You’ve heard the question asked before, seen it posed in the plot of your favorite Nora Ephron movie, and likely have even formulated an answer from your own experience: Can men and women be friends? Most attempts at puzzling out an answer are based on the premise of heterosexual attraction. And often, as a result, the answer is no — or at least for some decades in the U.S. there was a consensus that these relationships were rare if not impossible since they ran the risk of tipping into the romantic realm.
People largely agreed that it was hard to maintain a relationship that didn’t become romantic — and that if it did become romantic then it would be almost impossible to salvage it as a friendship after the fact.
There was even a scientific study in 2012 that more or less proved this point. It showed that the way men think about their female friends, and the way women think about their male friends, was pretty different. On the whole, it found that men were more attracted to their female friends. It also demonstrated that there were negative consequences resulting from male-female friendships, especially for women. (For instance, the breakdown of their current romantic relationship.) And, if this weren’t complicated enough, another study that preceded this from 2007 showed that men consistently overestimated their female friends’ attraction to them while women underestimated their male friends’ interest.
“A scientific study in 2012 showed that the way men think about their female friends, and the way women think about their male friends, was pretty different.”
Between then and now, we’ve become more accustomed to thinking about gender as a spectrum and accepting a whole pantheon of sexual preferences. Even still, when we asked our dear readers about their experiences with friendships across these gendered lines, we got mixed answers. While many said that yes, they were women-identified and had successful friendships with men — some even noted they had many, decades-long friendships of this sort — about 40% of responses included some kind of qualification.
Multiple readers thought that you could be friends but only if you met before puberty. Another idea that had consensus assumed that romantic feelings exist, and you can only be friends if you’re able to maintain clear communication and work through them. It turns out that the assumption of a heterosexual “trap” threatening friendships is still very much alive — and we can assume it is stopping many men and women from exploring what might be deep and enriching platonic relationships.
So, the question of male-female friendship still remains for us today, even as we’ve overhauled our expectations around the role of women in society and put into question what kinds of relationships men and women can have. What do we credit for its persistence? While societal norms change, it’s hard to deny that there are differences between those who self-identify as men and those who do so as women. So, maybe, just maybe, there’s something in that difference that makes male-female friendships difficult to carry on. And something, too, that makes it much easier to opt for a romantic relationship.
“The question of male-female friendship still remains for us today, even as we’ve overhauled our expectations around the role of women in society.”
Let’s start by attempting to characterize the difference between men and women without being reductive. For this, I rely on the theoretical apparatus of psychoanalysis, as I mostly always do, as a student of the discipline and a psychoanalyst-in-training. Psychoanalytic literature certainly doesn’t agree about what makes up the psychology of women — it’s easy enough to trace this problem back to the founder of the discipline, Sigmund Freud, who had many questions about what women think.
In fact, we can credit Freud’s questions about women as the reason why psychoanalysis was invented. And yet, as he developed his conceptual apparatus, Freud remained lost as to exactly what it was that motivated women in their choices. With men, the question appeared more cut and dry. Boys’ personalities and their romantic desires developed out of a single identification — with a caretaking adult in their life, usually a parent — that would serve as a stable orientation towards their choice of fulfilling pursuits from career to romantic partners. Girls, on the other hand, were harder to pin down because they took a more meandering and creative path in becoming women.
Many psychoanalysts since have proposed counterarguments, or expanded and extrapolated ideas about femininity from Freud’s first framework. One that has heavily influenced my thinking is Jacques Lacan, the famous French psychoanalyst, who emphasized that while men can be described as a group, as a result of this singular and strong identification, women cannot be grouped in the same way. They are each individual creations of their own making. For Lacan, women are also better positioned for working with the unconscious, and, relatedly, they are privy to a kind of creativity that doesn’t keep them so pinned down into existing structures.
All of that is to say, men and women are two very different types of people. And, I would like to emphasize that, here, masculinity and femininity are not based on biological markers, they’re open options — and they aren’t the only two options, either, though they are the ones we’re focusing on.
So, while it might sound reductive, “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,” had a point when it was released in 1992. It isn’t obvious that men and women would see things the same way, even if they were to enjoy the same social status and freedoms. The successful friendships that we heard about from our readers often mentioned that the relationships were so special and enriching because they were able to exchange perspectives.
“It isn’t obvious that men and women would see things the same way, even if they were to enjoy the same social status and freedoms.”
From Annbriel B., “The thing I love most about having male friends is getting the male perspective on certain topics I might normally only talk about with my girlfriends.” And from Danae P., “It’s interesting to get a man’s perspective on some things, like when I need to try to understand my husband a little better, LOL.” It turns out that acknowledging and working across this difference can actually be the key to making a friendship work.
Relying on the work of Lacan, we can say that what men and women do have in common is that they are lacking. Neither is exactly equal to their status as a man or a woman — not the perfect woman, nor the perfect man. This questioning of one’s gender, the failure that often emerges in trying to perform one’s role, is often what gets covered over by a sexual relationship where these roles are mutually reinforced. One can see why it might be easier to take the route of a romantic relationship as a man encountering a woman, or a woman encountering a man.
“Neither woman nor man is exactly equal to their status as such — not the perfect woman, nor the perfect man”
The alternative, being in a friendship as a man and a woman, stays with this vulnerability, exposing how much we don’t understand about ourselves, and about each other. And this is a much harder route since most of us would prefer not to risk asking questions about the central tenets of our personalities. Sometimes we do it in a psychoanalytic treatment because we are suffering — or, in the case of a friendship, we might risk allowing these questions to bubble up because we don’t want to lose a friend that we love. As DG wrote in response to our central question, “I go back to my answer of ‘I hope so’ because I don’t want to lose this unique, special friendship that I’ve never had before.”
“Being in a friendship as a man and a woman, stays with this vulnerability, exposing how much we don’t understand about ourselves, and about each other.”
While there’s nothing wrong with engaging in the masquerade of courtship practices — in fact, most call it dating or falling in love and it’s fun! — it is one way of concealing differences across gender identities by way of compatibility. The subtitle of “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” is “The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex.” That’s what makes it relationship advice. But what happens when we remain with our imperfect understanding of the other gender? Well, it can lead to a fantastic friendship if you’re willing to take the risk.
When men and women are friends, it won’t be based on mutual understanding. It will be based on a shared vulnerability that one allows to remain exposed instead of covering it over with a romantic relationship. This is harder, but many find it worth the effort.
Ashley D’Arcy is Senior Editor at The Good Trade. She is also a psychoanalyst-in-training and holds a Master’s in philosophy from the New School for Social Research. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and their Miniature Australian Shepherd, Rocky.
