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.

I have heaps of male friends. Always have and I'm in my 60s now.

And on all such threads there are women like me who say they’ve had unproblematic friendships with men for decades, so we are clearly either deluded or gruesomely unattractive?

In my 20s 30s and maybe even 40s I would have said yes you can (and I did) but now - like OP - I look back and think most probably weren't as platonic as I like to think they were. I can only think of one that was definitely completely platonic on both sides. All others had a bit of a sexual tension. All of my male friendships have fizzled away now (some completely, some in intensity/closeness). My truly closest friends are all female now (apart from my DH).

That said, in my 50s I find it easier to have easy relationships with men but I wouldn't call them friendships. I rub along well with a few male colleagues and friends' husbands but I wouldn't call any of them independent friends.

I imagine if any of your male friends asked you for sex, you'd be disgusted. Now, I imagine if you asked any of them for a shag they'd have their trousers down before you'd finished your sentence..... and therein lies the issue.

But you’re speculating. You say there was sexual tension in those friendships, but maybe only on your side, unless the men involved actually told you otherwise or made a pass at you? And ultimately, does it actually matter either way? I don’t sit about wondering whether any of my male friends fancy me. I can only speak for my own feelings. And even if there were sexual moments, I don’t think that’s anything necessarily damaging. I certainly kissed one male friend about 30 years ago — not sure what we were thinking, but we never mentioned it again. I’m still friends with him. And I slept with one a couple of times, but the friendship didn’t fundamentally change. I think we’d still be friends but he died far too young.

@NervousSubject I meant as in one or other if us had feelings that were not purely platonic. Not that I know we both were attracted to each other (although I have also had this experience and something has happened and the friendship has continued but then it's no longer platonic in my experience). The question isn't whether men and women can be friends at all - if course they can. My experience though is that the majority of them - when I look back - had an attraction (sexual) element to them in a way my female friendships don't (including those with lesbian friends).

DH has a couple of long term female friends, both were ex colleagues from decades ago. Their friendships pre-dated our relationship.
I met them when we started dating, met their partners etc. He still meets them for coffee etc and he tells me. And we all meet up a few times a year with DCs.

Yes they can be platonic. I’m a bisexual woman who discovered by bi side in my early 30s, l am now in my 40s. I do not want to go to bed with every friend regardless of their sex.

So, if l can’t have platonic friendships, l can’t have any friends at all.

I think it depends on what you mean by platonic. With most of my friends, male and female, there have been moments of attraction on one or both sides, but they have been brief and we've consistently chosen friendship over sex or romance.

I think that relationships grow depending on what you put into them and that it's perfectly possible to have a genuine friendship with someone where has previously been an attraction. But I also find it normal for people to stay friends with exes, which does seem to be out of the ordinary in many social circles.

Of course not. Men will not waste their time.

Wrong. I've several female friends who I've known for years. One is my unofficially adopted sister. We worked together over a good few years and just really get on and did from the first time we met. No drama, no sex, no flirting, just friendship
And my wife knows all about them.

Yes I believe men and women can be just friends. I have a few long term male friends the only one I no longer talk to only because he very clearly wanted more and became kind of possessive in needing to be in constant contact so I ended up cutting the friendship off. Me and my boyfriend were friends for a while before we got together but has been the best relationship I have been in I think knowing each other for a while before helped as previous relationships I barely knew them before the relationship started.

It’s a rarity. Men don’t usually make friends with women they don’t find attractive.

Men are only friends with women they find attractive, and women are only friends with men they don’t find attractive.

So I guess it’s possible to muddle along for years with nothing happening but it’s not IMO a genuine platonic friendship.

Obviously a gross generalisation but largely true from what I’ve seen of my own and other’s friendships with men.

Yes, I probably have more male friends due to the nature of my industry. I’m only going to be friends with people who I think are decent (view men and women as people not just sex objects). Therefore, I’ve never had an issue with platonic friendships of either sex. There have been some guys who have been inappropriate, but they were not my friends, it was obvious they had no respect for women as people, just whether they fancied them or not.

Of course you can have friends of the opposite sex but what your talking about I would presume that when lots of texts are being sent, then they may start getting secretive with their phone and seeing that person more than they should that's when boundaries are being crossed especially when one or both are in a relationship.

In 2019 I got rid of about 5 male friends.

One had seen a picture of me on holiday and said 'Wow, I can't unsee that pic of you 🥵' and he had a gf.

Another said he'd 'stalked' my photos, sad he'd like to be in bed with me and asked if I'd swipe on him if I saw him on Tinder.

Another said if he weren't happily married he'd whisk me away in a heartbeat.

And so on..

Yep @yellowgummybears

It's sad really. I felt really...taken advantage of.

Like, where did they get the notion that I was the unfaithful type? And it was quite obvious from the things they said that they'd wanked about us together.

I felt stupidly naive, like I thought we were friends and told them a lot of intimate things, but it was clearly not what I thought it was.

One of them tried to contact me the other day actually, but I ignored it. I mean, what would we have to say?