Men's friendships with women 'driven by sexual attraction'

[snopes]

Men's relationships with their female friends may be fuelled by an undercurrent of sexual attraction regardless of whether they are single but the feeling is not mutual, a new study suggests.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...ttraction.html

[LadyLockeout]

Because DOYC forbid that men have no sexual attraction to any woman, any where, for any reason, right?

[Ramblin' Dave]

My own experience with that problem when I was single makes me think the article might be missing a key point. When I had a crush on a friend, it was nearly always the case that I hadn't been attracted to her when we first became friends. That came later, and always because as we got to know one another better, we developed a sense of emotional intimacy. That, IME, is a bigger deal for men than for women, so for me it was something very special whereas for her it wasn't really any different than with her close female friends. That also would explain the article's finding that women often don't realize their friends have feelings for them.

It hurt to realize how often that bond is viewed differently from the other end, but I guess it was an important lesson to learn. If there is a fundamental difference between men and women on this issue (and I am always skeptical of that, on any issue), I think that's it: emotional intimacy can be viewed very differently.

[Magdalene]

Originally Posted by LadyLockeout

Because DOYC forbid that men have no sexual attraction to any woman, any where, for any reason, right?

My male (and gay) friend J and I had some fun with this at a tarot-card reader's expense once. She insisted that I didn't really have any true male friends, I just had men in my life who wanted to have sex with me. J was close enough to hear, and I kept looking over at him, trying to keep a straight face, and he finally came over with an over-exaggerated "cave man" swagger, dropped his voice about seven octaves, stood next to me, made a big show of 'adjusting his package' and said, "Yeah, baby, that whole queerer than than a three dollar bill was all part of a big scheme to convince you that you were the only woman who could turn me straight."

The tarot card reader was pretty pissed. I figure that's what she gets for insisting all my male friends only wanted to have sex with me when I told her, "I'm pretty sure there's a few who *definitely* aren't interested in me that way...."

Magdalene
Still not sorry about that

[crocoduck_hunter]

That was a good one.

[Esprise Me]

Thanks for sharing that, Ramblin' Dave. I'm intrigued by the idea that men and women differ in the degree of emotional intimacy expressed in their same-sex friendships; I wonder how many others share that perception.

I have a friend from college who discovered an attraction to women a few years ago, who made a somewhat similar observation about breaking up with men versus breaking up with women. When a woman suffers a breakup, she said, she cries, leans on her friends and family, takes some time to mourn and care for herself, then moves on. When a man suffers a breakup, he tries to carry on as if nothing's wrong, often hooking up with other women as soon as possible, but the hurt stays with him longer. She said it surprised her the first time her relationship with a woman ended, first because her ex's reaction was so emotional, then because her ex seemed totally over it in a matter of months and they could be friends in an easy, unaffected way that wasn't possible with her male exes.

Of course, any sort of "women are this, men are that" argument is going to be an oversimplification, but I think the social taboos that still persist about men sharing their feelings do make for some differences between how men and women interact with other people. It's also been my personal experience that men I've dated make themselves vulnerable to me in a way they don't with their closest friends, whom they've known much longer and who remain in their lives after we've broken up. I always assumed that was a function of it being a romantic relationship, but maybe it also has something to do with their relative comfort at opening up to a woman instead of another man.

I don't know if I've ever had a strictly platonic friendship with a straight man. I've often thought of a guy as just-a-friend, only to have him hit on me as soon as both of us are single. This is of course uncomfortable if I don't share his feelings, but it can also make me doubt my judgment and even, crazy as this may sound, my perceived worth as a person. I've never had tons of friends, male or female, and when it seems like all the men who hang out with me want to sleep with me, it's hard not to think that maybe men only hang out with me because they want to sleep with me. And that hurts.