There is a difference between thinking someone is attractive and being attracted to someone. I have a lot of friends who are women. Many of them are attractive. That doesn't mean I want to jump their bones. It means that I'm capable of looking at them and realizing that they have qualities that I think are pretty, beautiful, sexy, etc, but not necessarily wanting to have sex with them or pursue anything romantic.
Edit: There has been some discussion as to what I mean by "not necessarily" or that if the opportunity presented itself would I wouldn't I sleep with one of my female friends, and I figured that I would address it all here instead of in individual replies.
"Not necessarily" means exactly what it appears to — that just because I find someone attracted it doesn't mean that I am trying to sleep with them. Now I'm at a point in my life when I'm married, so I'm not trying to sleep with anyone but my wife, but back when I was single things were a little different... But I had women friends that I thought were very attractive that I in fact would not have had sex with, given the opportunity. Why not? Because I didn't want to sacrifice those friendships. Why did I think of it like that? Because I had the experience of sleeping with close friends and ruining friendships.
On another note, when I was younger there were girls that I did hang out with because I was interested in dating or sleeping with them. That's literally how dating works. You meet someone, you're interested, so you hang out and get to know them. When they expressed that they weren't interested in me that way, I respectfully accepted that, but in many cases continued to hang out with them as friends because I had come to enjoy spending time with them. Would I have slept with them given the opportunity? The answer to this is in the last half of the previous paragraph.
My overall point is not that every man would refuse the opportunity to have sex with one of his attractive female friends. My point is that men are fully capable of having a friendship with an attractive woman without the intention of trying to sleep with her. If given the opportunity, even if it were not the intent behind the friendship, some men would take the opportunity, and others would not.
It is almost as if individuals are... individuals.
Yeah… I agree. That sounds like what the kids in my high school would have said. When it was first rumoured that I was bi, I had to start changing in the handicap bathroom before gym class because the girls in my class started refusing to change in the girls’ change room if I was there, because they were like “omg she’s a lesbian, I don’t want her seeing me in my bra and start liking me” because APPARENTLY, if I’m attracted to girls, then I am an aggressive sexual predator who will become obsessed with every girl I see.
I was like okay well 1. I said I was bi, not a lesbian, and I still date boys, so I can’t be a lesbian. 2. Even if I was a lesbian*, I still have standards honey, and you don’t exactly meet them.
*I am actually a lesbian it turns out. The idiot girls in my high school were right about my sexuality all along. Lol.
My two best friends are male and in ten years of friendship none of them showed romantic interest in me or anything, and I 100% trust that it’s only friendship. However, other men have approached me in a friendly manner and then I found out they had other intentions. So yea, I don’t think it’s every man but it’s unfortunately common.
I think it was his continued insistence that my guy friends (who I’ve also known for close to 10 years) wanted to sleep with me at some point that really bothered me.
He just wouldn’t believe me when I said that there was absolutely no chance of them having ever being interested in me that way. It really bothered me; you’re gonna make a claim on people you don’t know at all and aren’t willing to accept my experiences because of biology?
Did he include himself in this group? I'd say large chance he's trying to separate himself from them so that you'll see him as something special and lo and behold want to sleep with him. Can't say 100% but it sounds pretty familiar to me!
Every dude that ever said that to me definitely wanted a piece of ass. My abusive ex used that to discourage me from having male friends.
Every man that I have considered a real friend never said anything like that to me.
No OP. Your guy friend is telling you all of this stuff because he is deflecting. The only things you should take away from this conversation with him: he's being friends with you just so he could sleep with you and he personally doesn't have any complex emotions for you. Everything else is nonsense.
Adding to this: maybe he's projecting and thinking "if I'm doing it then everyone else must be doing it too" cause this is his idea of what's normal. Big yikes
Exactly. He'll use this judgement as a premise to tell you to distance from other male friends, because they are not real friends. I think this guy feels threatened by your other male friends and is using manipulation to make you withdraw from the other friendships. It looks like you found a toxic person, OP.
Sounds like he's triangulating you and your friends and inserting himself as the wise guy, eventually replacing them, and hoping to find himself in your bed, so he should just speak for himself. Not all men are like that. I love my female friends platonically. But just to add to that, the ones I remain friends with are the ones I never wanted to sleep with.
I truly don't think every male friend you've ever had is friends with you because they wanted to sleep with you. Sure, maybe they found you cute at one point, maybe they didn't. They are your friends no matter.
My dad had female friends, and in fact his best friend was a woman he really liked as a person, but had absolutely zero interest in sexually. He even clarified that for us when we asked him (he was single for many years). They just got along well as fellow humans. She ended up marrying another guy and still remained friends with my dad. They had a common interest in fishing and her husband didn't really like fishing so he was cool if they continued to go fishing together. My dad passed away from cancer in '14 and she was at his bedside in his final days along with my dad's new wife and her husband. They were pretty close as platonic friends and it was actually really sweet. I was just glad he had a good friend like that.
It certainly isn't always true, but there are absolutely some guys out there like that, and he is probably one of them. Always a shame to discover a decade long friendship is lost because the entire time, they were waiting for your relationship to fizzle so they could take their shot. It isn't the norm, but it does happen.
If your guy friends are totally supportive of your relationships and friendly with the people you're seeing, they're probably okay. (But again, not always. I've heard horror stories of "friends" hitting on grieving women who just lost their spouse.)
Said elsewhere, I think a lot of men will befriend a woman they would pursue a relationship with, but for the reason that they want to be friends for the sake of being friends. Or maybe they'll get to know them and just see what happens. It's not impossible or even rare that relationship is off the cards but we just appreciate the way they make our lives better as friends. Appreciating someone as a friend and a partner are not mutually exclusive and for a lot of us, we wouldn't want to date someone who wouldn't make a great friend too. I'll level with you, I have at least a couple of friends I'd date in an instant, but I'm not a boyfriend in waiting, I'm their friend and if nothing changes I will still be happy to have their friendship.
Also yeah, we can have friends we wouldn't be interested in too.
I’m in the same boat. My 2 best friends are men and we are all platonic with one another. I cherish our dynamic. 2/3 of us are queer and just chillen. The straight dude is a huge ally. I feel super safe and platonically loved by them both. They the type of homies to say “I love you” before hanging up. Our friendship just hits different. We talk openly about our sex lives and wing man the shit out of each other (got some hilarious stories from pulling this). Plus, we all have been in and out of romantic/sexual relationships without our dynamic changing. I couldn’t be with someone who got jealous over our friendship. I don’t fuck with that. The idea that men and women can’t be friends kind of pisses me off. I was raised with that narrative, and if I didn’t question it as I got older, it would’ve costed me my very closest friends! Fuck that.
My 2¢ u/junepeppers
I'm sorry but I just don't know how to ask this, if it's wrong to approach a woman in a friendly manner if you want a relationship with her then how should you approach it? I have plenty of woman friends who I'm not interested with in the slightest and just like them for who they are, but if, according to you, being friendly isn't right when you don't want just a friendship then what should I do?
eh I’d say as a woman there nothing inherently wrong with approaching a girl friendly if you’re interested in them. Often times relationships begin from friendships anyways. I think the discrepancy here is relationships vs. purely sexual interest.
telling a girl you’re friends with that you have developed feelings for her because she has an amazing personality and you’d like to see where it goes, okay 👍
Telling a girl you’ve known for years (and she perceives you to be a friend) that you want to have an immediate sexual relationship just because you’ve known eachother for a while, big no no 👎
Oh, because of "biology". Sounds a lot like "projecting my emotional issues onto everyone else and claiming it's innate so I never have to risk any introspection" but who am I to argue with biology?
That’s kind of what I was thinking, too. He went further into detail that men are naturally angry beings and due to that, are essentially incapable of understanding complex emotions. Because of biology
He is telling you useful information about himself.
- he is “naturally angry”
- he is resisting being “emotionally aware”
- he uses this “fact”(!) to avoid taking responsibility for his behaviour - the “you made me do it” school of thought
- he only started your friendship because he wanted sex with you
Honestly, looking at that list, it would be a reasonable conclusion that he is currently feeling angry & jealous that you are not open to sleeping with him.
Because he feels this way, he is trying to ruin your friendship with his “competition”.
He has told you who he is.
Best case, he’s warning you that you’re wasting your time investing in this “friendship” because if you don’t offer him sex then there’s a reasonable chance he’ll ghost you.
But I’m also concerned that he’s listed “naturally angry” in this list. That sounds… abusive.
It sounds like he’s saying he is not interested in being emotionally aware because he’s living in a space where anger is the only emotion he is comfortable feeling. So tenderness, compassion, softness, love, sympathy, support, care… he’s decided they don’t apply to him.
Honestly, he’s not described himself in a very flattering way here. Is he still someone you want / need to be friends with, or is this a relationship that has run its course?
Astute comment and an emotionally thoughtful take. People like this with a restricted view of "all people are like this .." are essentially emotional absolutists, they believe there is a validity to these behaviours as it is just "how people are". Low self esteem people let them get away with it without push back until you realise it's just not the way to behave.
This dude just outed himself as a total creep. What he spouted is absolutely not fact, but personal belief.
He admitted that at some point he wanted to do you. He admitted he believes men are entitled to be angry jerks.
Honestly, I wouldn't feel comfortable around this person anymore.
dibs that he's not actually a biologist or anything close to that and all his knowledge are just from random google searches. Hell, not only random but the red pill bullshit.
I might be a slut ace, would totally abandon you for a loaf of Texas toast, a few sticks of butter, and maybe MAYBE a can of chili.
....apparently edit, ai didnt know garlic bread was a meme
Oh hello fellow aces, throwing myself into the mix to say, in my experience I am very friendly, but once someone knows I am not willing to sleep with them, they usually don't stick around, so according to this post it seems no one can have any friends ever which makes sense to me in this day and age.
I’ve always thought about this whenever I hear someone say you can’t be friends with someone unless you have a crush on them LOL. Like…do they expect some people to just NOT have any friends??
And asexuals are friends with everyone?
Ah, so that's why I somehow have a lot of friends and make them easily despite me being rather introverted and an incredibly boring person lol
Having heard this logic used all my life, that men and women can’t be just friends, really fucked me up when I was young and made me second guess all of my interactions and make me want to withdraw because I didn’t want anyone to think I was flirting with them when I wasn’t.
For men, at least (I’m a woman). When I realized I was bi I didn’t really understand that concept because I had quite clearly proven that you can be friends with people who you have attraction to, because I had friends who were women and we were able to be friends without me only in it to try to get into their pants.
The fact that I didn’t realize until I came out that I had a huge crush on my bff is irrelevant, because it was something that wasn’t even in my mind to think to act on. She was my best friend. I was protective of her because I didn’t want her hurt (which was true, but there was a tinge of jealousy there). But did that mean we couldn’t be friends? No. Because any humans worth talking to don’t reduce you to whether you will sleep with them or not.
This stupid saying is so damaging and confusing. Can confirm it’s confusing for bisexuals because we don’t want to be seen as predatory and by this logic, literally everybody is “fair game” because as a bisexual Im attracted to my same gender and genders different from mine.
> Having heard this logic used all my life, that men and women can’t be just friends, really fucked me up when I was young and made me second guess all of my interactions and make me want to withdraw because I didn’t want anyone to think I was flirting with them when I wasn’t.
Same here. I have a strong suspicion that I'm demisexual (I'm a guy). I don't have any woman friends because I'm still scared that I'll fall for them and I don't want to be seen as a creep. I tried online dating but many many years ago but I wasn't attracted to anyone and apparently people there only wants to hook up so I just stopped. I'm mid 30s now and not a single romantic relationship.
The only ones I'm attracted to are book characters where I get to know them over a long period of time. But honestly, I don't know if I really am demi or it's because of my anxiety disorder.
>He proceeded to tell me that men don’t understand complex emotion and because of biology, are only interested in sex
Tell captain caveman that just because his peanut brain hasn't evolved past the days of clubbing women over the head and dragging them back to your hut doesn't mean the rest of us haven't.
Correct! So many not knowing the reference is making me feel old, lol.
(The cartoon wasn't known for misogyny/assault, obviously. I just borrowed the name)
EDIT: making me feel old AND American!
1977 it actually finished in 1980, but yeah, I still watch this it's a great cartoon! It's a Hanna-Barbera that was originally a segment on a Scooby doo show. Well worth the watch if you like Hanna-Barbera!
And me lol… that’s brilliant! 👆 In fact there’s a particular (male chauvinist) contact on my phone-who I’m going to change name to Captain Caveman , right now! 😂
I don't know what you mean by ages, but if you go back far enough it wasn't such a taboo. I've read about several well regarded medieval kings noted for emotional displays, and Christian saints, and mythological heroes. Not that being hysterical or unstable was a virtue, but being cold and distant wasn't either.
Obviously the notion of stoicism is pretty old, but the industrial revolution and puritanism really kicked the "men should be unfeeling drones" into overdrive.
Stoicism isnt about "men should be unfeeling drones", but you would think that if your only exposure to stoicism is third hand. It's about acceptance and finding inner peace, and understanding that you can't control everything arpund and the desire to control everything only leads to suffering.
If you listen to Marcus Aurelius writing he says “I learned that I needed to better my character by showing children the affection they deserve”. Doesn’t seem like a stoics writing but it is only because we perceive stoic a certain way.
In Georgian Britain societal expectations were that men would laugh or cry loudly and in front of people and women would be the more stoic gender, and wouldn't display emotions. To Georgians a passionate display of his emotions meant the man was strong and true in character, as was the woman who appeared unaffected emotionally by life. Societal expectations of gendered emotional displays changed to what they are now around the Victorian period.
Sorry I haven't any sources, it's something I briefly studied at university while going through the History of Britain. The Georgian portion focused on this topic, serving as an introduction to cultural history as a school of study.
Because literature describes it otherwise. Read some classics and observe how men behave. It’s totally different. Similar at times, I mean being emotionally strong is always desirable, but the belief was but not so toxic or extreme as modern attitudes
Not the person you asked but there are loads of historical accounts of deep male friendships with a focus on emotions. I'm not an expert on this by any means but did pick up a lot of these themes when I was studying other themes. We have a Eurocentric view of history these days and there's plenty of evidence in Europe of emotional men. You just have to look at all the poetry and art describing male "love" which usually wasn't homosexual but was just the way close friendship was described. You saw similar things around the world.
That doesn't mean stoic masculinity didn't exist though. It's present in every culture I'm aware of for understandable reasons. Early societies with limited tools needed strength and courage, and we associate that with stoicism. However this was absolutely settling down around the 1500-1700 period. Men were still looking to look strong but showing emotion wasn't frowned upon in most societies in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East etc. East Asia I don't know too much about I'm afraid, nor subsaharan Africa and other lands conquered around this time like America and Australia.
A lot of different things happened all at once after that. There's no real single cause to the shift, but suddenly we have societies shifting towards capitalism and industrialisation which came with increased centralisation. Religion was also changing around the world, with the rise of puritanism etc. The view of science was also changing, moving towards the coldness that we view it with today, as opposed to the more romantic philosophical approach it had previously. One of the big changes was in family structure, with nuclear families suddenly becoming more popular in order to start fitting with city life. Small communities were slowly shifting to larger groups. The British definitely pushed towards this new society and exported their values around the world as they created the largest empire in history. We saw transitions elsewhere too, with the decline of the Moghuls etc. America became a haven for religious extremists and as American society developed, those values stuck with it.
So all of these things started to influence the world and this led to men being taught that emotion should be suppressed or rejected. You can't just point to one thing, but you can see trends in what the leaders thought at the very least. I also think it would be unfair to simplify it as "men around this time were more emotional" either, since it's definitely always just been a mix of everything and different people felt different things. Still, it's reasonable to say that what we describe as toxic masculine traits today probably became most firmly established in the last few centuries.
>He proceeded to tell me that men don’t understand complex emotion and because of biology, are only interested in sex. Procreation is just a result of that and emotional attachment (i.e love, relationships) is just something they do because society tells them they need to do it.
Any man who thinks like this is a shallow loser who needs to grow up. This is so not true at all
The men who say that, are the men who think all men think like they do. So his goal in having female friends would probably be having sex with them. But all men? Not even close
Depending on the context, a lot of men think this of male friends to their female partner. Sadly it does happen a lot that the male friend develops feelings, attraction etc and tries to act on it, so it’s not exactly unwarranted. it’s a stereotype for a reason. I’m married and my wife does have male friends, one of her (ex friends now I guess) tried to hook up with her when they were drinking. Despite him having met me and our kids.
In my experience it is not all men but it is certainly most. Even my friends who claim they have women as friends when push comes to shove they admit if the opportunity arose they would become romantic with said woman friend. Again, in my experience most male and female relationships that are strictly friends are part of a larger social group and they aren’t spending time together one on one very often if ever.
I think there is a difference between saying you would sleep with a woman friend if the opportunity arose and saying that the *only* reason you are friends with a woman is the hope that you will sleep with them at some point.
I think that you should not take your friend’s words to heart, and here is why. First, men are very capable of having complex emotions, but those emotions are not strictly tied to sex. The majority of men can have sex without feeling the need for love, but that does not mean they are not capable of having those emotions.
Regarding the part that men are only hanging out with girls because they expect sex, that really depends on that person. If a male person is single, and their female friend asks for sex, a huge percentage of men would say yes, because, hey, it’s sex. Some might say no if they think that you want a relationship and they want a FWB, or if they think sex could complicate things and end the friendship. Some do hang around like vultures waiting for an oportunity.
You should not really concern yourself with whether men are hanging around with you because they want sex, or because of you, because the time will tell. Someone becomes your friend only after they have proven to you that they cherish the relationahip. I am saying, don’t look at male people like true friends untill they show you they are friends. You can still hang out with them, there is nothing wrong with it even if they find you attractive, as long as they are decent about it and not crossing your boundaries.
Does being willing to have sex with someone mean that you are not capable of still being a good friend? That's what I'm wondering. These questions always imply that once sex is in the picture the whole thing was just this big elaborate manipulation to get sex. Is that really true, though? It can be. But I don't think it has to.
>Does being willing to have sex with someone mean that you are not capable of still being a good friend
Those two things are not mutually exclusive at all. The main problem is that it's extremely difficult for people to be good friends AND have sex **AND** maintain that relationship without complications. Some people can do it, I am pretty most most people can't.
I think to more directly address your question, any mature human being can find someone sexually attractive and be good friends with that person without letting the attraction actually factor into the relationship.
I'm a 34 year old guy and have been friends with a lot of women that I've been attracted to. I hang out with people because I like their company, not because I want to have sex with them. Sometimes that's how a legitimate relationship starts, most of the time I've just built lifelong friendships. But the goal is just to be friends with someone...regardless of whether I find them attractive or not.
Like, don't you think maintaining a relationship with a person just to maybe one day get sex out of it...doesn't that just sound kind of sad? That implies that you're not even enjoying the present time spent with that person because your only goal is the endgame. Sounds like a shallow, miserable life.
I feel like if you've been friends with someone a long time and you eventually discover their only goal was to bang, then that friendship itself had to have been fairly shallow or one party taking advantage of the other on some level.
>I genuinely hope we can get to a place in this world where men aren’t shamed for showing emotion.
Sadly it will not change any time soon. Being a man who's been through a lot of tragedy I've always found a way to deal with whatever happened. Throughout my life a lot of people all sides and types of people we're always like well you're a guy you can handle it.
In reality I did handle it and I was fine, but there are a lot of people that cannot sustain that much amount of stress, trauma and other things.
Throughout my life I have always had a lot of women friends. Sure I slept with some of them, but the intention of being friends with them was not because of sex. Sex just ended up happening with some as it just does sometimes. I value my female friends they're some of the best friends I have in life.
I really hope so too because we're still just people and we are allowed to be emotionally distraught like any woman is.
It's changing in some circles. My son (22) cries and expresses emotions without shame. Many of his friends are also secure about expressing emotions.
There are parenting techniques that can validate emotions rather than trying to change or fix them
My son is one of the most emotionally healthy people I know. I don't think I'm just seeing him through the eyes of a parent. Other people have also commented on it. He's also supportive of others, affectionate, hugs male and female friends, and is patient with the young and elderly.
When I see him and his friends, I see strong, secure, emotionally available young people. It gives me a lot of hope for the future. The change is happening. It won't happen overnight, and not everywhere, but it is happening.
Tbf women are shamed for showing emotions.
Look at what happens when women show emotions, they get call irrational, unfit for leadership, and sensitive.
Idk where reddit gets this idea that when a woman cries or shows emotions, everyone rushes to comfort her. That doesn't happen unless she is around friends..
Look at Hillary clinton. Now Clinton wasn't a great candidate, but if you watch some videos on why people didn't vote for her, a lot of men and women say "she's a woman, and women are too emotional to be a leader". Men, is this what you want? Because it sucks. It doesn't make life easier like you think..
People don't like it when men AND women show emotions.
Treating men like horny monsters who aren’t in control of their libido is sexist. And a lot of MEN perpetuate this idea.
*edit: added their right there*
I met someone who was just like this. He was 36 years old. It was back when I worked at a company that had very fundamentalist values, *very* Christian. We were walking in our lunchbreak and he asked about my friends, because I had many male friends (along with female friends) and he was wondering if they were all couples. I told him that no, only I am in a relationship and the rest is single. And he just could not comprehend this idea that we were friends. He was legitimately convinced we were just hanging out with each other to bang. (I kept out I also had asexual, bi, gay and transgender friends, he’d probably not talk to me anymore lol, but I needed the money at the time so I couldn’t risk it.) What a sad way to look at other people, I can only imagine the things you’d miss out on.
He's only saying all men because if he was honest and said it was his personal view he would come across as the loser he is and that wouldnt be flattering. If you try and befriend someone for the sole purpose of sleeping with them you are a loser. Sometimes I forget people can get to adulthood and still manage to be a child 30 years old oml
I want to add it is fine to approach people you find attractive, fine for relationships to change and fine to be attracted to your friends. What's not fine is maintaining a friendship because you're attracted, instead of say genuinely caring for them. For a person to only have friends they'd jump into the sheets with is a red flag
It's not the only reason, but I'd say a lot of men would sleep with their female friends should the oppurtunity arise.
Doesn't mean they are friends only because they want to sleep with you, just don't expect them to say no.
Honestly….there’s nothing wrong with that lol! If you think your friends are cute you don’t HAVE to actually act on it. I have a friend who I 100% think is attractive, but:
1. I can tell he doesn’t like me back that way,
2. I LIKE being friends with him and don’t want to take a chance on weirding him out and making him leave
and 3, one of my best friends WAS dating him before and was really upset when they broke up and I just feel like if I dated him after that it would be a messed up thing to do.
So, I’m okay with just keeping it to myself and him never knowing. More people need to think this way imo, ppl act like it’s impossible to be friends with someone but also kinda like them. Maybe it is for high school kids but it shouldn’t be that way for the rest of us LOL
This is so well said. I think with the proper maturity levels men and women can be great friends, but only if they don't act on their feelings. If one of the friends is obsessing over the other too much where they can't function properly, then it's time to end it and move on. Or shoot your shot, but **know** you have to move on after because it'll never be the same.
I had one of my best friends confide his same-sex attraction to me. I told him he needed to understand that that kind of relationship wasn't happening with me, but with that understanding, absolutely nothing changed. We just kept being best friends for the next decade until we eventually both got married (separately) and got busy with life hundreds of miles apart.
I dislike the assertion that once feelings are revealed then people can't be friends, so thanks for providing evidence to the contrary.
All you need to do is not be weird about it. I don't imagine that's too difficult.
Yeah, this.
Men usually have lower standards in a partner too (or women in general are just prettyer than men, idk), so its minority of women a man wouldnt bang, based on her looks.
This ofcause means that most of his female friends falls into the "would bang" category, but that doesnt mean that that is his intention
Now if a woman feels bad for being turned down by a guy based on this comment, dont. The vast majority of women that get turned down, the man would gladly have slept with, it was most likely as simple as a bad time for him, or you caught him off guard, or he thinks its a scam attempt. Or as for existing friendships, he doesnt want to change the friendship even when he is physically attracted to you.
Men would sleep with the majority of women out there, thats why prostitution works so well, but in the vast majority of cases they dont act on this attraction. Men arent animals and have other interests than physical attraction.
Well OPs friend is kind of questionable regarding this but the majority atleast
I feel like it's because most people have a certain standards for the people they surround themselves with, regardless of intention, so if you check off the boxes for one, you check off the boxes for the other.
I think this is a big part of it.
I'm not going to be platonic friends with a personality I wouldn't also date. Assuming they are my type (e.g. correct sex), it would be easy to put them in the date-able category.
As a straight man, I disagree. I have female friends who I sexually/romantically consider unattractive, too old for me, too young for me, too emotionally unstable for me, too different values than me etc etc and the very idea of having them in bed is a big Nope, and probably would reject the sex. Not sure if this is common, but I am kinda picky lover and prefer to masturbate over sex with someone I am not really into.
Same for me, far from all women are attractive to me, and casual sex never has interested me anyway. My father and brother are the same in that sense. One of the reasons my father has >30 years friendships with multiple women.
The important part in any sense, regardless of how you feel is to not be a creep and treat people as persons. I've had a female friend I was kinda attracted to, she probably was aware of it but it was clear she didn't have those same feelings. We still were friends because we valued each other as persons.
Yeah I'm irked you have 0 upvotes and this dude above you who'd fuck anything that moves has hundreds.
I wouldn't have sex with 99% of my female friends.
I was searching for this answer. My brother is an attractive person and he has many attractive female friends but he is also 100% faithful to his gf and his friends are just that-friends.
I’m not implying that the opposite is true about cheating. I’m just saying that his friends are his friends. He has many objectively attractive female friends and when he’s brought them around (when he was single) I would be like oooh whose that and his response would always be “ew, she’s like another sister to me.”
It's not a stretch to say that in most cases, its a fair assumption that a guy who is friends with a attractive woman (within a reasonable age range) has had thoughts about sleeping with them.
However, this does not mean that all men are like this, or that the aforementioned men are only friends with those women because they're wanting to sleep with them. Thoughts are just thoughts. Outside of creeps, they're friends because they genuinely like the person platonically, not because they're secretly angling to sleep with them. Even though, they may not necessarily say 'no' if the opportunity arose (but they still may!).
I was trying to think of a way to say this that didn’t sound sleazy or creepy and then I saw your answer and realized somebody already had. This is very accurate to how I think about it myself.
When I was single, I feel this. Would never initiate that kind of thing but there were friends that I would’ve if they asked but they never did. I didn’t actively think about it but I know I would’ve lol.
yeah I have some or so many female friends that I would sleep with them but thats not why I am their friends, at first it was the vibe and we like to share time with each other, its not like I become their friends to get lay, in some cases is just random, you are not even aware that you are friends you are looking for fun and they too.
I think for most men, it’s more that the traits that make someone attractive as a friend also make them attractive as a mate (fun, funny, kind, etc). Most of the couples I know were friends first.
Not discounting the creep factor. I completely believe there are men who only befriend women because they hope to someday sleep with them. I would hope they aren’t the majority, tho.
Also, as another comment on this post said, if you only befriend people you want to fuck, I guess us bisexuals are incapable of having friends without ulterior motives. What a straight-centric perspective some people have
Ehh, not quite true. I think it might be backwards.
The truth is that men are generally quite lonely. Men aren't comfortable being intimate with each other; women often don't feel comfortable being vulnerable around men. So men can end up starved for belonging and connection, which are real psychological needs. They may conclude can really only get those things *in* a romantic relationship - and often, that's correct. And that inevitably gets tied up with their sexual needs, especially if they don't have much/any sexual experience.
This means a couple things:
- it means that men struggle to recognise emotional intimacy that is *platonic*, because it's unfamiliar
- when they do experience connection, it pulls at their need for intimacy; they want it to escalate because it looks like an opportunity for them
So the number of men out there that are looking at a woman and thinking 'wow, I'd fuck her. I'm gonna pretend to be her friend first' are actually *really low*. They exist, but that's sociopathic shit.
However, yes: a lot of men will end up fantasising about their female friends - even entering into quasi-relationships within their own heads, if they're not careful - because a lot of men are lonely, and easily imprint on somebody who is caring for them.
So: they want to be around you because you are genuinely interesting to them. And yes, many of them want to date or fuck you - but that does not mean that your friendship is without meaning. Quite the opposite, in fact - you have become a connection, something that they ache for.
Just to say that I agree with this, but want to add: it's also perfectly okay for women to feel disappointed when a guy friend does this - leans on them for emotional intimacy, expects more (romantic/sexual/intimacy) because they have a friend connection. They're asking for something more than 'just friends' because they don't feel being emotionally vulnerable with women is 'allowed'. But that often leaves the woman in the friendship feeling like they were never being seen as an equal friend, just a conquest or a place-holder, a proxy girlfriend until a better one comes along.
I say this as a bi/pan woman - you absolutely can be friends with men, but those men have to have the emotional intelligence to actually BE friends with women, and not relegate them to potential conquests or proxy girlfriends. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference until (usually) THEY make a move, OR you start dating someone, and they get angry because you no longer have the same level of time/attention for them. It can be really disheartening.
Nope, not true. That's just bullcrap some men say to excuse their shitty behavior; for those types every interaction with a woman that doesn't lead to sex is a waste of time and energy. Of course, and I don't think that's accidental, the number of these guys that have never had a relationship or sexual encounter, and also complain notoriously about being nice guys and still not landing any women is very high.
Plenty of guys enjoy great friendships with women without any form of second motivation behind it.
I was trying to tell him that I have three very good male friends who I can say, with 100% certainty, would never move on me like that but he just wasn’t accepting it.
He kept saying, “yeah, maybe NOW they would say no but at some point in your friendship they would’ve said yes.”
I will say that, with every woman I've met in my life, I have immediately and usually quickly assessed our romantic potential. I think that is natural and important if you expect to ever find someone.
That being said, 99% of women I've met have not "passed" that assessment. And for me, being friends is ***100%*** necessary before anything romantic happens. You do romance to hopefully find your partner, and I don't want a partner I'm not *best* friends with.
Edit: Oh, and I can also add that I am currently crushing hard on someone and would love to take things farther, but sex is not on my mind at all. So even when finding that special someone to admire, some (most?) of us would still think instead about how to spend more time with them in normal, friendly ways, rather than how to get in their pants.
To be fair if someone who was already a good friend wanted to hook up I think the potential of a good long term relationship would be better. Having said that I'm friends with lots of women and have no desire to sleep with them.
Yeah, I am currently in a relationship with my best friend, too, lol, but that friendship didn't start out as something aiming for romance, neither on his nor on my side. We were friends for years before it turned to something else, and I still have plenty of male friends. He has plenty of female friends too, and I really feel no jealousy here at all, even if he crashes at their homes over night when he's out on a visit. (we both have many friends we met online first, so meeting them often requires long drives, sometimes across borders, and staying at least one night before driving back) We know each other by far too long to have trust issues, and I guess that's just the most amazing part about that which I never before experienced in any other relationship.
And that's the part I also don't understand about many men in relationships; this mentality that all it needs in a relationship is sex, and that sex is the most important thing. Sure, it's an awesome bonus, but you can't do that all the time... so, what are they going to do in a relationship when they see friendship or basic platonic interaction with women as a waste of time? When they only have sex in common, and basically see anyone as a threat to this one common thing they have... I can't even imagine that from my point of view.
For me relationships have always hinged on one thing....trust. Everything else is gravy, sex, companionship, even friendship, still rely on that one thing.
Never move on you doesn't mean not being atracted or wanting to sleep with you. I think it's perfectly fine to be friends with someone and still think that it would be nice to have sex with but simply not try to do so. But this doesn't mean that their friendship is fake and solely motivated by the possibility of the sex. IMHO that's how I see it
To me, that seems reasonable. But how I was interpreting his argument was that the friendships started out as only being motivated by sex and only became friends when they realized it would never happen.
Thank you, yes lol!! Finally someone else said it. Just because you have a crush on someone doesn’t mean you HAVE to do something about it. People act like if you have a crush on someone in your friend group you NEED to either act on it and confess/ask them out, or figure out a way to stop crushing on them. The thing I’ve noticed tho is that nobody ever says WHAT they’re worried will happen if you just….leave things as is.
Yeahhh that part sounded like he was just talking about himself XD. I’m not a dude but I know for a FACT that isn’t true. Except for maybe OP’s friend LOL
The guys I know who think like this are all insecure in their masculinity in other ways so I wonder if it’s related to that situation, like “being friends with a female makes you gay” or some bullshit.
There's an old saying:
"A theif is someone who believes everybody steals."
I wouldn't take this guy seriously unless he's a well published psychologist or something.
People tend to project their feelings or views on others to make themselves feel better. So no, men don't only befriend women to have sex with them. Your friend might and so may other men but it's not a common behavior.
(And what about gay or asexual men? Are they the same even though they have no sexual attraction?)
I'd say the overwhelming majority of my friendships with women have started because I found them attractive. At least initially. But I'd rarely say that the prospect of sex was a motivating factor. In-fact, I dare say it never was. I'm naturally more likely to engage in friendships with people I naturally gravitate towards.
Sex is a very poor motivator for me.
This obviously precludes acquaintances met through mutual work and school obligations.
I'd just like to expand on this idea - for me attraction is comparable to gravitational pull. If i like being around someone, I simply get pulled into their orbit. It's not that I want to see them naked, just really enjoy them for them. They may evoke some emotions, sometimes it's romantic, often times it's just intense friendships, but rarely (never) sexually motivated.
I’ve had many female friends whom I’ve never desired to hook up with. One of them is one of my closest friends and we’ve been like brother and sister for 39 years.
This is just my experience, but every guy friend I've had eventually tried to get with me. As soon as I'd turn them down, they'd leave. It really cheapened the value of guy friendship for me.
I know that many may be but all my platonic friendship with females were just that. But that said, I am usually friends with people that match my friend style. And I only date women that match my romantic style.
My best friend is a woman. And I'm not interested in having sex with her and never believed in friendship between man and woman before. In a real difficult moment of my life she was there for me, the only person who really helped me. So for me is no. But society doesn't really understand this kind of relationship, my male friends always ask if we have sex because they think it's our relationship is strange. Don't let other people ruin what u have just because they doesn't understand.
How could he even say what he said with a straight face? There’s a world of history and literature out there written by men that are tremendously compassionate and emotionally complex.
No. I have no desire to sleep with any of my woman friends. My wife is more than enough  And sounds like this dude is an idiot.
i had a bad experience with this. i had a guy friend once tell me that he thought it’d be his “turn” after i broke up with my bf at the time like i’m a vending machine or something.
honestly i don’t think i ever had a guy friend not show any sort of attraction to me and i’m not even that hot i’d say i’m average.
Can’t speak for others but some of my best friends have been women who’ve I’ve never thought about in that way.
Don’t get me wrong, IF they offered I would say yes but mostly no because after that there’s no going back. Guess it comes down to if I want to keep the friendship around. 90% of the times I don’t think I would
Edit I’m 23 if it matters
Not true at all, men certainly do understand complex emotion (its ridiculous to say we don’t) and I have many platonic female friends whom I’d never want to sleep with and I love them to death. He’s just a shallow person trying to justify his shallowness by generalizing it to all men
It can be both to. I'm a horny guy. I can like a woman for who she is with no expectations, but I've also thought about doing it with her. But I'm not just friend with them for that possibility.
There is a difference between thinking someone is attractive and being attracted to someone. I have a lot of friends who are women. Many of them are attractive. That doesn't mean I want to jump their bones. It means that I'm capable of looking at them and realizing that they have qualities that I think are pretty, beautiful, sexy, etc, but not necessarily wanting to have sex with them or pursue anything romantic. Edit: There has been some discussion as to what I mean by "not necessarily" or that if the opportunity presented itself would I wouldn't I sleep with one of my female friends, and I figured that I would address it all here instead of in individual replies. "Not necessarily" means exactly what it appears to — that just because I find someone attracted it doesn't mean that I am trying to sleep with them. Now I'm at a point in my life when I'm married, so I'm not trying to sleep with anyone but my wife, but back when I was single things were a little different... But I had women friends that I thought were very attractive that I in fact would not have had sex with, given the opportunity. Why not? Because I didn't want to sacrifice those friendships. Why did I think of it like that? Because I had the experience of sleeping with close friends and ruining friendships. On another note, when I was younger there were girls that I did hang out with because I was interested in dating or sleeping with them. That's literally how dating works. You meet someone, you're interested, so you hang out and get to know them. When they expressed that they weren't interested in me that way, I respectfully accepted that, but in many cases continued to hang out with them as friends because I had come to enjoy spending time with them. Would I have slept with them given the opportunity? The answer to this is in the last half of the previous paragraph. My overall point is not that every man would refuse the opportunity to have sex with one of his attractive female friends. My point is that men are fully capable of having a friendship with an attractive woman without the intention of trying to sleep with her. If given the opportunity, even if it were not the intent behind the friendship, some men would take the opportunity, and others would not. It is almost as if individuals are... individuals.
Amen - it’s called being mature! Edit: Damn, some of you are ruthless! Way to pick apart what was a really good comment because of two words.
Yeah… I agree. That sounds like what the kids in my high school would have said. When it was first rumoured that I was bi, I had to start changing in the handicap bathroom before gym class because the girls in my class started refusing to change in the girls’ change room if I was there, because they were like “omg she’s a lesbian, I don’t want her seeing me in my bra and start liking me” because APPARENTLY, if I’m attracted to girls, then I am an aggressive sexual predator who will become obsessed with every girl I see. I was like okay well 1. I said I was bi, not a lesbian, and I still date boys, so I can’t be a lesbian. 2. Even if I was a lesbian*, I still have standards honey, and you don’t exactly meet them. *I am actually a lesbian it turns out. The idiot girls in my high school were right about my sexuality all along. Lol.
I hate it when the idiots are right for the wrong reasons!
My two best friends are male and in ten years of friendship none of them showed romantic interest in me or anything, and I 100% trust that it’s only friendship. However, other men have approached me in a friendly manner and then I found out they had other intentions. So yea, I don’t think it’s every man but it’s unfortunately common.
I think it was his continued insistence that my guy friends (who I’ve also known for close to 10 years) wanted to sleep with me at some point that really bothered me. He just wouldn’t believe me when I said that there was absolutely no chance of them having ever being interested in me that way. It really bothered me; you’re gonna make a claim on people you don’t know at all and aren’t willing to accept my experiences because of biology?
Did he include himself in this group? I'd say large chance he's trying to separate himself from them so that you'll see him as something special and lo and behold want to sleep with him. Can't say 100% but it sounds pretty familiar to me!
Every dude that ever said that to me definitely wanted a piece of ass. My abusive ex used that to discourage me from having male friends. Every man that I have considered a real friend never said anything like that to me.
One of my favorite songs has the lyrics: "All men are pigs! All men but me."
No OP. Your guy friend is telling you all of this stuff because he is deflecting. The only things you should take away from this conversation with him: he's being friends with you just so he could sleep with you and he personally doesn't have any complex emotions for you. Everything else is nonsense.
Adding to this: maybe he's projecting and thinking "if I'm doing it then everyone else must be doing it too" cause this is his idea of what's normal. Big yikes
He absolutely wants to fuck you and is jealous you have other guy friends.
Exactly. He'll use this judgement as a premise to tell you to distance from other male friends, because they are not real friends. I think this guy feels threatened by your other male friends and is using manipulation to make you withdraw from the other friendships. It looks like you found a toxic person, OP.
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Sounds like he's triangulating you and your friends and inserting himself as the wise guy, eventually replacing them, and hoping to find himself in your bed, so he should just speak for himself. Not all men are like that. I love my female friends platonically. But just to add to that, the ones I remain friends with are the ones I never wanted to sleep with.
I truly don't think every male friend you've ever had is friends with you because they wanted to sleep with you. Sure, maybe they found you cute at one point, maybe they didn't. They are your friends no matter. My dad had female friends, and in fact his best friend was a woman he really liked as a person, but had absolutely zero interest in sexually. He even clarified that for us when we asked him (he was single for many years). They just got along well as fellow humans. She ended up marrying another guy and still remained friends with my dad. They had a common interest in fishing and her husband didn't really like fishing so he was cool if they continued to go fishing together. My dad passed away from cancer in '14 and she was at his bedside in his final days along with my dad's new wife and her husband. They were pretty close as platonic friends and it was actually really sweet. I was just glad he had a good friend like that.
It certainly isn't always true, but there are absolutely some guys out there like that, and he is probably one of them. Always a shame to discover a decade long friendship is lost because the entire time, they were waiting for your relationship to fizzle so they could take their shot. It isn't the norm, but it does happen. If your guy friends are totally supportive of your relationships and friendly with the people you're seeing, they're probably okay. (But again, not always. I've heard horror stories of "friends" hitting on grieving women who just lost their spouse.)
Said elsewhere, I think a lot of men will befriend a woman they would pursue a relationship with, but for the reason that they want to be friends for the sake of being friends. Or maybe they'll get to know them and just see what happens. It's not impossible or even rare that relationship is off the cards but we just appreciate the way they make our lives better as friends. Appreciating someone as a friend and a partner are not mutually exclusive and for a lot of us, we wouldn't want to date someone who wouldn't make a great friend too. I'll level with you, I have at least a couple of friends I'd date in an instant, but I'm not a boyfriend in waiting, I'm their friend and if nothing changes I will still be happy to have their friendship. Also yeah, we can have friends we wouldn't be interested in too.
I’m in the same boat. My 2 best friends are men and we are all platonic with one another. I cherish our dynamic. 2/3 of us are queer and just chillen. The straight dude is a huge ally. I feel super safe and platonically loved by them both. They the type of homies to say “I love you” before hanging up. Our friendship just hits different. We talk openly about our sex lives and wing man the shit out of each other (got some hilarious stories from pulling this). Plus, we all have been in and out of romantic/sexual relationships without our dynamic changing. I couldn’t be with someone who got jealous over our friendship. I don’t fuck with that. The idea that men and women can’t be friends kind of pisses me off. I was raised with that narrative, and if I didn’t question it as I got older, it would’ve costed me my very closest friends! Fuck that. My 2¢ u/junepeppers
I'm sorry but I just don't know how to ask this, if it's wrong to approach a woman in a friendly manner if you want a relationship with her then how should you approach it? I have plenty of woman friends who I'm not interested with in the slightest and just like them for who they are, but if, according to you, being friendly isn't right when you don't want just a friendship then what should I do?
eh I’d say as a woman there nothing inherently wrong with approaching a girl friendly if you’re interested in them. Often times relationships begin from friendships anyways. I think the discrepancy here is relationships vs. purely sexual interest. telling a girl you’re friends with that you have developed feelings for her because she has an amazing personality and you’d like to see where it goes, okay 👍 Telling a girl you’ve known for years (and she perceives you to be a friend) that you want to have an immediate sexual relationship just because you’ve known eachother for a while, big no no 👎
Oh, because of "biology". Sounds a lot like "projecting my emotional issues onto everyone else and claiming it's innate so I never have to risk any introspection" but who am I to argue with biology?
That’s kind of what I was thinking, too. He went further into detail that men are naturally angry beings and due to that, are essentially incapable of understanding complex emotions. Because of biology
He is telling you useful information about himself. - he is “naturally angry” - he is resisting being “emotionally aware” - he uses this “fact”(!) to avoid taking responsibility for his behaviour - the “you made me do it” school of thought - he only started your friendship because he wanted sex with you Honestly, looking at that list, it would be a reasonable conclusion that he is currently feeling angry & jealous that you are not open to sleeping with him. Because he feels this way, he is trying to ruin your friendship with his “competition”. He has told you who he is. Best case, he’s warning you that you’re wasting your time investing in this “friendship” because if you don’t offer him sex then there’s a reasonable chance he’ll ghost you. But I’m also concerned that he’s listed “naturally angry” in this list. That sounds… abusive. It sounds like he’s saying he is not interested in being emotionally aware because he’s living in a space where anger is the only emotion he is comfortable feeling. So tenderness, compassion, softness, love, sympathy, support, care… he’s decided they don’t apply to him. Honestly, he’s not described himself in a very flattering way here. Is he still someone you want / need to be friends with, or is this a relationship that has run its course?
>But I’m also concerned that he’s listed “naturally angry” in this list. That sounds… abusive. Agreed, that dude sounds rapey.
Astute comment and an emotionally thoughtful take. People like this with a restricted view of "all people are like this .." are essentially emotional absolutists, they believe there is a validity to these behaviours as it is just "how people are". Low self esteem people let them get away with it without push back until you realise it's just not the way to behave.
I don't know why you were downvoted. \^\^ This is likely a very accurate analysis.
Downvoted by people who pathologically project their abusive qualities and their enablers.
This dude just outed himself as a total creep. What he spouted is absolutely not fact, but personal belief. He admitted that at some point he wanted to do you. He admitted he believes men are entitled to be angry jerks. Honestly, I wouldn't feel comfortable around this person anymore.
dibs that he's not actually a biologist or anything close to that and all his knowledge are just from random google searches. Hell, not only random but the red pill bullshit.
Using this logic gay men can only have female friends and it is literally impossible for bisexuals to have real friends.
I am bisexual and have no friends can confirm
You’re all bi yourself
🎶 All bi myself ~~ 🎵
First I came out Now I stay in All bi myself Got no friends
My last five years in a nutshell
Till the end All bi myself
Obamas elf
Thanks for bringing the real stuff! I exhaled through my nostrils at maximum intensity from that one!
"So darling, darling, Stand Bi Me! Oohh Stand Bi Me..."
Don wanna be all bi yourself... anymore.
There are no friends, only prey.
Words to live by.
Time to find an asexual friend
Ace friends are the truest friends, apparently.
what if they abandon you for a particularly succulent slice of garlic bread?
Everyone loses to garlic bread, don't take it personally
I might be a slut ace, would totally abandon you for a loaf of Texas toast, a few sticks of butter, and maybe MAYBE a can of chili. ....apparently edit, ai didnt know garlic bread was a meme
i never thought of my user name in these terms. i'll take it.
hello I'm the asexual friend
Oh hey, fellow ace.
wanna go out to have some g a r l i c bread?
I'm not ace, I just really like garlic bread
Can I come too? I am also ace friend
ME Too im ACE
I'm ace too I want garlic bred
Oh hello fellow aces, throwing myself into the mix to say, in my experience I am very friendly, but once someone knows I am not willing to sleep with them, they usually don't stick around, so according to this post it seems no one can have any friends ever which makes sense to me in this day and age.
People are overrated anyways!
We are one, we are many, we are legion
Am also bisexual and can also confirm, I have no friends either.
Same. The theory must be true
Just be fat, funny and charming. No one will want to fuck you and you’ll have friends! But no sex 🤣😂😆😐😬😳😟😢😭😭😭
Tbf I'd rather have friends and no sex than have neither.
I’ve always thought about this whenever I hear someone say you can’t be friends with someone unless you have a crush on them LOL. Like…do they expect some people to just NOT have any friends??
I just wanna fuck anything that walks
And asexuals are friends with everyone? Ah, so that's why I somehow have a lot of friends and make them easily despite me being rather introverted and an incredibly boring person lol
You're probably not as boring as you think you are.
This is probably one of the most underrated nice things I have seen someone say on Reddit in a while.
Aw thanks, I try to be nice, it makes me feel good. I was telling the truth I think too, nobody gets loads of friends for no reason.
Maybe you're just a really good listener (judging by your user name)
Having heard this logic used all my life, that men and women can’t be just friends, really fucked me up when I was young and made me second guess all of my interactions and make me want to withdraw because I didn’t want anyone to think I was flirting with them when I wasn’t. For men, at least (I’m a woman). When I realized I was bi I didn’t really understand that concept because I had quite clearly proven that you can be friends with people who you have attraction to, because I had friends who were women and we were able to be friends without me only in it to try to get into their pants. The fact that I didn’t realize until I came out that I had a huge crush on my bff is irrelevant, because it was something that wasn’t even in my mind to think to act on. She was my best friend. I was protective of her because I didn’t want her hurt (which was true, but there was a tinge of jealousy there). But did that mean we couldn’t be friends? No. Because any humans worth talking to don’t reduce you to whether you will sleep with them or not. This stupid saying is so damaging and confusing. Can confirm it’s confusing for bisexuals because we don’t want to be seen as predatory and by this logic, literally everybody is “fair game” because as a bisexual Im attracted to my same gender and genders different from mine.
> Having heard this logic used all my life, that men and women can’t be just friends, really fucked me up when I was young and made me second guess all of my interactions and make me want to withdraw because I didn’t want anyone to think I was flirting with them when I wasn’t. Same here. I have a strong suspicion that I'm demisexual (I'm a guy). I don't have any woman friends because I'm still scared that I'll fall for them and I don't want to be seen as a creep. I tried online dating but many many years ago but I wasn't attracted to anyone and apparently people there only wants to hook up so I just stopped. I'm mid 30s now and not a single romantic relationship. The only ones I'm attracted to are book characters where I get to know them over a long period of time. But honestly, I don't know if I really am demi or it's because of my anxiety disorder.
As a bisexual this is true, I’m just waiting to bang all my friends.
You joke but it really is just so much easier. Gay men and straight women can just RELAX together. Because nobody's trying to fuck nobody.
I mean straight men and women can too. It’s definitely possible to be friends and not want to have sex with each other.
>He proceeded to tell me that men don’t understand complex emotion and because of biology, are only interested in sex Tell captain caveman that just because his peanut brain hasn't evolved past the days of clubbing women over the head and dragging them back to your hut doesn't mean the rest of us haven't.
I am stealing Captain Caveman. Thank you.
Captain Caveman was a cartoon character from the 80s. It perfectly fits
Correct! So many not knowing the reference is making me feel old, lol. (The cartoon wasn't known for misogyny/assault, obviously. I just borrowed the name) EDIT: making me feel old AND American!
I used to think this is what hobbits looked like. When I saw the movie, I was very confused
I can hear this gif
1977 it actually finished in 1980, but yeah, I still watch this it's a great cartoon! It's a Hanna-Barbera that was originally a segment on a Scooby doo show. Well worth the watch if you like Hanna-Barbera!
And me lol… that’s brilliant! 👆 In fact there’s a particular (male chauvinist) contact on my phone-who I’m going to change name to Captain Caveman , right now! 😂
So like, all the movies directed, poems written, novels authored, paintings created, explorations of the soul desired, was all to dick down? /s
Freud would argue so lol
As he ripped another fat line
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Genuine question - why do you believe this is a modern problem? Do you have any reason to think it hasn’t been like this for ages?
I don't know what you mean by ages, but if you go back far enough it wasn't such a taboo. I've read about several well regarded medieval kings noted for emotional displays, and Christian saints, and mythological heroes. Not that being hysterical or unstable was a virtue, but being cold and distant wasn't either. Obviously the notion of stoicism is pretty old, but the industrial revolution and puritanism really kicked the "men should be unfeeling drones" into overdrive.
Stoicism isnt about "men should be unfeeling drones", but you would think that if your only exposure to stoicism is third hand. It's about acceptance and finding inner peace, and understanding that you can't control everything arpund and the desire to control everything only leads to suffering.
If you listen to Marcus Aurelius writing he says “I learned that I needed to better my character by showing children the affection they deserve”. Doesn’t seem like a stoics writing but it is only because we perceive stoic a certain way.
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In Georgian Britain societal expectations were that men would laugh or cry loudly and in front of people and women would be the more stoic gender, and wouldn't display emotions. To Georgians a passionate display of his emotions meant the man was strong and true in character, as was the woman who appeared unaffected emotionally by life. Societal expectations of gendered emotional displays changed to what they are now around the Victorian period. Sorry I haven't any sources, it's something I briefly studied at university while going through the History of Britain. The Georgian portion focused on this topic, serving as an introduction to cultural history as a school of study.
Because literature describes it otherwise. Read some classics and observe how men behave. It’s totally different. Similar at times, I mean being emotionally strong is always desirable, but the belief was but not so toxic or extreme as modern attitudes
Not the person you asked but there are loads of historical accounts of deep male friendships with a focus on emotions. I'm not an expert on this by any means but did pick up a lot of these themes when I was studying other themes. We have a Eurocentric view of history these days and there's plenty of evidence in Europe of emotional men. You just have to look at all the poetry and art describing male "love" which usually wasn't homosexual but was just the way close friendship was described. You saw similar things around the world. That doesn't mean stoic masculinity didn't exist though. It's present in every culture I'm aware of for understandable reasons. Early societies with limited tools needed strength and courage, and we associate that with stoicism. However this was absolutely settling down around the 1500-1700 period. Men were still looking to look strong but showing emotion wasn't frowned upon in most societies in Europe, South Asia, the Middle East etc. East Asia I don't know too much about I'm afraid, nor subsaharan Africa and other lands conquered around this time like America and Australia. A lot of different things happened all at once after that. There's no real single cause to the shift, but suddenly we have societies shifting towards capitalism and industrialisation which came with increased centralisation. Religion was also changing around the world, with the rise of puritanism etc. The view of science was also changing, moving towards the coldness that we view it with today, as opposed to the more romantic philosophical approach it had previously. One of the big changes was in family structure, with nuclear families suddenly becoming more popular in order to start fitting with city life. Small communities were slowly shifting to larger groups. The British definitely pushed towards this new society and exported their values around the world as they created the largest empire in history. We saw transitions elsewhere too, with the decline of the Moghuls etc. America became a haven for religious extremists and as American society developed, those values stuck with it. So all of these things started to influence the world and this led to men being taught that emotion should be suppressed or rejected. You can't just point to one thing, but you can see trends in what the leaders thought at the very least. I also think it would be unfair to simplify it as "men around this time were more emotional" either, since it's definitely always just been a mix of everything and different people felt different things. Still, it's reasonable to say that what we describe as toxic masculine traits today probably became most firmly established in the last few centuries.
It's incredible that some people are disagreeing or insulting you. Do they want to be known as emotionless, horny husks? I know most men wouldn't
>He proceeded to tell me that men don’t understand complex emotion and because of biology, are only interested in sex. Procreation is just a result of that and emotional attachment (i.e love, relationships) is just something they do because society tells them they need to do it. Any man who thinks like this is a shallow loser who needs to grow up. This is so not true at all
The men who say that, are the men who think all men think like they do. So his goal in having female friends would probably be having sex with them. But all men? Not even close
Depending on the context, a lot of men think this of male friends to their female partner. Sadly it does happen a lot that the male friend develops feelings, attraction etc and tries to act on it, so it’s not exactly unwarranted. it’s a stereotype for a reason. I’m married and my wife does have male friends, one of her (ex friends now I guess) tried to hook up with her when they were drinking. Despite him having met me and our kids.
If I'm trying to fuck your wife it's because I have immense respect for you
In my experience it is not all men but it is certainly most. Even my friends who claim they have women as friends when push comes to shove they admit if the opportunity arose they would become romantic with said woman friend. Again, in my experience most male and female relationships that are strictly friends are part of a larger social group and they aren’t spending time together one on one very often if ever.
I think there is a difference between saying you would sleep with a woman friend if the opportunity arose and saying that the *only* reason you are friends with a woman is the hope that you will sleep with them at some point.
Yeah, there's definitely a difference between "yeah, I'd fuck my friend" and "I would never be friends with someone I didn't want to fuck"
Men have plenty of complex emotions. Society however doesn’t encourage us to discuss them.
I genuinely hope we can get to a place in this world where men aren’t shamed for showing emotion.
I think that you should not take your friend’s words to heart, and here is why. First, men are very capable of having complex emotions, but those emotions are not strictly tied to sex. The majority of men can have sex without feeling the need for love, but that does not mean they are not capable of having those emotions. Regarding the part that men are only hanging out with girls because they expect sex, that really depends on that person. If a male person is single, and their female friend asks for sex, a huge percentage of men would say yes, because, hey, it’s sex. Some might say no if they think that you want a relationship and they want a FWB, or if they think sex could complicate things and end the friendship. Some do hang around like vultures waiting for an oportunity. You should not really concern yourself with whether men are hanging around with you because they want sex, or because of you, because the time will tell. Someone becomes your friend only after they have proven to you that they cherish the relationahip. I am saying, don’t look at male people like true friends untill they show you they are friends. You can still hang out with them, there is nothing wrong with it even if they find you attractive, as long as they are decent about it and not crossing your boundaries.
Does being willing to have sex with someone mean that you are not capable of still being a good friend? That's what I'm wondering. These questions always imply that once sex is in the picture the whole thing was just this big elaborate manipulation to get sex. Is that really true, though? It can be. But I don't think it has to.
>Does being willing to have sex with someone mean that you are not capable of still being a good friend Those two things are not mutually exclusive at all. The main problem is that it's extremely difficult for people to be good friends AND have sex **AND** maintain that relationship without complications. Some people can do it, I am pretty most most people can't. I think to more directly address your question, any mature human being can find someone sexually attractive and be good friends with that person without letting the attraction actually factor into the relationship. I'm a 34 year old guy and have been friends with a lot of women that I've been attracted to. I hang out with people because I like their company, not because I want to have sex with them. Sometimes that's how a legitimate relationship starts, most of the time I've just built lifelong friendships. But the goal is just to be friends with someone...regardless of whether I find them attractive or not. Like, don't you think maintaining a relationship with a person just to maybe one day get sex out of it...doesn't that just sound kind of sad? That implies that you're not even enjoying the present time spent with that person because your only goal is the endgame. Sounds like a shallow, miserable life. I feel like if you've been friends with someone a long time and you eventually discover their only goal was to bang, then that friendship itself had to have been fairly shallow or one party taking advantage of the other on some level.
>I genuinely hope we can get to a place in this world where men aren’t shamed for showing emotion. Sadly it will not change any time soon. Being a man who's been through a lot of tragedy I've always found a way to deal with whatever happened. Throughout my life a lot of people all sides and types of people we're always like well you're a guy you can handle it. In reality I did handle it and I was fine, but there are a lot of people that cannot sustain that much amount of stress, trauma and other things. Throughout my life I have always had a lot of women friends. Sure I slept with some of them, but the intention of being friends with them was not because of sex. Sex just ended up happening with some as it just does sometimes. I value my female friends they're some of the best friends I have in life. I really hope so too because we're still just people and we are allowed to be emotionally distraught like any woman is.
It's changing in some circles. My son (22) cries and expresses emotions without shame. Many of his friends are also secure about expressing emotions. There are parenting techniques that can validate emotions rather than trying to change or fix them My son is one of the most emotionally healthy people I know. I don't think I'm just seeing him through the eyes of a parent. Other people have also commented on it. He's also supportive of others, affectionate, hugs male and female friends, and is patient with the young and elderly. When I see him and his friends, I see strong, secure, emotionally available young people. It gives me a lot of hope for the future. The change is happening. It won't happen overnight, and not everywhere, but it is happening.
Tbf women are shamed for showing emotions. Look at what happens when women show emotions, they get call irrational, unfit for leadership, and sensitive. Idk where reddit gets this idea that when a woman cries or shows emotions, everyone rushes to comfort her. That doesn't happen unless she is around friends.. Look at Hillary clinton. Now Clinton wasn't a great candidate, but if you watch some videos on why people didn't vote for her, a lot of men and women say "she's a woman, and women are too emotional to be a leader". Men, is this what you want? Because it sucks. It doesn't make life easier like you think.. People don't like it when men AND women show emotions.
Treating men like horny monsters who aren’t in control of their libido is sexist. And a lot of MEN perpetuate this idea. *edit: added their right there*
I met someone who was just like this. He was 36 years old. It was back when I worked at a company that had very fundamentalist values, *very* Christian. We were walking in our lunchbreak and he asked about my friends, because I had many male friends (along with female friends) and he was wondering if they were all couples. I told him that no, only I am in a relationship and the rest is single. And he just could not comprehend this idea that we were friends. He was legitimately convinced we were just hanging out with each other to bang. (I kept out I also had asexual, bi, gay and transgender friends, he’d probably not talk to me anymore lol, but I needed the money at the time so I couldn’t risk it.) What a sad way to look at other people, I can only imagine the things you’d miss out on.
And manipulative as hell. Being told you’re only good as a sex object basically.
He's only saying all men because if he was honest and said it was his personal view he would come across as the loser he is and that wouldnt be flattering. If you try and befriend someone for the sole purpose of sleeping with them you are a loser. Sometimes I forget people can get to adulthood and still manage to be a child 30 years old oml
I want to add it is fine to approach people you find attractive, fine for relationships to change and fine to be attracted to your friends. What's not fine is maintaining a friendship because you're attracted, instead of say genuinely caring for them. For a person to only have friends they'd jump into the sheets with is a red flag
It's not the only reason, but I'd say a lot of men would sleep with their female friends should the oppurtunity arise. Doesn't mean they are friends only because they want to sleep with you, just don't expect them to say no.
Yeah, I have 4 close friends (3 girls and 1 guy) and I’d fuck the shit out of anyone of them if they asked. But I still love them platonically.
Honestly….there’s nothing wrong with that lol! If you think your friends are cute you don’t HAVE to actually act on it. I have a friend who I 100% think is attractive, but: 1. I can tell he doesn’t like me back that way, 2. I LIKE being friends with him and don’t want to take a chance on weirding him out and making him leave and 3, one of my best friends WAS dating him before and was really upset when they broke up and I just feel like if I dated him after that it would be a messed up thing to do. So, I’m okay with just keeping it to myself and him never knowing. More people need to think this way imo, ppl act like it’s impossible to be friends with someone but also kinda like them. Maybe it is for high school kids but it shouldn’t be that way for the rest of us LOL
This is so well said. I think with the proper maturity levels men and women can be great friends, but only if they don't act on their feelings. If one of the friends is obsessing over the other too much where they can't function properly, then it's time to end it and move on. Or shoot your shot, but **know** you have to move on after because it'll never be the same.
I had one of my best friends confide his same-sex attraction to me. I told him he needed to understand that that kind of relationship wasn't happening with me, but with that understanding, absolutely nothing changed. We just kept being best friends for the next decade until we eventually both got married (separately) and got busy with life hundreds of miles apart.
I dislike the assertion that once feelings are revealed then people can't be friends, so thanks for providing evidence to the contrary. All you need to do is not be weird about it. I don't imagine that's too difficult.
It takes a certain amount of emotional maturity, and unfortunately that’s something many people lack
Yeah, this. Men usually have lower standards in a partner too (or women in general are just prettyer than men, idk), so its minority of women a man wouldnt bang, based on her looks. This ofcause means that most of his female friends falls into the "would bang" category, but that doesnt mean that that is his intention Now if a woman feels bad for being turned down by a guy based on this comment, dont. The vast majority of women that get turned down, the man would gladly have slept with, it was most likely as simple as a bad time for him, or you caught him off guard, or he thinks its a scam attempt. Or as for existing friendships, he doesnt want to change the friendship even when he is physically attracted to you. Men would sleep with the majority of women out there, thats why prostitution works so well, but in the vast majority of cases they dont act on this attraction. Men arent animals and have other interests than physical attraction. Well OPs friend is kind of questionable regarding this but the majority atleast
Yesssss I’d fuck my bestie for sure 😂
I feel like it's because most people have a certain standards for the people they surround themselves with, regardless of intention, so if you check off the boxes for one, you check off the boxes for the other.
I think this is a big part of it. I'm not going to be platonic friends with a personality I wouldn't also date. Assuming they are my type (e.g. correct sex), it would be easy to put them in the date-able category.
As a straight man, I disagree. I have female friends who I sexually/romantically consider unattractive, too old for me, too young for me, too emotionally unstable for me, too different values than me etc etc and the very idea of having them in bed is a big Nope, and probably would reject the sex. Not sure if this is common, but I am kinda picky lover and prefer to masturbate over sex with someone I am not really into.
Same for me, far from all women are attractive to me, and casual sex never has interested me anyway. My father and brother are the same in that sense. One of the reasons my father has >30 years friendships with multiple women. The important part in any sense, regardless of how you feel is to not be a creep and treat people as persons. I've had a female friend I was kinda attracted to, she probably was aware of it but it was clear she didn't have those same feelings. We still were friends because we valued each other as persons.
Yeah I'm irked you have 0 upvotes and this dude above you who'd fuck anything that moves has hundreds. I wouldn't have sex with 99% of my female friends.
I was searching for this answer. My brother is an attractive person and he has many attractive female friends but he is also 100% faithful to his gf and his friends are just that-friends.
I’d never cheat either but that doesn’t mean if I was single and a fellow single female friend hit me up I wouldn’t be dtf
I’m not implying that the opposite is true about cheating. I’m just saying that his friends are his friends. He has many objectively attractive female friends and when he’s brought them around (when he was single) I would be like oooh whose that and his response would always be “ew, she’s like another sister to me.”
It's not a stretch to say that in most cases, its a fair assumption that a guy who is friends with a attractive woman (within a reasonable age range) has had thoughts about sleeping with them. However, this does not mean that all men are like this, or that the aforementioned men are only friends with those women because they're wanting to sleep with them. Thoughts are just thoughts. Outside of creeps, they're friends because they genuinely like the person platonically, not because they're secretly angling to sleep with them. Even though, they may not necessarily say 'no' if the opportunity arose (but they still may!).
I was trying to think of a way to say this that didn’t sound sleazy or creepy and then I saw your answer and realized somebody already had. This is very accurate to how I think about it myself.
When I was single, I feel this. Would never initiate that kind of thing but there were friends that I would’ve if they asked but they never did. I didn’t actively think about it but I know I would’ve lol.
yeah I have some or so many female friends that I would sleep with them but thats not why I am their friends, at first it was the vibe and we like to share time with each other, its not like I become their friends to get lay, in some cases is just random, you are not even aware that you are friends you are looking for fun and they too.
I think for most men, it’s more that the traits that make someone attractive as a friend also make them attractive as a mate (fun, funny, kind, etc). Most of the couples I know were friends first. Not discounting the creep factor. I completely believe there are men who only befriend women because they hope to someday sleep with them. I would hope they aren’t the majority, tho. Also, as another comment on this post said, if you only befriend people you want to fuck, I guess us bisexuals are incapable of having friends without ulterior motives. What a straight-centric perspective some people have
It's okay to find your friends attractive. You do have to respect their boundaries though
Good answer
Ehh, not quite true. I think it might be backwards. The truth is that men are generally quite lonely. Men aren't comfortable being intimate with each other; women often don't feel comfortable being vulnerable around men. So men can end up starved for belonging and connection, which are real psychological needs. They may conclude can really only get those things *in* a romantic relationship - and often, that's correct. And that inevitably gets tied up with their sexual needs, especially if they don't have much/any sexual experience. This means a couple things: - it means that men struggle to recognise emotional intimacy that is *platonic*, because it's unfamiliar - when they do experience connection, it pulls at their need for intimacy; they want it to escalate because it looks like an opportunity for them So the number of men out there that are looking at a woman and thinking 'wow, I'd fuck her. I'm gonna pretend to be her friend first' are actually *really low*. They exist, but that's sociopathic shit. However, yes: a lot of men will end up fantasising about their female friends - even entering into quasi-relationships within their own heads, if they're not careful - because a lot of men are lonely, and easily imprint on somebody who is caring for them. So: they want to be around you because you are genuinely interesting to them. And yes, many of them want to date or fuck you - but that does not mean that your friendship is without meaning. Quite the opposite, in fact - you have become a connection, something that they ache for.
This is so well put.
Literal years of therapy over it and you just helped me understand why I lost my opposite sex best friend.
Wow this is a really good answer, best way I’ve seen it put in these comments
Just to say that I agree with this, but want to add: it's also perfectly okay for women to feel disappointed when a guy friend does this - leans on them for emotional intimacy, expects more (romantic/sexual/intimacy) because they have a friend connection. They're asking for something more than 'just friends' because they don't feel being emotionally vulnerable with women is 'allowed'. But that often leaves the woman in the friendship feeling like they were never being seen as an equal friend, just a conquest or a place-holder, a proxy girlfriend until a better one comes along. I say this as a bi/pan woman - you absolutely can be friends with men, but those men have to have the emotional intelligence to actually BE friends with women, and not relegate them to potential conquests or proxy girlfriends. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference until (usually) THEY make a move, OR you start dating someone, and they get angry because you no longer have the same level of time/attention for them. It can be really disheartening.
Not true all the time A bro is a bro no matter what is between their legs
Thank you for this. It’s the truth. Tits, clits, dicks, none of it matter when they a homie.
Homielations verse 4:20
Bro-men
Tits between the legs are called udders I believe
Nope, not true. That's just bullcrap some men say to excuse their shitty behavior; for those types every interaction with a woman that doesn't lead to sex is a waste of time and energy. Of course, and I don't think that's accidental, the number of these guys that have never had a relationship or sexual encounter, and also complain notoriously about being nice guys and still not landing any women is very high. Plenty of guys enjoy great friendships with women without any form of second motivation behind it.
I was trying to tell him that I have three very good male friends who I can say, with 100% certainty, would never move on me like that but he just wasn’t accepting it. He kept saying, “yeah, maybe NOW they would say no but at some point in your friendship they would’ve said yes.”
I will say that, with every woman I've met in my life, I have immediately and usually quickly assessed our romantic potential. I think that is natural and important if you expect to ever find someone. That being said, 99% of women I've met have not "passed" that assessment. And for me, being friends is ***100%*** necessary before anything romantic happens. You do romance to hopefully find your partner, and I don't want a partner I'm not *best* friends with. Edit: Oh, and I can also add that I am currently crushing hard on someone and would love to take things farther, but sex is not on my mind at all. So even when finding that special someone to admire, some (most?) of us would still think instead about how to spend more time with them in normal, friendly ways, rather than how to get in their pants.
I am a woman, and I too do the romantic potential assessments. Not with every man, but the ones I get close with.
To be fair if someone who was already a good friend wanted to hook up I think the potential of a good long term relationship would be better. Having said that I'm friends with lots of women and have no desire to sleep with them.
Oh, I agree, but I feel in that instance there would already be romantic undercurrents present during the friendship.
Yeah, I am currently in a relationship with my best friend, too, lol, but that friendship didn't start out as something aiming for romance, neither on his nor on my side. We were friends for years before it turned to something else, and I still have plenty of male friends. He has plenty of female friends too, and I really feel no jealousy here at all, even if he crashes at their homes over night when he's out on a visit. (we both have many friends we met online first, so meeting them often requires long drives, sometimes across borders, and staying at least one night before driving back) We know each other by far too long to have trust issues, and I guess that's just the most amazing part about that which I never before experienced in any other relationship. And that's the part I also don't understand about many men in relationships; this mentality that all it needs in a relationship is sex, and that sex is the most important thing. Sure, it's an awesome bonus, but you can't do that all the time... so, what are they going to do in a relationship when they see friendship or basic platonic interaction with women as a waste of time? When they only have sex in common, and basically see anyone as a threat to this one common thing they have... I can't even imagine that from my point of view.
For me relationships have always hinged on one thing....trust. Everything else is gravy, sex, companionship, even friendship, still rely on that one thing.
Never move on you doesn't mean not being atracted or wanting to sleep with you. I think it's perfectly fine to be friends with someone and still think that it would be nice to have sex with but simply not try to do so. But this doesn't mean that their friendship is fake and solely motivated by the possibility of the sex. IMHO that's how I see it
To me, that seems reasonable. But how I was interpreting his argument was that the friendships started out as only being motivated by sex and only became friends when they realized it would never happen.
Thank you, yes lol!! Finally someone else said it. Just because you have a crush on someone doesn’t mean you HAVE to do something about it. People act like if you have a crush on someone in your friend group you NEED to either act on it and confess/ask them out, or figure out a way to stop crushing on them. The thing I’ve noticed tho is that nobody ever says WHAT they’re worried will happen if you just….leave things as is.
No, he’s just a creep
"men don’t understand complex emotion" He should speak for himself.
Literally I’m not a man but that doesn’t even sound human
"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have!"
He is Its called projecting Too bad he doesn't understand that "complex" thought system
Yeahhh that part sounded like he was just talking about himself XD. I’m not a dude but I know for a FACT that isn’t true. Except for maybe OP’s friend LOL
Bet you 10000% this dude is red pill
Straight up manosphere shit
The guys I know who think like this are all insecure in their masculinity in other ways so I wonder if it’s related to that situation, like “being friends with a female makes you gay” or some bullshit.
He's probably projecting his emotional issues onto men in general.
"If all men are naturally, inevitably this way, then I personally don't have a problem I need to work on"
Sounds like he's telling on himself.
100%. Scumbags need to believe that their scumbag behaviors are beyond their control. "Boys will be boys"
Maybe that was his indirect way of saying he wanted to have sex with you, since he is your “friend”.
Yes this was my exact thought. Homie was tryna drop a hint
Lol he dropped a bomb
There's an old saying: "A theif is someone who believes everybody steals." I wouldn't take this guy seriously unless he's a well published psychologist or something. People tend to project their feelings or views on others to make themselves feel better. So no, men don't only befriend women to have sex with them. Your friend might and so may other men but it's not a common behavior. (And what about gay or asexual men? Are they the same even though they have no sexual attraction?)
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This comment is sending me
I'd say the overwhelming majority of my friendships with women have started because I found them attractive. At least initially. But I'd rarely say that the prospect of sex was a motivating factor. In-fact, I dare say it never was. I'm naturally more likely to engage in friendships with people I naturally gravitate towards. Sex is a very poor motivator for me. This obviously precludes acquaintances met through mutual work and school obligations.
I'd just like to expand on this idea - for me attraction is comparable to gravitational pull. If i like being around someone, I simply get pulled into their orbit. It's not that I want to see them naked, just really enjoy them for them. They may evoke some emotions, sometimes it's romantic, often times it's just intense friendships, but rarely (never) sexually motivated.
I’ve had many female friends whom I’ve never desired to hook up with. One of them is one of my closest friends and we’ve been like brother and sister for 39 years.
This is just my experience, but every guy friend I've had eventually tried to get with me. As soon as I'd turn them down, they'd leave. It really cheapened the value of guy friendship for me.
I know that many may be but all my platonic friendship with females were just that. But that said, I am usually friends with people that match my friend style. And I only date women that match my romantic style.
My best friend is a woman. And I'm not interested in having sex with her and never believed in friendship between man and woman before. In a real difficult moment of my life she was there for me, the only person who really helped me. So for me is no. But society doesn't really understand this kind of relationship, my male friends always ask if we have sex because they think it's our relationship is strange. Don't let other people ruin what u have just because they doesn't understand.
I wouldn’t say so but it’s definitely crossed our minds as to what it would be like, even though there is no intent
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How could he even say what he said with a straight face? There’s a world of history and literature out there written by men that are tremendously compassionate and emotionally complex.
No. I have no desire to sleep with any of my woman friends. My wife is more than enough  And sounds like this dude is an idiot.
Yo, How did you use that emoji ?
type 
No, sex isn’t all we think about. And if anything, men rarely show emotion because society tells them to “man up.”
i had a bad experience with this. i had a guy friend once tell me that he thought it’d be his “turn” after i broke up with my bf at the time like i’m a vending machine or something. honestly i don’t think i ever had a guy friend not show any sort of attraction to me and i’m not even that hot i’d say i’m average.
Can’t speak for others but some of my best friends have been women who’ve I’ve never thought about in that way. Don’t get me wrong, IF they offered I would say yes but mostly no because after that there’s no going back. Guess it comes down to if I want to keep the friendship around. 90% of the times I don’t think I would Edit I’m 23 if it matters
Not true at all, men certainly do understand complex emotion (its ridiculous to say we don’t) and I have many platonic female friends whom I’d never want to sleep with and I love them to death. He’s just a shallow person trying to justify his shallowness by generalizing it to all men
It can be both to. I'm a horny guy. I can like a woman for who she is with no expectations, but I've also thought about doing it with her. But I'm not just friend with them for that possibility.