Even Ross and Rachel Couldn't "Just Be Friends"

Two sentences.  "I'm fine being friends!! The question is: are you?"  This was posed to me and really got me thinking.

Friends.

In this day and age; there are so many different type of friends. You have your "Present" friends.  The tangible friends who are in your life that you hang out with on a regular basis. You have your "close, but far" friends who don't live near you but are always in a constant contact with.  You have "distant" friends such as those you keep up with on facebook from high school, but without it - you probably would lose contact with again and not think much of it. You have you "social media" friends such as those you regularly interact with such as Twitter or the like, but you don't necessarily know.  All of these are people you perhaps talk to on a daily basis and you do indeed probably consider your friends.  Think deep though into your circle of present and close friends.  Eliminate anyone of the opposite sex that you are friends with because they are the significant other of your friend. Eliminate the exes that you have managed to build a friendship with after the break up. Do you have any people of the opposite sex that you consider just a pure platonic friend?  One you could go out with on a Friday night and know that you aren't going to end up in each other's bed before day breaks?

Can a male and female truly be platonic friends without sex or feelings interfering with the friendship? It's the age old debate.  Women seem to be highly optimistic that such a friendship can occur and guys tend to be a bit skeptical.  I am skeptical myself, but then I always seem to think like a guy and my initial thought was NO.   So then I thought I would ask what my friends think.  I asked all of my facebook friends and out of 105 - I got 8 responses.  I tweeted 17 of my 25 followers and got back 6 responses.  My results were interesting (to me at least).

Facebook:

5 of the 8 were females that said YES

1 was a male who said NO

1 was a male who said YES

1 was a male who said not if both were hot

Twitter:

1 male said hmmm, I believe so. Although I would say any guy who is friends with a hot girl secretly wants to have sex with her
1 male said  Sure they can. However, usually one or both, have other aspirations.

1 male said nope those two can fuck everything up , figuratively and literally

2 females said YES

1 female said Maybe, but I flirt with all my guy friends, so what does that tell you?

I asked my ex who said yes and gave an example of a neighbor we used to have. The ex said our female neighbor was awesome, attractive and yet he had no interest in her outside friendship.  When I mentioned he was still married at the time, he responded "what and nobody who was ever married never cheated with a neighbor if that was what they really wanted to do?"  He did  also state that she had told him he was the 1st guy friend she had that never tried to hit on her. When questioned him about that - he responded that most of her friends were drunk skater boys in their 20's who weren't smart enough to seperate friends and friends with benefits.  Touche.

Another friend told me he had a female friend from high school who is his best friend, There is more to this, but I am trying to respect his confidence in me.  He wrapped it up saying the spouses were supportive of the friendship, but only because of the distance.  But why should distance be a factor if guys and girls can be strictly friends?

There was a guy named Mark in my twenties. He proved and disproved that question completely. He was friends with my circle of three. He dated one of us and stayed friends with her.  He was strictly friends with the second and was friends with me, but it turned into more and it ended with me punching him in the face and moving out of my dream house.

I have had a  guy room-mate where it tried to become something more, but ended up causing a severe amount of friction.  Only time has mended those wounds to where we haved moved past it and are friends. (For the record - I'm really sorry for throwing out your Playboys when they came in the mail back in the day- I was petty at the time.)

Then there is Man Whore who I have always been flirty with, but it's never going to cross that line.  Not because I don't want to mess up the friendship (and we are still friends even though we all moved out), but more because I didn't nickname him Man Whore for nothing.

I guess it comes down to a level of maturity where you know the risk isn't worth losing the friendship over.  Where you respect the person and friendship enough to know that things might not be so great if you cross that line. 

So can a guy and girl be strictly friends? The majority from my unscientific poll said yes they can. I still don't know where I stand personally. What do you think?