I have a lady friend who seems to have become some sort of relationship savant as of late. I don’t know where or when it happened, but it seems like almost daily, she’s dropping some profound thought she’s having about her past relationships and pursuits in dealing with men. The girl is dropping gems. So brings us to her most recent moment of clarity.
A little back story, a few weeks ago she engaged in a debate with her friends about the age old tale that men and women cannot be friends. She used our relationship as an example that platonic relationships are possible and her friends posited that it only remains that way because we don’t live in the same city.
Now this isn’t a theory either of us has ever really wanted to test. It’s not that kind of party, but out of the blue she tells me that, “maybe there’s something to this theory.” Reason being, a guy friend of hers who she has always thought was cool and platonic recently expressed his feelings for her. Out of the blue.
Well part of his rationale was that he’s thought long and hard about how cool she is and easy she’d be as a girlfriend. It’s no secret that men always want a woman who is as non-difficult as possible. And to him, my friend is the epitome of this. So where did her moment of clarity come in?
“Alex, he thinks he loves me become I’m easy. Well, I’m only easy because I’m not in love with him. If we were dating I’d become less easy because then expectations come into the picture. And all of a sudden the things he got a pass on because we’re friends aren’t going to be dismissed. Now it’s all weird! I can’t talk to him anymore because it got awkward.”
And she’s 100 percent right. When us menfolks have women friends, they’re usually our friends because of our interactions and how simple they are. There’s on complaining about our lewdness or ridiculousness. We can talk freely and not worry about things being taken the wrong way. But that’s also the thing most men want. So we probably do get lulled into this, “well she’s like this as my friend, she’ll be just like that as my girlfriend.”
Except we forget that we can’t be the same way we are with friends that we’d be with a girlfriend. We can’t keep going out when we want, whenever we want, and doing whatever it is we feel like doing. You have to be responsible for not being disrespectful to another person. Or being inappropriate. Us menfolks can be amazingly selfish in our lives (to be fair, I think many women are too, and probably a bit more self-centered), and we think, well, I’m selfish with my friend, she’ll be completely okay with that if she’s my girlfriend.
Yeah. No. It doesn’t work that way. The reason she’s so cool and easy is because she doesn’t have to be emotionally invested in you. You all have fun and check the feelings at the door. Once feelings get involved – which is why it’s not a good idea to sleep with your friends – all bets are off.
That’s what happened to my friend and the guy she can’t talk to anymore. He broke the seal. All that cool and fun they used to have, well its gone now because lurking in the shadows of love are those feelings he threw into the air. He’s hoping that she’ll give him that shot he wants.
And now she just wants shots. To mourn another platonic relationship she thought she had that never really existed.
I’ll drink to that.
Cool.
About Author
Alex Wise is the publisher and co-founder of Loveawake dating site, which launched in July 2009 and has been providing original free dating services and relationship advices, tips, articles, reviews, and videos to readers ever since. Follow him on the company site or on Facebook and Twitter