By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
May 17, 2001
You have met the man of your dreams. Besides being a walking, talking hottie, he’s smart, funny and well-educated. You look at him and can totally imagine making babies with him. Bad news, though. He only thinks of you as a p-a-l; you’ve got a great personality, but he’s not going to be asking you out anytime soon.
You consider your options:
A. Buy a killer outfit and try to seduce him.
B. Drop kick him to the curb, and look for a guy who wants to date you rather than compare dates with you.
C. Resign yourself to being friends.
If you’re wavering between B and C, Dr. Drew Pinsky says you’re on the right track.
“Men and women can be friends,” says intimacy and relationship expert Pinsky, co-host of “Loveline” and “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” “At the beginning, one person is usually attracted to the other. That’s what motivates people to come together.
“People can accept reality, but you have to come clean about your feelings to keep the relationship on an honest plane. You have to give the person the opportunity to say no he or she doesn’t want to go in that direction. You can’t maintain an honest relationship if you’re encumbered by your secret. Imagine how sick you’d feel if your friend came to you to talk about someone else he or she liked.”
That’s exactly what happened to Lisa Levins when one of her best friends admitted he’d been in love with her for the past few years.
“I felt like my friend had been dishonest with me,” says the 35-year-old Naperville resident. ” felt like all the things I had told him about my relationships and the things we had done together were a lie. We used to go to the beach together, and I’d try to set him up with my friends or girls I knew. I just thought he was really picky, but he told me later that he couldn’t imagine dating anyone who wasn’t me.”
Many women would have been flattered, but Levins was stunned. She started to question advice he’d given her and his motivations. Their relationship eventually crumbled because he couldn’t forgive her for “not liking him back in that way,” and she felt uncomfortable.
Pop culture tells us that male-female friendships are possible and can even lead to romance. Look at Niles and Daphne on the hit show “Frasier.” It seemed as if Daphne–with all of her supposed psychic powers–would never pick up Niles’ desperate yet unspoken signals of his secret love for her. Finally, this season, they’re exploring the depths of their feelings for each other. The wedding tonight on “Friends” culminates a long, platonic friendship between Monica and Chandler. Even on “Felicity,” our young heroine has been ricocheting over the past three years between Ben and Noel, two men who have been both her platonic friends and lovers.
“Friendship is the transition from two people meeting as strangers to where a mutual trust is established,” says Phil Mckane, 33, of Hyde Park. “On the face of things, men and women interact with each other, but there is an invisible line that divides friendships from intimate relationships based on a universal code of conduct formed in the early years of our childhood. The difficulty is when there’s sexual attraction.”
Mckane has been the object of a friend’s desire, as well as the one who admitted to a female pal that he had a crush on her. He didn’t date either woman and remains friends with both.
“Because you’re dealing with affairs of the heart, things can get very sensitive,” McKane says. “That’s why you have to be honest. Once you establish the parameters and clarify your position, people respect you for it. You’re giving the other person the opportunity to make a decision as to whether or not they’re going to reciprocate.”
Or, as North Sider Ho-Sung Pak, 32, puts it, “You can be friends until (sex) happens. Then you are faced with the reality that you could have sex or stay friends. I know most guys would pick sex because it’s what drives most males.”
With the possibility of sexual tension and broken hearts, you might think no one would bother venturing into relationships with friends.
“You could say the same thing about divorce,” says Sandy Kapelta, 45, of Rogers Park. “Why bother marrying? We forge ahead in marriage and in friendships with members of the opposite sex because they provide value in our lives.
“I would never give up my male friends just because there was the possibility of something going wrong. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong.”
Lakeview couple Gina and Bill Blouin have a strong commitment to their relationship and opposite-sex friends. While Bill, 34, estimates that half of his friends are female–and platonic–his 31-year-old wife believes his friendships are the exception.
“For most people, there’s more flirtation or sexual tension going on even though all the people involved may be completely innocent,” Gina says. “Before I got married, I’ve had situations where I developed a crush on a man, or he got one for me. I dealt with them the same way: basic avoidance. The strong friendships lasted.”
Bill does have one exception to his friendship clause. He won’t befriend former girlfriends: “Even I’m not that weird.”
*****
Relationship expert Dr. Drew Pinsky answers a few questions about opposite sex friendships:
Do friends ever end up getting married?
They do, but its much more the guy being attracted to her and bringing her around. Thats a much more common scenario than a guy coming around. It is very difficult for women to accept how men operate, which is often on a very visceral level. If hes not initially physically attracted to her, shes probably not going to be able to turn him around.
Can you make a friend fall in lust with you?
For a guy, its a base level. Men operate on a very primitive attraction level to begin with. If that isn’t there, they’re not interested in romance. For some guys, floodgates will open when they learn someone is interested in them, but that’s not as common. For women, the more they like a man the more they can grow attracted to him. My wife always says that men don’t have female friends unless theyre interested in them sexually. I have a few, but my wife knows them and is friendly with them as well.
How can married couples have opposite sex friends without making their partners jealous?
By keeping the boundaries very clear. People need to be very tuned in to what is potentially hurtful to their spouses. Even if youre innocent, you shouldnt hang out with someone if its bothering your spouse. Things can get very hurtful.
*****
The student website flunk.net posed the question, Can men and women ever be just friends?
Yes (17 percent)
No (50 percent)
Sometimes (13 percent)
One is always thinking about sex (20 percent)
