Friend or Foe

“I’m not a biter, I’m a writer for myself and others…”  Jay-Z

In the blogosphere, it’s not uncommon to get an idea for a post by reading someone else’s blog. For me, when I’m experiencing writer’s block, I sometimes scroll along my blog reads in search of some inspiration to get started.

For a better part of the summer, the first lady kept a poll on her blog asking the question: Can men and women truly be platonic without attraction? The choices we, the reader, had were 1. Absolutely, 2. Hell Naw, 3. Perhaps.

The poll was open for at least 20 days and I was always curious as to how the voting was coming along. While she doesn’t have a huge following on her blog, it’s a enough to generate good traffic and ignite healthy discussion. So when the polls closed a few weeks ago, I was curious to see the results.

Hell Naw: 9 votes

Absolutely: 7 votes

Perhaps: 5 votes

Interesting.

While voting was and still is confidential, I’ll admit I voted for “Hell Naw” and am not at the least surprised by the results.

From a man’s perspective, since the beginning of time, we have been attracted to females. We like the way they look, talk, walk, smell and umm…taste.  Heterosexual men spend a lifetime chasing women, often succeeding and often embarrassing ourselves in the process. But we want what they’ve got and I’d like that think, in many cases, the feeling is mutual.

So I believe that it’s extremely difficult to maintain a platonic friendship with the opposite sex without attraction. To be clear, by “attraction” I don’t mean sexual tension or even the idea that you want to have sex with said person. I believe that attraction in this situation is the acknowledgement that you find said person interesting and good looking and, if the situation presented itself to “take your friendship to the next level;”, you wouldn’t turn it down.

I’ve discussed and debated this subject with the Moose on several occasions and she believes women are easily able to differentiate the two than men are. And I tend to agree. I believe women are able to maintain the “just friends” tag and leave it at that. Whereas us men, always ignorant, tend to think that if a woman wants to hang out with us and spend time with us, she’s “in to” us. This may totally not be the case, but that’s how a lot of us think, even if we know said female may already be in a relationship and she may be just cool with us.

So when men are skeptical about their wives/girlfriends/SOs having “serious” platonic relationship, it can often be perceived as jealous or possessive, when if fact we are just viewing the situation from a man’s point of view and are simply warning the female to be cautious and not be naive.

Because for both men and women, every smile received from the opposite sex is not given with good intentions.

Ladies, does your man look like this?

I had a very interesting IM conversation today at work with one of my girls from college. She asked me, as a man, what do I find sexy about women. Random question, but one I found very easy to answer. I listed, in no particular order — confidence, style, sense of humor and well kept (hair, nails, etc.) Apparently, she had spent her entire day not working, but conducting some sort of informal poll among her guys friends in order to give her and some of her lady friends something to discuss at happy hour.

But it seems I had continued the trend of not mentioning any “physical traits” as something I found sexy, which she found interesting. I told her that it’s not that those things don’t matter, it’s just that even the finest women who has all the “assets” can be a turn off/not sexy if she has a bad attitude, doesn’t “keep herself up” and talks likes she hasn’t read a book in years.

Here’s where it got interesting. I said that men aren’t as picky as women. Not saying that we don’t know want we want, we just aren’t as specific as the ladies. In my experiences growing up, going through college and into my “grown man” phase, women, particularly those of the darker hue, tend to have measurements, requirements and checklists.

“I want a tall man — 6-2, 220-pounds”

“Tall dark and handsome”

“I don’t want a fat brother, he needs to be in shape.”

I could go on and on. The fact that men and women have standards is fine. We both know and understand what we want, what turns us on and what makes us happy. But, in reality, who we end up with may not or look like what we imagined. I represent for the under 6-foot brothers and I’ve actually had this very conversation with the SO. I’m certainly not as tall as she may like or may look like she may have pictured, but I like to think she’s happy which is what should matter.

But everyone doesn’t realize this. Women (and men) spend their lives lonely simply because they can’t find their Boris Kodjoe, Denzel, Sanaa or Halle. And, along the way, they pass up on the “average guy or girl” which may be the best thing, although it may not seem that way on the outside.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with having standards, just be cautious and know that everything that glitters ain’t gold.