Can Men and Women be Friends? Just Friends?
Or, Can a man and woman be friends if neither of them finds the other attractive?
What if one of them does find the other attractive, but it's not mutual, what then?

let me just state for the record that this post contains some generalizations. It's not meant to be an affront to your (whoever you are) personal experience, which may be an exception to the rule (but probably not), but rather is just a record of my musings on the question made famous by "When Harry Met Sally ."

Trick question(s), I think. Here's why.

I am tempted, after the debacle that was my 20s and the first two years of my 30s to say "no." Categorically, no. I base this on the fact that I currently have no male friends, and because the only two male friends I've had (that I saw with any regularity) in recent history were the boyfriend of my best friend (now out of the picture) and the man on whom I had a crush for 6+ years. He is now married to someone other than myself, and we are not friends for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I found him attractive, thereby ruining what would have been a perfectly mediocre friendship.

Fact. I've never been able to sustain a friendship with any male that I truly found attractive (and hence, was attracted to).

So, I'm thinking about friends of mine--male, whom I thought were tremendously wonderful, but to whom I was not attracted; with whom, during that magical time we call "undergrad" I had relatively regular access and appropriate, legitimate fraternal intimacy.

Where are those men now? Married. With Children, in some cases. So, while in my heart I will always think of them as my friends, it's a distant fondness that has replaced the actual relationship. If you are "friends" with a married man, you are also friends with his wife, or you do not see him. ever.

I don't know of any woman, I don't care how evolved she is, who would want her husband regularly hanging out with another woman, who she knows is just his friend, if she is not also in attendance. It doesn't matter if you (as said woman) knew him first. In some cases, you may not like the wife very much. Or, you may think she is fine, but there's no natural affinity. But there you are, having to address your Christmas cards to both of them and include her on e-mails and notes, when really, who are we kidding, you are not her friend, too. If you are, then great! But it still won't be the same as before. You are friends with a couple, not your old pal, her husband.

And to a certain extent, I think that's okay--appropriate, even. But I'd like to think I'd be one of those girlfriends or wives who would understand that the women who knew my guy before I did, still need him to be, as much as possible, what he was to them before,without me always being included in their conversations. I'd expect them to respect my relationship with him, but I want to think I wouldn't insist on going with him every time he wanted to meet up with one or a group of them for coffee or drinks, so they could all just be themselves. Because I'd hold him responsible for communicating with his actions as well as his words that his relationship with me is his top priority.

(sidebar: I'm not into this idea of "prohibiting" a man from doing anything. Even if he is my husband, but I feel myself about to get on a soapbox, so let's move on.)

I've been fortunate. In the case of the married male friend, it is usually also true that I was always friends with his wife as well. That's a nice stroke of luck, but it's not really the scenario we're discussing. A straight-up, honest-to-goodness-neither-of-you-is-secretly-in-love-with-the-other-one-friendship-between-a-man-and-a-woman-with-no-other-mitigating-third-party-wife-or-girlfriend-to-change-the-dynamic.

Now then. Where was I? Oh yes! Can men and women really be just friends?

Clearly, based on my "I'd like to be the kind of wife/girlfriend who..." speech, I think it's possible, but like communism, I haven't really seen it effectively executed long-term.

Sally: We're just going to be friends.
Harry: Friends... you realize, of course, that we can never be friends...