I’ve never been a very blokey bloke. I’m not interested in football – or any other organised sport. Cars, to me, are things that get you from A to B, occasionally breaking down at point C, necessitating a call to the man from the AA. I do, however, like women. I like looking at them. I like being with them. On the whole, I find them more interesting than men – possibly because they tend to spend less time talking about sport or cars.
Perhaps it’s not so amazing that something on Radio 4 should make me quite so angry, but this veritably took the custard cream: a Woman’s Hour discussion on the oldest chestnut of all: Can Men And Women Ever Be Friends? (Female friendships with gay men were, and are, outwith the bounds of this discussion). Two writers were on the panel: Tanya Gold contended that they can be friends, Mark Mason contended that they can’t; he said that your best friend must ALWAYS be of the same gender, that sex ALWAYS gets in the way, and that if, as a man, you think your best friend is a woman you are not only deluding yourself, you probably need therapy.
Further raising my blood pressure, and spreading the radius of spluttered biscuit crumbs in my kitchen, his main example was a case from his own life: a friendship with a woman that had ultimately failed. As an aside he mentioned that this friendship had actually started with two weeks of intense shagging. Now I may be naïve and old-fashioned, but that’s not exactly my idea of a friendship pure and simple; rather that sounds like staying friendly with an ex. (Something, incidentally, I’ve never, ever managed to do – maybe I do need therapy after all).
Mark Mason cited a friend of his who had believed that a woman was his best friend – he even went away on her hen weekend. He had subsequently mentioned this to a therapist, who declared that this was a huge problem, requiring much more, doubtless costly, psychoanalysis.
Even I had to admit going on a hen weekend was a little extreme, until my own friend Jane said that she’d been on a male friend’s stag do, even donning a fake beard in homage to the stoning women in The Life of Brian. Everyone was cool about it.
The female panellist, Tanya Gold, risked straying into dangerous waters off the Stephen Fry archipelago, by saying that 90% of men find most women slightly attractive, and 90% of women find most men slightly repulsive. At least she made me laugh, though.
Having polled opinion from quite a few friends on this subject, I’m pretty sure the safest, longest-lasting male-female friendships involve no sexual attraction at all. I’ve known Liz since schooldays. We moved to London at the same time and shared a flat when I had no girlfriend, and she had no boyfriend. Neither of us was happy about this state of no affairs – and yet nothing happened between us. We got back in touch again after a few years apart, during which time she had been married, had kids, got divorced – and she spent quite some time in the pub telling me exactly how much she had never fancied me and very firmly that she never, ever would. I absorbed the blow. I mean, nobody wants to be not-fancied, but at least I knew where I stood. Our friendship endures, and I can be utterly candid with her. I’m not trying to impress her, she gets me warts and all, and that’s what you need in a friend: the ability to be honest and be yourself.
If attraction-free friendships are the safest, are they the most exciting? Back on Woman’s Hour, Tanya took a pleasingly mature attitude to the issue: we are not all hormonal teenagers; just because we’re attracted to someone, doesn’t mean we have to act on it. There’s nothing wrong with a little harmless flirting, and it can add a certain frisson to a friendship.
I have to wonder if The X-Files would have been anywhere near as watchable without the unresolved, but clearly present, sexual tension between Mulder and Scully? (X-Files pedants note: yes I do know they get eventually together in the last movie. The sheer awfulness of said movie should be enough to put anyone off spoiling a great friendship by ever making a move on their best buddy of the opposite sex).
Mark Mason did make one point that made sense though: if you want a friend of the opposite sex, the odds are stacked against you. If you both have spouses or partners, then FOUR people have to be cool about the idea, and that’s just not very likely. My friend Jane says that she’s lost male friends this way: “I can understand why a man might choose the love of his life over a mate.” But opposite-gender friends can help keep relationships together too – helping you to see things from your partner’s point of view. Why is she so angry? What can I do to make her happy? Your female friend may have some insights and perspectives that you, dear bloke, lack.
William Blake said in Proverbs of Hell, ‘Opposition is true friendship’. Now, what could be more opposite than gender?
in full.
