February 1st 2010

Just Friends: Thoughts on “Cross-sex” Friendship

A female reader named Marian emailed me recently to talk, in part, about close, non-romantic friendships with men.

“I know the men I have in my life, that I relate to with no sexual pretense, have played a huge part in how I see myself and the world at large,” she said. “They have helped me to put myself back out there after some really difficult times both with hooking up and just life in general.”

A great point. Unlike past generations, yours has grown up knowing members of the opposite sex as pals as well as boyfriends/girlfriends. This has undoubtedly enriched – and complicated – your lives, as Rob Reiner foresaw in his 1989 film, When Harry Met Sally.

I asked Marian, a 27-year-old Midwesterner, and Sean, a college senior from the West Coast, to talk about what social scientists call “cross-sex” or “cross-gender” friendships.

Marian said she has five close guy friends. One she met in college when she was a sophomore. “We share an odd sense of humor and a capacity for deep emotion,” she wrote.

She used to visit this guy after a night of partying during what she called, “an especially lonely period of time” in school. Sometimes, she’d sleep in his bed, “cuddling with him.” The guy had a girlfriend who, according to Marian, knew she did this and was not bothered by it.

“To this day some of my friends look back on that time and don't believe it was innocent,” she continued. “I don't blame them. Had I not been there, I wouldn't believe it either. I remember feeling like me and [my friend] were holding onto each other for dear life. Like sleeping in each other’s embrace was protecting each of us from losing ourselves.”

She continues, “I love my girlfriends to death, but at times guys can provide insights that women can't. I can pick apart a hookup with a male friend and get insights from him without having to attach 1,000 emotions, shoulds, and should-nots to the experience.”

Sean says guys speak more directly than girls: “Girl-talk is very nuanced, subtle and indirect, and often involves a lot of implied communication. Guys aren’t that complicated. When we say things like, ‘That guy is an asshole,’ there’s rarely a hidden agenda….Guys can offer girls blunt advice….”

What do girls offer their male friends? Sean was quick with an answer: Girls he has known “tended to talk more in depth about certain events in my life, particularly relationships, than my guy friends. [The girls] loved to just listen, and I felt like I had a receptive, caring audience.”

An example: In high school, he broke up with his girlfriend after finding out that she was cheating on him. His guy friends, he said, “were trying to get me to treat my ex like shit and pull a prank or something on her, but I wasn’t quite down on egging her house.” His friends who were girls helped him defuse his anger and hurt by talking over the situation. “They were extremely understanding, and offered some pretty non-biased advice.”

What about sexual arousal? Is it inevitable? Sean says in some cases yes, at least for guys.

He has been turned on by one of his college friends since freshman year, he said. “Unbeknownst to this girl…in the back of my mind I have been saying ‘I wish that she felt the same way back.’ Watching her hook up with new guy after new guy, and then talk to me about it, helped me realize that she didn't. I was in the ‘friend zone,’ as my peers call it.

“I wasn't waiting around for something to happen: I've had several girlfriends or romantic interests in college. But I have always wondered if this opportunity would ever actualize. It actually, for me, made the friendship more exciting, there being this secret behind it. It's still a great friendship, and I can honestly say that she is one of my best friends in college. Maybe I'm still waiting to see if something comes of it.”

Girls are not immune to feeling sexually attracted to a friend either, says Marian. She cites a guy who has been a friend of hers since high school, and has “come to Sunday dinners at my family’s home, helped me move, and gone on road trips with me.”

“I used to make passes at him early on in college,” she wrote. “He never took me up on the offers, which I am happy for.”

The tables turned about a year ago, on Valentine’s Day. “He made a pass at me. I allowed him to essentially hump my leg until he reached orgasm. This all took place in my apartment well after midnight, but before 6 a.m. I left him on the couch and went to sleep in my bed.”

The friendship could have self-destructed after that, but it didn’t. Marian and her friend got up the next morning, watched TV and talked some about the previous night.

The talking was key, she said, and “we have resumed our non-sexual friendship.”

Terry Apter, a British psychologist and author, says the flaw in “When Harry Met Sally” is the idea that “once two friends have sex, there are only two possible solutions: separation or marriage….It’s a pity, really, because life offers so many more possibilities….Friendship, especially between a woman and a man, is one of those relationships that has no well-defined script; each friendship has to define its own rituals and routines, its own cache of meanings; and its own symbols of exchange.” 

So, how about you? Have you had close relationships with friends of the opposite sex? If so, what was the experience like?

(For more reflections on "cross-sex" friendship, also check out Katy Otto's "An Ode to Good Dudes.")