Can a man and a woman be just friends?

Revisiting the age-old question

The human race has come a long way. Teenage girls are winning Nobel Prizes, men are changing diapers and doing laundry, women are flying airplanes, and the leading Republican presidential candidate is Donald Trump. On the technological front, the progress is even more staggering. Three dimensional printers are producing human-scale muscle structures, and stem cell treatments are enabling the blind to see and the deaf to hear – miracles, in bygone ages.

So can a man and a woman be just friends in this brave new world? I am afraid the answer, for all our liberation and progress, is still in the negative. We are simply hard-wired in a certain way, and for a very good reason. It wasn’t that God wanted men to continually fantasise about women; it was just that He willed the human race not to go extinct. You may question the motive, but the way it was ensured is simply brilliant. The resulting physical attraction suffices to put paid to any finer sentiments. The fate of the male-female friendship was sealed the moment survival of the species became paramount.

So what is to be made of the mixed friendships we see all around? Well, in each such relationship, there lurks a hidden romantic interest. One party – usually it’s the man, but such women are by no means unheard of – is merely playing along, hanging in there, hoping that someday the door leading to better things will open, something deemed beyond reach just yet.

Of course there are those – unmarried women, mostly – who would have none of it. ‘Nonsense! I have many male friends!’ is the usual response. (If I had a dollar every time I heard this, I would be a rich man today). This is usually followed by a barrage of insults. Well, maybe they do have many male friends, but their angry tone suggests that perhaps they are not as convinced as they would like to be; that they desperately want to believe what they are saying. I believe that consciously or subconsciously, they cannot be unaware of the feelings of their male ‘friends’. Either way, it is gratifying for the ego – something too dear to let go of easily.

Men, when they are the beneficiaries, act in a similar manner. However, among men there are some who are obliged to take a certain position for the sake of not sounding old-fashioned. Well, sexual tension has nothing to do with fashions; it is there, unless there are medical issues or serious orientation incompatibilities.

This may be a very old debate, but in the context of Pakistan it is still fairly new. When Harry Met Sally made it into a very popular discussion topic worldwide, but up until the late nineties it was at best an academic issue for the bulk of the Pakistani society, where the word friend referred to one’s same-sex buddies, and the only relationships that fell in the grey zone were between cousins of the opposite sex. The new millennium changed all this, and along came YouTube and widespread access to the world of the American sitcom. It is said that TV ads tell a lot about a society. The boys-and-girls-hanging-out-and-having-fun theme is frequently being employed by our advertisers. In real life too, boys and girls are ‘hanging out’ more and more across campuses and cafeterias. Whether it’s a case of ‘art’ imitating life or vice versa, it is very much a practical issue now. So in the true Mamnoonian spirit of exploration, are there any exceptions to the rule enunciated above?

Some avenues are often suggested. Can a man be friends with a woman whom he finds physically unattractive? Well on the face of it, yes. But who can be sure of the feelings of the woman? Does she find him equally ugly? In any case, would you, girls, like to be friends with somebody who thinks you are unattractive? I am afraid this is a nonstarter.

Other possibilities are presented. If both parties are romantically committed elsewhere, then friendships between them ought to be possible, right? Wrong! We are biologically hard-wired to keep looking for mating partners – that’s a primal instinct for us. At the subconscious level this search continues even when a partner is already there, or after one is too old for the whole procreation routine. (Well, for most women may be it doesn’t, but for men it does). Logically speaking, the search should stop, you say? Well yes, but there’s no arguing with the DNA.

According to one counter-narrative, the above may have been true of another age when women stayed at home, and men worked; but now that more and more women are working and socialising with men, things are looking up for the institution of mixed friendships. (Even this narrative concedes that such friendships are still ‘tricky’). But the aforementioned change in the workplace demographics is too recent to have altered our biological instincts. A friend, male, who happens to be a biology enthusiast, tells me that such changes occur over centuries if not millennia. Let’s review the situation a few centuries down the line.

Some women are charmingly equivocal on this issue. While they are supporters of mixed friendships, they are not exactly delighted if their boyfriends (or husbands) start putting the theory to practice. Perhaps they are (rightly) convinced of their own purity. Perhaps they are (rightly) convinced that all men are brutes. A little reflection will show that this latter conviction contradicts their original position.

Men and women have to co-inhabit many spaces – the classroom, the office, the bus, the airport, and the restaurant belong as much to women as they do to men. However, men as well as women will do well to be honest with one another, and with themselves. Behaving, or treating somebody, as a spare tire is beneath them. Of course they can still go ahead and pretend to be friends (many will), but they will do so at their own peril. In addition to the blood relations and the potential spouse, there can be any number of legitimate relationships between men and women – the teacher/student, the colleague, the class fellow, and above all, the fellow human being. But just friends? Come on, who are we kidding?