Can LOVE overpower FRIENDSHIP?

And I Too Don’t Have The Answer….

  
“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love but no friendship.” -  Oscar Wilde

Have you ever been in such a kind of relationship? Have you got a friend of the opposite sex? And even if you haven’t had such experiences….why? Is it possible for men and women to be just friends without romance coming in between?

Friendship is a gift to mankind, relations made by choice, and not force or fate. It comes in all forms and complexities, but nothing confuses this important relation as much as gender does.

 It is a subject that comes up time and again in our conversation…Can a man and a woman be just friends, as in “JUST”, as in “ONLY FRIENDS”….no sex, no lust, no passion, no secret crushes and desires…”JUST FRIENDS”.

The answer to the question could be “YES” and with the big “YES”, there would be an addition of “BUT” or “ONLY IF”, so the answer everyone is avoiding is “NO”.

True friendship requires a deep connection, and if a romance factor alters the relationship….then you can either have a thing going on, or just be simple acquaintances.

For many of us the idea of such a relationship is intriguing, but questionable. The life of this kind of relationship is possible but a little improbable…it may get romantic…emotions get involved, possessiveness or jealousy may occur. Will your libido be in silence and not come in the way? But as one grows older and matures in thought we learn that compassion, love, trust and mutual respect are important things in any relationship. We are not animals, we are no longer controlled by our hormones…although I am contradicting myself here…hormones still wake up time to time making life difficult…and believe me age makes no difference. (After all man is a social animal) With maturity one can differentiate between love and friendship and such people just do not buy the concept of a romantic pull in this kind of a relationship.

From the time adolescence sets in, males and females have been drawn to each other because of sexual attraction and curiosity. How do friends draw a line between mutual affection and sexual desire?

So men and women can be friends but the crossing of the bridge towards lust and romance will always be there. It’s like playing with fire, a distinct possibility of getting burnt.

“A single man and a single woman can definitely be friends without sexual tension, as long as one of them is gay or hideously unattractive.” Anonymous 

Personally when I think of my closest male friends, I find reflections of all shades of the multifaceted issue…A “Just Friend” settlement, romance turned “Friendship”, lover as “Best Friend”, male friends who are genuinely just “That Friend”.

A man and a woman can always be, “just friends” …a person has to have control over their actions and responses to people of the same or the opposite sex. I have many male and female friends and I have no problem whatsoever regardless of my sex or orientation.

As an individual, I strongly believe that life is nothing but an opportunity to know yourself and explore what’s within you till you live. You may have missed your whole life, just that last breath you took or the last moment on earth, if you have not found a true friend or been one even for a second…AND if you have, then you have NOT missed out on anything because a single moment of love and friendship with a man or a woman is equal to the whole eternity. That is the glory of “FRIENDSHIP”.

Coming back to the main point here, in the classic romance, “When Harry Met Sally”, Billy Crystal tells Meg Ryan that men and women can never be friends because sexual attraction gets in the way. The concept of platonic friendship that arose and was largely talked on and written from the time of Greek philosopher Plato, still remains as unclear and confusing as ever. We all know that men are from Mars and women from Venus, agree that there will be friction between the two, agree that sexual tension and romantic feelings are bound to creep in between……….BUT CAN’T THE TWO EVER BE FRIENDS???                                                                                                                                      
“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends”– W.B. Yeats (1865- 1939). ‘The Municipal Gallery Re- visited’ (1939)

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