In the aftermath of the Mark Sanford debacle, Laura at the conservative Pursuing Holiness blog asks the old question: Can Men and Women be Friends? Her answer is the expected one: no.
Can men and women be friends? Certainly. My husband is my best friend – the ultimate “friend with benefits.” But it is unwise in the extreme to invest your emotions and build an intimacy with someone with whom you can’t complete that intimacy. Even if you are never physically unfaithful, is there any way to have an intimate friend of the opposite sex without depriving your spouse of the emotional investment to which they’re entitled?
I wrote a post four years ago on this subject. I re-read that piece of mine this morning, and as is so often the case with my “older” musings, I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with myself in equal measure. As I mark eleven years clean and sober this week, I note that my own spiritual journey since 1998 has been a rapid and occasionally turbulent one — and as a result, my thinking on a variety of issues continues to evolve and shift as I grow and learn. The posts I put up in my first two years of steady blogging (2004-05) tended to be much more conservative in tone than the ones I’ve put up more recently. Four or five years ago, I was only just coming out of what I call my “boundary-learning” stage; after so many years of what might best be described as exuberant transgressiveness, I was until recently perhaps over-sensitive to the potential for a sexual charge in virtually any relationship. I’m glad I practiced that level of caution; it was a needed corrective to an earlier way. I note that by last year, when I put up this post about controlling boyfriends, my views had already begun to shift.
But in light of Laura’s post, and my own words from 2005, I’d like to revisit — briefly — the issue of male-female non-romantic friendship.
First of all, like Laura, in my 2005 post my approach was blindly heteronormative. If men and women can’t be friends because of the possibility of sexual attraction, then it follows that lesbians and straight women can’t be friends, nor gay men and straight guys. And bisexuals? Clearly a group for whom radical introversion and isolation is the only possible course. One mistake we make around these issues, over and over again, is that we can predict with certainty what sort of people we are going to be attracted to. The anecdotes are legion of women and men falling in love with people of their same sex after living — in many instances, quite happily — in heterosexual relationships for years and years. As a man who has been generally drawn to women throughout his life, I’ve been surprised once or twice by an unexpected twinge of attraction to a male friend. It is culturally imposed homophobia rather than biological hardwiring that prevents more men from admitting the same thing.
In other words, sexual attraction is, for a great many of us, a fluid thing. A few of us always fall for the same types, like blonde tennis players or dark-eyed philosophy majors of North African ancestry. But most of us who think we have or had a “type” are stunned by how the radical exceptions come into our lives. And not as infrequently as is imagined, that exception is of a completely different gender identity. Simply telling your husband “I only want you hanging out with guys, not with women” isn’t an automatic prophylaxis against an affair — it’s only an attempted barrier against a heterosexual one. The number of men or women who were stunned beyond words by their other-sexed spouses’ decision to leave them for partners of the same sex is, as is widely noted, nearly legion. So often, no one in a marriage sees it coming.
I’ve become increasingly convinced that a hostility to the possibility of genuine platonic friendship between men and women exacerbates the problem of infidelity. When we repeat the traditional common sense notion that men and women can’t be friends, we set ourselves and our culture up to view the other sex with a mix of suspicion and wonder. We also set ourselves up to believe in our own frailty. Those who wish to make a theological case for the total depravity of human beings have a great deal invested in emphasizing the universality of weakness; they have a reason to stress our incapacity to sublimate our erotic desires to our reason and our promises. Conservative Calvinists are on common ground with the peddlers of romance novels, who emphasize stories of folks being “swept away” or “knocked over” by love. When we set people up to believe that they are vulnerable to being swept off their feet, of course, the chances are excellent that they will find themselves swept off their feet. We’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy by relentlessly underselling human agency.
Saying that human frailty is oversold isn’t the same thing as saying we ought’nt to be careful. We are, as a species, remarkably proficient at self-deception. But we can learn how to be close without being romantically or sexually intimate. Through practicing good healthy non-sexual relationships with folks of other sexes, we learn our own boundaries. The earlier we start in forming these relationships, the better. Rather than teaching young teens on the cusp of puberty that the other sex is a mystery, we need to do everything we can to demystify men and women to each other. That process of demystification happens best by encouraging opposite-sex friendships to flourish at all ages, from kindergarten to adulthood, among the single and the committed alike. And while this demystification won’t lessen the power of attraction, it will make the attraction seem less destructively overpowering when it does emerge.
Does her position mean that bisexuals can’t have friends at all?
Whoops, sorry, I see you made that point. *embarrassed*
Trying to set a bunch of rules to stop infidelity has always struck me as an understandable but fruitless urge. Cheating is almost always a reaction to the primary relationship, even if the immediate temptation seems like the cause. I’m completely able to hang out with male friends—even travel with them far away from home—without being hit with this strong urge to cheat. Because I don’t really feel like I’ve got anything to rebel against, which is the ingredient that gives cheating its juice.
It boggles my mind that there’s a debate about this.
The hilarious part is that I’ve been sincerely told “men and women can’t be friends” by women I consider to be platonic friends. Their excuse was that they were friends with my wife first, so I’m some sort of adjunct to her instead of a male friend in my own right.
I’m confused about the quote’s saying men and women can’t be “intimate friends.” What is an “intimate friend”? I do think there is a level of intimacy with a friend that, especially combined with sexual attraction or sexual history together, is incompatible with maintaining a marriage/LTR with someone else. But I don’t know why opposite sex friends would necessarily be “intimate” friends. I have some very good male friends. I don’t really consider them “intimate” friends. I guess I think that throwing “intimate” in there is just a way to hedge, because it’s the “intimate” that is making the friend relationship problematic to the primary love relationship. It’s like defining away all the not problematic male/female friendships by saying “well those aren’t intimate.”
Good post as usual, Hugo; I must confess when I hear this old canard, I can’t help but think the speaker’s emotional and personal growth was somehow stunted in adolescence. On the other hand, like Stentor, I’ve known many people who express a deep certainty in their belief in any variety of strong and particularly absurd versions of culturally dominant gender norms, even as their own complex lives, attachments, behavior and personalities belie such nonsense. It’s an odd phenomenon indeed.
I can’t believe I waited this long to find and read your blog. Well written, brave and illuminating. Reminds me of lectures. (Men & Masculinities 2003)
Adulation aside, the post “Can Men and Women be Friends?” serves to further evidence the appeal of delineating the world between black and white divides.
There are many who need the world simplified. I have my beliefs on why this is so but will reluctantly hold my tongue. However, stating it impossible for men and women to be friends is bold and egocentric. In reality, what the writer is saying is she can’t be friends with a man, but as is so often the case with people who only see a shadeless world, she universalizes her attitudes and values and fails to imagine a perspective outside of her own.
Of course this is understandable. Admitting that some may be strong enough to enjoy the fruits of opposite-sex friendships means that others (themselves) are too weak to do the same. It thus becomes much more palatable to say, “If I can’t do it, no one can.”
And as you so astutely point out, religion, especially religions of the west that implant and then reinforce the idea that man needs be constantly guided or fall prey to the temptation he/she is too weak to combat on his/her own, creates not only a self-fulfilling prophecy but also an always within reach excuse.
Excuse my long post. I believe the crux of the issue is this, until both men and women realize that being faithful is a choice one has to make everyday for the rest of their life and not just some mountain top romantic promise, the temptations will always win out.
If a person doesn’t have a spouse to owe intimacy to, well, then, they can be friends with whoever they want…But anyway, you said it best, especially about the ideologies that have a vested interest in emphasizing our frailties.
I think that part of the “men and women can’t be friends” myth is rooted in the related “men are from mars, women are from venus” myth…you know, the one that says men and women are so different it’s almost like we’re from other planets and learning to communicate with the opposite sex is like learning a foreign language. By positing that men and women are so completely different that communication and connection requires a significant effort, this forces the person making these assumptions to ask: Why bother? The answer: Because they want sex!
It always frustrates me when my guy friends act like women are some sort of alien creature. I invariably end up asking, “Well, what would your response be to X situation” or “Why do you do X” and then telling them their answer is not far off from female motivations. “Why do you like to have sex? Because you like to have orgasms! Well, what do ya know. Women like to have orgasms too! Who’d have thunk?” Sure, this isn’t a perfect practice, but I’m convinced that that damn Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus book has done more to kill communication between the opposite gender than anything else in the last few decades…ironic since the author was actually trying to HELP men and women communicate.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions I guess.
As usual, I agree with everything you wrote, Hugo.
And I find it interesting that Laura says:
“But it is unwise in the extreme to invest your emotions and build an intimacy with someone with whom you can’t complete that intimacy.”
So, does that mean she doesn’t have any female friends with whom she invests her emotions, since, being a married heterosexual female, she “can’t complete that intimacy” with them?
I have a spin on this… and I do mean spin.
What if the primary ‘intimate’ relationship someone has is ‘not’ their sexual one?
I had a number of ‘gal pals’ over the years where the most ‘intimate’ relationship in their lives was not the sexual one, and never has been or even desired to be. Nurturing, intimate, affectionate relationships need not be sexual. These relationships I would observe the heterosexual partner was the outsider and existed with a level of intimacy for their intended although sub-consciously purpose as sexual and reproductive tool.
What I mean here is a long standing sole mate status friendship between two ‘admittedly heterosexual women’ was the primary relationship or couple. The men or secondary relationship was drown out of a necessity to reproduce, and took away, reduced the primary intimate relationship… but was tolerated out of society convention. The husband was always the real outsider, the third party never to obtain the level of emotional or intellectual intimacy as the primary relationship because there was never a desire/necessity for that to happen by the members of the primary relationship.
So who is cheating on who?
@Stentor
A lot of good male friends of mine are the significant others of my female friends. I think that this dynamic is very helpful for me initially in forming other-sex friendships because all games and expectations are automatically (in theory) off the table. these guys usually initially appreciate me because I don’t try to get their demonize them or scrutinize them for my friend’s sake. then we become genuine friends at some point. at this point, i like to let them know that i consider them friends in their own right. i have taken to telling this to the girls too because i find that a lot of the time the expect some sort of girl-code behavior where i can be expected to side against him at the first signs of trouble. a lot of the time i tell the women something like “your and older friend and a closer friend, but since I have invested energy into becoming friends with your bf i consider him a friend in his own right. and if he fucks you over i have your back of course, but if you breakup he is still my friend.” usually they react well to this. i really hate girl-code and guy-code which values friendships on gender and not content. it makes me sad that your female friends won’t aknowledge your full worth, but they probably feel like it would be disloyal
Paul: I think the “cheating” depends on expectations. It could be seen as cheating on the men if the husband desires to be or thought he would be the primary intimate relationship. But if everyone’s happy with their position, or knew it going in, then I don’t think there’s any cheating going on.
It sounds to me like in your example the female diad has accepted the male partners as an acknowledged part of their lives such that being “intimate” with them, to a degree, is not cheating, because it’s expected and part of the agreement. However, one of the women might feel a sense of betrayal if the male partner became the primary intimate partner of the other female. And to me, whether it was a betrayal would depend on whether there was an agreement to maintain the friend relationship as primary or whether that was expected by one party but not agreed to by the other.
Of course, there are both explicit and implicit agreements and obligations. With marriage, there is a societal default, and while I think that people getting married should explicitly discuss their expectations, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone, in the absence of such a discussion, to assume the societal default in terms of obligations and expectations regarding intimacy and fidelity. It may cause problems down the road, but it’s not unreasonable.
I really appreciate the acknowledgment that, while most of us have “types” we might consciously know we are attracted to, it is often those that surprise us that are the most challenging, to us and our intimates. I’ve posted here before, and while I know we disagree on polyamory, one of the elements to that approach to loving that I think is useful here is the freedom to acknowledge that someone who has been a friend is now someone that is sexually attractive — out loud, to both yourself and your partner. This can often defuse the situation, make it into something less threatening, mostly for the simple reason that it is no longer hidden away.