Friendships help shape and mold a person. We gain friendships in two senses: platonic and romantic. The problem with our culture and American media is the skewed understanding of friendship in romantic relationships. In America, there is little to no distinction between finding someone attractive and being romantically interested in them. My goal is to explain why this is detrimental to society and show instead how we should have a different way of viewing friendships in a way that is beneficial.
Mainstream media often associate co-gender friendships with romance. Michael Monsour, the author of “Women and Men as Friends,”comments on the film “When Harry Met Sally,” which sets an example of how sex always comes in between men and women being friends. Many college students don’t see the dangers of solely romantic co-gender friendships. The media depicts relationships where people meet, immediately are attracted to each other, fall in love and live happily ever after. This seems amazing until we realize the ramifications behind relationships of this kind.
Once in the relationship, they often realize that perhaps this friendship won’t be able to go as far as they wanted it to. At that point, heartbreak is inevitable.
Basing relationships purely on attraction has other problems. Those involved could hurt themselves socially because they won’t know how to deal with people of the opposite gender in a way that isn’t romantic. Opposite gender friendships stem from attraction, and, if people think that attraction means relationship, then they will never be able to truly be friends with a person of the opposite gender. College students that participate in friendships and relationships of this kind could also hurt themselves physically.
Those that involve themselves in relationships based on attraction tend to idolize their significant others, leading them away from relying on God first and others second. And by giving in to their emotions as soon as they appear, students don’t learn how to have self-control and to avoid giving into their impulsive desires. Attraction-based relationships affect persons mentally, giving them a false mindset that they can get what they want when they want it.
One last way that following the media’s portrayal of relationships can harm college students is that they learn to think that the other gender perceives them differently than they actually do. If the only relationships that a student has only had same-gender friendships and dating relationships, then that student will not understand how the opposite gender views them and wishes to be viewed.
Often the media portrays men as muscular and buff, so men often think that women only like guys that fit that standard. The media portrays women as slim, sexy and slathered in makeup, so women believe that they must look that way for men to notice them. Both genders feel like they need to change something about themselves in order to be attractive. It never crosses their minds that people will be attracted to them for who they are and that attraction can lead to not just a romantic relationship but a friendship.
In order to fix the mess that is American relationship and friendship norms, college students must learn how to tell the difference between attraction and romantic interest. My view, however contrary to popular cultural norms, is that there are many benefits that come from basing friendships on attraction and dating relationships on romantic interest.
Instead of skipping over the friendship stage in relationships, college students should use it to help them. One way that cross-gender relationships benefit students is that they enable people to get to know each other before they decide to start dating. When friendships come first, the people involved in the relationship have a chance to get to know each other and see if they are a good fit before investing their deep emotions into the relationship. Many dating relationships that start without friendship first end in heartbreak. Starting with friendship prevents that from happening.
Starting with friendship also helps prevent college students from getting hurt. Having platonic friendships teaches the people involved how the opposite gender thinks. It teaches them how to carry on conversations with people of the opposite gender and takes away the awkwardness that comes when the only interaction someone has had with a person of the opposite gender is one that is romantic.
Platonic friendships provide physical security. Rarely would someone’s friend dare to bother them and invade their privacy. Platonic friends, instead of taking the focus away from God and onto the people involved, encourage those involved to turn to God instead of relying on each other. They support each other when they are emotionally down and use their different mental strengths to help each other out in their weaknesses. Platonic friendships are life-giving.
Research shows that what I advocate is true. Vicki Harvey, in a qualitative report designed to reveal myths attached to cross-gender friendships, “We’re Just Friends,” provides evidence that cross-gender friendships have “distinctive advantages that are hard to obtain in same-sex friendships.” She writes that they “provide insighter perspectives on how members of the opposite sex think, feel and behave.”
Harvey goes to say that they fill voids left in same-sex friendships, such as by giving men an emotional outlet to express feelings that they keep hidden from other men. For women, Harvey says that cross-gender friendships are less demanding because they have “lower levels of disclosure and are less threatening.”
Students should care because their whole lives are shaped by the friendships that they have in adolescence. If they base their relationships on attraction, they are just getting more emotionally involved than they should in a relationship that they don’t even know will endure. If, instead, they use that attraction for a person to build a friendship, then they will be able to get to know the person and see if that person will actually make a good significant other.
Featured image courtesy of Olivia Choate