Close platonic friends

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I really want close friendships with people, but I don't want a sexual relationship. You'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask, but every time I manage to get close to someone, they always want to make it romantic and weird. Is it even possible to have a close friendship that is platonic and doesn't involve physical contact?

I think part of the problem is I'm an aspie female and I try to make friends with aspie males because I have a hard time relating to NTs. Some of these aspie males just don't understand the difference between friendship and a romantic relationship. All I want is a friend I can talk to.

Well find aspie gay male friends

Easier said than done.

I have had exactly the same problem in my life.
I have never had many female friends. It is easier to talk to males for me, but it always turns out eventually that they are interested in me in a romantic way.

I don't think that there is anything you can do about it.

Well...

Short answer: Yes. You already had one.

Long answer: Um, somehow things are way too complicated for me to attempt to put here. I can say things which make no sense yet its impossible to argue with me about.

WTF: Why did you just cut all contact with me indefinitely when I found this. You put a post on Facebook saying that the L&D forum here was of little help, use one of your former FB Profile pictures as your profile picture here. I was interested in the site, and I had heard about it from a therapist. I might of been a little weird about my response to this, but I was firmly on the "we can just be friends" side. Why did you get so angry?

Brief moment of insanity: AND WHERE THE f**k IS MY f*****g RESTRAINING ORDER?

A lot of the time when a guy initiates a "friendship" with a girl, they usually want to be something more than just friends(unless they are gay). Thats pretty much the way it works. Just tell them that you aren't interested in them in a romantic/sexual way. If they accept that and things don't become awkward, then a close friendship could work out.

In my own experience, close platonic friendship is almost impossible, unless the sexual orientation of the couple rules out sexual interaction. Probably because we're dealing with one of the most powerful biological urges there is.

Many people seem to believe otherwise. I'm sure a big confounding factor is that in the mating game, sexual attraction tends to be the elephant in the room, as if there's an unwritten rule that you can't discuss it frankly until the relationship is consummated. I'd love to know why. I sense that Anna_K's idea - that heterosexual men are usually after sex - may point towards the explanation. I would add to it that they can be very good at hiding their intentions, so telling them you don't want sex and getting them to okay that might not be the end of the problem. I've read that hetero women are hard-wired to crave only close friendship at least until that is achieved, while hetero men are hard-wired to crave sex with new women and then get emotionally involved when they achieve that.

I used to think that was rubbish - if not, then why does monogamy happen as often as it does? The answer seems to be that the social taboo on promiscuity is so powerful that it markedly inhibits the animal instinct of the male from expressing itself. My other objection to the theory was that I didn't recognise myself in it. Maybe a little when I was young, but even then I always wanted strong emotional involvement, and I only needed one woman, and that was much more important to me than sex. Although strongly heterosexual, I seem have an unusually feminine nature about such things - at least consciously. Freud would have said that I was just brought up with too much guilt and have repressed my natural male instincts. That's worrying - repressed drives are supposed to cause insanity, and a man who is after sex, when even he himself thinks he isn't, is a danger to self and others. More worrying still, although I was well convinced of the wisdom of delaying sex until I'd established that the lady was right for me, I'd succumbed to too-early sex in some of my relationships because the women concerned wanted it that way, and that must be why those relationships broke down.

Men can't be trusted very well in that respect, self included. Knowing the risks, now I'm in a good relationship, I keep other women at arm's length. I might talk with them for a little while in a safe, non-private setting, but I don't take any chances. I take emotional fidelity very seriously. It's very bad to push away half the human race that much, and it often feels crazy, but I think the alternative is even worse.

Sorry to have banged on about this at such length. It's just that I can see how hard to believe this stuff can be, so I went into a lot of detail to explain why I do believe it. This thread is a great topic with very important implications for friendship and romance, and strangely enough, I've noticed that the women I've been close to who I think were Aspies seemed very naive about these concepts. My fiancee seems to be the exception, but she says she learned a lot from her previous partner about the realities of the mating game. I also caused a lot of pain and anxiety through my own unawareness, before I figured it out.

Obvious follow-up questions to that....

If someone is bisexual and in a relationship, then they should live in a bubble? Are (straight)men sexually attracted automatically to anyone with a vagina?

Are you implying that the sexual urges of women are negligible? (This has always been a beef of mine--that women are always seeking something through sex when that's not always true.)

I see a lot of blanket statements that may apply to many instances, but not all.

Well, I said "in my own experience," and I've only known two bisexuals. One of them couldn't be faithful despite her best efforts. The other one, though not unfaithful, had his own partner but was habitually invasive towards my partner in what might be called a sexual way - only with words, quietly spoken but somewhat aggressive in content. He had a conviction for statutory rape with a minor, from whom he caught an STD which he passed on to his gf. He claimed it was basically the minor's fault for tempting him, and for all I know he could have been telling the truth. So my experiences tell us very little, and I don't know the answer to your question. It was possibly a mistake for me to broaden my thesis to include all sexual orientations, but I didn't want to get too heterosexist as if heterosexuals were the only people worth talking about. You could ask a few bisexuals, though they might be no more honest about it than heterosexuals, who aren't always honest even with themselves. Anybody totally open about their sexual desires may risk hurting their partners and / or shocking and inviting the wrath of those they reveal them to, or wrecking their chances of achieving those desires if their mating game depends on keeping their intentions unspoken. Maybe look around for scientific studies? It's relatively easy to measure sexual arousal.

For heterosexuals at least, if a couple is settling down to start a family, they need a stable relationship, not one in which there's a risk that one of the parents will bond with a new mate and perhaps leave. The kids could die as a result. Or the man might be cuckolded. Infidelity might be a small risk but the consequenses are dire in a more primitive society, which I guess explains why jealousy and adultery taboos evolved.

Factors such as the quality of the relationship and the values and wisdom of the person probably affect the risk of infidelity more than the number of people they are biologically wired to mate with. And the ways of bi people may be rather different from the Waltons. It's very hard to predict who's going to have an affair and who isn't.



More or less, I think. Men might say they only fancy a few percent of women, but I don't believe it's that black and white. Old, ill or male-looking women are somewhat less sexy to men than nubile ultra-female ones, but it takes some doing for a woman to be totally unattractive sexually. Even large pupils have their effect, as does the way they walk and smile at you. As long as they're recognisably female, there will be some attraction, but only the most attractive ones are usually consciously noticed. To a male chimpanzee, there is no such thing as an ugly female chimp. If men weren't governed by social taboos, they'd admit that. You'd have a hard time finding a father who would admit to rather fancying his young teenage daughter, or who even knew consciously that he did. But from a biological perspective, why wouldn't he fancy her? She looks like a younger version of her mother. I suggest that he probably does feel a bit of lust for her at times, and that the reason he doesn't know that is because of the strength of the taboo which is there to protect the species from the genetic harm of inbreeding. Incest does happen, though mercifully the penalties are so severe that it's comparatively rare.

Most female mammals are only "in heat" for a relatively short time during the menstrual cycle. For humans, it's for most of the cycle, so we're much sexier than other species. Women usually artificially amplify the sexual signals they give out, using lipstick, cleavage etc., and men are suckers for sexy women as a rule. Humans wear clothes not just for warmth and protection, but also for what used to be called decency - i.e. to tone down the sexual signals. Some parts of women are almost never seen in public. They hide those parts so well that women in the sex industry can make a good living by doing little else but display them.



No, but it's much less common for a woman to immediately want sex with a stranger, the timing is different, biologically she needs to know whether he'll make a good father and protector, because she's the one who has the babies (effective contraception is a recent thing that evolution hasn't caught up with). Note how porn and prostitution for men are thriving industries while the same for women is a mere niche market. Different brain wiring, I think. Women can use sex as bait, to get whatever they want from men. It's generally seen as rather absurd for a man to try to use his body as bait.


There are exceptions to most rules. Simplification is probably a necessary evil with such a complicated subject as human sexuality, else it would take forever to analyse it all. But I don't know whether you mean my statements, or statements from elsewhere. I'm just saying what I think, and I'm sure it's not all crystal clear or 100% accurate, but I don't yet know of any flaws that totally derail the general cut and thrust of my thesis.

^^^^^ You seem to frame things in an evolutionary perspective, but I wonder how accurate that may be. I look at the recent paleo diet craze, and the scientific feedback that humans evolve much faster than you think.

I brought up bisexuality on a personal note. I don't see it hurtful towards your partner, or advantageous to hide it. My husband told me once "honey, I know you like girls but you're married." Being attracted to anyone sexually doesn't mean it is going to be acted upon. You seem to see this as a given.

Perhaps you're right on male/female wiring, because I don't think pure sexual appeal is a trump card for most women. But on that line of reasoning, we can value other factors that qualify as a platonic relationship over sexual appeal. Are you starting men can't?

I have close female friends that I don't feel attracted to. I'm not gay.

@MjrMajorMajor:
I hope to answer these interesting comments of yours soon, but time is short right now. I just had to post now about what you said about my theory possibly leading to bisexuals being locked up for fancying everybody. It's not necessary. A male bisexual can be close to hetero men, and a female bisexual can have female hetero friends without significant sexual danger.

I saw this:

http://www.wired.com/2007/12/humans-evolving/

It seems like good science there. But I don't see anything about genes controlling fidelity and jealousy, assuming they've been isolated. I allow that it's dangerous to assume the human race hasn't changed at all, but how quickly have those traits moved? Sad that they think manipulative charmers are on the wax.



I didn't mean to suggest that anybody should conceal their sexual orientation as such from a serious partner. Just that I think tact about some specifics is quite common in relationships. For example, I wouldn't exclaim "she's fit!" if I saw a healthy-looking lady in a bikini while watching a movie with my fiancee. A survey about who people fancy would require brutal frankness about such matters, though I've just realised it could be done anonymously, so I guess it doesn't matter. You like girls but you're married. I liked girls last time I looked, but I don't even want to look since I met my partner. Something inside me probably does, but I only look to my partner for that kind of thing, because that gives me enough sexual happiness and because I wouldn't want to make her jealous. If I looked at porn, I'm pretty sure it would still work on me, so I don't.





So I agree with you. If I seem to have suggested otherwise before, I sure didn't mean to. I would add that manipulative charmers would also affect the fidelity forecast, if they're effective. I also saw a questionnaire about how faithful a person one was, and it seems that a big factor is how much of a risk-taker the individual is.



Only as a general tendency, and it's more of a timing thing, I think a man is more likely to be initially attracted sexually and then the other valuable things follow. Possibly men always value the sex life more highly - I'd speculate that there's a spike in male infidelity when the female is having a baby, and that her new body shape and his loss of her nurturance (she's maybe in hospital) contribute to that spike.

It would be interesting to see a survey on partnered people who have had close friendships with others who are potentially attracted to each other (by the orientation way of reckoning), and see how many led to affairs and how many didn't. I was surprised to discover the concept of emotional fidelity, which I thought was remarkably sensitive towards not provoking jealousy and anxiety in the mate. It was heterocentric stuff. One guideline was that on entering a steady relationship, if close opposite-sex friendships must be kept, then they have to become friendships with the couple and not the individual. Of course if the OP has no partner, that's not possible. Singles can take whatever level of risk they feel is right for them.

I think there's a common unspoken understanding, at least in close hetero relationships, that singles are expected to back off. When I've mentioned my partner to such women, their behaviour towards me has changed, and when other men have found out I exist, the same has happened. They no longer communicate in private or seek as much closeness as they once had. In a nutshell, they stop trying to do couply things. It's never been talked about at the time. The only time I've explained why I've done that was met with anger. I'd been corresponding with a lady I'd met via postal dating. When I first wrote to her, she said that she didn't want a partner but wanted a special friendship. I'd been seeking more but I agreed, and we started doing the kind of things a demure but merry courting couple would do, on the phone and by letter. Just little harmless jokes and banter. Then she told me that she had a steady boyfriend. I realised I'd been flirting with another guy's partner. I explained that I didn't want to tread on his toes and that we couldn't be special friends any more. She was furious for a day or two, and after some arguing she stopped communicating abruptly. She was a very feisty, fun-loving person, and seemed to be something of a trouble maker at her workplace.

I've had close female buddies in the past without it getting to sex. Mostly we had hopes of finding fully-fledged relationships, or had them already, and I often felt that we were holding each other back, and I worried about the strain I might be putting on their partners when they've had them, and wondered whether that might have been why one of them split up from her partner just after I split up with mine. I think those anxieties are well-understood in at least some circles. I think a lot of mainstream working-class NTs and many others intuitively recognise lines that limit external opposite-sex dealings. Doesn't apply to singles who aren't looking for relationships, but most of them are.

*shrugs* I have one. We did try to date once but it didn't work. Things were unamicable for a year and a bit after that but we managed to pick up the pieces and be friends again. I can't think of a single instance since then that it's been "complicated" (I admit it was kinda complicated for me the first time we were friends because I'd never had a platonic relationship before).

He's a rarity though. It is the kind of emotional friendship I've tried to replicate with other guys but failed in spectacularly hurtful fashion. He's set the bar pretty high for other guy friends to meet. I mean, if he's capable of showing me care and respect without expecting anything more than the same from me, surely other guys are able to do the same? Apparently not.

There are lots of sites with advice such as this:

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/relations ... riendship/

I don't say its underlying philosophy is right for everybody, but I think it gives a good forewarning of the bar height that a heterosexual partner might want, and how toxic things might get if they don't get that. It seem to me that it's the very closeness of the (supposedly) platonic friendship that can be so hard for partners to tolerate, and that it's often just as hard to tolerate as a sexual affair.