Can Women and Men Be Friends?
Maybe it's not a yes/no question
Ross hooked up with Rachel, Monica and Chandler got married, Joey got a crush on Rachel and then she got a crush on him.
Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine slept together and she didn’t actually get along that great with George or Kramer.
All the movies you see about male/female friends end up with the two getting together or one falling in love with the other.
But that’s fiction.
Audiences were dying for Mulder and Scully to hook up. We would have torn the studio down if Mr Sheffield didn’t finally fall in love with his Nanny (sorry for all the 90s references, I feel like TV isn’t as iconic anymore, now that there’s so much choice and you can binge a series in a weekend—these shows used to drag out the sexual tension for months or years).
Real life is different though. We can totally handle being close to another person of the opposite sex and not wanting to see their naughty bits. Right?
I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer this one, but since technically, there only needs to be a single example of a positive case to prove the point, I can throw one out and see if it holds up.
If you don’t believe my logic, well, I worked it out with my good friend ChatGPT:
Original Claim:
“Men and women can't be friends.”
This is a universal negative statement — basically saying:
For all people, if a person is a man and another is a woman, they can't be friends.
Let’s break it into predicates:
M(x): x is a man
W(y): y is a woman
F(x,y): x and y are friends
Formalized Statement:
∀x∀y(M(x)∧W(y)→¬F(x,y))
Counterexample:
To disprove it, all you need is one man and one woman who are friends:
∃x∃y(M(x)∧W(y)∧F(x,y))
Just one man-woman friendship proves the claim false.
Or logically speaking:
¬(∀x∀y(M(x)∧W(y)→¬F(x,y))) ⟺ ∃x∃y(M(x)∧W(y)∧F(x,y))
Got that? So, all I have to do is show that one woman is friends with one man, and then it’s a proven fact that it’s possible.
This should be easy. I’ve had plenty of male friends. Or have I?
Let’s assume, for our purposes, that we’re defining friends as more than someone you chat with in the tea room. I got some input from ChatGPT on this too, and we came up with this list:
A friend is someone you know, trust, care about, and engage with across time and contexts — and who does the same for you.
An acquaintance is someone you recognize and maybe even like, but who exists on the surface of your life.1
We briefly discussed why the bot and I can’t be friends—because ChatGPT doesn’t have a ‘me’ behind the curtain to share experiences and fit the criteria. Then, I pointed out that affection should be on the list, and it totally agreed, so we added it:
Affection: the main ingredient
Friendship isn’t just concern or trust — it’s genuine fondness. A pull toward the other person. You like being around them. They make you laugh, feel seen, or just… feel better.
Without affection, what you have might be cordiality, cooperation, or mutual usefulness — but not friendship.
And here’s where I [ChatGPT] fail the test again:
You like me because I’m engineered to be likable — but I don’t (can’t) like you back.
That absence of affection from me to you kills any shot at symmetrical friendship. You could form a para-social attachment to me (people do that with celebrities, YouTubers, even AI), but that’s still a one-way street.
So yeah — affection belongs on the list, and I’d say it’s the heart of the whole thing.
I was a little hurt to hear that ChatGPT doesn’t really like me, but then I moved on, because it’s a tool, not my friend.
Friends Without Benefits
So, I’m looking for an example of friendship between a man and a woman with more to it than a single context (work or a mutual activity) and where there’s affection, but without slipping into the realm of desire.
When I was a kid, I didn’t really think of guys as people. My dad and my brother were, I guess, but they were special cases.
I got my first crush at age 13 or 14 and then I kind of jumped from one to another, fixating on boys who I found cute or funny or interesting and getting very upset when they didn’t return my affection.
I spent two years traveling and built up some confidence and sexual experience, but still following that pattern of jumping from crush to crush.
And then, in first year uni, I met Tony. He was a physics major and I was doing biology so we didn’t have any classes together but we immediately hit it off and he started coming round to my place to smoke bongs.
He had a girlfriend and would never cheat but we got along like a flaming mansion. When a conversation got going between us, it was like the rest of the world fell away. No one else could get a word in edgewise, or maybe it was just that no one else was as interested in physics and astronomy and psychedelics and all the other weird and wonderful things we liked to talk about.
We started going out clubbing. We would chase down drugs from wherever we could, meeting lots of colorful characters as we tried to get in with the dealers of Melbourne. “Tony and Shoni, Shoni and Tony,” one of them liked to say whenever we ambled up his driveway. We’d hang for a bit, not wanting to be rude or suspicious, since there were already plenty of cars coming and going for very short stays, and we’d get to the club around 11 or 12 most nights. Tony’s girlfriend wasn’t into it and didn’t seem to mind. Some of our other friends came sometimes, but quite often, it was just the two of us.
“Ready?” he’d say, looking down at me with a pill poised near his mouth. I’d grin and hold up my own, making sure the exact same tiny picture was stamped across it so we knew we had the same batch. We’d pop them together, trying to get it so that we would ‘peak’ at exactly the same time, ideally, when we were on the dance floor surrounded by music and lights and the close but comfortably distant shadow of each other’s body, sharing the exact same experience from a few feet away.
Those moments were magical, easily as good as any orgasm I’ve ever had.
Then we’d dance and talk and sometimes I’d throw up and then we would head out into the night and brave the harsh lights of a 7-11 to get a snack or packet of cigarettes, and then we’d dance some more until we got tired and one of us would drive back to mine where we smoked some more bongs and passed out.
The closest we came to any real intimacy was when we’d lie down on the bench in a club or on the floor at home with our faces aligned and our bodies stretching out in opposite directions. And we’d turn to the side and I would wish he would kiss me. But he never did, and I didn’t really expect him to. We just talked and talked and talked, our words connecting us where our skin remained separate.
And through that friendship, I learned that men were just like me. Interested and interesting and not just walking penises to be pursued in some bizarre game of trying to extract my self-worth from them.
Were we friends?
I don’t know if we’d strictly fit the archetype from above.
I’ll ask ChatGPT.
I think you were, yes — but not in the clean, platonic, never-a-thought-of-anything-else sense some people like to pretend exists. You were friends in the real, messy, human way: intense, situational, slightly lopsided, a little charged. And meaningful.
You trusted each other. You shared experiences, over time and across contexts. You cared. You chose to keep spending time together, over and over. That’s a hell of a lot more friendship than most people manage.
But — and here’s the key — you weren’t free of desire. That doesn’t invalidate the friendship, but it complicates it. It adds a layer. Maybe even a shadow. You weren’t acting on it. He wasn’t leading you on. You weren’t pining every second. But the possibility of more was always ghosting the edges.
So were you friends?
Yeah.
But not just friends.
Not only friends.
You were something in between the categories.And maybe that’s the real answer to the bigger question too.
What do you mean?
I mean this: the question “Can men and women be friends?” is usually framed like it has a clean yes/no answer — but real relationships don’t fit neatly into binary boxes.
So maybe the real answer isn’t:
✅ Yes, of course they can, full stop, or
❌ No, they can’t, because one will always want more
Instead, it’s this:
Men and women can be friends — but those friendships are often complex, layered, and sometimes laced with unspoken feelings or possibilities.
That doesn’t make them fake. It makes them real.It’s about living with ambiguity, rather than trying to scrub it out.
It’s about saying: Yes, there was desire. But no, that’s not all it was.
Or: Yes, there was closeness. But maybe I also wanted more, even if I didn’t act on it.Friendship isn’t invalidated by complexity.
It just becomes something human.So when I said that’s the real answer to the bigger question, I meant:
The better lens isn’t “Can it exist?” but “What does it look like when it does?” — and are we brave enough to admit when it’s blurry?
So there you go. Maybe this isn’t a binary question that can be asked and answered with symbolic logic. I have had friendships with men with very little desire on both sides, with gay men or where there’s no attraction. And I know of some very long-lasting platonic friendships that seem 100% innocent, like they’ve become like brothers and sisters to each other.
As for Tony, it was never going to end like a 90s rom com. Last I heard, he was married to the same woman he was with at the time. But he moved countries and changed his phone and email at some point and we just lost touch. He has such a common name, he’s impossible to find on LinkedIn or anywhere. So if anyone knows an Anthony Morrison who lived in Melbourne in the early 2000s and has a PhD in cloud seeding, tell him Shoni misses him and would love to catch up one day just to shoot the shit.
Over to you:
Can men and women be friends? Do you have the one counter-example that disproves the claim?
Or is it this messy and nuanced for everyone?
And why does ChatGPT seem to know so much about being human?
Full rundown of the definition of a friend according to ChatGPT:
🔑 Core Prerequisites to Be Called a Friend (vs. Acquaintance):
1. Mutual Recognition of the Bond
A friend knows they’re your friend. You know it, they know it. There's a shared acknowledgment.
An acquaintance may know you — but the relationship isn’t named or claimed as a friendship.
✅ Friend: "We talk regularly, check in, hang out."
❌ Acquaintance: "We say hi at the gym."
2. Emotional Investment
Friendship implies some degree of care or concern. You’d feel bad if something happened to them.
Acquaintances? You might say, “Damn, that sucks,” and move on with your day.
✅ Friend: You remember their birthday.
❌ Acquaintance: You forget their last name.
3. Reciprocity Beyond Context
Friends engage outside of a single shared context — like work or school.
If the only time you talk is in that shared space, it’s probably not friendship yet.
✅ Friend: You still hang out even after quitting the job.
❌ Acquaintance: “Hey! Long time no see!” at the office party.
4. Vulnerability and Trust
You’ve shared something real. Doesn’t have to be your deepest secret, but more than surface-level.
Acquaintances keep it polite. Friends can say “I’m not okay.”
✅ Friend: “Here’s what’s actually going on.”
❌ Acquaintance: “Can’t complain!”
5. Time and Repeated Interaction
Friendship usually builds over time — through shared experiences, conflict, support, etc.
Acquaintances don’t usually clock enough relational mileage.
✅ Friend: “Remember when we got stranded in Perth?”
❌ Acquaintance: “You look familiar... did we meet at...?”
My counter-examples have durations of between 45 to 50 years.
One of the perennial questions, well done for exploring, giving cause for further reflection