Scientific proof! Men and woman can't be friends.
I've spoken about this at length with friends of mine, actually, and concluded that you can't really be friends with someone if you are trying to ingratiate yourself to them. Excluding that, I don't think sexual attraction is incompatible with friendship at all. I do think it's very important to disentangle sexual and romantic attraction. If I'm infatuated with a girl who sees me only as a friend, to say that I am "just friends" with her rings of dishonesty. I think the "nice guy" stereotype serves as a demonstration that many young men do have this sort of one-sided infatuation with a supposed friend. But with regards specifically to sexual attraction (not that the line is clear) things seem easier. For one thing, there's a difference between actively being sexually attracted and simply finding someone sexually attractive. Actively wanting to have sex with someone seems incompatible with friendship (given the ulterior motives and ingratiation) but simply being open to the idea of having sex with them is not. I remember watching a video with the premise that men and women can't be friends, in which young men in the company of female friends were asked if they'd have sex with those friends. All of the men answered yes, and the conclusion was that men and women cannot be friends. I think this conclusion is erroneous; rather, men are perhaps generally more willing and relaxed about sexual interaction (a point which hardly needs to be made, really). Take this scenario: a female friend of yours walks into your room completely naked and says that she wants you to have sex with her. I think that answering yes does not imply that one can't simply be friends with such a person. So: guys (and girls) can find each other attractive and still be friends. I have a friend. We are close friends, but nothing more. We talk about all sorts of things - including other people we like and/or are dating. We've also spoken about sexual attraction between friends. We've had sex, and (I believe) we're both open to potentially having sex again in the future. But neither of us has any romantic feelings toward the other, and in all other ways we are just friends. Crucially, we will probably still be friends even if we have never have sex again (and had been friends for a couple of years before anything happened between us). But, of course, it is not the same with everyone. I have another friend with whom I have discussed similar things; we almost had sex (I, correctly, decided not to fully have sex because of how I predicted she would end up feeling). We've since spoken about the same things and she has admitted that she's not sure she can have friendship and no-strings-attached sex without potentially developing some sort of greater emotional attachment. So I think that men and women, even given sexual attraction (mutual or otherwise) can be friends. This doesn't imply that all such people can be friends. But I do really think that one of the important elements is ingratiation and having an ulterior motive, which don't really work with friendship.
God this is a great article. I feel like it reminds me that all we really are in the end are just an evolved sort of ape. We are just monkeys living on this planet in search for two things, food and sex. Our instinctual desires guide our everyday actions whether or not we realize it. Seeing that we can't even be friends with women without thinking of them in another light reveals how little we have control of our own lives. Our instincts and what we don't yet understand about our brains are what is in control. Not that I'm saying this is a bad thing, we've survived long enough thanks to them. I just think it's interesting that to this day even seeing how modern we've become, that we still can't help ourselves when it comes to love.
and what does "platonic" mean in this sentence. If there is a desire but no action, is it not still platonic? In both men and women, I've noticed that desire is not just lust. Being a friend, includes desiring and enjoying someone's company, appreciating their help, laughing together. These are all activities that build friendship and increase desire - even if someone is not initially your type. Proximity is not the only reason friends have sex, but it is very often the deciding factor. Oh dear, I just met theadvancedapes and thought we were going to be friends. I guess not.These friendship pairs were then separated, and each member of each pair was asked a series of questions related to his or her romantic feelings (or lack thereof) toward the friend with whom they were taking the study.
mk I have some problems with this study as well. No stats and no details about what questions were asked -- and how did they define "friends"? The possibility of romance or a clothing malfunction does not necessarily mean that the friendship is not real - especially if friendship is undefined.Although women seem to be genuine in their belief that opposite-sex friendships are platonic, men seem unable to turn off their desire for something more.
Also, sexual desire and romantic feelings are not the same thing, but young men have an especially hard time disentangling the two. As I get older I have a much easier time being friends with women than I did when I was in my teens to early twenties. I have a couple friends that are very attractive women, and while I'm attracted to them, I have no trouble decoupling my attraction from my friendship. This is something I would have found impossible a decade ago.
True. In some sense the reason why this study is supposed to surprise us is because culturally we aren't supposed to be sexually attracted to anyone but our chosen partner. It's pretty absurd to think that attraction is soley based upon the nature of the relationship. There's nothing wrong with recognizing that your friend is attractive.
I think we can still be friends lil ! This study is slightly simplistic but I thought it was interesting enough to post for discussion.
ha ha I wasn't being serious. Of course we can be "friends" and you can punctuate it any way you like. The video is cute - but here's my problem with all of this. The men all said "no, men and women can not be friends." Yet, they all were being friends with the women. In some cases, best friends. So obviously all the people in the video CAN be just friends, but they can also be MORE than friends if both sides feel like it. I think all our friends are people that turn us on, but we can be turned on in many ways. I'm surprised that none of the young adults in the video had anything more nuanced to say (although it might have been edited out).
No surprises here. I've often been stymied by the women I've known's naiveté regarding this topic. He's just my friend -That's not what he thinks...
Ya I've experienced this as well. There is a great YouTube video that went viral last year specifically revealing this phenomenon:
I'm sure that worked. It would have been nice to have some statistics. In some of those statements, you don't know if the findings were 53/47 or 83/17. But this pretty much fits what we know about primate behavior in general, right?In order to ensure honest responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to agree—verbally, and in front of each other—to refrain from discussing the study, even after they had left the testing facility.
I can't comment on the statistics because I haven't read the actual study. That was just an article based off of the study - it would have been nice if they gave some more specific statistics. What do you mean about this fitting with primate behaviour in general?
AFAIK, many non-human primate communities include a male that mates with several females, whereas the females typically mate with only the dominant male. I'm sure that's a simplification, but my general impression is that primate males are more promiscuous by nature. As a result, it would only make sense that human males are relatively more inclined to seek sex when it's a possibility.What do you mean about this fitting with primate behaviour in general?
Actually, there really is no order-specific generalization you can make regarding primate social-sexual systems. The social-sexual system you described would most closely resemble gorilla behaviour. Male gorillas compete for harems of females. One or two gorillas usually outcompete all other males for the complete control of several females for as long as they can. However, the variation among all primates is truly overwhelming. For example, chimpanzees organize themselves in multi-male, multi-female systems. Although alpha males or top ranking males will generally have more mating opportunity and generally sire more offspring, females have sex with all the males to increase paternity confusion (decreasing the chance of infanticide). Bonobos on the other hand are famously matriarchal. Females control sex and use it to dominate males. As a result every female will usually have sex with most other males and even many other females. Two more interesting examples: Gibbons are lesser apes and they are almost completely monogamous. They find one partner and usually mate for life. There is some evidence of external copulations - 'cheating' - but they are rare and the other partner is generally unaware of these external copulations. Ring-tailed lemurs are also female dominant. They have also have very strict breeding seasons. During a very brief 2 day window all the males will compete for access to females - but it is the female who will make the final choice of who to mate with and for how long. An interesting evolutionary rule to make sense of all this sexual primate mayhem is the general principle that social-sexual system can be dictated by sexual dimorphism. Sexual dismorphism is the size difference between the sexes. In species with extreme dimorphism (like gorillas) a few males usually dominate and control the reproduction of all females (this is true for other mammalian orders as well). However, when there is no sexual dimorphism (like gibbons) males and females tend to be monogamous. When there is sexual dimorphism - but it is not pronounced (like chimpanzees and bonobos) there is some other interesting variant of the two extremes. However, it is still unknown how ring-tailed lemurs and bonobo evolved female dominant social-sexual systems.
Thanks for that. I learned a lot in that comment. This is one of reasons why I created Hubski. Had I just read the article by myself, I would have walked away with the impression that the findings reinforced my misconceptions of primate behavior. Here, a specialist in the field not only sets me straight, but better educates me on the topic. It doesn't get much better than that. I had never heard of the sexual dimorphism principle. Now I am wondering about mass ratios and monogamy in humans.
No problem! One of the reasons I became interested in primatology was because studying our closest living relatives can tell us a lot about our own behaviour. If we are going to take the sexual dimorphism rule that seems to apply throughout the mammalian world, it would appear as though we have become more sexually monomorphic and less dimorphic over the past few hundred thousand years. Many palaeoanthropologists believe this is because monogamy has been increasingly selected for. From a purely functional perspective it would make sense that monogamy would be incredible beneficial for a species that has such a prolonged maturation period. For example, it takes chimpanzees and bonobos 6-7 years to become independent and sexually active. It takes humans considerably longer - in between 13-20 depending on culture and social system and a range of other important variables. It takes us so long to mature because our brains are so much larger (3 times larger than chimpanzee and bonobo brains). Anyway, as we evolved, and our brains started to expand (in between 2 million and 100,000 years ago) we would have needed more and more bi-parental care (mother and father). It is during this same time that our human ancestors (e.g., Homo habilis, Homo erectus, etc.) became less and less dimorphic (i.e., the male and female sex ratio reduced considerably). Obviously we are not completely monogamous, but our sexual patterns more closely resemble that of gibbons than chimpanzees. We are still more promiscuous overall than gibbons but if our social-sexual system resembled the chimpanzees there would be no such thing as an exclusive long-term relationship (i.e. marriage).
I was wondering what sort of behavior is favored when sexual dimorphism leans towards physically dominant females. Is that what happens with bonobos? What is the degree of sexual dimorphism in chimps? Their behavior is very interesting.
To be honest, there are no extreme examples of females being sexually dimorphic over males. However, hyenas and ring-tailed lemurs are both female dominant and they are slightly larger than their male counterparts. I think as a general rule, most evolutionary scientists would suspect female dominance to be connected with body size in most cases -- evolution just hasn't selected for this trait often. As for bonobos, they seem to be more monomorphic. I would personally say that male bonobos seem to be a little larger. However, female bonobos do not dominate male bonobos physically, they control them sexually. As for chimps, males are certainly sexually dimorphic to females, and it shows within their hierarchy. Males have their own dominance hierarchy and females have their own dominance hierarchy, but the top ranking males are always dominant to the top ranking females. Females have clever ways to combat this, however many times they cannot avoid being coerced to mate or relinquish food in certain situations.
So it's just that the smaller the amount by which males are sexually dimorphic over females, the more monogamous they are? Are there any completely monogamous primate species where the male still has the sexual dimorphism advantage over the female?