Archive for Friendship

Platonic, what’s that?

{ February 23, 2008 @ 12:23 pm } · { "Body or Soul", Attraction, Friendship }
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Something bad seems to be happening these days, all my thoughts seem to be triggered by something or the other from the newspapers I read. Its been three weeks in a row now, an article in one of the local newspaper making me think on it. Am I in dearth of original thoughts?, or does it mean our newspapers have become more thought provoking?, or I have finally began to get the right message out of them.

As I opened todays newspaper, an article in the His/Her section caught my eye, I generally avoid that section of the newspaper because, most of the times it has some tips for dating which is almost useless to me. Today they had an article about platonic friendship. I really did not know what it meant, so went ahead and read on, the article was about how to make sure your relationship does not end up in a platonic friendship. The article was boring in content, but the idea struck onto me. How do I cope with this problem, if we ever get into one such. Firstly how often does one face this issue?, is it really common?, more importantly can one successfully convert a platonic friendship into a relationship of romantic nature, or the only way is to make sure you never let the relationship get into the platonic mood because there is no way out of it.

Interesting thoughts mainly because, I have written m any a times about cross gender friendship and how it need not mean its romantic in nature, how people misunderstand something very pure, and in a way make it harder for people to have such beautiful friendship. I had also experienced this recently when one of my friendships was in question, and so was one of my good friend’s and she was really upset with this.

I never thought about the other way around. What if both the people do not want it to be platonic but are wondering how to make the next move, who should make it, and how to give hints as to the other person knows there is a romantic interest in the friendship.

The topic is very close to the previous post I wrote about how to define flirting, unfortunately when one of the pair does not get the hints what does the other person do?. There are many of the stupid persons around like me, so unless things are made explicit we may not understand what the others are trying to say. Actually the worst part is, more than reading signs one is more worried about reading the signs wrong. I guess doubts must be there on the both sides, I mean no one would want to ruin an existing friendship by trying to bring in romance.

Actually I am feeling kind of stupid these days writing about these things, mainly because its on the lines of a blind man describing a beautiful scenery, all he says are things which he imagines it to be, so what all I am saying over here are things which I feel “what it must be like”.

Do people really get into this issue often, I always imagined that there must be a lot of clashes when it comes to friendship because more often or not one of them might develop the romantic interest and the other might resist. This might spoil the friendship. But again as I said I just am assuming this might be the case, listening to many of my friends and people I know who have experienced the one way traffic as I mentioned above. What would one do in that case, does he or she try to make the other person see the romance which they are seeing?.

Can one really convert the platonic friendship into a romantic relationship?. I am not sure on this regards, have not met many people who have successfully done this, or may be these aspects never come out for others, mainly because its too personal. Many of the platonic relationships might have moved on to romance, mainly because both of them had the inclination, but can it happen that one said no and other made him/her change his mind?.

One thing which still amazes me is that, people who have moved on from strong platonic friendships for long time, can they really get physical in the relationship?. I somehow cannot picture being physical with many of my female friends, mainly because they have been such good friends, and you know personally what they like and don’t, and what things in a guy they hate, so one refuses to get the thoughts of that nature involving them. I am sure there must be hurdles related to these in such relations.

I really wanted to type a part of the article here, mainly because I found that really funny, and kind of surprised if one can really do it. The article was titled “Platonic relationships preclude more interesting things, we tell you how to avoid the trap“

“An out of town trip where only two of you end up going is a sure sign that nothing is going to happen between the two. A dangerously high comfort level has set in already. This means that you need to break the pattern urgently. Don’t accept the invitation for an out of town picnic unless he has naughty intentions“

On a totally funny side, a Father of a daughter should get to read this. I would love to see his reactions.

Friendship Talkies

{ January 10, 2008 @ 4:32 pm } · { Friendship, Gender talk }
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Anna Garlin Spencer who was an American feminist, speaking about man/women friendship, once quoted saying “The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed“. What I recently discovered not only rare men and women are needed for that kind of a friendship, but even rare people needed to understand one such friendship.

I generally don’t believe in keeping contact with people, whose views I cannot appreciate, or rather cannot stand. Unfortunately when they become a business liability, you end up keeping interface with them, even though you hate their presence. “Falling in my eyes” was an instance of such horrible person, with whom I still have to interact.

When you meet a person, you really can’t know his/her real attitude, and thus may sometimes end up being friends with people whom you later discover, to be really bad, or incompatible with your ideologies. I generally distance from them slowly, just hoping that they don’t feel totally left out suddenly. Still over the years I have maintained contacts with all such one time good friends. Recently, on the occasion of the new years, I pinged a one old friend on gtalk, mainly to wish him a happy new year. Its been almost more than 6/7 months since I had talked with him, or emailed. After the pleasantry exchanges, the usual hows work stuff, he started to loosen up, and things which I hated started to come up. Its surprising how people keep track of what you are upto, even without talking to you directly, he seem to know whom I am spending time what, whats happening at my workplace, and with whom I was generally in good terms with.

When you are not aware of a relationship, I guess the best thing you can do is not to talk about it, because you never know how you are affecting the other person. He started commenting about a nice friendship I have developed over the recent times. I could not stand it. He had absolutely no right to talk about a friendship, in such a bad taste. Firstly I doubt if he has ever understood how a friendship can exist between opposite sex. More importantly I don’t think he understood what friendship means in general. I gave an excuse and logged off the gtak, but I was pretty pissed the whole day.

The next day my reader showed up this post from a friend No place for friendship.
Its strange how often the friendship gets misunderstood, sometimes from the people involved and many times from people outside. When there are sentiments involved, it makes it all the more sensitive topic to be dealt with.

As I do not have much insight about how women misunderstand the friendship, I will chose to write my views from the male perspective. People always accuse of the men to misinterpret friendship to a relation of romantic interest. I think I agree to this partially. I do not know if it only happens wrt males, but in some cases, I have seen myself, and felt in a odd occasion, that I misinterpreted the intention in a friendship. I guess this is inevitable in a non established relationship, when each have their own agenda, or probably they haven’t even set up their minds as to what to expect in the friendship. Do you think the one who misunderstood is guilty?, I am not so sure on that one. One thing is for sure, when the misunderstanding comes out, in most of the cases, thats the end of the friendship.

Talking about the more damaging part, people not knowing anything about the relation, people who see that from a distance, many times have something nasty to say, hurting the sentiments of the people involved, especially if it is about a person whose friendship you really care about. As it happened in my case, my respect for the person further deteriorated, more importantly put in a doubt in my mind, what if all people are looking at the friendship with a bad perspective?, more importantly what if the other person has other ideas more than friendship. Basically ruined something which was doubtless.

I agree this does indicate a weak friendship, what some one says or does should not have any effect on your strong friendship, thats ideal situation we are talking about, and it takes time for all friendship to reach that stage, and in the mean while, someone makes such a comment, and it really effects you.

For a long long time, I did not believe in pure friendship, not with the same sex, specially not with the opposite sex, but perceptions do change, for some sooner and for less fortunate ones like me later. Why is it that common a notion that “Man and a woman cannot be just friends”.