Do you believe that female buddies and male girlfriends just want to be friends with you?
Is there pure friendship between men and women?
Your answer is
"There is no" behind it
When we ask this question, perhaps there are not a few people who answer "no".
There are also some netizens' golden sentences that have triggered many hot discussions, such as: "Only in one case, pure friendship will occur between men and women, that is, men have no money and women have no face." "The one who thinks there is pure friendship must be the one who is loved!"
"Friendship, brothers can be." After 95 Akon thought.
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The reason why this issue is often discussed is not because of the question of friendship or whether it is needed, but from the wavering of the sense of security and the reorganization of cognition in the relationship, which reflects our interest in the intellectual curiosity of interpersonal relationships themselves, and then trying to solve ambiguous and complex situations.
Colleague Zhang Min, who initially asked this question, wanted to confirm whether the friends of the opposite sex who got along well around her were the same as her own emotional definition, "friends", worried that their misreading of the relationship would cause unexpected emotional debt and public opinion pressure.
Stills from "Please Answer 1988"
In the view of his friend Xu Chao, there is actually only one answer to this question, that is, no. "In fact, men, nine times out of ten, think so don't have any unrealistic fantasies anymore."
The result of more people accepting this view is that the relationship between the sexes is further simplified, so that the back-and-forth speculation is of course useful for quickly achieving social goals, but this result always makes people feel as if something has been lost, something is wrong.
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What can be "had"?
What else can a man and a woman have besides friendship?
An ambiguous phase in which one or both parties want to develop into love.
So what is friendship? What is love?
The reason we need friendship is that humans, as social animals, need to be socially recognized. When our values are accepted, we gain a sense of belonging to the group, which in turn receives a signal of safety. Therefore, the beginning of friendship often begins with "gaining understanding", "OK, you understand me, you are my friend." ”
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In his book Friendship Processes, Beverley Fehr, a scholar at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, defines friendship as "a spontaneous interpersonal relationship that usually shows intimacy and support, where both parties appreciate each other and ask for each other's company." Psychologist David Myers divides friendship into 8 main elements: joy, mutual help, respect, unrestrained, acceptance, trust, understanding, and communication.
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Regarding love, David Myer believes that in addition to the above 8 elements of friendship, there are two elements of passion and care, passion includes "being infatuated with each other", "sexual desire", "exclusivity", and caring includes "always being the champion of the other party in various disputes", "chief defender and extreme dedication". In psychologist Robert J. Sternberg's love triangle theory, the passion part is also included, and the other two corners are intimacy and commitment, which refers to the warm experience that can be caused in a love relationship; commitment is the decision or guarantee to maintain the relationship.
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Because of this, love usually starts from the edge of the eye, unlike the sense of social identity of friendship, love mainly satisfies our emotional needs, we need to be loved, we also need to love.
Netizen Shen Danannan said bluntly: "The only red line between these two emotions is sex." "This can indeed be the biggest difference between regular friendship and love." However, the difference between friendship and love is by no means limited to this, and we can feel it in the context of love and friendship.
When you stay with friends, the overall atmosphere is comfortable, the mood is relatively peaceful, the communication topics are free and diverse, and in most cases, the number of people involved will be greater than two people.
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When you are with a boyfriend/girlfriend, based on sexual attraction, the whole process is accompanied by passion, especially in the early stages of the relationship, often moving and falling into a strong obsession, of course, in such interactive scenes, an unrelated third party is not welcome to join.
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It can be seen that love is "selfish" and desires to be unique, while both parties want to be more intimate and want to have more. Friendship, on the other hand, is relatively inclusive and open, and the requirements for distance are limited to appropriateness, and there is no excessive possession and care. Therefore, we often look at lovers who quarrel and break up because of different places, but rarely see friends who have broken up because of different places.
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The survival rule of pure friendship of the opposite sex
In contemporary society, more and more traditional love boundaries have been overturned, such as: age, region, nationality, etc., it can be said that as long as you want, you can choose anyone to be your friend, you can also love anyone worthy of your love.
So in the occasion of friendship, why exclude the opposite sex?
Also, what kind of friendship is pure? Is it the longevity in the concept of time, or is it 100% pure in the emotional range?
If there is, it can only be a case in which the psychologists Laura K. Guerrero and Alana M. Chavez divide the platonic friendship of the four major friendships of the opposite sex, and both parties unanimously insist on not wanting to have any other relationship than friendship.
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However, as far as the feeling itself is concerned, it is not a static existence, but a dynamic change, from scratch, from thick to light, from simple to complex, love and hate are intertwined, mixed with likes and dislikes, which is what happens in any kind of feeling, even if it is family affection.
Perhaps because of this situation, many people think that there is no pure friendship between men and women, as long as the timing is right, friendship can not hold back the idea of wanting to become love. But this "timing" is not only sexual attraction, but also the measurement of multiple objective conditions and the intensity and persistence of subjective motivation. According to Heidi Reeder, a professor of communication at Boise State University, sexual attraction does not become a decisive factor in "the end of friendship" or "transformation into love".
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From this point of view, the so-called "pure friendship" is a stage, a relative concept.
And the real story in real life also tells us that some ordinary friends of men and women may have experienced some twists and turns in the middle, but in the end they are still friends, and they are always friends.
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XiaoFei's cousin has a very iron male girlfriend, the two have been dead parties since middle school, together without talking, very tacit understanding, have been friends for nearly 10 years, when they began to face the marriage of this matter, the two people did not expect to list each other as an option, "We are too acquainted, no." "She's my brother-in-law, absolutely not." Until now, they are married separately and are still friends.
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Liu Yu's male friends, not because time has diluted the passion, but because the other party is the sea king. It is also strange to say that in addition to the emotional view, the two people hate each other, other aspects are very chatty. Such a fate is indeed difficult to give up, so netizens with the same experience said 8 words: mutual appreciation, mutual dislike.
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Colleague Mr. Qin's heterosexual friendship is based on 4 years of college friendship, which began with the mutual companionship of the same north drift, eating, drinking and having fun together, and talking about the world together, but the reason why it did not develop into love was because it was not eye-catching, and each other did not feel, so each found its own destiny.
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The pure friendship of colleague Xiaonan is more secure than that of the other three, and the idea of friendship and love does not even have a seed. Yes, they both like men. The two are classmates and fellow countrymen, this male girlfriend, intimate and gentle, empathetic, very good at taking care of people, from time to time to meet for dinner, scold the ex-boyfriend together, communication is very smooth and in tune.
Rachel and Joey in "Friends" are also an example, they are not without trying, but in the end they chose to be friends, 3 men and 3 women in "Friends", and finally digested 2 pairs internally, it seems that friendship is very easy to transform into love, but from the perspective of permutation and combination, there should be 9 combinations, but in the end it only became 2, probability, or friendship won. The little flame of love may have burned once, but it was extinguished, and the friendship lasted for a long time, with a little twist and turn, harmless.
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From these real-life cases, perhaps we can find the survival rules of pure friendship between the opposite sex, such as Xiaonan's case, such as appearance is not good, or has tried, but it is ineffective.
However, rather than summarizing such a law, we want to be more convinced that friendship between the opposite sex exists and can be beautiful, but it is never possible to maintain friendship simply by relying on some objective condition.
In fact, the most important thing is to clarify the definition and needs of both parties for this relationship, and then set a good boundary and keep the boundary. At the same time, it is also necessary to actively respond to possible changes in emotions.
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Under the precipitation of the years, the biggest gain between people is a fate worth cherishing, as to whether this fate is friendship or love, it does not matter.
Crazy because of you! stills
However, no matter what the feelings between you are in the end, if you want to continue to walk together, you cannot do without cherishing and maintaining.
Stills from The Witty Doctor's Life
Resources:
1 Do you believe in pure friendship between men and women? Psychological research says so
2 Heterosexual interaction, is there a "pure friendship" between men and women? How to judge and maintain?
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Author | Sunny
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