I've been constantly inspired by my friend Lucie (http://lisforlucie.blogspot.co.uk/) over the last few months to start writing a free-form blog where I discuss what's on my mind at any given moment.
I'm kicking things off with a slightly deeper subject than I intended, it's based around an incident that recently happened to my friend, Miranda. Without going too far into detail, Miranda's good friend, Toby recently declared his love for her. It was out of the blue for Miranda and it's certainly affected their relationship. It got me thinking, how hard is it for men and women to be platonic friends?
Our culture certainly seems to tell us that it isn't possible at all. There are plenty of films and TV shows where the guy and gal end up together in the end - it's essentially the whole plot of Friends. We're conditioned to think that there's someone out there for us all, maybe even right under our noses.
A platonic friendship needs to be a relationship where any idea of sex is off the table. It's tricky, as members of the opposite sex, we're hard-wired to procreate. However, it's worthwhile to pursue.
Don O'Meara, Ph.D. published his findings on the subject in the journal Sex Roles in 1989. His research was based on the "challenges" that a platonic relationship faces. Those challenges being: defining it, dealing with sexual attraction, seeing each other as
equals, facing people's responses to the relationship and meeting in
the first place.
It's pretty clear from O'Meara's findings that there's a level of communication to be improved upon. I know from my own personal experience (that I'll elaborate on in future posts) that communicating with the opposite sex is something you can learn - it's also maintaining a high level of honesty that's important too. O'Meara and other social scientists have furthered their research and made some very interesting findings.
The main one that sticks out for me is that men benefit from a cross-sex relationship more than women do. It's pretty much down to what men get from their relationships from other men - not much. A successful platonic relationship can benefit from the emotional soundboard, women confide in other women and are comfortable when men confide in them too. It's worth mentioning that women benefit from a guys lack of sensitivity too - we're a little harder to offend, most of the time.
So, it's clear, researchers believe that we can benefit from platonic friendships with the opposite sex. We just have to be honest, communicate and make sure we putting the right boundaries in place. I'm not going to lie to you, I've gotten my wires crossed a few times in the past but I have some really great friendships with girls that I wouldn't trade for anything.
I'm interested in what you think about my post. Please comment below.
JC
