After spending nearly the last three years of my life living among my peers, I have come to develop many friendships with both guys and girls. Since freshman year, I have had more guy friends than girl friends.
I am not saying that I did not get along with many girls. I just found that I got along much better with guys than girls. Let us be honest: they are not as petty as girls. And I will admit that I can be petty at times.
Up until now, I never questioned whether or not my guy friends were true friends or were interested in something more.
I thought it was completely normal to have guys as friends that are strictly friends and never think about crossing any boundaries.
However, after my boyfriend noticed the call log on my phone and saw the number of guys that I have been talking to on the phone, who I consider to be just friends, he brought up an interesting question:
Can a male and female just be friends?
By talking to both male and female students, I have found that both sexes think that it is almost impossible to have a strictly platonic relationship with the opposite sex.
Joe Valente ’06 expressed his opinion that guys are not out to be just friends with girls, but admits to having a few girls that are just friends.
“I have three friends that are girls that I don’t want to have sex with,” said Valente.
Ryan M. ’06 made a very blunt but honest point about his relationships with girls.
“Every girl I meet I try to have sex with [her],” said Maresca. “When that doesn’t work out and they want to become friends, we just stop talking.”
Katelyn Friedson ’06 agreed that guys and girls cannot really be friends.
“I think girls can be friends with guys in a strictly platonic way because girls tend to want to talk about feeling more than guys do, whereas guys, for the most part, don’t need that,” she said. “So the only reason a guy would befriend a girl is for romantic reasons.”
However, she made an interesting point that helped me narrow down who girls can really consider to be just their friend.
“Guys with girlfriends tend to want girls as friends to ask for relationship advice, so that they can ask things that they would feel dumb going to their guy friends about,” she said.
Now that I think about my friendships with guys, I have come to the conclusion that the only guys that girls can really have strictly plutonic relationships with are guys with girlfriends.
But then that starts a new issue with the girlfriends. So girls, don’t let your boyfriends make many “girl friends.”
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