Ryan ChartrandIt’s a question we all want to know the answer to, but can we ever really know? Can men and women be JUST friends?
This brings to mind a friend we have. He is slightly lacking in the romance department and he always seems to find himself in the elusive “friend zone.” Since we’re women, we’re here to say that there is no “friend zone.” When put in this mysterious realm, people tend to chalk it up to holding back too long or not being aggressive enough in the beginning of the relationship, but do they ever consider that the other person is just not that into them?
It takes two to be in a relationship, and if you feel any sort of sexual attraction toward the opposite sex (or same sex), there can never truly be a platonic friendship. Most women scoff at this statement, but they also underestimate the attraction men have toward women because of a lack of self-confidence, etc.
Don’t be coy; friendships with the opposite sex never seem to pan out the way we want them to. It’s guaranteed that at one point or another, one person will look at the other as much more than a friend and this feeling is rarely reciprocated.
So let’s go back to our friend, he wants this kind of friendship to somehow develop into a whirlwind romance like some romantic comedy that makes you want to gag yourself with a spoon. This is never going to happen for most people and purely for the reasons stated above.
Yes, most people have their good friends of the opposite sex, but there is always a crossroad at which you need to choose one path: friends or lovers? It is that moment of clarity in which you find yourself discovering this person as more than just a friend. Like we said, more often than not, this person will not feel the same as you. Your relationship will end in heartbreak and so on, but if nothing developed in the past, why do you think there would be hope for something more in the future?
As pessimistic as it sounds, this word “friendship” is a crafty tool ladies use all the time. It becomes a woman’s best excuse to avoid breaking some guy’s heart by flat-out rejecting him or smoothing over a break-up. And in each case, women do mean it to some extent, but what it should mean to the receiving end is that she is no longer attracted to you. The label of “friend” is a safety net women use to keep options open, or to get away from defining a relationship which is obviously more than a platonic friendship. (And just to get it straight, friends with benefits are not friends – they are f*** buddies.) It’s hard to gauge where a relationship is going, but make sure you know what you want.
So as you sit in the stuffy classrooms with new people who you will see every week for the next three months, think about this: don’t look to that attractive person next to you as your latest “study buddy.” Instead, make them your next hot date.
Journalism senior Jessica Ford and animal science senior Elizabeth Yi are the new Tuesday columnists. Their column “The Naked Truth” will focus on love, sex and dating. E-mail them your questions for future columns at thenakedtruthcolumn@gmail.com.