His iPhone: Why Can’t We Be Friends?

Can boys and girls ever just be friends? It depends on the guy, plain and simple. Some guys can and some guys can’t. It is based on a situational difference. In college it gets even more complicated and tricky as social situations are often lubricated with alcohol, and well, alcohol makes people slutty.

I’ll save you the talk on rapport vs. report talking and men and women. Take Morality of Marriage to hear all about that, Fr. Klein is good. Some guys can’t be friends with girls because they can’t have the conversations necessary to maintain a meaningful friendship.

The Magnet Theory:

When you were a kid and played with magnets, you would face the positive side to the negative side and they would snap together. Then, you’d face negative to negative and watch them fly apart. The trick to being just friends is finding out how to turn your “inner magnet” so it’s negative facing negative. Which depending on the person (magnet) is either easy or not so easy.

Guys:

It is easy to stay just friends as a guy, depending on the attractiveness of the girl. It sounds horrible to say but if the guy is not physically attracted to the girl then keeping it just platonic should not be an issue. If he is not trying to get in the girls pants then he should be able to focus on the conversation and other things important to friendship.

Not all guys are shallow and attractive guys can be friends with attractive girls. The trick then is finding a way to deal with the “What If We…?” situations.

Girls:

I’m not a girl. I want to avoid over generalizing cause that will get me in trouble. So I’ll leave that to BlackBerry girl.

“What If We…?”

The “What If We Could…?” factor, however, can’t be denied. At some point a thought of something happening between two friends is bound to arise. True friendship will be able to weather the storm; those who can’t won’t be friends or will drunkenly hookup one weekend night and then not be friends anymore.

Friends

So if you are lucky enough to find someone who is friendship-only material (guy or girl) you are lucky. It is possible, but tricky.  Guys and girls who are friends are always useful because they can provide insight into the mindset of the opposite sex.

Once you have found a worthwhile friend, don’t play the friends-first-potential-lovers-later game. The friend zone is the friend zone, my friends. BlackBerry girl will tell you it is impossible, so prove her wrong because we know I’m right.

– Sent from my iPhone