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Oh, thank you for mentioning that. That’s why HN is the only place where I interact with other users, civil disagreement is appreciated. :) Ok, I kind of agree
by maCDzP 4y ago
Oh, thank you for mentioning that. That’s why HN is the only place where I interact with other users, civil disagreement is appreciated. :)
Ok, I kind of agree with what you are saying. But I come to a different conclusion. I hope my text below isn’t a long unintelligible rambling.
Maybe it boils down to how one defines friendship and if friendly affection and sexual affection can coexist. I sorta see a Wenn diagram for this.
Say that I have sexual fantasies about a friend but my friend doesn’t share those fantasies. There is nothing from letting these feelings coexist inside me.
Is it easy? Not necessarily, but I believe it is it possible. One might even have to go see a therapist, so what?
I could even be so honest towards my friend and say: “Look, we are friends, but I also have romantic feelings towards you and it’s hard since you don’t feel that way. Which is totally ok! So I need a couple of weeks where we don’t hang out and it will pass”.
In that scenario, are we still friends? I believe we are. I am making an effort to make the friendship work. But I also need my friend to respect me and my boundaries.
And once those feelings has passed, because my experience is that they do, then we can continue being friends. If I wasn’t able to let those feelings coexist inside me while hanging out with that person.
One last thing. I cherish friendships, it gives me so much joy. And true friendship, that affection you mention, is also rare. So it’s not the best route to automatically exclude half of the population from being friends with you. So there is a lot to be gained from framing these different feelings of affection in a way so that they coexist. Then we get to reap the rewards of many great friendships.
- jdthedisciple 4y agoI understand that you can view friendship the way you described, and yes perhaps that's how many people view it. But for me just friendship is the type that exists among hetero men or hetero women, where there is no possibility of sexual attraction. So I'm not denying that the type of friendship you describe can exist, but it's not "just" friendship then, like "we're just friends". I think a metaphor that describes this well is the two magnetic poles. You can of course keep them close to each other without them touching, but that requires some constant force. This necessary constant force, that is needed to keep the distance, is a compromise to friendship as I envision it. Now here is another crucial point I haven't even mentioned yet: It is very well understood, that males tend to eagerly and overly interpret signals from females as sexual advances, whereas on the contrary, females tend to underestimate the sexual signals they are giving to males. It could be a mundane joke or a wrong, unintentional move. This creates a constant granular level of tension and uncertainty that needs to be perpetually overcome, which is incompatible with "my" understanding of just friendship.