Can Men and Women Be Platonic Friends?

Most men say men and women can't be platonic friends. And most women say men and women can be platonic friends. How is each party defining 'friend', and why do they disagree?

Hmmmm...?

I'll try to answer this question as honestly as possible from one man's perspective.

First of all, I think that I can honestly say that I've had or still have two platonic female friends (one more so than the other, in my own estimation) that I met (not in person) on this very website.

One of them is married, and one of them is currently engaged to be married soon.

So, yeah, from that perspective, I'd say that it's possible for a man to have platonic female friends.

That said, I need to say quite a few more things as well in order to give you a fuller picture of what I truly believe or to better explain to you how I normally define the word "friend".

For starters, I absolutely HATE (I'm tempted to say ABHOR) communicating with people via written text alone. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I HATE IT WITH A PASSION. For me, it's one of the lowest forms of communication possible (with the obvious exception of God's word, the Bible), and I sometimes am even offended by being relegated solely to letters and symbols which appear on someone's computer screen or cellphone. If I want that type of "friendship", then I could always click on one of those artificial intelligence (AI) "friend" links that appear as ads on social media websites such as Facebook (FAKEbook). Not my cup of tea. Thanks, but no thanks.

For me, under normal circumstances, true friendship entails at least the following:

"And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaks unto his friend." (Exodus 33:11)

Personally, I don't mind initially "making a friend" via written text, BUT if they're truly a "friend", then I believe that there ought to be what I would call a "natural progression" after that. In other words, unless this "friend" is married or engaged and a "natural progression" might give the "appearance of evil" if we got closer, I believe that a true friendship should at least progress to the point where the two "friends" speak to each other on the phone. If that "natural progression" goes smoothly, then there quite possibly should/could be a further "natural progression" to where the two "friends" actually speak face to face...even as God and Moses did.

If such "natural progressions" don't exist, then I, personally, question whether or not someone is truly my "friend".

An acquaintance?

Sure.

A "friend"?

Highly doubtful...at least in my own mind (others are certainly free to disagree).

To be completely honest, I believe that one very real reason why such a "natural progression" doesn't take place is because one of the two parties doesn't want anything more than a platonic relationship, and they're therefore hesitant to even possibly give the wrong impression that they might be interested in anything more than just that.

Also, if someone is truly my "friend" and/or truly considers me to be their "friend", then we should actually care about each other, and even "faithfully wound" each other at times out of genuine concern for one another.

"Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." (Proverbs 27:6)

"Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." (Proverbs 27:17)

If someone is truly my "friend", and if I'm truly somebody else's "friend", then we need to have real vested interests in each other's well-beings, and those interests may include us having to "faithfully wound" each other at times, or to address things in each other's lives which may need addressing for our own potential benefits.

Personally, I ABHOR "kiss ups" or "the deceitful kisses of an enemy". To me, that's superficiality and pretentiousness, and there's literally nothing that I ABHOR more than those two things.

As I said once before on a thread that I started here, "iron sharpens iron"...and cotton balls don't. Imagine a file with grates on it sliding roughly over another piece of iron in order to hopefully smooth out some rough spots. Yeah, those types of scenarios are often necessary, figuratively speaking, where two real "friends" are concerned.

Again, this is only my own life's experiences that I'm about to describe, but I can honestly say that 90 something percent of my alleged "friends" throughout my lifetime didn't give a rat's furry bottom about me in reality. Again, it was all superficiality and pretense, and I ABHOR those two things.

I must also add this:

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." (Proverbs 17:17)

Do your "friends" truly love you at all times, or do they hide from you when you're in need?

I'll leave you all to answer that question on your own.

I'll end with this:

"A man that has friends must show himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother." (Proverbs 18:24)

A true friendship should be give and take on both ends.

If you're the only one giving, then, in my estimation, the other party isn't truly your "friend" (unless there's some sort of situation where they can only receive...like sickness, or a handicap, deep depression, etc., etc.).

Just my two cents worth.

Always great questions from you.

Personally, I don’t see a problem with men and woman being platonic friends, up to a point, but platonic has a nuance to it that it can be intimate and affectionate as long as it isn’t sexual.

A platonic friendship could involve caring about them a lot, greeting with a hug, going out to lunch, regularly chatting, etc from my perspective.

When someone is in a relationship with someone who has a platonic friend of the opposite sex, there should be some boundaries so there isn’t too much of any one thing.

If my gf was too interested in another boy then that looks like a problem to me, but maybe I could accept it if from the being I was given a choice to decide if I’ll tolerate a relationship with someone with a gal who is platonic friends with a guy.

Because men tend to objectify women moreso than women objectify men.
Meaning....

Men tend to see women as an accessory instead of as a person....the whole world teaches them to do this. Every bit of advertising, video, and movie uses this as promotional material.

Seeing the person first and their appearance as a secondary attribute is out of line with what the world pushes.
And following what the world promotes leads to ruin every time.

Women aren't exactly helping because they do try to stay fashionable by wearing the latest fashion trends....today its yoga pants that display every curve, wrinkle, and dimple.
Sex sells! It is effective in the marketplace and this promotes this whole notion that appearance is a priority over character.

Nevermind the insanity of this...

Women are usually more cunning in their approach to relationships. They pay attention to the person(s) and their personality more than anything else. For whatever reason women tend to be more adaptable in their relationships....and try to fit in.

All of which is why most (but not all) men tend to not have platonic relationships with women but women are more capable of having platonic relationships with men. But again....women can and will use sexual attraction to their benefit. (Kinda cold hearted IMHO) A few guys will do the same thing with women...but it's not the norm.

I totally agree with what you said here, but here's my own personal observation/gripe:

For starters, I truly do look at a woman's heart, first and foremost, so I definitely don't objectify women. Quite frankly, just the thought of that makes my blood to boil because I truly do respect women in general.

Here's my observation/gripe:

God only knows how many times I've heard a woman complain about how men don't listen to them, don't open up to them about their own feelings, etc., etc., etc.

Why does this bother me?

Well, because my own downfall, time and time again, has been directly related to wanting to listen to a woman or to opening up to a woman myself. I mean, these were women who showed interest in me themselves, so it's not like I just go up to women randomly and start spilling my guts.

Anyhow, I don't care if I get into trouble for saying this or not, but I've come to the very definitive conclusion that what a lot of women say they are looking for and what they are actually looking for are worlds apart.

Of course, to keep the playing field even, a lot of men are just as deceptive themselves.

In other words, I'm certainly not here to bash women as a whole. Just commenting on one thing that I've seen time and time and time and time again in my own life's experiences.

I just don't get why people, whether men or women, can't simply be honest with their feelings.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again right now:

I honestly believe that pretentious and superficial people are sick in the head. EXTREMELY sick in the head...and it's even worse when said persons claim to be "Christians".

Well, that ought to win me some dates...lol.

This video by Allen Parr is incredibly insightful, especially in regard to married couples considering this topic.

Women do have a huge disconnect between words and actions....a lot of people do. But for women who tend to value their mood of the moment too much...you never will get a straight answer.

Men have all the same emotions as women but they tend to have fewer successful outlets and means of expressing their feelings....and generally don't value them too much.
Women tend to place too much value on their feelings and have a million ways to express them which are completely bewildering to us men. So it's extremely confusing to figure out what and why they are doing or saying anything.

"Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see" was once a very famous axiom. Today with social media prominence it has been abandoned.
But it's still true.

I hear what you're saying, but when I try time and time again to get a straight answer from a woman and she won't give it...

Well, as far as I'm concerned, she just did...and I walk every single time because I know that she truly doesn't care about me.

Which begs my original question:

Why can't men and women simply be honest with each other?

Of course, I've already provided my own answer to this question in my previous response.

I'm not into wasting time or game-playing in the least.

If somebody wants to waste my time, then that tells me just how little regard for me they actually have.

Women, generally speaking, can't give you the straight answer you are looking for....it's not for a lack of willingness but due to inability.

It takes a while to figure out what a woman is really about. Almost two years.
Up to you to figure out if the puzzle is worth solving or not.

I'm sorry, but, generally speaking, I don't agree with this comment of yours at all.

Granted, there might be situations where there were some sort of extremely painful hurts that have caused a woman to shut off access to her heart, but, generally speaking, I've just found a lot of women to be outright deceptive.

Again, this is just me sharing my own personal experiences.

Others here might have totally different experiences, and I genuinely hope that they do.

As I've honestly said before, I'm a huge fan of love, and I'm genuinely happy when others find it...even if it continually eludes me.

Well, as I mentioned just yesterday or the day before, in my own estimation, I've only ever really been in three real relationships. One of them was with a woman (my ex-wife) who had been repeatedly sexually molested by her own father between the ages of 5 and 6 years old, and another was with a woman who was raped by one of her mother's boyfriends when she was 4 years old. This last woman was also thrown into the foster care system for years where she was regularly abused, and she also turned to a life of prostitution for many years in order to sustain herself. I'm mentioning this solely to inform you that I know a thing or two about patience or taking a while to figure out what a woman is really all about.

Anyhow, these are not the types of women that I'm referring to.

Instead, I'm referring to superficial and pretentious women (and there are many men who are the same way), and they're definitely not my cup of tea. In fact, I'd rather die of thirst than even take a sip from that dreadful cup...which is why I'm presently parched...lol.

I might be part of the minority opinion, but I absolutely believe men and women can be platonic friends.

For example, @Lynx and @RodB651 are two awesome guy friends I met here on CC and also in real life back in April. I also attended another meetup a few years ago with Lynx, and spent some time with his family -- all platonic. Last week I met another CC guy friend in person for the first time (he's no longer on this site, but we've kept in touch for many years.) We just finally happened to be in the same place at the same time, and it was a super fun day of arcade games (skee ball!) and a movie.

I also have a guy friend I've known for about 20 years and we joke all the time that if either one of us lost everything and didn't have a dime to our names, we could show up on each other's doorstep and know the other person would help in any way they could, no questions asked (well, maybe a few due to us knowing each other so well, lol.)

There have been times on CC when I wrote about a ministry I used to participate in that wrote to and visited inmates. This particular friend is the only person I have kept in touch with at the time, so we met each other through paper letters, then in person when I went to see him at the prison. Our friendship survived him being transferred several times and almost 2 decades of life-altering changes, including when he was finally released and has gone on to a new and very successful way of living. He is one of the very few people I have been able to be completely honest with about my life and feelings, including going through a long time of hopeless suicidal thoughts when things were especially tough.

It's been a great blessing to me to watch his life go from being what society dismissed as a hopeless statistic into a life that's been completely transformed and is actively and positively contributing to society and taking care of his family. We have talked about how our friendship might change when/if either or both of us got married, but I honestly don't think it will be that much different. We've already weathered plenty of times when the other person was seeing or interested in someone (often scolding each other along the way to keep each other in line.) We keep in touch mostly by text, and not very often (maybe a catch-up session once every 4 months?) because our lives are already plenty busy.

For whatever reason, my platonic male/female friendships never turned romantic and I honestly don't think they ever will, and I'm perfectly find with that. We know where we stand and if anything ever did change, I trust that the situation would be handled prayerfully and honestly.

I am thankful for all my friends, both male and female, and see these friendships as (hopefully) being lifelong.

But I also realize that I am writing this from a woman's point of view, and it's entirely possible that the male friends I am describing might have different perspectives.

Just as a question to gain information...
Would it be fair to say that your deeper relationships with women have been with those who have been severely emotionally damaged in some fashion?

Then if that is true....it then begs the question as to why you find them approachable, relatable or attractive. (It also explains why you find words and actions never match with women)

Might wanna try fishing in different waters. Trout and catfish don't hang out in the same places.

Kinda depends on how you define “friends”.

Of course men and women can be friends, but they should never be friends in the sense of deep, confiding, and in an emotion sharing way.

This is dangerous for them unless they intend to date or marry.
It doesn’t mean you can’t have conversations with the opposite sex about issues, but there really should be other people present.

I can’t think of a single Biblical example of men and women in the above described way, in that type of relationship.

I just wanna know where are these men SonsofCaleb knows and where are these women JohnDB knows?

Most of the men I know disagree with what SonsofCaleb says and most of the women I know act different than how JohnDB says they act.

(replying to SonsofCaleb and JohnDB)

Yes, I think heterosexual men and women can be platonic friends. Because they are the opposite gender, the thought may come across in the beginning there could be something more. However when there is no attractive in that sense at all, I think a platonic friendship can still follow. In this type of relationship, it is not unusual to hang out, chat about issues, even dating issues with the person of the opposite gender. We do know that people of opposite gender can be close in a non-sexual way (brothers and sisters, cousins, etc.). I think a platonic friendship has the potential to reach this level.

Yes and no.

My first real relationship was with a Russian Jewess, and that was before I became a Christian. She wasn't "emotionally damaged" to my knowledge, whether "severely" or otherwise. As I've admitted before, and I'm not proud of this or condoning this, that relationship, especially at her end, was pretty much completely sexual in nature. I'd be willing to guess that some sort of sexual activity transpired between the two of us every single day or night of that relationship, BUT, for me, that truly wasn't my biggest attraction. I genuinely cared about her, and that is why I was even willing to engage in sexual relations with her back then. In other words, not that I've ever been any sort of "Casanova" (not even close), but I did have several other women before then and after then who desired to have sexual relations with me, and I turned them all down because I honestly had no sort of heart connection with them whatsoever at my end.

My next real relationship was with my now ex-wife who was a black Latina from Panama.

Was she "severely emotionally damaged"?

Absolutely, BUT, as I've testified before, I honestly had no clue about that until about one month AFTER we were married. In other words, that certainly wasn't a "draw" for me of any sort, but something that I later stumbled upon via certain different situations that transpired. Anyhow, in that particular relationship, it was a Divine set up or Divinely arranged, so it really wasn't anything inside myself that drew me to her, but rather an external Divine encounter.

My last real relationship was with a woman from Finland that I met on Facebook. By the way, I'm mentioning their ethnicities because I'm realizing that I've never had any real success with American women. Maybe I need to "take my show on the road" or to travel abroad...lol. Anyhow, in her particular case, we began private messaging on Facebook after I had made certain comments on some of her public posts. That led to some audio calls, and that led to a lot of video calls. Ultimately, she travelled to America to see me on three different occasions, and those are the only times that we actually met in person. That relationship lasted about 2 1/2 years.

Did she have "severe emotional problems"?

Yes, and then some.

In her case, I was aware of this before we ever met in person, and, as weird as this may sound, her problems actually drew us closer together. In other words, I showed her a lot of compassion, and that led to a deeper bond between us.

Like I said, it is both true and false, and even when it was true, I only knew that upfront with one of these women (the one from Finland), so it really had nothing to do with any initial attraction two thirds of the time.

I hear you, but I truly haven't been stuck at the same fishing hole.

Anyhow, I'm seemingly taking this love for women inside of me to the grave with me.

Whatever, I guess.

One other thing...

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this publicly before or not (not that I expect anybody to care), but I know that I said something along these lines to a platonic female friend of mine here recently via PM.

I honestly have no desire whatsoever to have male friends UNLESS it's somehow related to ministry.

Even when I was married for 17 years, I literally only went out with male friends one time during that entire timeframe, and that was me reconnecting with two former high school friends of mine that I hadn't seen in many years.

In fact, I recently told my platonic female friend here that I'd rather have two mail trucks loaded with explosives tied around my neck as I did a swan dive off of a cliff than to hang out with male friends.

Why two mail trucks?

Well, just in case the rope broke on the other mail truck during my downward plunge.

That being said, if I don't have female friends, whether platonic or not, then I have no friends at all.

What can I say?

I like women.

A lot.

If only the feeling were mutual...

It used to be, but it seems that I went out of vogue several months ago.

In other words, there was always at least one woman who liked me, whether the feelings were mutual at my end or not, but now I'm like a leper.

Where's Jesus when you need him (to cure my leprosy)?

lol.

I do often wonder if platonic, opposite-gender friendships are tougher on men than they are on women -- and I'm not at all trying to be sexist in any way.

When my Grandma died, I went to visit my Grandpa regularly because as one can imagine, he was having a very tough time coping after having a constant female presence for over 64 years (they were married for 64 but had known each other their whole lives.) It wasn't long before he found another female companion.

He told me that men don't really have friends (at least in his experience and generation,) and so the loneliness, emptiness, and need for human interaction they feel in their lives is always seen as being needed to be filled by a woman.

This made a lot of sense to me because men are, unfortunately, socialized to be strong, silent leaders who aren't really close to anyone except supposedly their wives, if they wind up finding one. I've often felt sorry for men because society, and even the church, seems to discourage and even punish men for trying to build sincere friendships or relationships with other people.

Women are raised to be more social, so many have close friends or at least acquaintances, whether male of female, to fill this void, while men often seem to have no one. Women often have someone to go hang out or talk with, so I think many women might feel less of a desire to settle into a relationship or dating situation -- henceforth why so many guys see women as constant "friend-zoners."

I think women just have more outlets to satisfy a need for social interaction, whereas, men have fewer and therefore, will place most, if not all their bets on a woman (leading to men wanting to attach to women in a romantic way much sooner or more often than women attaching to men in the same way.)

I could be wrong, and I'm sure everyone's experience is different, but I'm finding this to be true in my own life. Back when I was younger, I was more desperate to find someone because I thought I couldn't be alone. But time has taught me that I CAN be alone (and in some ways, even thrive,) so these days I seem to have so much going on that it keeps me from getting too attached, too soon (for the most part, at least.)

I think that there's A LOT of truth in what you just said...unfortunately.

In other words, that doesn't bode too well for us men.

Learn from Baloo. Just look for the Bear Necessities.

Or learn from Bagheera and just take a nap in a tree. =^.^=