“Wow who hurt you incel?”
In today’s world, the practice of establishing cross-sex friendships is almost a given, that anyone who questions the practice is almost immediately dismissed as someone projecting his lack of social interaction in real life. However, I do think that there are legitimate reasons against this, which we would be exploring in this blog post.
An assault to marriage
This practice is actually a recent phenomenon as a result of diminishing traditional gender roles, which in turn creates more opportunities for relationships to form between the sexes. Mainstream educational institutions allow for boys and girls to interact with one another, and through bringing women into the workforce. These regular opposite-sex interactions would eventually form a relationship, whether as a friendship, or as a romantic relationship. While this might not always be the case in friendships, sexual attraction would more often than not be present in either one of the parties involved, either early on, or developed later through prolonged interaction. These feelings would usually be suppressed in order to maintain the friendship. Eventually, this led to the idea of Friends with Benefits, in which the emotional affection and attachment in a typical friendship remains, but the suppressed sexual tension is able to be expressed with ‘no strings attached’, whatever that means.
As a result, hookup culture becomes more prevalent, degrading sex into a mere act done for pleasure. People have forgotten that the primary purpose of sex is for procreation, and as an expression of the unity of a married couple in which they become one flesh. These relationships are an inferior imitation of the companionship in a marriage.
The ambiguity of a friendship
Another problem with opposite-sex friendships is that the boundaries are blurred in its emotional and physically expression of it. This would especially be a problem if one party happens to be married. At what point does it become an affair? Do you only draw the line at sex? If we are only looking at the legal definition of adultery, yes, it is where the line is drawn. However, there is more to a marriage than that, and it is understandable when a spouse reacts negatively to such a relationship.
This is different from opposite-sex relationships between family and in the professional context. In those cases, the boundaries are clearly drawn and there is no grey area pertaining to the nature of the relationship.
“But I’m not married, so it’s fine!”
If your friendship with the opposite sex is contingent on whether you are already married with someone else, it simply testifies to my point that opposite-sex friendships are just a substitute for the married estate. What is the point of forging a close friendship with someone of the opposite gender only to cut it off once one of you gets married?
Conclusion
These are just some things to think about. Now I am not condemning everyone who happens to have a friend of the opposite gender, but that it is in principle, not an advisable relationship to get into due to all the messy ambiguities and emotional conflicts it can cause. Neither am I calling for men everywhere to avoid women like the plague. There is no problem with being acquainted with someone of the opposite sex, just avoid investing too much of your emotions to make it into something more.
Wow, I really like your take on having friendships of the opposite sex. I find men and woman to be fundamentally different such that even the way they look at friendship changes. I find my female relationships tend to be more possessive in a way that men are not. Moreover, interactions with men tend to be straightforward and to the point, whereas with women its more “nuanced.” In any case, great thoughts – I look forward to reading more of your blogs.
Very excellent take, I only wish you talked longer about this! I am of the opinion that you shouldn’t expect a woman to share her body to you until she’s shared her soul to you and vice versa. I think the inherent issue of men and women being close friends is that this emotional intimacy is intended to be attached to sexual intimacy and if you’re “just friends” but very close with someone of the opposite sex, you’re frustrating each other without cause.