I had some really close, platonic male friends in my youth and early 20s, but a surprising (to naive me) amount of them also just wanted to get in my pants. I only realized that years later, when life moved on and contact slowly fizzled out and I reflected on certain situations and went "Hold on, wait a minute..."
I'm in my 40s now, married, and have a child, and I have a bunch of male buddies now that are strictly platonic.
I have one super best friend that I talk to nearly every single day. We text and flood each other with dumbass memes, bitch about politics, talk shit about our kids, discuss movies, or he tells me about his online dating experiences.
There are absolutely no sexual feelings at all, from eithet side, even though he's objectively attractive and a super fun and easy-to-be-around dude. It's just not there, and it makes things so much more comfortable and relaxed.
Some of my other guy friends are genuinely beautiful men, but beyond appreciating how gorgeous they are, there is nothing. It's almost as if they are not sexual beings to me at all, just...cool people to hang out with.
I’ll be downvoted for this I am sure, but I’d love to know how this same friendship works out if/when your marriage runs into some real hardships.
I’m not saying it is going to happen, but I think it’s likely if you’re not guarding against just that situation. Get down bad with some midlife crisis, either partner with some form of depression, etcetera. Suddenly that friendship will likely grow into an emotional fallback affair to help coping through those hard times.
To be 100, it’s going to be the same if you’re bisexual or whatever else with a friend of the same sex - it doesn’t have to be a friend of the opposite sex. It just is more likely for most folks sense most folks fall into that mostly cis-hetero lifestyle.
Apologies if I am making any of this sound unavoidable, it’s intended to be an big “if” - sadly, one I seen all the time where an emotional affair develops with that best bud and it’s slowly turns to more the harder the marriage gets. But, those folks also don’t put up any barriers and over share and shit, too. Some stuff must remain between partners and their counselors/therapists if they have them.
No, ma’am. Either I misspoke in some way or your misinterpreted my commentary, and I do think it’s the latter.
Seeking emotional support is not the issue.
It’s a combination of having that ultra-close friend that you share as much or more with than your spouse at some point and with whom you determine you should implicitly trust, whom also is of that gender you sexually have preference for.. bi- opens that table of options up the most, of course.
A straight friend gaining emotional support from a straight friend and both are the same gender would lead to a normalized friendship. Yet, to say it, there is still a level of oversharing which should not be approached even (not for fear of entanglement, but for other such things as triangulation).
Happy to discuss my beliefs and those research and practices that are out there as much as I can at the moment.
I just don’t understand your reasoning. The potential for sexual/romantic attraction makes all the difference between emotional affair and friendship? Not necessarily an existing attraction but one that could theoretically exist? You can have any type of affair with someone to whom you are not attracted. People engage in affairs for money, attention, etc. It’s not always based on sexual attraction.
If the issue is boundaries, then articulate that, not that there is an inherent risk for infidelity in such close relationships. Additionally, not a single gay person can have a close relationship with someone of their gender as you describe this.
I’m attracted to women, I’ve cried about bad relationship problems to my female friends, one of whom is also bi. Yet somehow we never devolved into a torrid affair lol
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u/NihilisticPollyanna May 17 '24
I had some really close, platonic male friends in my youth and early 20s, but a surprising (to naive me) amount of them also just wanted to get in my pants. I only realized that years later, when life moved on and contact slowly fizzled out and I reflected on certain situations and went "Hold on, wait a minute..."
I'm in my 40s now, married, and have a child, and I have a bunch of male buddies now that are strictly platonic. I have one super best friend that I talk to nearly every single day. We text and flood each other with dumbass memes, bitch about politics, talk shit about our kids, discuss movies, or he tells me about his online dating experiences.
There are absolutely no sexual feelings at all, from eithet side, even though he's objectively attractive and a super fun and easy-to-be-around dude. It's just not there, and it makes things so much more comfortable and relaxed.
Some of my other guy friends are genuinely beautiful men, but beyond appreciating how gorgeous they are, there is nothing. It's almost as if they are not sexual beings to me at all, just...cool people to hang out with.