it doesn't actually HAVE to be that way though. You can have closeness without romantic interest if you realize that's what's happening. It's a learnable skill. Having a nice cuddle is good to recharge your batteries.
And you can have romantic interest in someone, while at the same time knowing that’s just not going to happen and behaving accordingly.
I have at least half a dozen close woman friends, all of whom I have or have had “romantic thoughts” about, but for various reasons have either not tried, or tried and been rebuffed but stayed close friends with.
One example, a girl I met in ‘99 (I still remember the day) and fell head over heels in lust with. She had a boyfriend, so that was out of the question. In the next 15 or so years we were never in a position where both of us were single at the same time. That situation happened about 5 years back, and we ended up in a drunken flirty conversation, where we both agreed that we weren’t going to do this, because we both valued the friendship too highly to risk losing it over a hookup. (Neither of us have great track records of staying friends with exes…)
Others had/got boyfriends/partners/spouses, and while all of them involved awkwardness and sometimes outright distrust, I totally understand and acknowledge that’s a normal human reaction to a girl having very close guy friends they’ve known a lot longer than “new boyfriend”. You need to earn trust in those situations, and all you have to do is behave like a rational and respectful human being. It can take a long time though, the girl from the example above got married, it took 3 or 4 years before her husband go ok enough with our friendship that we can go out together alone. And that’s Ok, I reckon I’d have acted exactly the same were the positions reversed.
> She had a boyfriend, so that was out of the question.
I’ve always found this “blocker” interesting. I’m that way too but many, many men and women do not treat a significant other (on either side) as some kind of natural and impenetrable barrier to pursuing the object of their lust. Sometimes it goes nowhere, sometimes it blows up, sometimes it gets them what they (both) want.
I’m sure there’s a lot of cultural variation, but for myself, I think when I was younger this was way more about a lack of confidence than it was about morality. And now that I’m older I’m pretty sure it’s 99% “don’t want the hassle.”
> many, many men and women do not treat a significant other (on either side) as some kind of natural and impenetrable barrier to pursuing the object of their lust
If they'll cheat with you, they'll cheat on you.
I don't need that sort of complication or grief in my life. And I respect myself too much to be the sort of guy who cheats on his girlfriends, or the sort of guy who cheats with someone else's girlfriend. It's probably cost me some hookups, it has never cost me a relationship I'd regret, because who wants a relationship with that kind of person?
Having said that, I'd also never let someone having a SO be something that stops me from working at kindling a friendship. For me at least, while finding a "life partner/soul mate" is an extremely worthwhile objective, making good friends is a more important thing for me than hooking up with every available (or unavailable) woman possible. So I'll still pursue a friendship, just being rational enough to think with my head not my dick, and keep the "lust" in check.
I see the same combination of utility and morality in your reply as in my own experience, and that’s exactly what I question.
You don’t want the complication, but you also think of yourself as a better person if you don’t cross that line.
But I’m not at all sure that the people who do cross it are any less self-respecting. In the case of my friends who I know have done so, I kind of doubt they would have lived better lives had they been more monogamous from say their 20s to mid 40s. It’s not like they were trying to hurt anyone. It’s not like they didn’t have good relationships. And compared to myself, I look at their less sentimental, more realistic view of sex and love as possibly healthier.
If someone cheats on you and you never find out, does it mean anything?
> But I’m not at all sure that the people who do cross it are any less self-respecting.
I get that. It's just that their idea of what's "respectable" and mine differ. That's not to say either of us are right or wrong, but I stand by my version of respect and self-respect amongst the people I chose to spend timer with and I will judge them and the people they cheat with accordingly. If they've got a circle of friends who share their views, they won't give a flying fuck about my judgement of them.
In my view, and amongst my friends, cheating is a demonstration of untrustworthiness. The same as stealing. It doesn't matter to me if you've stolen from me or from someone else, if I know you've stolen at all, I know I can't trust you not to steal from me or my friends. If you're happy to fuck around with someone else's wife or girlfriend, you'll probably be happy to do the same with mine if it suits you. We will not be friends. You will, at very best, become an acquaintance that I do not trust.
> If someone cheats on you and you never find out, does it mean anything?
Yeah. It means they lie to you and are untrustworthy, just you don't know about it yet. Maybe you'll never find out about that specific instance of cheating, but you still have someone you should have been able to trust who'll break that trust and lie to you in your life, and these attitudes will eventually reveal that, even if you never find out she fucked the best man at your wedding (or whatever). Thats what I meant when I said "I don't need that sort of complication or grief in my life."
(I will add though, that this was not nearly as strongly a developed outlook on life in my 20s, and I will cut some slack for "kids being kids", but if you're still fucking around on your girlfriend/wife in your 40's, you will be judged harshly and very firmly moved from "a friend" to "an untrustworthy acquaintance that I probably need to warn other actual friends about" in my life.)
I believe the lack of a moral element is due to Hollywood movies normalizing cheating. I mentioned it elsewhere in these comments, but there's a lot of celebrated cheating in widely popular movies (both classic and modern) like Casablanca, The Notebook, and Sleepless in Seattle.
Perhaps the behavior came before the movies, but I'm skeptical because it seems to be the natural behavior to avoid pursuing people in relationships (it will probably cause emotional trauma for the person in a relationship, as it would be natural to feel guilty about cheating, though I indirectly know of a person in a relationship who seemed to have felt no guilt about cheating at all).
When I think of my friends who treat monogamy as situation-dependent, I think that’s more normal in Europe than the US, but I haven’t made a study of it or anything.
I have at least half a dozen close woman friends, all of whom I have or have had “romantic thoughts” about, but for various reasons have either not tried, or tried and been rebuffed but stayed close friends with.
One example, a girl I met in ‘99 (I still remember the day) and fell head over heels in lust with. She had a boyfriend, so that was out of the question. In the next 15 or so years we were never in a position where both of us were single at the same time. That situation happened about 5 years back, and we ended up in a drunken flirty conversation, where we both agreed that we weren’t going to do this, because we both valued the friendship too highly to risk losing it over a hookup. (Neither of us have great track records of staying friends with exes…)
Others had/got boyfriends/partners/spouses, and while all of them involved awkwardness and sometimes outright distrust, I totally understand and acknowledge that’s a normal human reaction to a girl having very close guy friends they’ve known a lot longer than “new boyfriend”. You need to earn trust in those situations, and all you have to do is behave like a rational and respectful human being. It can take a long time though, the girl from the example above got married, it took 3 or 4 years before her husband go ok enough with our friendship that we can go out together alone. And that’s Ok, I reckon I’d have acted exactly the same were the positions reversed.