The Eternal Question: Is There A Friendship Between A Man And A Woman?

No matter how many fighters for individuality, for equality, body positive and so on, there have been, are and will be stereotypes in society. One such stereotype is the eternal question of whether there is friendship between men and women. A recent study suggests that such friendships are more of a burden than a benefit.

There is no such friendship! And that's why

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Eau-Claire argue that heterosexual friendships do not exist as such. Attraction to a partner of the opposite sex is a normal and not always conscious feeling. And this feeling can do colossal harm to a friendly relationship, especially if one of the friends is in a romantic relationship with someone else.

When the researchers asked male subjects to list the advantages and disadvantages of opposite-sex friends, 32% said that attraction to such a partner was a disadvantage, and for 6%, attraction was beneficial. About 47% of women aged 18 to 23 called attraction to a partner a bad trait, and for 22% it turned out to be even an advantage.

Participants in the experiment, who were in a relationship, stated that such friendship gives the partner reasons for jealousy, and on this basis silly conflicts often arise. Lonely partners, on the contrary, were jealous of their friends for their halves. The percentage of jealous people is relatively low - 38% of women and 25% of men, but this gives sufficient grounds to consider such friendship burdensome.

About 23% of the total number of participants said that friendship with a partner of the opposite sex somehow made their partner less attractive and boring automatically. Sara Jenkins, one of these people, explained: “You see, relationships are more complicated than friendships. For example, I want to wear a short skirt. My partner will say, "You're not going anywhere in this," and the like. A good friend will support, and even give an independent male assessment. Do you understand? And so in everything."

Friendships or even innocent communication with a person of the opposite sex instinctively triggers mating strategies, the researchers say. A person unconsciously begins to think of his friend as a sexual object.

Of course, this research has flaws that affect the outcome. For example, this does not take into account special cases when friendship between people of different genders has been maintained for many years, and there were no difficulties with this. Probably, there are really few such cases when friendship between a man and a woman does exist.