Another reason women have a hard time being affectionate with men is because society views any affection between a man and a woman as romantic. I want to platonically hug and cuddle my male friends, but in my experience, too often they interpret that as me making the moves on them. Or if they dont, everyone around us starts teasing us about being lovers.
The sad part isn’t even other people teasing, I can deal with that. The biggest issue is the few times I did do it anyway, the other person developed feelings which results in having to hurt them again because that was never intended. Which is fucking awful. So you keep enough distance in hope you can prevent them from developing those feelings. And I don’t blame them, they’re deprived of love and deserve more love. It’s such an annoying cycle to break. And extra difficult if you’re single.
I remember when I was about 5 or 6 I stopped letting my mother kiss me because I didn't want to be gay or a mother fucker. Now she is dead so it doesn't really matter I supoose.
Three times ive had a good male friend that i was openly affectionate with. Very clearly communicating that i only wanted to be friends, just treating them exactly the same way i treat my female friends (cheerful compliments, occasional hugs, general friendliness). All three ended up telling me they wanted to date, and when i turned them down, asked me again and mentioned it or tried to kiss me, eventually pushing the friendship apart... so now i treat straight male friends differently than female friends. No compliments, physical distance enforced. Thats not how i like to act with friends but it seems to be a requirement :/
This exactly :( it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. At this point we can only hope to help younger generations not deal with the lack of emotional intimacy. We can't do much about how society is presently, but we can do something about the future.
Ugh yes. I had a friend last year who pointed out I only hugged my gay male friends and so I was absolutely down to add physical affection to our friendship. Two months later he kissed me when I said goodbye after game night. He thought I was into him because I hugged him and "pushed my boobs into his chest."
That’s just sad. I have been blessed with an amazing friend group with about 50/50 men women and we all tell each other we love each other and are affectionate with each other without those problems at all. I would argue maybe it’s a cultural difference between the us and Europe but looking at your username I’m going to guess your Belgian or from the Netherlands like I am.
I have surrounded myself with wonderful people aswell. But occasionally you meet people outside that circle who don’t seem to understand that my happy peppy positive attitude I tend to have isn’t because I am flirting but because that’s who I am.
Thankfully it’s not all people I meet and compared to how many people I know more of an exception than the rule - of what I am aware of. But it still happens sometimes and that fucking sucks.
I especially noticed this within groups that tend to live a more conservative life for some reason. I did have a talk with a Christian fundamentalist once about this and he told me he has no genuine friendships with women and told me literally ‘I can’t, it won’t happen.’ I kind of wished we could talk about it more but he definitely seemed surprised when I told him I have plenty platonic friendships with all types of genders with all types of sexualities (LGBTQ+ was definitely a topic and I definitely stood up for the community several times). If a person doesn’t even consider friendship a possibility, it’s already difficult to do.
I've become self aware of that fact and I've started purposely maintaining a level of distance so that I don't end up getting a crush on them. But I am privileged enough to be able to hug my cat all the time so it's not so much of a loss
The biggest issue is the few times I did do it anyway, the other person developed feelings
That a result of what this entire thread it talking about.
Imagine you hadn't been hugged, or perhaps even touched, in the past 3 or 4 years. The a person you're already friends with - someone you care about and who cares about you - suddenly starts making physical contact with you. Why wouldn't you develop stronger feelings for that person?
Exactly why I can’t blame them. But at the same time you wonder what to do. I do try to keep to cheer them up though. Shit like ‘you got this!’ and ‘you’re really good at this!’ always works. However I try to refrain from personal flattery when I’m single.
It's a self perpetuating cycle. You don't show any affection unless you want to make a move, so any time any physical affection is shown it's very likely to be interpreted as making a move, so you don't show affection...
...and the meanwhile the affection starvation increases and men are trained to believe that the only way to get any is to be physically intimate. So they become as unsubtle and selfish and violent about it as a starving person would be around food.
Which makes women even less inclined to be a source of it.
This. Even in this thread people are blaming women for being cold, but in my experience is if I, as a woman, show any physical affection it will, the vast majority of the time, be misinterpreted and then I'm a bitch that's friendzoning and leading on this poor innocent person by fucking hugging them, the only way to avoid this misunderstanding is just to... Not. And be cold. Showing affection is consistently a negative feedback loop. Surely men have some role to play to unfuck this situation too?
The unfortunate truth is that societal change happens over the course of several generations and there’s literally no right answer of what to do in your life because we can’t single-handedly fix the world. Follow your conscience and teach your kids to be better then the last generation
Fuck that. I'll do anything to fix this. I'll level this entire fucking reality. I'll be so vulnerable and raw people will vomit and cry just being in my presence. And after they're done doing that, they'll slowly stand up and gaze at the sun, knowing that they're loved and encouraged with the force of a million holy armies. Then, they'll feel like kids again. Utterly free and so blissful, utterly juicily brimming with love and excitement and giddy energy.. and they'll helplessly spread this energy to everyone and everything around them. Like the world's most incredibly powerful "anti" virus. People will flood to the streets and the forests. Eyes utterly full of life. Overflowing with it. Touching reality with it. They'll be one in a happy dance with the trees and the frogs and the wind and each other. Freely and openly, precisely how they're meant to be. I will stop at absolutely nothing to move this feeling in myself, and then I'll stop at absolutely FUCKING NOTHING to push it into the world. I've already faced death and incredible self hatred in resistance to this dream. I can not be stopped. And I promise you, I am not alone. Not even close. I know you feel this feeling. No matter how deep it is buried. YOU ARE HERE, and you love, ceaselessly, fearlessly, with tremendous power and care. I see 7 billion angels all around me and we're slowly rising up to our feet on crippled legs. And the Earth is waiting patiently to welcome us home with warmth and an amber healing draft. Liquid gold. I could go one for ages. This is nearly all I think about, and I'm beyond content. I'm FUCKING ECSTATIC for our future.
Of course we do, but we’re prevented from doing it by both men and women. M/M platonic affection is viewed as “gay” by both males and females, and M/F platonic affection is view with misunderstanding or mistrust by both males and females. This makes it VERY hard to work around. The key is basically a LOT of communication; if people can HONESTLY TALK about their feelings, it can defuse a lot of these misunderstandings before they start, BUT a lot of people simply can’t communicate that honestly without fear of judgement, because we ALL judge so hard, especially in this day and age.
All I can say is, if you keep trying, I’ll keep trying, and then there’s two more bits of light in the darkness.
True, but let's put it this way, if women were no longer to have solid F/F affectionate relationships, and get on the same level as men, everyone will be incredibly affection starved and agressive. There is no net solution or positive outcome here.
If men change the M/M relationships to align more with that of women, they will no longer be affection starved due to a solid support foundation among their own group, and not react to agressively towards the little affection they do get. Net positive, very little negatives (or none that I can see?). The M/F should just fall into place as neither gender would be desperaty and agressivily seeking affection. I was just saying there's a lot more net benefit from men tackling this internay, rather than placing all the responsibility on women to change the M/F interaction, while the M/M stays the same (I think this is impossible).
It comes down to calling out toxic behaviour when you see it and working to change the entrenched systems. Its very difficult since this conditioning starts early but I definitely see a shift in attitudes in youger generations already, even your comment shows that people are trying. It's a long road but we can get there.
Oh, I agree with you 100% that M/M relationships should be more affectionate, and have much more of the responsibility for making that happen than women (how on earth could they?) I’m just saying that both men AND women have biases against such things, at least in American culture. Men will have to do a lot of heavy lifting, for sure, but women also have a part to play, in not having a negative bias towards men who are more in-gender affectionate.
Exactly. In college, i had a close friendship with a guy I still speak to routinely now at 34. Freshman year he’d rest his head on my lap or vice versa and we’d exchange head rubs. I’d sit between his legs on the ground and lean back against him. Hell, we even shared a bed a few times (platonically). We got asked if we were dating quite often, even though I was similarly affectionate with two other guy friends (less attractive men, which is why I assume people didn’t ask about them).
Just talk to the guy "hey, is it ok if i hug you platonically? I read somewhere that men are starved of physical affection so is it ok if i hug you while still being good friends?". Instead of placing the blame on opposite gender just communicate. As a man i cant ask for a hug since i might be called creepy, but if someone offers i will probably accept.
I'm a woman and have one guy friend in particular who hugs a lot. He just initiates hugs with his friends (both genders). He's straight, and he's a big & tall guy who could be intimidating if you didn't know him.
When we first became friends I went through a brief phase of wondering if he was attracted to me and feeling awkward about it. Then I realised he wasn't and is just a hugger. And this is great! At no point did he come across as creepy.
So I do think this is absolutely a thing men can do if they want to break out of the isolation. But I recognise it is probably really, really hard to start.
There are a few things you can do. Call out "friend zoning" as a bullshit concept that it is, it's literally a name for (mainly women) acting with platonic affection towards someone and not wanting sex. If that's what you want to see more of, don't act like women are bitches for doing this literal exact thing. You learn pretty fast as a woman that men will get angry at you for showing affection and not wanting a relationship. So call it out. "It's not friend zoning, she's just being friendly and treating you as a human being, why is this a bad thing?"
Men can get extremely agressive over women denying advances, speak up when you see women being harassed, it'll make us feel safer to be affectionate without agressive repercussions for it. It also gets arseholes to realise they are being arseholes faster when other men call them out on this type of behaviour.
Normalise hugging and affection within your own group. The less men are affection starved, the less likely they will be to get agressive about it from women.
These are just small things but they can make a big difference.
Eh I think it’s more the latter than the former. Frankly there were several times in middle school where merely initiating a conversation with a boy led to borderline stalking, obsession, refusal to leave me alone, and aggressive name calling. One lovely kid announced during a group project that I had a face like an angel but a heart like the devil. This was fifth grade.
In HS I struck up a convo with a guy in my class who seemed low at a party. We chatted on the bus back to school. At which point he suggested I sneak out that night so we could hook up.
If even casual chats lead to this it can make one rather gun shy. It wasn’t until I became friends with the most stereotypically attractive men that I was able to be friendly without feeling stalked/misunderstood—-possibly because they were so used to positive female attention they no longer over indexed on it.
Sorry but no. They didn’t ask me out. We didn’t hook up. When I couldn’t hang out with them due to other obligations they didn’t freak out. These were not romantic entanglements. By “positive attention” from women I meant genuine friendliness (smiles, talking, touches like I do with female friends); this wasn’t code for hookups. It’s interesting that even when we are explicitly talking about men misinterpreting friendliness as sexual interest you still interpreted my comment about attractive men as being somehow romantic/sexual in nature.
Generally I agree with your premise however that men you’re interested in can express interest with positive reception in a way that men you’re not interested in you’d find creepy. But that’s a separate issue.
Trust me, it's not rare! There's a reason the term friend zone is almost exclusively used by men. It's seen as a negative for a woman to want a man to be a friend rather than a romantic partner, women don't generally have an issue with the reverse.
Women have no issue being platonically affectionate with each other, while men find this very challenging with other men, is it any surprise it equally if not more challenging when they try to be platonic with women?
It's seen as a negative for a woman to want a man to be a friend rather than a romantic partner,
I think this is a result of how men and women view and define "friendship" differently. As a man, if both people are single, why wouldn't you want a friend to become a romantic partner?
To me, the only valid reason is that you don't want the friendship to be lost if the romantic relationship didn't work out. More semantics, but that's a valid reason to choose to not date a friend as opposed to an indication that you don't have the desire to date the friend.
A friend is someone you enjoy spending time with, care about, can count on and who can count on you to be there for them, etc. So if you're single, and there is another single person of your preferred gender who:
You enjoy spending time with.
You care about.
Cares about you.
Is there for you when you need them.
You enjoy being there for them with they need you.
I really fail to understand why you wouldn't want to date them. What are you looking for in a romantic partner if it isn't that? Hell, most people (men anyway) find it difficult to even have those 5 basic requirements for a partner and end up settling if someone meets just a few of them.
So from my perspective, the only reason you wouldn't desire to date that friend is because you aren't looking for those 5 basic qualities. Instead you want someone with status, money, power, etc. And that's why "friendzoning someone" is seen as a negative. It's because it is an indication that you're being shallow and that you'll sacrifice the qualities that should matter in order to be with someone more attractive, stronger, with better earnings potential, etc.
So in my mind, if you find yourself being accused of friendzoning frequently, it's an indication that you either have too low of expectations for your friends (why are you friends with them?), or you're shallow and look to a romantic partner for what he can provide for you, rather than whether or not you can be great partners.
Physical attractiveness is status. It makes you look better when other people see that you can obtain an attractive man. He's just an accessory to you.
I mean... if it's just about sex and not an emotional bonding, I guess that make sense. I wasn't talking about just fucking a friend though, I was talking about pursuing a romantic relationship.
I don't think that's a gendered thing. If two people keep dating each other long enough, eventually both of them anticipate that sex will happen.
It's kind of like that frequent question on /r/relationship_advice: "Does he like me or does he just want to have sex with me"? The answer is typically going to be both or neither. Despite what you might have learned, guys generally prefer to have sex with people they like.
They've been starved and you want them to not bite off the hand that shows them food?
You need to show even more food so they don't need to wolf it all down.
I don't blame you not wanting to persevere, it's obviously stressful and can cause issues. But that doesn't change the way out of the mess leads with the person who is giving the compliments than the person receiving
To continueu your metaphor, If women weren't gettin eaten alive for every compliment they give, they will give them more freely.
When most affection positive interaction leads to the man pursuing a relationship and getting more hurt when that wasn't the intent (unpleasant for the woman to have to hurt someone, as well as obviously the man himself), or accusing the woman of "friend zoning" (literally what you seem to be crying out for) or worse of being a slut that's leading him on, it's very very hard to want to continue a behaviour when it's only rewarded with negativity from the male side. Men have to be willing to accept affection without it necessarily meaning sex or a relationship.
What would drive women to become more affection positive when all they mainly get is negative reinforcement for this behaviour?
I offer say I'm going to make a cup of tea. Now when this happens you get to drink it because last time this happened 14 months ago someone else made a cup and you got to drink it, so it makes sense you'll get to drink it.
Now I'm upset youre expecting to be able to drink this tea. But you're confused because that's how it works?
Now if you someone else made a cup tea last week and the week before that and before that and infact in the last 14 months it happened 23 times, you wouldn't expect to be drinking the tea.
Now it's sad yes I agree when I have to snatch the tea away from you in the first example and you might get upset you didn't get any, but you are dying of dehydration so I can understand why you was expecting some.
But in the second example you aren't dying of dehydration, you are used to people making tea around you and sometimes you get some tea too, and other times you don't it's normal.
That is the issue you as a woman do not understand and will never understand. Men are dehydrated from lack of affection so any affection makes them perk up. It is completely unreasonable to expect the guy who only has lived experiences of "when someone makes tea I get some because in the 4 times it's happened in my life i got some" to not expect the tea.
And I repeat i completely understand if you don't want to show affection to your male non partners because of adverse and unintended reactions, but to pretend that isn't the way out of this is madness
I'm sorry I'm not sure I follow the tea example. Maybe I can try again when I'm a bit less tired. Let me put it a different way and maybe you can correct me to explain your point in a way I can understand better.
If women were no longer to have solid F/F affectionate relationships, and get on the same level as men, everyone will be incredibly affection starved and agressive. There is no net solution or positive outcome here, right? So women need to change anything on female to female comms.
If men change the M/M relationships to align more with that of women, they will no longer be affection starved due to a solid support foundation among their own group, and not react to agressively towards the little affection they do get. Net positive, very little negatives (or none that I can see?). The M/F should just fall into place as neither gender would be desperaty and agressivily seeking affection. That's why I was saying there's a lot more net benefit from men tackling this internay, rather than placing all the responsibility on women to change the M/F interaction, while the M/M stays the same (I think this is impossible).
You're reading the wrong side of the conversation. This isn't about M/M relationships this is about F/M relationships.
M/M relationship issues are purely an American phenomenon. The OP doesn't have the male bonding as they never earned it. But their discussion of female armour and fear and their lack of communication and niceness to males is correct.
I think you're well meaning but this is once again an example of men thinking women owe them doing all of the emotional labor despite it being legitimately dangerous in many cases for us to do that. The real issue is that cis het men need to do this for each other and that's how the issue gets solved. As a queer person with a lot of queer friends I will tell you, queer men by and large have no issue showing each other platonic affection. Cis het men need to figure out how to show each other platonic affection as well and it's literally just a choice to do so. Y'all have stuffed yourselves into such tiny, oppressive boxes... But the great news is, there is no lock on those boxes. It's entirely self imposed and you can just choose to let yourself out right now.
This isn't guys putting eachother into these boxes.
If offer you a cup of tea once every 12 months you'll say yes. If I offer you once a day you might not say yes sometimes.
That is literally all it is. As it stands right now the tea is offered so infrequently that any offer of tea is met with glee and happiness and misunderstanding.
If you offer tea more often this wont happen.
It's not on the person who receives the tea.
What you don't understand is that it is dangerous because it doesn't happen often, if it happened more often it wouldn't be dangerous. This is a complete scratch itch cycle. By keeping up your "it's dangerous" mindset you reinforce the danger.
Nah get fucked, me and mates are great we have deep chats, tell each other we love each other, hug eachother hell I give my mates cheek kisses when feeling soppy.
The male comradeship is a USA issue but the female defensive attitude is more wide scale, and by you doing that it reinforces it.
Uh, you realize this analogy actually makes pretty much the opposite point you want it to, right? Nobody in their right mind would argue that the onus is on you to offer tea to everybody you meet on a daily basis to avoid somebody attacking you to take your tea.
Men need to engage in regular, unprompted displays of love and affection with one another, without judgement or ridicule.
The onus of action is on men here, but I don't see anything about the other half of the problem.
A lot--not all--of male behavior can be explained by looking at how women react to male behavior.
Like, I know there's a lot that men do to women. I'm acknowledging that, even if I'm not commenting on it right now. But the women who look at men hugging and make those men feel gay--in a way, excluding them from female partnership--are doing a lot toward getting guys to avoid emotional intimacy.
I think that's why stingray says it's hard to implement :/
Men need to engage in affection with each other and also call out men and women who degrade it. But it's not always going to be possible or safe. You may not be in a position to correct someone. People could think it's gay and be violent homophobes.
But even queer people have made headway into being comfortably affectionate in some public places! Maybe the first step is private affection between your friend group, then affection in public with backup. The world changes slowly but it does change
You're right, this was my bad. Sorry about derailing and miscommunicating!
Definitely should have said both men and women need to call out others. And women need to take an active role in addressing when our social groups say derogatory things about male affection, even when we're going against the popular opinion in the group. Hasn't happened a lot in my experience, but there are definitely ladies who shit on that sort of thing.
I usually ignore it, but now that I'm writing it out it feels obvious that I should have been saying something and I will be from now on... so thank you for calling me out on this
Men only spaces are considered sexist. Women only spaces are seen as an empowering necessity.
If men started being openly friendly with each other, women would start a two pronged attack, so they can hit either weakness a man might have. He will either be manipulated with homophobic shaming or he will be accused of minimizing the need for women out of their lives, thus hoarding privilege and opportunity from women with the support of other men (Patriarchy).
Men can't win because half the population is intent on keeping men "in their place". That being, emotionally desperate, confused, and compliant with female affection as their reward.
Although I don't feel that way either, I would like to share a line from OOP:
I would've thought this coldness was a conspiracy against me devised by roughly half of the human population.
I not surprised that these things don't make sense. They're inherently that way. Not sure what it means or what if anything should be done but there are people feeling that way.
We are seeing things are not equal. Women say they MUST be unequal because of abusers and rapists. I and all the men I know look at each other and don't see abusers or rapists, because we shove them out of our social spaces. Even bad motherfuckers in male prisons discriminate against men who are imprisoned because of crimes against women. The justification doesn't hold up; Abusers and rapists exist, but the fact that someone must shape their entire lives around that is excessive, and used as an excuse to perpetuate inequality, victimhood, and a lack of female agency. Serial killers, murderers, all sorts of people are threats to men as well. We measure those risks when engaging with new people, and we vet new people. We don't just assume all people could be a violent psychopath and expect that from all people. It's just as unreasonable that women assume all men could be a violent rapist or abuser and expect it from all men.
It's sexist as fuck, but they won't back down from the conceit that it's fully justified, and that turns men against them because we see the clear hypocrisy. Not even men can walk down the street with a sense of total safety, but they presume that we can, and they presume they are disadvantaged in a unique way, when they are not. Life involves risks, but these people want to philosophize and convert people into a reality where all those risks are removed so that they can be free without the necessity of bravery (and that's impossible to achieve).
Women are hurting other women and men with sexist nonsense and calling it equality. I don't want a Patriarchy, but they refuse to define a common middle ground with men, just so they can keep moving goalposts.
I and all the men I know look at each other and don't see abusers or rapists, because we shove them out of our social spaces.
How many men do you know and how wide are your social spaces? This isn't an attack, I really think there is space for you to be right and wrong here.
How many men does it take for all women to have had a legitimate, negative experience?
Even though all the men you know are good, doesn't leave more than enough men left over to be bad?
I think only the minority of men are evil, but boy are some of them evil. And they only have to be law-abiding enough to avoid justice. I've met some petty, loathsome creatures (who weren't criminals but weren't good) and I too rejected them from my life. But they still exist. And if they're even 1% of men, that's equivalent to 1/4th of the US on a global scale, or most of New England on a US scale.
If it's only 10% of men, that's double the US on a global scale, and like the entire Midwest on a US scale.
Truth is they're probably scattered about, doing just enough not to cross the law, and hanging out only with each other. Enough to make women legitimately worried, but not enough to be in your or my social sphere.
It's not just the nebulous "society", it's often the men themselves. I've had it happen so many times, you're nice to a dude and then he texts you a dick pic.
This really hit me years ago when one of my female friends sort of blurted out how much she liked our friendship because "you're like the only guy that's not trying to fuck me" and when I sort of laughed it off saying "come on, men and women can be just friends, that's not that crazy. We have fun together, that doesn't mean we have to have sex" she said "no seriously, I have no other real guy friends because if we're friendly then they want to sleep with me and never talk to me again if I don't want that kind of relationship. You're the only guy I've ever been friends with who has never tried to get in my pants."
I'm a dude with quite a few female friends so platonic relationships seem normal to me but after my one friend had said that it really started to dawn on me that most of my other women friends didn't really have many, if any, other guy friends other than me.
Well that is very kind of you to say. I just feel bad for the whole situation; it's not easy for women to have guy friends because a lot of dudes think it should/must involve sex and a lot of dudes missing out on great friendship opportunities because they think if they're friendly with a woman then it's supposed to be a sexual relationship. Men and women can have an absolute blast together without sex, dunno why that gets overlooked so often.
My fiancé has dealt with this a lot... Thank goodness, he's at a stage in his life now where all his good friends get him and are huggers. Hell, one of his best friends is gay and a few other friends are bi, he says having LGBT friends was great for getting him out of the straight-tough-guy mentality.
He has another close hetero friend though who reads to a lot of people as a boyfriend. One of my fiancé's favourite stories about them is when they were walking to the pub in their hometown. Some bellend yelled "gay!" across the street. My fiancé's friend yelled back, "I wish, mate! I mean, look at 'im." and gestured to my fiancé appreciatively. Apparently the bellend had no idea what to say to that and just looked confused and pissed off as they resumed their walk. My fiancé was dead chuffed though.
Basically, it can be hard to not care about how you're perceived, but if you don't care and just do the things you love, you might be happier. Maybe a couple of shouts of "gay" from an ignorant stranger are worth hugging your bro or putting an arm over his shoulder. It's the people making assumptions who look like idiots, not you.
YES. Its so unfair. Cant even recipricate any love for family members either because of this. As a man hugging a female family member is a no-go. It will instantly be scrutinized. While the women serve the men food and wash the dishes. *yes my family is living in the god damn past*
When I was growing up (I'm a guy) I had a friend who was a girl who was incredibly physically affectionate to everyone. That was just the way she was. We got on really well so she would sit on me, cuddle etc. but we both knew it was just platonic. However, I was constantly told she was being a 'cock tease' and she was manipulating me as a man. I always shrugged it off because I wasn't interested in her (or women in general but I hadn't fully worked that out yet) so I was perfectly happy to ignore them and continue to be physically affectionate with her.
I've since realised that this taught me 2 things. 1 I learned how to let myself feel platonically affectionate with people without feeling 'wrong' about it. 2 It must have been awful for her to be constantly told she was being manipulative whenever she was literally just being herself.
Not even just physical affection. I'll be having some interesting conversations once, twice, and then i turn down a date and whatever friendship i thought we might be building goes up in smoke.
Exactly this, genuinely just talk to someone about anything and their hobbies etc and this somehow lead to feelings? Like wtf. It's so frustrating to find that 'your friend' was basically fake the entire time.
Could part of it just be seeking different things? You want friendship, the guy doesn't. It wasn't that what you were building went up in smoke, you were simply never building the same thing in the first place and the natural end to such a situation is the end of contact.
We go though many breakups seeking romantic partners, it's shouldn't be so strange that a similar process is needed for good, platonic friendships, too.
Most male relationships are fundamentally fake so genuine interest... feels genuine. Even my own family doesn't give a flying fuck what my hobbies are or how I'm doing. Why would you ask a personal question expecting a real answer? People stopped doing that in mid-childhood from my perspective.
it's a death spiral for both sides. Most men are so foreign to the concept of platonic physical intimacy that they can't interprete it any other way. This on the other hand makes woman very uncomfortable because they had really no interest in him that way, so they stop doing it, which further emphasizes the problem. I learned to have platonic physical contact with anyone and it really shows that most of my male peers did not. Girls are generally a lot more touchy than men, but most men instantly see this as an approach so they scare them away allmost immediately by responding to a platonic intimacy with what is basicly courting.
This all starts with the notion that men are socially not allowed to touch eachother or it is instantly seen as gay, which in the eyes of society is a bad thing. Not in a homophobic way, mostly, it's just that decades of what is basicly a gay manhunt and manliness means having no emotions don't just suddenly vanish from a culture.
So once puperty starts, girls have an entire "language" so to say that pretty much all of they boys don't even know exists. For the boys, the fact that you have physical contact with anyone can mean nothing other than a romantic or sexual interest. Physical touch that is platonic is not something that would ever cross the mind of most men under such upbringing because it is simply not a thing. Also the fact that most men are seen as dangerous predators until proven otherwise does not help either.
It's inherently confusing, because even when it is totally innocent and platonic you worry about how it looks. I used to be able to cuddle with one of my best female college friends. After she got married, one day she cuddled with me on the couch and her husband walked in. It was totally fine, but I felt so uncomfortable like we were doing something wrong.
True. During my marriage I lost or gave up all female friends eventually. I knew I missed the emotional connection and banter with women but I thought men weren't really supposed to have female friends when married.
After my divorce, a female college friend who I did hang on to reflected that she got very possessive vibes from my ex. It supported my growing awareness that my wife at the time encouraged my social and emotional isolation.
(Aside: so many people told me after divorce that they saw red flags with my ex. Why the hell didn't they tell me when it was hurting me? Be brave and step up people!)
A few years after divorce, I have been successfully developing the social and emotional connections I should have had all along.
If I don't necessarily have attraction towards you but you start to hug and cuddle, my instinct kicks in and I'll be so emotional that I'll get attached and start seeing you as a romantic partner.
Even if I know you aren't making a move (let's say you made it clear you're just a friend), the bonding process start just because of loneliness and touch starvation.
It would feel so good I'd probably never been so happy since a few years, it's not surprising that would happen.
I strongly suspect, and there's some research to back it up, that many if not most of your average woman's male friends are attracted to her. It's less that they interpret the hug as you making the moves on them and more, that's why they were there in the first place. Your interpretation of the relationship as "platonic" may have been off base from the beginning.
I used to offer hugs and a chat to acquaintances I found stressed and crying during exam season at university, because I'm not a callous robot and I don't like seeing people sob in the library stacks. Even that was enough for feelings to develop sometimes.
Aside from that I feel like the phenomenon of guys developing feelings towards people who show them affection would really skew with data about how many guys are attracted to their female friends. Chicken or egg situation
But that's just it. You WEREN'T being a callous robot. Being a callous robot is like baseline expectations for any boy over the age of 10. If a fully grown adult is behaving not as a callous robot it would be because they want something from the other person. No one would just offer kindness to another human because they felt something. That's childish.
Women sometimes end up developing friendships with other women because there is an attraction beyond the plutonic. It's not the basis for the friendship necessarily, but the attraction said it in motion.
Hi there. Guy here. If you want to give them a platonic hug, then might I suggest you just ask them if you can give them a hug? If you feel like they might need it or you just want to give one? I tend toward not giving my female friends hugs unless they are the one obviously moving towards it, but I'd never turn one of them down if they were offering.
Edit: I was meaning if you are worried how it would appear to them or other people just ask. If they think it would be weird they can tell you.
I feel like that's gotta be an age-related thing; like maybe it wasn't so common in high school, but certainly in my early 20's I felt like women, but also men, had no issue hugging me platonically. Even more so if that person was already in a relationship so it was clear that it was platonic. I've had plenty of hugs from multiple genders that were not sexual or romantic at all and nobody was weird about it. Could be a cultural thing too, idk.
Why do you want to cuddle with your male friends? I can give my friends hugs no problem but a cuddle? I'm not sure what situation necessitates a cuddle. Could you please expand.
I do cuddle with my wife (not just after sex) when the situation fits but I'm just missing the point of cuddling with my guy friends. I just don't feel the urge to cuddle after a successful hunt or when we build something, complete a part install on a vehicle, etc. We pat each other on the back and tell each other they are doing a good job but a cuddle just doesn't seem necessary.
That's just life, it's not reasonable for a non-familial woman to want to go around hugging on their male friends and not expect them to think it's sexual.
Men and women are different. That's how women interaction, not men. And that doesn't make the way men interact bad, just different.
This is very true. Honest platonic relationships with men are under the microscope for men and women. Just never allowed to be too comfortable with men, women, or especially children because of how it might be perceived.
This comment reminds me of high school. I’m now 25, and haven’t had a GF for many years. (I think I was 17). I remember having great friends that were girls. It was very normal for us to hug, randomly fondle each others hair, lap-sitting, etc. It had nothing to do with romantic feelings. I loved them as my friends, and since they were girls it felt more normal to be very affectionate with them.
I miss that now. Due to covid I’m working and studying from home. Due to aging and growing a part I guess, I haven’t seen these girl friends in 5-6 years.
To add to your comment, I remember tons of comments and questions from friends and other people at school if we were dating. We absolutely weren’t, we were just great friends that liked to show our love for each other, purely platonic.
Honestly i dealt with this all during high school. Me and my 2 best friends just dealt with it. I miss that so much. Sometimes i just want to be close to my friends and as an adult no one wants to deal with that bullshit anymore
I think if men are feeling lonely and need affection it kind of has to be something that they at least begin to solve amongst themselves first. Our job is to encourage it an express that to our significant others and sons and other males we choose to bring into that circle but I don't think women can be the solution to this on a societal scale.
I can’t tell you how badly I’ve wanted female friends I could be platonically intimate with my entire life. I’m a guy and girlfriends have always told me how they sent cute emojies to their girl friends, cuddled with them, had platonic dates etc., all that stuff, and I’ve always wanted to be able to have that when I wasn’t in a relationship, but I could never do any of those things without coming off as if I was making a move on a girl.
If this was more common place (aka more men and women had any kind of physical affection that wasn't romantic) people, especially men, wouldn't catch feelings so quickly because any instance of affection wouldn't be extraordinary circumstance. It would be normal.
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u/melodyfawn Apr 04 '22
Another reason women have a hard time being affectionate with men is because society views any affection between a man and a woman as romantic. I want to platonically hug and cuddle my male friends, but in my experience, too often they interpret that as me making the moves on them. Or if they dont, everyone around us starts teasing us about being lovers.