Can we just be friends?

It is an old age question that every couple battles with: Is it possible for two people, male and female just be friends with no strings attached? Can two people just be friends without being romantically involved? 

These questions have constantly been the subject of debate in different societies today. The answer to this no one knows, but there are definitely some pointers that people should be wary of in such types of friendships.

It is true that opposite sex friendships stand on shaky ground half the time but the evidence that men and women can never be just friends is too overwhelming. 

In the movie "When Harry met Sally", actor Billy Crystal said that men and women can not be friends because the sexual attraction part always gets in the way.

It is not just about the movies but also various studies that have been carried out show that opposite sex friendships account for 15 percent of affairs in married couples.

If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, it may help to explain why men and women can never be friends.

A friend of mine told me that all the blame should be put on any red-blooded, heterosexual man and woman. Point to the jealous that plagues any rational person when a significant other befriends someone of the opposite sex.

But can we take this juvenile line of thinking associated with teenagers and say truly a man and a woman can never be just friends?

Wrong, the belief that men and women can never be friends comes from another era in which women were at home and men were in the workplaces and the only way they could get together was for romance.

However society has changed and the paradigm shift has now seen the the two sexes working together, sharing interests and socializing together.

This cultural shift has helped people to see that though it may be tricky, men and women can successfully be close friends. What is more interesting  is that there are more good reasons for the two parties to do so.

In our African culture, our societies have long pointed out that the only relations that are approved between opposite sexes are romantic ones because they are productive and people have babies which continues the life cycle. True, but absurd!

Part of this confusion over the relationships stems from the way the media portrays these relationships. In "When Harry met Sally" what the movie successfully did was to convince a whole group of moviegoers that sex always comes between friends.

But that is not the only movie, almost every time you see a male-female friendship, it winds up in a whirl-wind romance. take our local drama Studio 263, Vimbai Jari was befriended by Tom Mbambo and where did it end? Talk about The Bold and The Beautiful's Taylor and Chip, on Generations Sharon and Samuel. the list is endless.

These cultural images are hard to overcome and this is why society looks at any relation between opposite sexes to lead to romance.

A popular saying that says everything under the sun is marked and approved by society caught my attention as  I was going through an interesting novel just the other day and I realized, if these beliefs had been cultivated by the media into society then the situation could be reversed. 

So if one is truly to assess all the evidence and ask again if men and women can be friends, the answer would be absolutely!

Men and women can be friends, it depends on the different stages the individuals are in their lives or the practicalities involved such as marriage and living too far apart.

Often when men and women are friends, they have already diffused the sexual energies that they used to generate and they often find themselves at ease with each other.

Sometimes some people would have worked closely together, or met through families, or have simply known each other since their childhood. Whatever the circumstances, the familiarity makes them feel like brother and sister. They can be themselves with each other.

Should you however find yourself in an exclusive relationship, and you do not want to introduce your new friend to your mate, you have to ask yourself, "Is this just friendship?" or is he or she a friend with possibilities?

Attraction and compatibility are the building blocks for close relationships, ,so the bridge from friendship to romance is already built. The big question is when, if ever, it will be crossed.

The bottom line is that men and women can be friends, but the bridge to romance and the possibility of crossing it always exists.