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Platonic Love - Beyond Body Physics



Written by 2 students from a certain uni

This is exactly the same issue that the movie When Harry met Sally was based on – can platonic love between men and women exist?
Simply put - can men and women be just friends?

Billy Crystal was of the opinion that if the woman is attractive, the man will always be thinking about a romantic engagement with her, while Meg Ryan adorably played the woman who vehemently believed that men and women could be just friends, only to eventually fall in love with her so-called friend. (title of e-mag) finally explores the friendly possibilities.

He says:
Boys will be boys, and men are also boys. For the less gentle sex, sexual gratification is NEVER off the cards. The pivot for a relationship between a man and woman (platonic or not) is always how attractive the man finds the woman. It’s very easy to have a platonic relationship with someone who resembles your mother and/or Charlize Theron in that serial killer movie (the name escapes me……see my point?), but try talking about having a platonic relationship with someone who looks like she was made to test your initial resolve, and it’s a different ball game altogether.

Now, there is no point being unequivocal about much in life. Exceptions do exist. For example, a friend’s girlfriend is always off the cards and so a platonic relationship might flourish in between the times you bury your face into a pillow and scream, “WHYYYYY did that *&%%^$ have to meet her first?”

Also, in cases where the protagonist is an honourable male whose heart belongs to another, platonic relationships might feed, like a fungus I might add. The point is, it is very rare for a man to keep his mind from wandering to the possibility of physical intimacy.

A playful pat, an angry slap, and an unconscious touch – these are all the things that can breakdown the resolve of the most strong-willed of men. To a single man, there exists no such thing as ‘platonic friendships’, only opportunities.

Why have a platonic friendship when we can have a sexual relationship? Why talk when we can touch? Why hit the gym when we can just hit the bed? Much more fun and much more (re)productive!

To a man, a platonic relationship with an attractive woman simply represents a failure, an everlasting reminder of the one that could not be seduced. A stepping stone you might say, to future success. May there never be another platonic friend. If we must be friends, let us be friends with benefits!

She says:
Ok, I’ve got to admit that with attractive men, it is hard to just be friends. Women are naturally very affectionate, otherwise known as touchy-feely. We’ll hug our friends, lie on their shoulder, hold their arm and in general, be comfortable with human touch. With our girlfriends, it's completely normal and everything is cool. But with our male friends, (yes, we do have male friends. We, unlike men, are not inclined to want to sleep with every man we meet) this touchy-feely habit sometimes changes things.

For instance, if we jokingly punch them only to collide into a well-muscled and toned set of abs, it’s pretty clear what we’ll be thinking about for the next couple of hours. It’s unlikely we’ll act on it, but from time to time, the thought of being “more than friends” will cross our mind. For most girls, we tend to categorize the boys in our life. There will always be some boys we meet that for various reasons (too immature, too silly, too superficial, too in love with someone else, too –insert any negative adjective-) we will NEVER be interested in dating, or going further than friends.

These are the boys we refer to as “not my type”. As long as the boy doesn’t fall in love with her and make things complicated, these male-female friendships can survive pretty well. It’s always platonic, brotherly-sisterly at most. Then there’s the other extreme category of boys who are totally your type from the get-go. For this bunch, girls will permanently be attracted to them; sometimes it’s a superficial physical thing, sometimes it goes beyond just looks. But whatever the reason, these are the boys that girls will never be able to be good friends with, at least not deep inside, simply because they keep pining for that “something more”.

But as in any spectrum, the trickiest part is the in-between category. Most boys in our life are unclassified. We occasionally feel spurts of great concern for them and worry on their behalf. But then we also know that nothing beyond friendship seems to be happening, yet the possibility never dies.

This is what makes such friendship a very confusing mix of platonic and romantic. The key to making a transition into either category on the extreme ends is very situational.

For instance, you’re having a crisis, say you just had a nasty break-up. The reaction of this boy is critical in deciding whether you fall head-over-heels for him, or whether he reminds you of a fatherly-figure instead. The more comfortable you get with sharing your private demons with this person, the more likely that your friendship becomes less and less platonic.

On the contrary, when the boy is having his crisis and you have to be there for him, sometimes him over-sharing his personal issues plants him firmly in the platonic category. There’s always a fine line between knowing someone very well (and it's still vaguely romantic) and knowing someone too well (that you are quite sure you don’t ever want to date someone like him).

The male-female friendship is a strange relationship, sometimes fraught with sexual tension, but mostly, sisterly tolerance for his stupidity.

The bottomline: there really is no clear-cut answer, because complicated creatures that we are, we can actually straddle both and self-delusionally ignore some of our own feelings too.

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Labels: f

posted by WILLIAM @ 2:46 AM