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Comment by bloopernova | Hacker News Reader

For young, single heterosexual men; cultivate deep platonic friendships with women.

Get a hobby, do charity work, find something where you meet and become good friends with multiple women of different ages and backgrounds. Do not ever attempt to date any of these women.

Why? Because most men know woefully few women, and your life will be much richer. A lot of men know very little about the experiences, fears, and hopes of women.

Be there for them. Ask them for advice. Ask them for feedback on your appearance and your personality. Tell them your hopes and fears, and listen to their feedback.

You'll become a much better partner because of it, and your romantic relationships will be far more satisfying.

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A woman will very unlikely give you an honest advice. They are usually not made for that with friends. They usually just re-assure and "support" you. That's been my experience.

There are two types of woman who will be-friend you platonically: Woman who are interested in you sexually as a partner and want to be close to your radar, just in case. Woman who are not interested in you but find value in your friendship (either connections, money, emotional support, etc...)

In both cases, it's a bad deal for you. You are much better finding your own real partner instead of masquerading around other woman to forget about your lacking in that area.

Friendships with woman do exist. But they are limited by the fact that man and woman have very different hobbies and interests. That is, unless you are interested spending Saturday evening looking out for the perfect face mask or the color of your jeans; and I don't mean that in a pejorative way.

You are somewhat close minded. Don't take this as a quick accusation of some -ism. I just get that you're not at all open to new experiences.

* You think you figured out people. But non of us have figured out people. Being open minded means at least trying to give any person a chance. You already have them divided into types and dismissed.

* You think to be friends you need people with the same hobbies and interests.

* You think your hobbies and interests are already set.

Whether your goal is to find a partner or to find friends, trying to figure out and decide about people in the privacy of your mind, then projecting that on the world will hamper your goals.

Humble yourself, assume you're wrong, and allow people to surprise you.

> * You think to be friends you need people with the same hobbies and interests.

At least in that point there is some truth to it. What activities will you engage in with people, if you do not share hobbies or interests? Activities will be quite limited, unless you discover some shared interest or hobby. Maybe your shared interest will be once a week sitting in a café and talking about your job. As long as it is a shared interest, you got at least something to do with the other person.

Socialization in many countries around the world is still very much having strong bias for men and women roles and interests. Without high awareness of this, it is also very difficult for parents to do anything about this. Children are usually not 24/7 with their parents either. They spend a lot of time in other institutions like kindergarden and school, where they usually face a mainstream bias.

This means, that quite often there is a trend for men and women to also have different hobbies and interests. There is of course overlap in many areas, but not everywhere. It is slowly changing, but it will still take a long time. Just to give examples:

When I studied CS, only 10% were women. Looking at biology and psychology for example, we have almost the opposite situation.

I agree with everything you said. Of course everything you said is a description of the reasons that go into making it less common.

I disagree with the prescription that it shouldn't/couldn't. Saying something is unlikely is different to closing that door.

People and society are complex, and the long tail is really long. That's why being open minded and really giving the person in front of you some consideration is really important.

Holy shit you have not met many women.

I have been arguing with myself about replying to the comment you replied to.

Good lord that person reveals a lot about themselves in it. And none of it is good. If they didn't seem to be angry, I'd pity them.

Imagine if I summed you up based on only this comment and how you were publicly not-very-nice to a guy who volunteered his opinion/experience to further a discussion.

Most importantly, you're just attacking a human being, you haven't even engaged with them.

Or people, by the looks of it.

Holy shit.

Eh, it depends. I don't really have many female friends and it hasn't seemed to be a negative.

The biggest issue is that there are relatively few women interested in the same types of hobbies I have been. Also, shared interest is not as great a basis as shared context for building friendships. So the number of women who have the same interests and shared context are even lower. I have only a few close male friends and the rest are not that close. I don't think I have any close female friends, just some that are not that close. Many of those friendships die out when we leave the same school/team/club/etc.

Needs or goals can get in the way too, especially when younger. Pretty much anyone who shares enough values/interests/context to become a really good friend ends up on the list of dating partners because they are such a good match. It makes sense in some ways since you don't want to miss a chance with someone who is such a good match, especially when that's rare.

How do you know something isn't a negative if you can't test it?

The same way that the other commentor contends it's a positive - anecdotal experience, plus a logical framework supporting it.

I'd say do that, but with men.

Men of good character, morals, aspirations and goals.

Platonic friendship between men and women is a myth. (Exceptions exists, but only confirm the rule)

> Platonic friendship between men and women is a myth

This is a not unusual opinion amongst Americans, and one I questioned myself, but I can assure you after moving to Europe its a cultural issue(especially in the south).

Europe also has much higher infidelity rates, with France reporting over 37% of women (using women as an example since the data came up more easily) having had affairs compared to 13% in the usa.

(Not an expert) That stat would seem to show only that more French women admit having had affairs, not that more have had them.

I'm friends with most of my friends wife and most of my co-workers and honestly not super interested in banging any of them.

I also have two female friends since childhood and we never done anything and we keep in contact even though we live in different states. Yey facebook!

> Platonic friendship between men and women is a myth.

I must tell my friends about this, they will be distressed.

I bet at least some of them will actually agree with me.

I disagree but I am curious, what makes you think it’s a myth?

First, thank you for asking, I already appreciate your constructive approach.

Now I would like to be more precise: I assert that, at the very least, male-female-friendship is a deviation from the rule. I.e., it is not expected to work, but it can in some instances.

Why?

Because male and female are by default and by nature sexually attracted to each other, and if not then that is simply unexpected.

In fact, there are studies where they made strangers simply look each other in the eyes for a little while. What happened was that some of them fell in love just by doing so.

Put another way: Friendship means affection. There is no reason why such affection between a heterosexual male and female wouldn't eventually cross the sexual level of affection, at least for one of the two. It is simply to be expected more often than not. Thus it is expected that at least one of the two will - at least occasionally - have sexual fantasies about the other.

Oh, thank you for mentioning that. That’s why HN is the only place where I interact with other users, civil disagreement is appreciated. :)

Ok, I kind of agree with what you are saying. But I come to a different conclusion. I hope my text below isn’t a long unintelligible rambling.

Maybe it boils down to how one defines friendship and if friendly affection and sexual affection can coexist. I sorta see a Wenn diagram for this.

Say that I have sexual fantasies about a friend but my friend doesn’t share those fantasies. There is nothing from letting these feelings coexist inside me.

Is it easy? Not necessarily, but I believe it is it possible. One might even have to go see a therapist, so what?

I could even be so honest towards my friend and say: “Look, we are friends, but I also have romantic feelings towards you and it’s hard since you don’t feel that way. Which is totally ok! So I need a couple of weeks where we don’t hang out and it will pass”.

In that scenario, are we still friends? I believe we are. I am making an effort to make the friendship work. But I also need my friend to respect me and my boundaries.

And once those feelings has passed, because my experience is that they do, then we can continue being friends. If I wasn’t able to let those feelings coexist inside me while hanging out with that person.

One last thing. I cherish friendships, it gives me so much joy. And true friendship, that affection you mention, is also rare. So it’s not the best route to automatically exclude half of the population from being friends with you. So there is a lot to be gained from framing these different feelings of affection in a way so that they coexist. Then we get to reap the rewards of many great friendships.

I understand that you can view friendship the way you described, and yes perhaps that's how many people view it.

But for me just friendship is the type that exists among hetero men or hetero women, where there is no possibility of sexual attraction.

So I'm not denying that the type of friendship you describe can exist, but it's not "just" friendship then, like "we're just friends".

I think a metaphor that describes this well is the two magnetic poles. You can of course keep them close to each other without them touching, but that requires some constant force. This necessary constant force, that is needed to keep the distance, is a compromise to friendship as I envision it.

Now here is another crucial point I haven't even mentioned yet:

It is very well understood, that males tend to eagerly and overly interpret signals from females as sexual advances, whereas on the contrary, females tend to underestimate the sexual signals they are giving to males.

It could be a mundane joke or a wrong, unintentional move. This creates a constant granular level of tension and uncertainty that needs to be perpetually overcome, which is incompatible with "my" understanding of just friendship.

Not romantically or sexually attracted to my sister, my auntie, anyone too old for me, anyone too young for me, anyone who smokes, anyone who belittles waitstaff, peopke who overindulge (fillers, etc), people with hairy armpits, people who have strong masculine traits, people who do not wash to my standard etc;etc;etc;

There's limitless numbers of people I am genuinely not attracted to, are you saying they can't be my friends either?

Even the study you cite says “some” of the people started catching feelings.

I much more readily believe that you are either attracted or you're not, and while thats subject to change with appearance changes and so on, it is basically normal to have people you’re not (and are extremely unlikely to be) attracted to.

Obviously excluding family, since I'm appealing to nature. You're not naturally sexually attracted to your immediate family members, i.e. it would be a deviation form the norm if that occurred.

But I can't believe that's your best retort to my argument, when it should be quite obvious that's not what I'm referring to.

And yes you may not be attracted to them, but that doesn't mean some of them aren't to you.

Also it's important to understand I'm not saying you're immediately attracted to any female. That is not my argument. So it's pointless to point out you're not attracted to some random girl who smokes.

I'm simply saying that given a male and female forming a friendship, there is every reason to expect that OVER TIME, at least one of the two's affection will reach sexual levels.

My point was that there are plenty of people I’m not attracted to, not just family, whole entire categories of people.

I am also not exactly attractive. So I see no reason to believe they are attracted to me.

You just assume too much here for me to take it seriously.

If you are saying, sincerely, that every woman I am friends with is secretly attracted to me then I’m going to have some really awkward conversations.

I have plenty of friends who are women, it feels so ordinary that I can’t even imagine a world where this is not normal.

Agreed. But you can have sexual fantasies and still be friend, no ?

Not if you're married

Don't mistake your own failings for universal ones.

Cmon, what are you - a jellyfish?

I thought your initial comment—the one you deleted a minute after posting it, where you were boasting about how sexually attractive you are—had more personality tbh

You know I agree with you, but I figured the public wasn't ready for it.

Thanks though!

That's not how confirmation works.

I mean you're right, but what I really meant is that exceptions don't disprove the rule which is based on sound reasoning (see my answer to the guy that actually asked)

> Platonic friendship between men and women is a myth.

Despite all the examples to the contrary? If anything you're telling on yourself, here.

This is great advice. Different voices educate you more about the world than the echo chamber. Plus you get approached a lot more by other women when they see you can treat women like humans and not objects

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