MEN + WOMEN = FRIENDS?
Friends – one soul living in two bodies.
Aristone
Friends are those who always appear to throw a life-line to us when we
are sinking. They also protect us from stress and loneliness. The words “among
friends” are connected in our consciousness to the same sensation of comfort and
simplification, as the word “home”, because friends create an atmosphere of domestic
cosiness.
Friendship between spouses is probably not a unique experience of
friendly relations between genders. But the majority of classical thinkers held that
friendship between a man and a woman, in general, is impossible. In the majority of cases
this can be caused by social and cultural conditions, distinctions in education and public
life, in which women did not participate (such as constant wars which forced men to leave
home).
Nevertheless, it is meaningful to put a classical question: Is
friendship between men and women possible? Or, if we formulate it in modern language: Do
we have reasons to believe that friendship between men and women is more difficult to
support, than friendly relations with the same gender?
Can Harry Be Friends with Sally?
 When we ask this question the first problem which occurs is one shown in a
film of Harry Berns “When Harry Met Sally”. In the episode when he and Sally fly
together from Chicago to New York, Harry declares: “Men and women cannot be friends –
because sexuality will always be a handicap.” Harry’s position is strong, based on
life experience.
Can a man and a woman be friends? I mean, can they be only friends,
without any sex? Harry and Sally were friends and then became lovers, which almost
destroyed a fine friendship and a fine love story. Nevertheless, can a man and a woman be
friends in real life? Research proves they can. But a friendship with a man is another
type of relation than a friendship between women, mainly because men and women understand
friendship in different ways. For a woman, friends are those people to whom she can tell
her deepest secrets.
 To a man-friend, a woman can turn the “sharp sides” of her personality,
openly showing something that she can hide from her girlfriends. In all friendly relations
between men and women, sexual tension is always present. It makes such a friendship
especially attractive and even stimulating. But the majority of men and women agree that
the introduction of intimate relations represents a big risk for friendship, because sex
causes the desire for possession which is incompatible with friendship. Some men and women
are capable of combining friendship and sexual pleasure, but the majority of friends of
different genders prefer to cautiously bypass such possibilities. Not every good friend
can become a lover. Harry and Sally did not resist temptation.
The pure kind of friendship between men and women is an extremely rare
thing. In general, young men simply cannot be the friends of girls, not because they are
“anxious ugly creatures”, but because they are men. True friendship between men and
women is abnormality. If we want to talk, to share problems, etc., men have men for this
purpose, and women are given to us by God for another kind of relationship.
Thus, friendship between men and women will always encounter
difficulties which have no place in friendly relations of the same genders. There will
always be an aroma of excitation which is not felt when people are representatives of the
same gender.
To conclude, let’s examine possible types of relations between men
and women:
a) A man and a woman can be lovers and simultaneously be friends. They
can share experiences, support each other, exchange mutually interesting information; in
short, be good friends.
b) Only sex can unite them.
c) They can be husband and wife and simultaneously friends. (It is usually a very good and
strong marriage.)
d) They can be husband and wife – but not be friends.
e) And, lastly, in 1 case out of 100,000,000, the young woman and the young man are simply
friends, and neither of them wants anything more.
By Kirill Mikhaylov
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