Cross-sex friendships

My oldest son has decided that he’s had enough of girls. They’re just too upsetting, too much hassle and he doesn’t understand them.

“Welcome to the real world”, his Dad said.

“I’m finished with loving girls” said my newly-cynical son. “From now on, I’m just going to have girls as friends. I’m just going to study in future. No more women.”

“Uh-huh” I replied somewhat sceptically. “O.K. What happened?”

It turns out that on his latest trip to a disco with his class-mates, his (first love) girl kept him on a string, and then decided to dump him and dance with his mortal enemy all night. Hence, much heart-ache, tears and bitterness. And he’s only twelve.

Resisting the urge to launch into an over-protective, mother-induced rant against young and seductive twelve-year-old floosies, and how she was never good enough for him anyway, I gave him a hug and bought him a new computer game, which cheered him up immensely. However, that tactic won’t work forever. It’s gonna be a rough ride.

The thing is, as I explained to him, it just isn’t possible to be “just friends” with a girl.

There is no such thing as a purely platonic relationship between men and women.

Call me cynical, but I really believe this is true (assuming that neither of the parties concerned are gay, of course). We’re talking about close heterosexual friendships, not mere acquaintances. If we’re being completely and utterly honest here, then sooner or later, love and/or sexual attraction will get in the way.

Rich and I have had many, many cross-sex friendships over the years, and in every single case, the love and sexual attraction aspect has entered the relationship at some stage, often with disastrous results for the friendship with the other person. It might be possible to start out purely as friends, but somehow, somewhere along the way, as the friendship grows, sexual attraction plus romantic love creeps in somewhere. “The Demon Lust,” as my old catholic maths teacher used to say.

The attraction may be one-sided, and the person who feels the attraction may never let the other friend know, but the chemistry exists all the same. And the object of the attraction usually knows it too, although they wouldn’t admit it, for fear of embarrassment or for fear of being wrong, or just because they don’t feel the same way, and they may simply want the friendship to just go back to “normal”.

Work friendships are especially prone to this. Law, medicine, photography, accountancy, the profession doesn’t matter. If you’re stuck on a three week management review job, far away from home, spending 24 hours a day with an old work colleague who has become a close friend, then the chances are you’re going to end up in the sack together, or if not, you almost do. No matter if you’re married, dating someone else, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Sexual attraction is human nature. It’s hard-wired into your genes.

Suppose you’ve been happily married for many years, and one day you leave the wife at home to go on a two day-long location shoot with a beautiful nude model, with whom you’ve worked many times before, and who is also a close friend. After a long day’s fun shooting, plus several glasses of wine on an evening at the bar, the conversation starts flowing, and you talk late into the night and tell each other your deep-dark secrets. Are you then telling me that the idea of sex wouldn’t creep in somewhere? Because if you are telling me the whole thing is completely above-board and utterly innocent, you’re either lying or kidding yourself, and I simply wouldn’t believe you.

So are all friendships with the opposite sex doomed? Is it possible to have life-long close platonic friendships between a man and a woman? Yes it is, in my experience, but only after the love/attraction/sex thing is long gone, which usually takes years. IMHO, I think the trick is to get beyond the sex bit. To recognise the mutual (or one-sided) attraction, to talk about it openly and honestly, and then to agree that it exists, but to put it aside. Perhaps this even gets easier with age, as the hormones die down a bit, although I do know many sixty-year-olds who would disagree with me, and who are in the throes of some grand passion (and not with their spouses I might add).

Both sexual attraction and falling in love are human nature, and such emotions can add a great deal to the depth and wisdom of a close friendship. The trick is to acknowledge the issue, and to recognise the “stop sign”, the point at which you can go no further without ruining the friendship with sex. And of course, it’s not really even the sex which is the ultimate problem here, it’s the emotion that inevitably goes with it. You simply can’t have sex with a close friend, and feel nothing for them emotionally. It’s just not possible.

Like many people, I am notoriously bad at heeding stop signs. I tend to blindly speed past the amber warning sign, charge straight through the bright red stop sign, and subsequently flatten everyone in the street. Carnage. And the friendship is ruined.

The moral of the story? Talk to your friends, be honest with each other, and the friendship will survive if both sides are determined enough to make it work. Above all, avoid extended jobs away from home with work colleagues, long intimate shoots with beautiful naked friends, and most definitely stay away from alcohol :-)

And as for exercising that elusive concept called “Willpower”?

*Sigh* When someone learns how to master it, please do let me know how.




Cheeky Lee. One of my personal favourites from last year’s shoot.