Can opposite sex friendship ever be platonic?

[Underthemoonsky]

I’ve read so many post on here about people saying they’ve seen their DH messaging a woman but says it’s just a friend etc etc and it got me thinking about my own life.

DH and I knew each other before we started dating, we were both very into the same hobby and I fancied him from afar (he was older and in a relationship so he was absolute no go territory). He started texting me one day purely about our hobby and if anyone read the messages (over the course of id say 3 days) they looked completely innocent and just about our hobby. I didn’t text back after the 3rd day because I felt i wanted to talk to him more but knew it was wrong.

fast forward about 4 months and no one to one contact and he messaged me again about something not related to our hobby. I text him back and said I’m sorry but are you not in a relationship? turns out they had broke up 3 months prior and long story short the relationship was over anyway and he knew he shouldn’t have felt the way he did about me (turns out he had been fancying me from afar to) but hand on heart there was nothing ever going on when he was in a relationship and this all came out afterwards.

got me thinking - those messages were completely innocent and yet it turned out they weren’t.

I also on a side note had a lot of male friends before I met DH and since that I’ve lost every single one of them with most of them saying they know now there’s no hope for me and them - but again these are fellas I would’ve been texting as friends and nothing more with absolute zero romance.

I always said men and women can be friends with nothing else going on, looking back on my own life experiences though I don’t think so anymore.

As a general rule I find no, men and women can't be friends. But every rule has exceptions.

Yeah sorry I probably should’ve kept it as two separate questions as there is a massive difference between long standing friends and ones that are made during the marriage.

No to be fair there were 3 really really good friends. One of them I had known my whole life and he used to come stay at my parents house when we were in university together. The two others I would’ve messaged daily and been on the phone at least twice a week etc they were genuinely really good friends. And I remember one friend came up to stay just after DH and I got together and he was so weird and off and he rang me the following week saying how hard it was seeing me with someone.

regarding my DH yeah you’re bang on, we knew off each other, saw each other on a weekly basis but there was little contact despite fancying each other because a) we didn’t know the other felt the same b) we aren’t those type of people.

i actually had another friend who was married and he tried to get with me and said he was going to leave his wife for me (again with no prior romantic notion before this!) it was completely out of the blue. he was a really good friend of mine and I really missed his friendship as I completely stopped contact after that.

Yeah sorry I probably should’ve kept it as two separate questions as there is a massive difference between long standing friends and ones that are made during the marriage.
DH has a female friend he made at work some years after the last of our DC was born. She, her DH and their DC have been to stay with us; we have been to stay with them. As two couples, we get on well, and I like her a lot.
Whenever she has work stress, she and DH have a Zoom call (they work in the same field). I can listen in any time I want to. I have no concerns at all.

It all depends on the people involved.

" a sudden, intense friendship with someone of the opposite sex where you're messaging a lot, spending a lot of time together without either friend's partner - is dodgy territory imho."

Yes, I can see that, but I would also not accept being told that once I have a boyfriend I can no longer acquire friendships with men at all. I've always had both male and female friends so such a sex segregated life wouldn't be for me.

I believe they can be, but most often they can't,

Of course. I have many friends of the opposite sex that I spend time with and so does my DH.

My best friend is a man. We've been friends for 25 years. We've been on holidays together stayed at each other's homes etc
My husband loves him as much as I do and considers him a close friend of his too. My friend's various partners at times have struggled with our relationship but once they actually see us together they "get it.

But every old friend starts off as a new friend at some point! I have male friends that predate DH, whom I’ve been with since the 90s, but I definitely also have male friends I’ve met more recently, because I didn’t put some kind of opposite-sex friendship moratorium in place when I started seeing DH. He has female friends of all vintages, too. I’d find it far weirder if he didn’t. To me, a man with good female friends is a sign of a decent human being who sees women as full human beings, not just people he could have sex with.

Your own experience of texting your future DH is just that, one experience. It’s as valid or invalid as my experience of male friendships that have pretty much the same pleasures and problems as friendships with women.

I had a drunken kiss with my best guy friend once.. we were both grossed out by it. And I've had drunken kisses with girlfriends too, so I don't think it means anything.

If you'd asked me a couple of years ago I'd have said yes, but I was fooling myself.

What it actually turns out to be is...when I was fat I had male friends with no interest in anything else.

I lost a LOT of weight, suddenly the dynamics changed, and long story short, I've lost the male friends I had.

I don't think there should be some sort of moratorium on new opposite sex friends once you're in a relationship. But I do think the dynamics are different, and so a man suddenly becoming best friends with a, for example a new woman at work, mentioning her all the time, messaging her about non-work-related thing and being secretive around his phone, or going off on long bike rides or some other shared hobby with her, without his partner (who in 9/10 posts I see on here about this topic is left stuck at home to look after the kids) is dodgy territory.

Sudden intense relationships are dating under the label of friendship. I’ve seen a lot of posts on here about husbands developing a new female friend at work. Strangely always attractive and usually younger. Said husband then gets caught up having coffees or meals with new friend, texting/ phoning her about non work related matters, sometimes walking or cycling with her.
Both parties are invigorated by their connection. DH’s behavior usually changes eg there may be weight loss, more care about his personal appearance.
It’s a slippery slope that leads to more and more inappropriate actions. In my case Dh’s coffees/ exercise/ non work WhatsApps led to selfies together, the giving of small gifts ( DH to new friend), a date to a place I’d said I’d always wanted to go to.
We’re still on the brink of separating; 30 year marriage down the drain.

Yes but…
Only if the partner of the opposite sex friend is mature enough OR if the friend know how to handle them and defend the friendship if they are insecure and jealous

I ‘lost’ my male friend of 26 years because his new GF didn’t accept our friendship…
Note - we live in different continents, haven’t see each other f2f since forever and mainly communicated via voice notes on whatsapp
In the end I just accept he is not a true friend after all or maybe a very weak man
in a toxic relationship (I heard a few crazy things before he ghosted me)

His loss

@Underthemoonsky

I think it’s possible for men and women to be platonic friends and, as a PP said - would we say gay people could only be friends with the opposite sex and bi people could only be friends with someone who is not attracted to people of the bi person’s gender?

But I would say it is very situational. I think often there may be a bit of physical attraction on one or other side and perhaps both. But does that in fact matter?

You said that you and your DH fancied each other like mad from a distance. You recognised that you could not engage platonically with him and stopped contact. There was obviously great intensity there; platonic friendship was always going to be too tricky.

But at university, I had a bit of a crush on a good male friend of mine and another good male friend of mine had a bit of a crush on me. I’ve also got that kind of history with a couple of other male friends of mine whom I’ve known since I was young and indeed, about 15 years ago, I developed a crush on a colleague (though it had no impact on the love I felt for my DH). None of this has affected my ability to have good, comfortable and appropriate platonic friendships with the men in question. So I don’t think the existence of a degree of physical attraction is a reason to scrap a friendship in any event. It’s only if the relationship is incapable of remaining platonic that it’s a problem.

I think the only guys that have ended up as actual friends are exes. I have been life long friends with 2 of them, even though I have now been married for decades.
But prior to that, guys who I thought were just friends always turned out to want something more.

Absolutely it's possible but it's a lot easier when I am in a happy relationship.

Anyone new, I make a point of mentioning coming innocuous about 'my husband' very, very early on when getting to know them.

We (DH and I) were for many years very active in a partner dance where it was not always obvious, in fact impossible, to tell by observation along who was in a real relationship together. We agreed that we would never say or write (or do) anything that we would be embarrassed for the other to know about.

Once or twice I have found myself thinking about doing something and I find it really helpful to imagine saying <whatever> in front of DH. If I'm good with that then I have no problem going ahead. If I ever think of something v and the reaction is oh, I don't think he would like that then I immediately don't do it and importantly for me immediately tell him about it so we can both laugh about it.

It works both ways (I mean for both of us).

Much more difficult but not impossible when not in a relationship but it has been known for the other party to disappear when they do start a romantic relationship with someone else.

Of course they can, I have a best friend whose male, he's honestly like a brother. I've known him over 20 years.

Every time I've formed a friendship with a man it's ended sooner or later because they hoped it would turn into something more and they were disappointed. For me, I had no attraction to them and I only ever viewed them as my friends. I ended up feeling a bit used when I realised they didn't see me the same way.

We see this asked time and time again and the answer is No, the man in almost all cases would quite like to shag the lady as thats how they're wired.

In short, while you're young, no. When you're older and no longer fuck material, maybe. But in my experience men are always after something, like ongoing emotional support (that isn't reciprocated), with you acting as a surrogate wife or mum replacement.

Absolutely you can have friendship with members of the opposite sex. On if m6 very best friends is a guy. Absolutely love him to pieces and feel he is my brother. No sexual connotations, just someone whomI liv3 and trust, and he ferls the same way about me. He has a lovely wife and child, who also wrlcome me into their home.

Honestly, sometimes but often not.

I'm friends with a man at work who's 12 years younger so he probably thinks I'm ancient.
Friendly with another man who I've zero attraction to, but I can't say the same on his side though he's never asked me out or flirted.

The 3rd guy, he has a girlfriend but I suspect he might be interested if he hadn't.

It works best if you're both just not attracted to each other at all, if the thought of being intimate makes you think, eww, on both sides.

agree with @Runsyd