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Gender and Friendship

Have you, or one of your opposite-sex friends ever been in the friend zone and didn’t want to be?
            “The friend zone refers to a situation where there is a mismatch in romantic feelings between two individuals. For example, sometimes this is a sexual attraction mismatch, where one person is interested in romance while the other wants to just be friends,”(Nicholson, 2013, p. 1).
Why does the friend zone exist? Better yet, on a broader scale, the real question and purpose of this post is, can heterosexual men and women be strictly platonic friends?  According to Adrian Ward’s (2012) study, investing the capability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships, “Two people can experience the exact same relationship in radically different ways,” (p. 2). The results of this study found large differences in how both men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were found to be much more attracted to their female friends, than the women were to their male friends. Also, the men more often thought, compared to the women, that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them. In fact, the study showed,
            “Men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends,” (Ward, 2012, p. 2).
Women as well, were also unaware of the mindset of their male friends because they were generally not attracted to them, and assumed that their lack of attraction was reciprocated. With this, the study’s results suggested that the men repeatedly overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and the women repeatedly underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.

Nicholson, J. (2013, March 01). Avoiding the Friend Zone: Becoming a Girlfriend or Boyfriend. Retrieved September 24, 2017, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201302/avoiding-the-friend-zone-becoming-girlfriend-or-boyfriend


Ward, A. F. (2012, October 12). Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends". Retrieved September 24, 2017, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/men-and-women-cant-be-just-friends/

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 3, 2017 at 2:54 PM

    I like this blog topic, it is interesting and relevant! I grew up with a lot of guy friends because I tend to enjoy hanging out with them more often then girls, but I have had some weird interactions with friends I thought knew that we were strictly platonic, who themselves thought there was more to it than that. I think that it would be very interesting to find out why men think that there is always a mutual sexual attraction in every opposite gendered friendship. I want to be able to feel safe with my close friends, regardless of their gender, but there have been a few incidents (usually with alcohol involved) when a guy friend has been too handsy or overly sexual. That always makes me feel unsafe around them and really hurts the friendship.

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