Men and women cannot be friends because the relationship depends on one party being attracted to the other.
For men, there is almost never pure friendship with a woman.
Did you know that if a man is not attracted to a woman he will almost certainly not approach and talk to her?
In fact, one of the only times a man will approach a woman he is not attracted to is if he believes he can gain access to her more attractive friends by using the unattractive friend to get his foot in the door.
It sounds manipulative, but it is sex we are talking about here.
Think about this rationally.
What exactly do men and women have in common?
What do they have to be friends about?
If men and women start discussing various things they are interested in, a bond generally forms.
Some form of attraction usually starts to surface.
It is nearly impossible spend excessive amounts of time with another person, of the opposite sex, share interests, stories and thoughts without developing an attraction to them.
What I have just described is often the breeding ground for adultery.
It’s a rare for a man or woman to storm out of their home saying “I’m tired of my marriage, I’m gonna go have an affair”.
It’s becoming less rare with websites dedicated to anonymous affairs, but it is still uncommon.
Instead what happens is a seemingly innocent relationship develops between to people. It starts with small talk but the end result is often pillow talk. What starts small grows into powerful attraction that becomes difficult to resist.
What is kept as a secret inside the mind tends to grow as well. You feel the urge to avoid telling your wife when you develop one of these “friendships” at work or some other place.
If you feel the urge to keep something a secret, that might just be your intuition trying to tell you that you are doing something unwise.
Small talk can easily lead to a feeling of companionship which can easily lead to an affair if not stopped in its tracks.
It is dangerous for men and women to be friends.
Intersexual relationships are designed to be sexual in nature at their terminal points. Once that singular relationship is developed in a marriage, that should mark the end of any close man-woman relationships.
I’ll make it plain: I don’t believe men and women can be close friends. Perhaps they can be distant friends, but close friendship is often built on attraction.
It seems to me that relationships between men and women are meant to lead to marriage and sex.
That is the natural end point of intersexual relationships.
That’s not to say platonic relationships cannot happen – you can probably think of some exceptions yourself. But it is exactly that – exceptions. And exceptions serve to prove the rule.
Because of these realities, we need to understand some key principles:
I – Men in Committed Relationships Should Not Develop Close Friendships with Women.
It is a Potential Pathway to Adultery.
If you want one of the surest ways to put yourself at risk for an adultery, then make close friendships with a woman who is not your wife.
Your intuition will tell you it’s dangerous. And your intuition can be verified with logical analysis of the lives of men who have made the same error.
II – Women who are “just friends” with men don’t understand the minds of men.
When women become friends with men, they get attention, which is exactly what they want. During this friendship, the standard man frequently tries to win her affections by proving he is worth them. [This is a weak approach – you cannot win over women by proving your worth. They have to be organically attracted to you]
Women don’t understand that all their male friends are likely attracted to them on some level.
You don’t see guys hanging around unattractive women do you? They seem to always make friends with women they find attractive.
Even if women know this intellectually, they just don’t want to acknowledge the reality of it because they are enjoying the attention too much.
If a woman could spend five minutes in the mind of the man she would instantly understand why men and women cannot be friends.
Man in the secular state is driven by his sexual drive and makes the bulk of his decisions in an attempt to satisfy that drive.
When trained by biblical principles he attempts to reign in this drive, but that does not change the fact that the sexual drive exists, and it always will exist in his mind. He can discipline it, but it will always be there.
Therefore if a man makes a friendship with a woman, it is done in attempt to further the sexual drive.
He may deny it to himself, saying, “Oh we’re just friends. We have so much in common. She understands my complaints”. These are all excuses meant to deny the reality that every man knows in the back of his mind – that the relationship might turn sexual.
The main point is that men and women simply cannot be “just friends”. Not in the truest sense. Not in the ways that women are friends with women and men are friends with men.
Same sex friendships will always go deeper than intersex friendships. Intersex friendships generally terminate at sex. It is very difficult to resist the pull of those relationships to turn sexual.
I would encourage you to not have close relationships with other women who are not your wife.
I also understand that as Christians we have a familial relationship within the church body where men and women interact.
I would encourage you to keep these relationships on a Spiritual level.
Do not make close friends with women even at your church. Plenty of affairs have begun at a church.
And how often do people mistake emotion for spirituality? Very often.
As such, Christian’s can mistake their emotions for spirituality when it comes to their relationship with one another.
Because of the confusion regarding the relationship between the spiritual and the emotional, we have another possible breeding ground for an affair.
Always remember the fact that men and women cannot truly be friends.
So what you’re saying is that men are always going to cheat. It’s inevitable and uncontrollable. That must be so hard for men, not being able to control their actions towards women. It’s most certainly the woman’s fault when men can’t control their emotions/feelings/acts etc. if men are so volatile and weak, why are they the head of the household? If they are always doomed to commit adultery then why would they be allowed to lead anything?
Not what I’m saying at all. Nowhere in this text do I say that or anything remotely resembling that.
What I do say repeatedly is that maintaining friendships with women increases the risk of adultery for men.
Men aren’t doomed to do anything.
Men have Free will.
Yet no one would argue that certain decisions we make increase the probability that other behaviors happen.
Going to a bar increases the probability that drinking happens.
Going to a nightclub increases the probability that a one-night-stand happens.
Developing deep relationships with women increase the probability that extramarital sexual intimacy happens.
Again these are just probabilities, not absolutes, not hard rules, something I repeatedly state in this article. I even speak about there being exceptions to this rule that men and women cannot be friends, You can see that right before point “I”.
The fact that I continually use terms like “increase risk”, and , demonstrates that men do have the ability to control themselves. Best ways to control themselves is to avoid these friendships with women if they can’t. Because deep friendships lead to being more than just friends.
As far as “it’s most certainly the woman’s fault when men can’t control their emotions/feelings/acts etc.”, that’s just nonsense. No one Said anything about whose fault it was in this article. The word “Fault” isn’t even used or implied. and this entire text is centered around men’s choice of action when it comes to relationships with women.
So as far as your questions: “if men are so volatile and weak, why are they the head of the household? If they are always doomed to commit adultery then why would they be allowed to lead anything?”
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These questions don’t even have to be answered because the premises they are based on is false. Men are not volatile and weak – that’s a false premise inferred by an perception of this text that’s unsubstantiated. And besides the fact that men are handed God-given authority to lead [See Ephesians 5].
Men lead themselves before they lead their families. And they lead their own lives in ways that maximize the probability of living honorably, which includes avoiding adultery by removing one of the ways adultery develops – through intersexual friendship.
Thank you for your comment.