Photography by: Raminta Paukstyte“We’re just friends.” Whenever I hear this statement it leaves melooking like Mr Bean at his last attempt to smile. Not necessary because Idon’t believe it can be true, and not even because I remember ambiguouslyclaiming it myself only several months ago, while I must admit it was notexactly true. As we all know well, exceptions are like love - 'always in theair'. We hear many cases, stories, glories about it, but there is always a bigroom for debate – can men and women be ‘just friends’?
Surely, being too categorical and flat about close friendshipsbetween opposite sexes is not ideal for a greater analysis about this issue.However, having a strong belief from personal experiences that it’s not possiblefor men and women to be just friends because of sexual reasons as well as adozen of people and psychology lecturer’s opinions combined, this featurechallenges and unravels that matter from its ground.
Around 20 students were interviewed and most of their thinkingsounded far too optimistically innocent. Several said they believe it’s notpossible for men and women to be ‘just friends’ without sex getting in theirway. According to many more, such friendship is very possible and they admittedhaving different sex friends themselves. Although the matter of how much timethey spend together with their opposite sex friend was not included in thequestionnaire. Could it be the case?
It might be argued that it’s enough for the opposite sexes tospend much time together to make them fall in love with each other. “The moretime you spend with someone the more you find him or her attractive”,psychology lecturer of University of Sunderland, Dr Daniel Farrelly says.
It appears that this is especially the case formales. “They have a high level of testosterones that leads to being more likelyto be looking for any sort of sexual relationship.”
Moreover, males can be wrapped around the finger much easier ifyou’re flirting and giving them signs. According to Farrelly, people,especially males, do pick up on that. And is this where the status ‘just afriend’ vanishes?
“Probably could be. For more long-termrelationships”, he continues, “it’s definitely a good idea to have a goodunderstanding of what person is like first” rather than going straight intorelationships.
I won’t start crying now complaining abouthow “just a friend” managed to steal my ex-boyfriend’s heart from me byspending much time playing football together with him and his mates (what I wasphysically not able to do being 2000 kilometers away). That made his “I won’tever need any other and moreover I don’t want nothing but you” statement notvalid. However, that does say a lot.
On the other hand, according to Dr JanetReibstein, professor of psychology at Exeter University quoted in Psychologies (Aprilissue 2012, UK edition I picked up in my way to University this morning)feature Just good friends, sometimes “you become so used tosomeone you can’t see them as a sexual object.”
After interviewing three “couples” a journalist Zoe Strimpeldiscovers that men and women can be friends of the closest and most non-sexualvariety. However, a confession of one pair of friends featured in the magazine:“We used to sit and cuddle and watch films” do not convince me at all as itdoesn’t sound very innocent and promising.
It’s a clear fact that different sexes attract eachother. Thanks to the physiology and the natural gravity of attractionthere’s nearly no chance that none of us have ever dreamt of ‘what if we couldbe together?’ when in practice the spoken language should be translated to"I want him or her in my bed!"
(Journalism student Raminta Paukstyte asks students from University of Sunderland do they really think men and women can be just friends without any sexual connections getting in the way)
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