One of the sections that jumped out to me was the section on Sexual Attraction in friendships.
I have experienced this issue in a friendship, only I was on the receiving end of it. It wasn't so much a sexual attraction, but one of my best guy friends in high school had "more than friends" feelings for me throughout our whole friendship. It was brought up many times throughout our friendship, but I continued to let him know I wasn't interested and things would go back to normal. The first paragraph talks about how problems can arise when two heterosexual people are friends, with the agreement that there is no sexual relationship. When one person feels differently than the other, it can cause hurt feelings and ruined friendships. Thankfully, we were able to stay friends for a long time without it being a problem, but within the last couple of years we grew apart. He was upset about my relationships and the issue between us couldn't be over looked any longer. It's a sad situation because I really love him as a friend and wish it didn't hurt him to be my friend for so long. I think that if one person has sexual attraction towards another and insists that they can just be friends, they probably shouldn't because it will never work out.
So would it be easy for you to say that your past friendship with the guy should have never happened? It’s a shame but I still don’t have a proper response for the statement that “Two heterosexual individuals of opposing sexes cannot be friends”. On one hand I believe people can be friends for different reasons, but at the same time, that would mean that one of the individuals is goal-oriented. I am pretty convinced however that your old friend had a goal in mind regardless of your opposing views. That isn’t to say that you couldn’t enjoy the friendship on a whole other level however. I just agree with you that when intentions like that are expressed early on, one should simply avoid the scenario.
ReplyDelete