Men and Women Being Friends
Wed, 06 Feb 2008.
NSFW links: I’ve linked Todger Talk a few times before in the sidebar, I found these guys via The Girl. I like Todger Talk because it’s an attempt at opening the dialogue up to men. The site is not without its faults and a few incorrect male assumptions but overall, its heart is in the right place and I will continue to read it and I hope the comments really spark up some good discussion. Also, they’re incredibly British so that’s good too.
In a recent post, Women can be so tactless, Dave describes a female friend with such kind words as “magnificent”, “aristocratic”, “positive”, “beautiful” and “uplifting”. In one paragraph. I don’t mean to sound harsh but he’s just jerking off with a thesaurus. He talks about how she’s been on a string of bad dates; had the absence of common sense to sleep with the lot of them; and meanwhile he’s getting nothing from her. He’s “doomed to receive a ‘sweet’ kiss on the cheek at the evening’s end.”
This gets me angry. It reminds me of my own failings and nothing gets me angrier than having to confront my own shortcomings embodied in another person. All the self-loathing subconsciously transforms into regular loathing. It’s like when some smokers quit and they don’t become non-smokers, they become anti-smokers.
Let me preface this by saying I’m not trying to beat up on the author. These are my own issues that his writing has captured so well and it’s succeeded in drawing out a response from me. I, too, used to look up long adjectives to describe my crushes. In fact, I still do when I’m feeling particularly verbose. I’ve had terrible situations of falling head-over-heels for friends and they were none the wiser or willfully ignorant. These situations ended in disasters comparable to the hot girl sleeping with all the guys that she doesn’t fancy.
I wrote in the comments:
If it were me, I’d give her a stark and hopefully refreshing honesty. A woman that smart and perceptive understands, on some level, every bloke would love to see her naked.
It’s ok to admit that. If she says or wears something that turns you on then go ahead and tell her. It definitely won’t get you the girl but by doing this I learnt that it’s ok to be a man and to have desires and to be honest to them rather than be the creepy sexually frustrated chump that gets off on listening to his friend’s escapades.
I was honest, and I somehow dispelled this pedestal that I put my female friend on. Instead, I found a much stronger and more open friendship and I’m less afraid to let any girl know I’m interested. I still find her attractive, sure, but now this freeing honesty and mutual respect between us is worth far more than any old roll in the hay.
I absolutely mean that and I’ve been trying to apply it more and more. In the last few years of my life, I’ve told girls if I see an attractive quality in them. It’s called a “compliment”. I don’t wrap it up in weaselly “politeness” as would be expected of an Elizabethan-era gentleman caller, there is no need for fancy words. Tell them they are hot or they have a great laugh, a nice smile, legs that go all the way up to Canada, etc. By not telling them you find them attractive, you’re bottling your attraction just like you’d bottle rage or fear or Johnny Walker. Any psychologist will tell you that these are not things you should keep bottled up.
Platonic friendships between men and women have only gained traction in recent history. We still haven’t worked out a widely accepted model for them. Watch any Hollywood movie and if you see a man and a woman you still automatically assume they will hook up unless they fall into certain stereotypes that would define them as un-dateable (gay, married, fat, ugly, old, etc.). The thing is that the majority of your female friends will be totally dateable and Hollywood offers no advice for that. Maybe books have the answer but nobody knows where the lie-berry is. The internet certainly doesn’t have the answer, it only has a huge network of “seduction” salesmen that will try to transform you into something you’re not.
Add to this that we’ve become a society infested with over-mothered boys. We all grew up respecting women but it’s a twisted kind of respect that one would give a nanny, an authority figure or perhaps a cobra. It’s not the respect of equals. We’ve grown up hating our own sex and restricting ourselves only to the psuedo-lesbian pornography aimed at mama’s boys because God forbid we see a man enjoying sex. This man-centric “lesbian porn” they sell probably hints a lot of problems with the attitudes of men.
Ok… I get manifesto-y in that last paragraph but I think the point still stands. Be honest and upfront, enjoy their company by actually being a friend instead of a Cold War spy trying to get into their pants because, like I said, platonic relationship between men and women are still new to this world. There’s a lot we could learn.
awesome food for thought. you’re exactly right that there fails to be a model for platonic relationships between males and females anywhere, really, in pop culture or entertainment or literature (the stuff i hear you will find at that lie-berry place) - unless, like you said, one or both of the people in question fit some paradigm delegated as “un-dateable”.
you may hate my 2 cents, but i’m throwing them in: it seems like for some guys, it can become a pride thing. please confirm or throw darts at me as my punishment for being completely wrong. it just seems like - in my experience - when i learn about a guy friend who has had a crush on me or is currently crushing on me, it is always long after it happened or started. and these guys will have chosen to either continue the friend act but act odd, or ignore and become distant entirely. and i’ll have no idea until long afterwards (kind of like your mom and classmate boy! yes?). so maybe the guy shouldn’t be afraid to say something. and it may not go anywhere, but if she’s any friend at all, there can still be a very cool, kickass relationship and maybe, eventually, even jokes that can be made of ever having had an attraction in the first place. like you said - honest and upfront. i know i’m not like most ‘typical girls’, but i will always appreciate a friend who can tell me everything like it is and respect someone who can make themselves vulnerable by being honest.
of course. now that i think about it. if i had a male friend i had a crush on, i probably would either say nothing or try to secretly seduce him. so, what is that old saying about those who can’t do, teach? yeah, that’s me, apparently. i’ll just add a “be better than me! don’t make the same mistakes i did!” and we’ll be all set for this lecturing from afar segment of the day.
wow damsel had like a real thought out comment. Damn her being awesome at everything :)
The whole platonic thing is a myth, a mirage, when in practice. Pining from far away, or even close up hurts. Why put yourself through something that the intended is oblivious to?
Gosh Damsel, you get extra brownie points for referencing another post of mine. :D It is a mixture of pride and fear that stops anyone from confessing their crushes and I think a million words and love songs and teen movies have been spent on this so if people still can’t deal with their crushes then my blogging certainly isn’t going to change anything.
Yeah I tried the secret seducing thing and it did not work for me. I guess I wasn’t working my mojo hard enough.
Tiff, this is the first time I’ve seen someone have comment envy, haha. Perhaps the purely platonic thing is unachievable but I see it more as an ideal than a myth. Pining is definitely a bad thing but I think sexual tension can exist without it becoming unrequited love.
The experience I’ve had all too regularly is that if you’re friends and then you start crushing on her, and give the complements, she’s just take it as a friend giving complements. She’ll be thankful for it, but generally won’t think more of it because they know they have your loyalty and they don’t have to “fight” for the complement. (I’m stereotyping hard here - ladies, feel free to tell me I’m off base)
Your point that platonic male-female relationships is a really good one, but just because it hasn’t been around for generations doesn’t mean much, in my mind. Each generation relearns all the relationship conventions and social nuances all over again, and adding the platonic relationship to the mix just adds more lessons to learn.
That said, sut-and-out saying “will you fuck me” is an absolute point of no return. Maybe you’ll get lucky, maybe you’ll be able to get past it anyway, but for all those non-Lotharios out there, there’s always going to be that element of “what if she absolutely hates me afterwards?”.
My best lesson has been that it’s never the end of the world. Cliche, but there’s always more fish.
aargh, editing.
“platonic male-female relationships [haven't been around for long]“
sut-and-out -> out-and-out
The point I’m trying to make about the compliments is to be unambiguous and let them know you personally find them attractive. Sure, it might be hard to dispel the ambiguity of generic white lie vs. actual interest it’s worth it.
I think the lack of a model for platonic relationship speaks volumes. People build relationships based on what they know whether they draw from family, friends, movies or porn. Yes, there are lots of hard lessons that you can only learn first-hand but that in no way implies that a human somehow builds up a model of social interaction from scratch. That is impossible. We frankenstein models of thinking from both real experience and the stories we see every day.
The out-and-out “let’s fuck” is only an absolute point if you made it to be one. Wouldn’t it be awkward if your best friend just announced one day that you should sleep together? Build a foundation and appropriate context, inspire attraction in the other person, learn to enjoy the game of flirting rather than backing people against a wall with Yes/No ultimatums.
There’s always more fish and you can’t afford to be hung up on a single “what if”. You need to determine the situation, mark them as a friend or otherwise and move on instead of months of agonizing over whether it’s worth shooting for that point of no return.