Tainted Goods: Can the Possibility of a Relationship Ruin a Chance at Friendship?

• In Event: 'I never considered not sleeping with you a sacrifice': Physical attraction as a force for stability and change in cross-sex friendships

Abstract

First comes love, then comes marriage, and the rest is history or fairy tale. But what comes before love? What if, instead of first, stolen glances across crowded rooms, there is the laughter, warmth and affections of friendship. Are you doomed to always be “just friends” for fear of ruining what you have? Or do friends make the best partners? The pleasures and perils of having a friend of the opposite sex are numerous (Monsour, 2002) and over the course of platonically relating, the liking of friendship may turn into romantic attraction. But is that trajectory a foregone conclusion? In a mixed-method study of friendship, 2100 adults responded to questions regarding the possibility of cross-sex friendships and best friendships, providing a rationale for their response. While 95% answered affirmatively (in varying degrees) that friendship was possible, only 55% thought best friendship was a plausible. For people who think friendship or best friendship was impossible or at least unlikely, some distinct patterns arose in their explanations: attraction always gets in the way; fear of what the other will think; and expectations about what is suppose to happen. Participants clearly were caught in a dialogue of stability (keep the friendship as “just friends”) and change (“but what if it has become more?”). This seems to suggest a complicated reasoning pattern: a friendship is problematic because it may turn into something else which, in turn, would jeopardizes the friendship. In other words, the possibility of latent attraction may prevent the actuality of friendship.

Author

• Emily Langan, Wheaton College