This morning, I read a column about a platonic friendship ruined by an attempt to define it precisely by one of the parties. The woman, who is slim and attractive (I googled her) and the man is a bear, at least going by the description of him in the article. The two share an intense friendship for years, while the woman is in an on-off relationship with an alpha male who sounds like jerk. At one point, the woman asks her friend if he is in love with her, to which he responds with an offended 'No'. Their relationship is never the same after that. The woman says its was difficult for her to conceive of a relationship with a man that didn't involve romance or sex.
While the article was about how some relationships fall in the grey area between friendship and romance, I was more interested in the differences in the level of physical attractiveness between the two. It is easy to be friends with someone you are not physically attracted to or with someone you are attracted to but is unavailable. The question is can you be friends with someone you are physically attracted to and who is single and available? Do we tend to assume that if two people of the opposite (or same) sex are friends, the less hot friend is secretly in love with the hotter one? The piece doesn't make mention of the man's sexuality but if he was heterosexual, kudos to him for being clear about he felt about his female friend and for respecting their relationship enough not to make a pass at her. Straight men are socially conditioned to pursue attractive women irrespective of whether they feel an emotional connection with them. Resisting that pressure is not easy.
While the article was about how some relationships fall in the grey area between friendship and romance, I was more interested in the differences in the level of physical attractiveness between the two. It is easy to be friends with someone you are not physically attracted to or with someone you are attracted to but is unavailable. The question is can you be friends with someone you are physically attracted to and who is single and available? Do we tend to assume that if two people of the opposite (or same) sex are friends, the less hot friend is secretly in love with the hotter one? The piece doesn't make mention of the man's sexuality but if he was heterosexual, kudos to him for being clear about he felt about his female friend and for respecting their relationship enough not to make a pass at her. Straight men are socially conditioned to pursue attractive women irrespective of whether they feel an emotional connection with them. Resisting that pressure is not easy.
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