I grew up hearing the message that boys and girls can’t be just friends, because boys are only friends with girls they want to have sex with. This kind of messaging, which is ultimately harmful for all genders, screwed up my head as a woman when it came to my friendships with men and it’s taken me a long time to unlearn them.
“When we see love as the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners.”
-bell hooks, All About Love
I’ve had some form of friendships with men since high school. My best friend at the time was dating a boy, Curtis, who became one of my closest friends even after they broke up. One of his close friends dated Ashley for a time, so our friend circles became intertwined. We spent a lot of time together, whether it was listening to Iron Maiden at full volume in their cars in various parking lots around our hometown, hanging out at each other’s houses watching movies, having bonfires in the summer, or driving around and going to Wal-Mart because there wasn’t much to do in a small, rural Michigan town in the 2000’s. I had to dodge questions about our friendship for years; the idea that a boy and girl could be such close friends without ever dating or even hooking up seemed mad to most people in my life. I had a couple of moments years ago where the questions made me wonder if we should give it a go; we clearly got on so well… could there be something more between us? Looking back, I think I was always attracted to my friend Curtis… but only as a friend. Our ‘chemistry’ as friends is what people saw when they watched us interact and what drew us to each other. Chemistry exists between all friends, regardless of gender or sexual identity, but because we are two heterosexual people it was always assumed that the chemistry between us had to have been sexual.
Curtis and I aren’t as close as we once were, but when we do see each other it’s just like old times. We’ve watched each other grow up and he’s one friend I know will always be in my life, even if we only get to see each other once every couple of years. Curtis was my first example that the lessons we’re told about men, women, and the relationships we’re “supposed” to have with each other are… well, to be honest, bullshit.
“Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term “masculinity”) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
Being told as a teenager and young adult that boys only want to be friends with girls that they want to have sex with told me that I shouldn’t expect any emotional connections with men unless they wanted to date me. If they showed any interest in me, it was probably because they just wanted to hook up with me. If this kind of messaging messed up my head, despite the positive friendship I had with Curtis, how much does it mess up the boys in our society? Why are they being told that they have to want to have sex with any girl or woman they’re friends with? I have seen the jokes online about how often when men and women do start to become friends, the man admits shortly after that he has ‘feelings’ for her or that he would hook up with her if given the opportunity. I’m not denying this is true for many women, but what I’m questioning is… do those men actually want to have sex with every woman they’re friends with? Or have they been told that if they ‘like’ a woman, then they must want to have sex with her? If they feel an emotional connection with a beautiful woman, does that mean that they have to like her? We can make fun of men for doing this, but I have to wonder if we could stop for a moment and think… what are the messages we’ve been told that make this such a common occurrence and if they’re messages we still want to be telling future generations.
I think one of the biggest reasons we struggle with seeing men and women be “just friends” is because in our heteronormative and patriarchal society, men aren’t raised to be good friends to each other, let alone to women. In our patriarchal society, masculinity is defined by what you provide for others. Men are taught that they can’t rely on anyone except themselves. They aren’t taught how to be emotionally vulnerable. Boys are implicitly taught about having power over others when they aren’t held accountable for their mistakes and the pain those mistakes cause others. Boys are told that they must financially provide and be a place of physical security for others without having anyone to turn to for their own safety. They’re told that they should want sex all the time and that girls will only respect men who are in charge, both in and outside the bedroom. They’re not taught how to regulate their emotions except through acts of violence, physical or otherwise.
Then we tell them they have to be in romantic relationships with women and wonder why divorce rates are high, the ‘male loneliness epidemic’ is a thing (a phrase used to describe the phenomenon that more men are reporting having less sex, and more feelings of loneliness lately which is really the culmination of generations-long patriarchal expectations), the suicide rate among men is rising, and domestic and sexual violence towards women is also rising…
All these lessons, and much more, have kept, and are continuing to keep, men from forming deep, healthy, positive relationships; both with other men and with women and other genders.
Being able to rely on others AND showing up for others is a key part of being in a healthy relationship. Being able to be emotionally vulnerable is a key part of being in a healthy relationship. Learning how to apologize and take accountability for your actions is a key part of being a good partner/friend/sibling/child/parent. Being able to provide and allowing others to provide for you is a key part of being in a healthy relationship. Knowing yourself, your sexuality, and what kind of relationships you want with others will help you be in a healthy relationship. Learning how to regulate your emotions through safe and healthy channels will give you the tools to be a healthy, safe person.
Until we change the cultural expectations around masculinity, we will not see an end to the ‘male loneliness epidemic’. Men need to be willing to unlearn the lessons they were taught from childhood about what it means to be a man and how to be in positive, safe, healthy relationships with other people. Men also need to be willing to speak to other men and masculine individuals about what masculinity means to them. They need to redefine the cultural norms and they can only do that by speaking of their experiences with other men. People wonder why certain ‘masculinity influencers’ have gained such a following online, but it’s because they, unfortunately, are speaking to the pain that boys and men do feel under patriarchy. They just aren’t providing healthy, safe places to actually unpack the pain and instead are providing quick, easy ‘fixes’ to bury the pain. Luckily, there are more and more men speaking up against these influencers and doing more work around changing the script around what it means ‘to be a man’. But there’s still a long road ahead of us.
The majority of this responsibility falls on the men to do this work, but women uphold patriarchal beliefs about men often. The system continues to work because everyone participates in it. We uphold the system every time we don’t allow the men in our lives to cry, to be gentle and ‘soft’, or to rely on us for (healthy and not co-dependent) emotional support. We uphold the system when we don’t hold men accountable for their actions, when we say ‘oh, boys will be boys’ when they are expressing destructive or even violent behaviors, or when we praise them for their sexual prowess while shaming the women they had sex with. We, especially people who call themselves feminists, need to be open and supportive of men who are truly committed to the work of unlearning patriarchy, even when it’s difficult.
“Not every guy who is “hot” to me is going to be perfect, or even slightly good for me. In fact, the large majority are not. Even when they seem to be because they are 6’3″, have a British accent, and also like the song Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen- I know, that’s three whole things, how could this not be the person I’m meant to spend the rest of my life with?! As it turns out, the most important sign that someone is not right for you, isn’t how they feel about Harry Styles or whether they have glasses that make them look like a professor, but whether or not they’re interested in you.”
― Blythe Roberson, How to Date Men When You Hate Men
When I think about the messaging I received as a young girl about why boys and girls couldn’t be friends, I think one of the reasons I struggled with unlearning them is because of the intertwining messages around sexuality that were embedded throughout. If boys only want to be friends with girls they want to have sex with… what about when girls want to have sex with their friends who are boys? Am I not supposed to want to have sex with my hot, male friends? Do I only have sex with men I find hot, but don’t have an emotional connection with? When I’m attracted to a man and we share an emotional connection, does that mean we should date?
The sexist denial that women can, indeed, find their male friends hot is obviously another tactic of patriarchal culture to keep feminine sexuality in check. Learning that is important, but then also learning that sexual attraction is the shallowest form of attractions/connections helped me figure out more about my sexuality and the relationships I want in my life.
If I’m being honest, most of the men I call my friend I found attractive at the beginning of our friendship. My feelings have changed over time, but I won’t lie and say that isn’t how it started for me. But that initial attraction led me to get to know them more and I realized the chemistry and connection we had ran deeper than just finding each other hot.
Let me share an example.
I matched with Peter on Tinder in the fall of 2020. We went on a couple dates, and I was immediately very interested in him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t interested in anything serious and decided to end it shortly after. I was devastated. He was one of the first men I had met in a long time that I felt a strong connection with, who didn’t seem like a jack ass, and who I was really attracted to. I had been going through a bit of a dating rut/abstinent streak at that point in my life and was eager to put myself out there again. His rejection really hurt me, because I had been in therapy for a couple years at that point. I had been doing the work on myself so I wouldn’t fall for assholes and their manipulative games anymore and I really thought things would be different this time around (clearly still had some learning to do!). What I had to realize with Peter is that what drew me to him was more than my sexual attraction. He felt like a safe person, one of the first safe men I had met in a very long time, and I think my body knew I needed that. As a hopeless romantic, I struggled with understanding why I had met someone that I had such a good emotional connection with, but he didn’t feel the same. I had to learn that, actually, he did feel the connection too; he wouldn’t want to be my friend if he didn’t! But just because we feel connections with others doesn’t mean we will always end up dating them. Connections and chemistry can lead to all kinds of different relationships with people and I’ve had to learn to appreciate the beauty in that.
Peter was my date at my best friend’s wedding a couple years back. After the wedding my best friend told me that a couple of her other friends had made comments about Peter and I having great chemistry and they were asking about the nature of our relationship. She had to tell them that he had a girlfriend, and they were a bit shocked. My best friend and I talked about those comments and what it means for people to see a man and a woman have great chemistry that aren’t dating. I think it makes people, especially people in relationships, uncomfortable because we’ve equated being in a relationship with never having chemistry with anyone else ever again. But that just isn’t true! You will meet multiple people in your life, whether you’re single, married, divorced, whatever, that you will have chemistry with. That doesn’t mean you have to have sex with them. It can simply mean you connect with them in a way that feels good to both of you. But because of those silly little messages we’re told when we’re younger about boys wanting to have sex with all their girl friends, we mistrust that connection when we see it between men and women. We don’t know what to make of it because it doesn’t fit into the narrative we’re told about each other.
Well, I say fuck that narrative. Let’s rewrite a new one.
One of my favorite movies is How to Train Your Dragon and I chose the title for this post from one of my favorite songs from the movie’s soundtrack. In the scene that the song plays in, the protagonist, a scrawny Viking teenager named Hiccup, is trying to win over the trust, and ultimately friendship, of Toothless, the Night Fury dragon he injured. The song builds up as the two of them spend time with one another. In the beginning, Toothless wants very little to do with the annoying teen. Over time, Hiccup’s patient persistence begins to have an effect on Toothless. They become more curious about each other and the scene builds to a ‘trust dance’ with each other and the history that exists between Vikings and Dragons; can they bridge the pain and hurt that has been caused by both sides and learn to trust each other?
Ultimately, they do. And they’re able to help others bridge that pain too and build a better society.
The last few years of my life I have had to really learn about how to be friends with men. After Owen broke my heart, I had a lot of healing and reflecting to do about many things, including my expectations around friendships with men. Luckily my friendships with Finn and other men in my life have been a source of healing for me over the last couple of years. I’ve had to think about how I show up in my relationships with men and what kind of relationships I want to have with them. I’ve created some of the best friendships I’ve ever had with men and it’s because I’ve truly begun to unpack the gendered expectations I have around my friendships with them. I realized that if I wanted to be in better romantic relationships with men, I needed to address how I showed up in my friendships with them too. My hope is that the deeper and wider my friendships go, then the deeper and wider my friend’s friendships will go, and so on. We can continue to heal the pain and hurt we’ve inherited from previous generations that doesn’t serve us anymore.
Here’s to the friends, regardless of gender, who show up for you on the good & bad days and every day in between.
...But Not With Haste 