HOW MEN AND WOMEN CAN BE BEST FRIENDS

Every girl needs a good guy best friend. I’ve been lucky enough to have a few. As far as I am concerned, men and women can truly be just friends. Some of my closest and longest friendships have been with men. With one of my guy friends our love lives tend to parallel each other. When he is confused and in a messy relationship so am I. Going through a hard heartbreak? We’ve done it together. Now both of us are single with the intent on making the next move with ease and caution. Of course as male and female, we often approach the same situation completely different.

My good friend, let’s call him Mr. X, had started dating someone new. He was into her from day one. As one of his best friends, I questioned what was going to happen next because he literally met her days after breaking up with an ex. I’ve never been able to successfully move into the next situation while thinking of the last but I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I know plenty of people who have. Plus, this time she wasn’t an obvious rebound. She sounded great; a woman with a great job, a full group of friends, smart, and intellectual. She sounded like someone I would have been happy for him to end up with.

Nearly a month in, things were going great. Dinners, breakfasts, running errands, making plans for the future...then the ex called. It was just a simple phone call. No decision of getting back together but the brief encounter completely switched his outlook on the new situation. Within days he wasn’t excited to hang out with the new girl and started to pull away. Everything that was so great about her began to die. He still thought highly of her and he couldn’t verbalize why things were different but he began to wonder was he really ready to jump into something serious so soon? Of course he couldn’t see this but the simple meet up with his ex shook him up enough for him to question if he was ready to do it all over again. Here he was with a great girl and too scared to entertain while the drunk young bartender where we were at was much more appetizing. He was just beginning to deal with the questions he should have asked himself on day 1 not day 42. 

So the perfect and most logical move for him was to disappear. From that moment on he wasn’t going to call and not return her phone calls hoping over time she would just get the picture. He spoke of his plan as if he was the simplest decision that anyone else would make. My jaw dropped to the floor. In that moment, I saw the clear manifestation of differences between men and women. Where I thought of the emotional implications and what this meant for him and her, he was looking for the easy way out. There I was literally seeing the other side of a moment that I had been once apart of.  As much as I have given the advice to a confused friend that what ever happened between her and the man that decided to disappear had nothing to do with her, it was more of a general statement without really knowing if it did or not. And when I have been in the situation myself I never understood how I could interact with someone and their decision to not engage could really have nothing to do with me. But I stood there listening to Mr. X’s ridiculous assessment and it all became crystal clear: It’s true, SOMETIMES IT REALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU!

Seeing myself in this girl’s shoes I convinced him to tell her the truth, he fucked up and started a relationship he couldn’t finish. He looked at me as if I was crazy, as if the truth was never an option. How could he admit to possibly being emotionally messed up?  But as much as it might hurt her at the moment, it saves weeks or even months of agony wondering what happened.  Every girl has been there; replaying every moment, every phone call trying to piece together what happened when all disasters could have been avoided with just 5 minutes of the truth.

I remember being in a similar situation with a guy that seemed to be going really well and then it was not. It was as if I could smell his ex girlfriend around him. So in our next conversation I asked him if he was getting back together with her and let him know that I was completely ok with it. Silence on the other end and then he said, “You are the coolest girl in the world”. The thing is, no sane woman wants what someone else has or more importantly, wants someone who doesn’t want her. It’s the ambiguity that makes relationships a lot more complicated then necessary. And like clock work in the middle of my lecture, the new girl emailed him questioning if something had happened between them that she wasn’t aware of. It was right there, sitting in his hands, the opportunity to tell the truth instead of hiding and hoping time will take care of the situation for him.

That moment was the perfect reason why men and women should and can be friends. We both learned something about the opposite sex that we couldn’t learn from the person we are romantically linked to. As I learned, sometimes with men not all things should be taken personally, while he learned women are more resilient then one would assume. Especially when treated with respect.

As our friendship has suffered in the past when we were in serious relationships we made a promise to always make time for us. Because this “us” was just as special and needed for the balance in our other relationship. You can always use someone to bounce off thoughts with especially someone who’s not from the same mindset. With a best girlfriend sometimes you can convince each other driving off a cliff is the best thing to do but with a good guy friend you might see an escape route missed.