I was on the public bus a couple weeks ago with some friends and got unwilling engaged in an interesting conversation between my fellow bus riders. Keep in mind I do not know these people.
So we sit down in the back of the bus, a young woman, early twenties, is sitting next to us, and two men, probably mid-thirties, are sitting across from us. Now it is the middle of the day, so it is unlikely that either of these two men is intoxicated, not impossible, but unlikely.
Well we sit down midway through a conversation between the two guys, but it didn’t take any of us long to understand the gist of the what was going on.
The first man was monologue-ing about how if a guy is attracted to or has other intentions for a girl, a friendship couldn’t work. Now he was being a tad more vulgar than I’m going to be, so for the rest of the conversation just replace “intentions” with either “wants to fuck/bang/have sex with” whichever is your preference. He used all three.
Well, he went on to explain that, if you’re a guy, and you want to screw around with a girl a friendship is out of the question. He validated this by saying he was attracted to a girl he’s not going to care about much else, and therefore it isn’t really a friendship. He also made a point to say the girls he considered his friend were all ugly.
At this point my friends and I were all glancing at each other in agreement. All wanting to say something to argue this guy, but keeping our mouths shut seemed like a better option.
This guy had a very strange labeling system for these girls he seemed to know. His definition of friend seemed to be what most people would call a “close friend” whereas what most people would define as a friend he called “home girl” or and “associate’, which I can only assume he meant acquaintance since associate sounds more like someone that would help you put a hit out.
After the man had made his point, the girl sitting next to us started making her own points. She countered that a friendship is fine with whoever you like as long as you don’t act on it. The man replied that it doesn’t matter because if the guy (or girl I guess) has something else in the back of their mind when there hanging out it’s not a real friendship.
This was rebutted by how a relationship/hook-up can mess up a friendship and some friendships are too valuable to throw away. I’m not sure how this point was matched, but I’m sure it was some similar argument to his previous ones.
This whole interaction got me thinking. All of us have fallen for a friend at some point or another (generally in middle or high school). And it seems that there is a big difference in mentality between the genders. As a girl, I can attempt to speak for my gender and say that we are more logical. If we fall for a guyfriend we weigh our options. What are the odds this guy will reject me? Will he treat me differently if he knows I like him? How long would a relationship actually last with him? If we screw around can we still be friends? And on and on and on. We also generally prefer to be chased by men, rather than to go after them ourselves. So if a guy doesn’t like us enough to ask us out his own damn self it’s probably not worth it.
For guys it’s a whole different game. I’ve been around enough guys to gather some basic information. The key thing in this particular situation is that a lot of guys are driven by their genitalia. I have to ask my male readers: can you yourself be legitimately friends with a girl you are attracted to? Or is the hope in the back of your brain always going to push your actions and reasoning for hanging out with her or listening to her problems? Personally I would hate to find out a guy friend of mine was just hanging out with me because he wanted to get in my pants.
So does crazy bus philosopher have a point?
I want to ask all of you. Lots of comments on this one! Give me your opinion, as a girl/boy can you be friends with someone of the opposite gender if you are attracted to them?
