Can men and women just be friends?

Jet, August 18, 1997

Opposites seem to attract. And men and women are as opposite as it gets. So can the two genders merge as just friends, putting aside their natural attractions and sexual desires?

Everyone JET polled agrees that men and women can have truly platonic relationships. In fact, the experts and those who've experienced such relationships all think platonic relationships are healthy and enriching. However, some conditions have to be present for healthy, enriching platonic relationships to begin and develop.

Self-control is a key element needed to make platonic relationships work, according to Dr. Sheron C. Patterson, senior pastor at Jubilee United Methodist Church in Duncanville, TX

"We need self-control," she explains. "It stems from knowing yourself. Once you know what you can take and what you can handle, you can more comfortably interact with someone else."

She also said both parties need to be "certain and secure that they want to be platonic." And a platonic relationship should be conducted in "well-lit public places."

"You can not meet a man in a dark comer at midnight and expect the relationship to remain platonic."

Patterson, who conducts relationship seminars for singles and married couples, emphasizes the importance of the places people in platonic relationships hang out. She says they should not hang out in the same places where there are several romantic couples who are being affectionate. "You can have the best intentions in the world, but I do believe Satan will slip in," she contends.

Dr. Allen Carter, a psychologist in Atlanta, points out that platonic relationships should have a defined purpose.

"What's the purpose of this relationship?" he says, is a key question. "To make any relationship, from marriage to someone who shares an office with you, powerful, you have to get clear on what's the purpose of this relationship."

Carter explains that this means being honest and open. If one party begins to feel something for another, "put it on the table," he advises. "Say `Yes, I'm feeling something for you....should we let this pass on by?'"

Honesty is one reason Valda Williams, 31, of Washington, D.C., says she is able to have three males as close, platonic friends. She says she "lets them know up front" if she's not interested or if she's just looking for friendship.

Williams' relationship with James Hill, 30, of St. Louis, began when they were students at St. Louis University.

"I'm like a little brother to her, and she's a big sister to me," Hill says about their relationship. And he says while he was attracted to Williams, her honesty in the beginning let him know nothing would happen.

And even now, after 12 years of friendship, the two don't see their relationship going past the platonic state.

"I know I can never date my sister," Hill points out.

"That would be incest," Williams quips.

But despite the success of some, other people don't think platonic relationships can work. One reason, according to Dr. Tracy Shaw of UCLA, is that "people confuse intimacy and sexuality."

Intimacy is "where you can develop a close, supportive relationship with someone," she suggests. "If that in fact happens with an individual of the opposite sex, there may be a tendency to believe that the next step is for some sort of romantic component to take place."

But that does not have to be the case. A male and female can be intimate without being sexual, Shaw says. "Friendships between men and women don't have to end in romance."

She points to several of her "healthy, satisfying and supporting relationships" with platonic friends. She says most of them developed out of work relationships with colleagues or individuals she's known over the years. Some even resulted from old romantic relationships.

"As time has passed and feelings have healed," she says of the once-romantic relationships, "they've developed into platonic relationships."

Turning once-romantic relationships into platonic ones isn't always easy, says Dr. Ronn Elmore, whose books Now To Love A Black Woman and How To Love A Black Man look at the differences between men and women.

Often people are "too tired, too hurt or too angry to even figure out" what it means to have a friendship with each other.

He also says a person should be leery of platonic relationships when he or she doesn't let anyone know about it. "If it's (relationship) a secret, there's something going on that probably is unhealthy."

But those instances aside, Elmore says platonic relationships can be vital.

Platonic relationships can be "truly beneficial because men and women are so different and we speak such different languages. It helps us become bilingual. It expands our own ability to speak both languages."