a DS, so it’s not like there’s the potential for anything to ever happen either so I’m utterly confident we will always stay platonic friends.

AIBU to think you 100% can have a platonic relationship with the opposite sex?

To answer a pp I grew up with a brother and sister yes, plus lots of male cousins who are like brothers to me. I'm not sure that is it though.

For me personally I am not very 'girly' and from a young age was quite a tom boy. Probably matters less now but in the 90s when I was forming relationships, gender roles were more strictly defined than they are now I think. So my early friendships at 5/6/7 were based around riding my bike, climbing trees, playing football etc, not playing with dolls, or doing each others hair etc.

That is obviously a massive generalisation but you get my gist. Once these strict gender roles became relaxed I of course made more girlfriends, and have a few very close ones, but the majority of my friends remain male and if I am honest, I still find, on general, I prefer their company.

I can only think of one male friend from uni who I slept with and to be honest, I fancied him from the get go but he had a girlfriend when we first met. We had loads in common and on the same course so we became friends. But that is it! All other male friends, are just that.

I'm a gay woman and my closest friends are straight women and men. There is just a divide between who I find attractive and my friends.

My straight women friends are all attractive but it would never occur to me to objectify them or see them in a way other than a friend. In turn, they think nothing of getting changed when I am there or sharing personal things.

I have sometimes had problems with gay female friends though. I am above averagely good looking, have an open, warm and confident personality and am a caring friend, it has sometimes been misinterpreted by single gay friends.

It can also be an issue with newer straight female friends, who perhaps don't know many gay women. I am very kind by nature and like other people doing well - I have been told in not very subtle ways that a friend is straight (I know, mate!) or in one case her insecure husband has told her she is not allowed to be my friend. This seems to be their issue and there is no polite way of saying to someone I don't find you at all attractive (and have been with my far superior partner for twenty years).

@Bellasblankexpression
So, does that make them more important or just as important as DH? Funny because there was a thread about shagging a close friend's ex yesterday and most comments were that relationships were more important than friendships in adulthood so the op shouldn't feel too bad about upsetting her friend and fuck her anyway if she did feel upset. I wonder if these friendships are more important because they are with men? I read it a lot in posts about friendships with the opposite sex "they were in my life first, so I'll keep them forever" whereas I rarely read such sentiments about same-sex friendship threads. It's as if women choose male friends because there is no "competition" with other females and they are the object of adulation. Also, just wondering if you mind DH sharing beds with other women? Could me and your DH share a bed? I can play friends.

I know that wasnt aimed at me, but I share a bed with male friends if needs be and I would be fine with DH doing the same. He tends to have more female friends funnily enough!

No they don’t mean more to me than DH, they’re important in a different way @tony68
DH is still the one I want to tell things to first, the one I’ve chosen to spend my life with and I’m very happy with that decision!

I disagree with it being because they are men - I would feel the same way about my female best friend if DH had had a problem with her but I think it arises as an issue more with partners if it’s a male friend. With a female friend you’ve had for life is usually a non issue. The other thing is, when a relationship is new and a friendship has been lifelong, surely of course you would choose the friendship? I know I would have done because if my partner couldn’t get on with my friends, it would have shown that we weren’t as compatible as I would have thought.

DH is very friendly with both of them, one of them he has a total man crush on so I know he doesn’t feel threatened in any way.

@tony68 of course I’d mind a stranger sharing DH’s bed as he would me. And I wouldn’t like it with a new friend I’ll be honest, but I know he wouldn’t with me either. It’s all down to what’s okay with you and your partner.

The difference is these friends have grown up with me and are like siblings. DH has known them for years and years now as we’ve been together for years. If he had ever said he didn’t feel comfortable with sharing a bed I wouldn’t have done it, obviously. Plus it’s not all the time any time it was in specific circumstances.

DH has two female friends that he is very close with - one that he grew up with (parents babysat for each other etc) and who is now one of my closest friends - we were introduced when then DP and I were very new and hit it off right away! The second was his best friend through school, they then drifted apart and in more recent years reconnected. I like this friend a lot and we meet routinely for dinner/kids to play etc.

I was never sure about true platonic relationships (I have an acquaintance who has definitely tried to befriend my DH for not so pure reasons) but the two cases I’ve mentioned above are certainly platonic, healthy friendships with no romantic undertone.

@Bellasblankexpression we were friends for about 6 years and had worked together too; there was a bit of flirting/banter but I was going out with someone else for some of the time.

yep, of course you can have a purely platonic friendship with a male and be close friends with them. maybe everyone else on this thread is fancied by all and sundry but throughout my life i’ve had some close male friends through all my walks of life and not not fancied them and neither have they fancied me (one did and that friendship did end badly)- but with my close friends we have gone for dinner and lunch and drinks whilst i’ve been in a relationship and it’s been absolutely fine because we are adults and don’t need to jump into bed with one another

my closest two friends are female though

i suppose it is easier to be very close with guys you have known for a long time (at least longer than your current relationship) - if i met someone tomorrow and treated them like a best friend my DH may wonder what was going on and could feel threatened.

Of course you can. I've worked in a department of 80 that is 2/3 male. Don't fancy any of them, but there are a number who I've worked with for 15 + years who are not only colleagues but good friends. I have a rule that I don't friend any work colleagues on FB so there is a degree of separation, but we regularly share stories of our families and personal life in chat, over lunch, etc.

Yes, I have a male friend, we are both married but we were best friends when younger and now feel almost like siblings. No sexual feelings/flirting has ever happened, people used to joke about us being together as others have the same annoying view that men and women cannot just be friends.

[quote tony68]@Bellasblankexpression
So, does that make them more important or just as important as DH? Funny because there was a thread about shagging a close friend's ex yesterday and most comments were that relationships were more important than friendships in adulthood so the op shouldn't feel too bad about upsetting her friend and fuck her anyway if she did feel upset. I wonder if these friendships are more important because they are with men? I read it a lot in posts about friendships with the opposite sex "they were in my life first, so I'll keep them forever" whereas I rarely read such sentiments about same-sex friendship threads. It's as if women choose male friends because there is no "competition" with other females and they are the object of adulation. Also, just wondering if you mind DH sharing beds with other women? Could me and your DH share a bed? I can play friends. [/quote]
Well, surely that’s because people don’t routinely opine that same-sex friendships should be quietly shelved when the person is in a relationship, a view I often see expressed on here? I find it a completely mad viewpoint, especially when a glance at the relationships board on here shows the extent to which relationships/marriages breakdown.

My male friends are no more important than my female friends — though both are very important to me —but then I don’t have anyone in my RL who thinks I shouldn’t have close male friends because I’m married. Or that going for a drink or dinner or to the cinema with an opposite-sex friend is ‘date territory’ or ‘couple stuff’, a view I’ve also seen on here.

DH is going out for dinner tomorrow night with a female friend. Clearly he’s on a date.

@SheepGoBaaaa completely agree. I’m going to visit my best friend this weekend, haven’t seen him for nearly 18 months now and I can’t wait. Clearly this is a dirty weekend away

[quote Bellasblankexpression]@SheepGoBaaaa completely agree. I’m going to visit my best friend this weekend, haven’t seen him for nearly 18 months now and I can’t wait. Clearly this is a dirty weekend away [/quote]
Pack your sexiest underwear, obviously.

@Velvian, no, the opposite actually. I'm an only child and had a very sheltered adolescence - went to a Catholic girls' school and barely spoke to a boy before I was 18. When I left home I found myself gravitating more towards male friends, partly because they had similar interests to me but partly I think as a reaction to that. I can see that it might easily have gone the opposite way though and left me uncomfortable being around men at all.

My DH's best friend is a woman he's known since they were 11. They dated very briefly when they were 16 and DH has stated quite emphatically that they are "completely sexually incompatible" so I guess that got any latent tension out of their systems and now they are just great friends. I get on really well with her and her husband and we've been away on holiday the 4 of us and so on. I actually love that my husband has a lot of female friends and has since his teens because it's helped make him really great at dealing with preteen hormonal daughter

I think it can work, equally it can go very very wrong! I tend to form crushes quite easily so I don't tend to have super close male friends.

It works for me!

Growing up, my two best friends when boys and even now, I have more male friends than female. I can safely say that nobody fancies anyone else so it works very well.
When I first met my husband, he was a bit dubious of my friendships thinking there might be something sinister but once he met them and saw the dynamic, he realised all was fine and is friends with them now too.

[quote psychomath]@Velvian, no, the opposite actually. I'm an only child and had a very sheltered adolescence - went to a Catholic girls' school and barely spoke to a boy before I was 18. When I left home I found myself gravitating more towards male friends, partly because they had similar interests to me but partly I think as a reaction to that. I can see that it might easily have gone the opposite way though and left me uncomfortable being around men at all.[/quote]
Likewise. I was at convent schools throughout my education, didn’t have brothers or male cousins close in age, and had probably not addressed a single word to a boy before starting university. Male people were a whole, interesting new vista for me, and I remember the pleasure of discovering the potential for doubling potential friendship possibilities.

Am determined to send DS to a mixed-sex secondary,though it’s difficult where I am.

I met my best mate (male) at 16 or 17. We worked together. It has never been more than platonic friendship. Never will be. We're in our 40's and still natter on the phone for hours. DH obviously knows him but they're not close at all. It's my friendship, not DH's and it doesn't bother him one bit. We've invited him to come to stay with us for a holiday (we live far apart now) and DH is more than happy to accommodate him.

[quote Bellasblankexpression]@SheepGoBaaaa I agree. I always get the “is DH okay with you seeing X” which drives me mad as well. Both of my friends were in my life way before DH![/quote]
I get this a lot with my husband's female friends. It really annoys me and I always say that if something was going to happen between them it would have in the 20 years they've known each other. They're not going to suddenly jump into bed together all this time later when we're all happily married.

I used to say you could but now I think differently.