From the original article on October 25, 2012. Author: Chateau Heartiste.
Four years ago, this esteemed blog laid out in detail the reasons why men can’t be friends with bangable women, and under which conditions male-female friendships could plausibly form and endure.
Men and women simply cannot be friends unless certain conditions are met.
This is easy. When there’s no loin burning to get in the way a girl buddy is like a guy buddy, except you can dump on her about your dating troubles and give your opinion of in-season colors without getting laughed at.
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Girls find it easier to keep their sex drives in check, which is why they can retain their sanity while remaining friends with uninterested guys they are attracted to far longer than the reverse scenario. Men who are attracted to their girl buddies cannot stay friends for long without either making a sloppy move and killing the friendship or sacrificing their last ounce of dignity as they go insane from blue balls toxic shock.
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There is only one way a single man can be friends with a woman he wants to bang and that’s when his balls are so drained from fucking other women that he feels no testicular pressure to act on his desire. You’ll notice that a typical sexually satisfied alpha has lots of hot girl acquaintances he doesn’t bother gaming because the effort required is not worth the very small marginal increase in pleasure or risk of losing the girls as social proof and as friends.
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If you’re looking to be a cool friend to hot chicks without falling victim to the temptation to hit on them, you can acquire this noble virtue on the cheap by shackling your vice within the artificial prison of marriage or exclusive relationships. (Note: The opposite doesn’t work — most men will sleep with a hot married woman given the chance and in spite of the risk.) This is the foolproof method for betas to be relaxed and emotionally stable friends with attractive girls they’d love to bang. They simply tell themselves that they already have a girl waiting for them at home who they love very much or, if they don’t love her, who would be really pissed if they cheated on her, and so the pressure is off. They can therefore rationalize their asexual acquiescence to LJBFdom as a pose of moral rectitude.
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Pretty simple trick to be platonic with a chick when she’s a flick on your monitor and a thousand miles away.
As per usual, the Chateau was more right than it knew, and ahead of its time. Recently, a scientific study has confirmed just about every observationally sound assertion put forth in that seminal post.
[T]he possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.
New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment. [...]
The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends. [...]
These results suggest that men, relative to women, have a particularly hard time being “just friends.” What makes these results particularly interesting is that they were found within particular friendships (remember, each participant was only asked about the specific, platonic, friend with whom they entered the lab). This is not just a bit of confirmation for stereotypes about sex-hungry males and naïve females; it is direct proof that two people can experience the exact same relationship in radically different ways. Men seem to see myriad opportunities for romance in their supposedly platonic opposite-sex friendships. The women in these friendships, however, seem to have a completely different orientation—one that is actually platonic.
Science ♥s Heartiste. It feels good being so right so often, but honestly a high “being right to being wrong” ratio isn’t that difficult to achieve as long as you are open to seeing reality for what it is, rather than what you wish it to be. The study’s money quote:
Taken together, these studies suggest that men and women have vastly different views of what it means to be “just friends”—and that these differing views have the potential to lead to trouble. Although women seem to be genuine in their belief that opposite-sex friendships are platonic, men seem unable to turn off their desire for something more. And even though both genders agree overall that attraction between platonic friends is more negative than positive, males are less likely than females to hold this view.
If you were to read nothing in life except this blog, you would be better equipped to successfully navigate the obstacles life throws at you than a feminist or manboob who has read 10,000 cathedral-certified gender studies textbooks at $100 a pop.
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