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Litcrit
Guest
Fishing and sports were mentioned in the brackets at the end of the sentence which included
which are not trifles or small talk - they constitute serious conversation between friends. I don’t have problems in my marriage to discuss and I don’t reveal absolutely intimate sexual details to anyone (I’d hope not may people do), so this is what for me is discussing marital issues with my friends - whichever sex they may belong to. And for some reason I prefer talking about my husband with my male friends.
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SRLAUREL
Guest
In that case, join the club. What does friend-zoned mean? What about the reference to a ten-foot pole?
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joshvanrad
Guest
My friend Jenny and I have been extremely good friends for the past decade. She even lived in one of the spare bedrooms of my house for a while a couple years ago.
We once talked about this very topic and what we both discovered is that we had both analyzed the possibility of a romantic relationship, but decided we are best suited as friends. I think a romantic relationship would crumble under the weight of our contrasting personalities, but as “just friends” we thrive and are able to keep a really great friendship untarnished.
Ite in pace,
Joshua C.
We once talked about this very topic and what we both discovered is that we had both analyzed the possibility of a romantic relationship, but decided we are best suited as friends. I think a romantic relationship would crumble under the weight of our contrasting personalities, but as “just friends” we thrive and are able to keep a really great friendship untarnished.
Ite in pace,
Joshua C.
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LostChemist
Guest
I have more female friends than male ones and there is NO romantic interest at all. I definitely believe that men and women can be friends. The travesty here is that so many people perpetuate this myth to the detriment of friendships. There have been many women that have said that they can’t be friends with me simply because I am a guy and guys and gals can’t be friends. I find this outrageous. Sadly, it seems that the more religious folks are the ones that hold this position. The movies nowadays also perpetuate this.
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SRLAUREL
Guest
I have not seen any indication that more religious folks hold the position that men and women cannot just be friends (quite the opposite in fact) but I completely agree that the notion that sexual urges and romantic impulses cannot be resisted or channeled appropriately is part of a myth perpetuated to the detriment of true friendship — which means to the detriment of other forms of loves besides eros.
Our culture trivializes sex and thus treats it as something that is not susceptible of human integration or direction. Once this attention to the naturalness of sex was thought to be a way of honoring sex, but because this emphasis was too one-sided it has simply demeaned sex into something that drives human lives on every level to the exclusion of notions of commitment, integrity, love, responsibility, friendship, etc. Sex is natural, but, in the human being, it is also sacred and to treat it otherwise is to trivialize it and human beings, their relationships, and their capacity for communion in the process.
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VeritasLuxMea
Guest
"Friend-Zone" is slang. It refers to a situation in which person A has romantic interest in person B, however person B views person A as a platonic friend only.
Example: Bob is romantically interested in Ann. Ann appreciates Bob’s friendship, but does not share his romantic feelings.
Addendum: this phrase is often used to describe situations where there was a window of time to attempt to form a romantic relationship, but that window of time has now closed. In that case, it is not necessary for either party to have romantic interest in the other party. They may have “friend-zoned” each other.
For example, let’s say that a young boy and a young girl grew up as neighbors, and they formed a very close friendship. Often, by the time they grow up to a marriageable age they may be said to have a brother-sister sort of relationship, such that it is impossible for one to think of the other in a romantic way. However, if they had never formed such a friendship, then they might have been good romantic partners. But the friendship is now so close that it is preventing them from pursuing such a relationship. (Sorry if this was a confusing example.)
"Ten Foot Pole" is also slang. It refers to someone’s desire to keep their distance from another person, place or thing. It is often used in a hyperbolic manner to indicate dislike or disinterest.
Example: “I wouldn’t touch cauliflower with a ten foot pole!” means, “I don’t want to eat cauliflower, it’s disgusting!”
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Crescentinus
Guest
I’m a product of that culture. Sadly, even in anime and Korean dramas you see this problem.
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Kathryn_Ann
Guest
I would say it’s possible, but rare.
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GodIsMyLight
Guest
Sure they can!
I have a lot more guy friends than girl friends, I love them of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt romantically attracted to them. If it happens though, I won’t refuse the opportunity, it just hasn’t happen yet.
I have a lot more guy friends than girl friends, I love them of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt romantically attracted to them. If it happens though, I won’t refuse the opportunity, it just hasn’t happen yet.
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LostChemist
Guest
My experience with the religus issue is it seems that some people are brought up with a set of rules of how a man and woman should behave in public. I am a happily married man and my wife doesn’t have an issue with me being friends with women. We have a healthy marriage based on love and trust. However, there have been many Christian females that have this idea that they cannot be friends with a married man. This is somehow taboo. I have a Catholic friend that is really dear to me and this has caused much more drama then I care to deal with and almost ended our friendship. She still lives with her parents who are devote Catholics and they have a problem with me and her doing pretty much anything together. They firmly believe that we shouldn’t be friends because I’m married. Now, my wife has met her and there has never been a danger of going past more than friends. I understand that and so does she. In the beginning though, she was very skiddish around me for those reasons. She’s not the only one in fact. There have been many females that wouldn’t be friends with me simply based on this fact. For example, while I was still an undergrad in college I was taking an ethics class where this student brought up some great points. After class I asked her if she would like to go and grab a cup of coffee and the vendor a few feet away to further discuss her viewpoints. She flat out looked at me and said that she couldn’t have coffee with me because I was married. I tried to tell her that I was just looking to talk about class and still she said that it would be inapproporiate and walked away. She even made it a point to sit further away from me in class. I have seen this on too many occasions!
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GodIsMyLight
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Now that you bring this up, I remember both my mom and my aunt were exactly the same until a few years ago. I remember I was also this way when I was younger, and now that I think of it, I think it is because we went to the same all girls private Catholic school. Boys were not allowed inside school, in fact, not even brothers of the girls were allowed to pick them up if mom/dad weren’t present. They went to that school from kindergarten up until HS, but I left n 6th grade. They are not like that anymore, probably since around 9 years or so ago. My dad is cool with my mom having male friends, and my mom is cool with my dad having female friends.
This made me remember how hard it was for me to learn how to socialize with boys, I am thankful for my parents they enrolled me in a coed Catholic school for a year, and then public school. As I said before I now have more male friends than female friends.
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SRLAUREL
Guest
Ah, I see what you mean then. I was coming at this from the perspective of seeing folks who seem to treat sex as the quick route to relating to people or to genuine intimacy. For these people friendship seems not to enter the equation, getting to know one another in the ways friends actually do is not on their radar screen even, and the naturalness of sex is so emphasized that its sacredness is completely missed. (Nothing wrong with treating sex as natural, of course, unless you also miss the sacredness and personally demanding dimensions as well.) Usually, I have found such folks to be non-religious or even anti-religious and often their approach to sex is to use is as a means of rebellion from the religious.
Many thanks for explaining your perspective. I too have seen this, but just found it less prevalent than what I have described. Clearly what you describe as well as what I describe are both problems in approaching the challenge of male/female friendships.
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EasterJoy
Guest
Our culture trivializes sex in order to sell cars, deodorant, cosmetics, and clothing. The business about honoring sex by remembering that it is natural was, IMHO, an ill-conceived effort to oppose that cynical assault on the human person for the sake of profit.
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EasterJoy
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a) Your friend is still living with her parents, so she may be comfortable with broader boundaries. That is her perogative. Being free to choose one’s friends includes being free to exclude married men. Sitting in a coffee shop with a married man, after all, does not seem a good way to find a spouse of one’s own.
b) Speaking of “I’ve seen this on too many occasions”, you only have to be hit on by a married male friend once to set your boundaries a good deal stricter. There are married men on college campuses who think nothing of pursuing women not their wives, both among students and staff. College, after all, seems by many to not be “the real world” but rather a place set up for “self-exploration” and the “pursuit of one’s dreams”. They just get nutty. And oh, yeah, the “you have such a great mind” line is used by a lot of them as a hook for collegiate women they want to pursue. That is a common route for flattery.
c) You don’t know what her past is, so don’t be too sure you know why her comfort zone is where it is. Not everyone who won’t hang out in bars is a temperance freak. Some of them are alcoholics. Some of them have dated one alcoholic too many. If you have any tragedy surrounding male-female relationships in your past, you can easily get to be an “ex-smoker” about the whole matter.
If you really want to talk about class with this friend, consider approaching her, granting that her boundary about married men is common (if not universal) among sensible adults, and asking her to have dinner or lunch with you and your wife, and encourage her to bring a friend…male, female, whoever she likes. Then she’ll know that your interest actually is social. Besides, it will get your wife into your academic life and your academic circle of friends, and she might enjoy that.
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SRLAUREL
Guest
I agree this is a big piece of the way sex is trivialized and exploited today. However, another piece of the picture is the need to get around notions of sex as dirty or sinful, and part of doing this was to stress the naturalness of sex. It was a big step from sex-as-sinful (and this meant for many teachers of the faith at least venially sinful even in marriage!) to sex as natural, but another step needed to be taken as well to prevent its trivialization: namely, the step to affirming sex as sacred and sacramental.
Today the Church is very clear about the sacramental or sacred nature of sex, but the dominant view of sex is of it as only natural. Were we to understand sex as sacramental we would be less able to trivialize it as we do, and more open to understanding it as something related to human human integrity and dignity rather than as a primitive drive which cannot be controlled or channeled in distinctly human ways.
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EasterJoy
Guest
Isn’t that the tendency we all have? In one age, the faithful can be so in awe of the Blessed Sacrament that they wrongly avoid Holy Communion, while in another age the faithful become so comfortable with the unfailing love of God that they believe reverence is unimportant! It goes back to a saying that I like: If the narrow way could be found by holding the steering wheel hard as far to the right or as far to the left as possible, then it wouldn’t be difficult to find, would it? As it is, there is a ditch on both sides of the road, so one must drive attentively, with open eyes and focus in mind and heart. With trust in God’s mercy, yes, but we have eyes in order to be able to look at the road!
Sex is a very powerful drive, but it is not the only driving force of a mature human being. Our sex drive is, as you put it, “susceptible of human integration and direction”. That direction is the setting in which our sexuality is meant to reach its perfection, in which virtue is the master of concupiscence. Having said that, each of us have our own strengths and weaknesses, one this and another that, and we need to select our friends and social situations with both our strengths and our weaknesses in mind.
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SRLAUREL
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This is not, in this case anyway, only about a tendency — though it is ALSO about that. It has to do with Church teaching. For centuries, largely thanks to Saint Augustine, sex was seen as sinful and even in marriage it was still seen as venially sinful — though it was tolerated for the purposes of pro-creation, etc. It is only in the past half-century or so that the Church herself has stressed the Sacramental or sacred nature of sex. (Moral theologians have done so for longer than this.)
The response to Church teaching eventually was the rebellion and correlative assertion of the naturalness and beauty of sex we find so prevalent in the past century (or less). This was a big step, but it did not go far enough. Hence the Church has been stressing the further necessity — that people regard sex as sacred/sacramental and that a vocation to marriage be understood as a genuine call to holiness as complete as religious life or ordination are such calls. (The universal call to holiness was part of the fruit of Vatican II, as I am sure you know well.) Treating sexual/married love as sacred and a way to genuine holiness really was something new.
However, I agree with all you say about knowing ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, etc.
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irishOntarian
Guest
Quick note: I think it’s a bad way to put it to say “just friends.” Friendship is different from an erotic relationship, but it’s not a little thing either. Ideally, I like to think of friendship as a kind of extended siblinghood 
And on that count, yes, a man and a woman can totally be friends, and even close friends, without having a romantic relationship.
And on that count, yes, a man and a woman can totally be friends, and even close friends, without having a romantic relationship.
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irishOntarian
Guest
Oh man that’s awful! There’s already been too much alienation between the sexes without this kind of thing!
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