The only thing I ‘use’ them for is conversation and companionship when I go out sometimes. Since I’m not actually dating anyone or getting ‘hot sex’ I’m not torturing any of them unknowingly with that. I tend to approach the males in my life with the absolute conviction that there is no sexual interest on their part. Everybody tells me this couldn’t be further from the truth, but I don’t buy it. I’m fairly attractive but men keep a distance from me. I’m cursed I tell you!

LOL- that was brutal….anyway. As for me, notice I said I would want a romance to develop from friendship.

I would run, not walk, from the married dude though- and stay as far away as possible. He’s a total scumbag.

‘Bernie’ is a guy I talk a lot of shop with (we work in similar design professions) and commiserate about the perpetual single status with. He’s a good looking guy and I get along with him, but I don’t find myself attracted to him. He’s a bit of a man-whore and that’s a red flag to me, but I do enjoy his company. He’s never made a move on me, and at one of his parties he commented to me that I was the only woman in attendance who he hadn’t ‘dated’ at some point (I think it’s safe to assume that means ‘didn’t have sex with’.)

‘Pete’ is a guy I met a while back. I slept with him the first night I met him, mostly because I was so sexually frustrated and I was very drunk. I didn’t particularly care for him as relationship material, he doesn’t have his shit together, so a relationship would be out of the question. I had an emotional conversation with him however and we bonded over having similar taste and similar family ‘issues’. He remains my friend to this day, I regard him like a little brother (perverse as that sounds). We never had sex again and I don’t want that to happen anymore.

My ‘best friend’, we’ll call him ‘Henry’, is a guy I dated for a few months, who loves me dearly and is always there for me, but I could never form an attraction to him so I ended the courtship. We only had sex one time. He’s a great guy in every sense of the word, and if I could force myself somehow to be attracted to him it might have been perfect. But I couldn’t. He has a new girlfriend now, but we’re still close.

‘Jake’ is an old college friend I looked up recently. Back in college I had a HUGE crush on him, but he was married and I was an emotional wreck, so, as you can imagine, that was not going to turn out pretty. Nothing ever happened between us other than kissing a few times (which he initiated, not me.) I’ve gone out to dinner with him a few times in the past few months since I contacted him. He’s an amazing person who lives a very unconventional life. We have great conversations. The last time we hung out he confessed to me that he was in love with me back in college. I fear he still is in love with me and that is what is motivating his friendliness (and, yes, he’s still married). I wouldn’t be able to resurrect that crush I had on him even if, for some unknown reason, I would want to. So, I don’t know how that is going to turn out – I’ll just have to be careful I guess. 15 years after I was madly in love with him – the guy confesses he was in love with me? It just ain’t right.

And, last but not least, the man who ruined me, ‘Charles’. I met him last year, and though he claims to be my friend, I cannot believe him. He’s more of an IM chat buddy, and he hasn’t even been there in that capacity lately. He did (very nervously) kiss me once, and that only added to the confusion. I can’t be his friend because I’m totally in love with him. Why? I have no clue. But it became impossible for me to become attracted to anyone else since I met him. I guess, in some ways, it keeps me out of trouble, but it’s made dating impossible for me. I compare everyone to him, and I look for clones of him on dating websites, and it just isn’t going to happen. It has really turned my thinking about love inside out and I’m not sure I’m better for it.

So, those are my ‘platonic’ male compadres. The lot of them, with the exception of the last one, are totally ‘there’ for me any hour of the day. And what about that last one – why does he claim to be my friend when he could have just walked away from me and my attraction to him? Yes, male-female friendships are not easy to figure out, that’s for sure.

My dating life finally started to pick up in grad school, and then was maintained via internet dating once I left school. And I think I wasn’t particularly nervous because I didn’t feel as though I had a lot at stake. I wasn’t looking for the love of my life, I just wanted to see what dating was like and what that person was like. And I guess that’s how I’ve continued to approach dating. So long as I was enjoying it and could see it as a healthy relationship (though I did toy with an unhealthy one or two) then I continued.

All this being said though, I think that the whole When Harry Met Sally thing might be right. I think that once a certain age is hit (probably once leaving college, or school, however you want to define it) that straight men and women can’t just be friends, that at least one person always is wondering/hoping if something will become romantic. There have been guys with whom I got along really well, thought were funny, enjoyed some of the same off-kilter activities, etc, but just didn’t feel the romantic attraction for them. Our “friendship” lasted for a year before the guy revealed that he had feelings for me and could no longer be my friend unless I wanted to become more than friends. The other guy didn’t quite last as long. And other guys I’ve encountered it just hasn’t developed either. Maybe it’s because they only view the opposite sex as a romantic interest, or their significant other might be P.O.ed at the development of a new friendship with a potential competitor, or…? But unfortunately, I don’t think that developing a close, platonic friendship with a straight guy is likely once you’re out of school.

Anyway, just my $0.02.