Boy/Girl: The Friendship Graph

Can guys and girls be friends?

Woooow. How exciting is that title? Boys/girls and math? Super exciting!
I thought it would be fun to explore and divulge our beings into this mysterious and hazy subject between men and women. This is a controversial subject because a guy and girl friendship does not last forever. Because if it does last forever (or so we’ve been taught), they are called marriages. And when someone deviates from the friendship… I think it is honest to say that most of us have been in close relationships with the opposite sex (or if you like the same gender, we won’t leave anyone out) because we are innately attracted to one another. Plus, I think we are attracted to the opposite sex because they give us a type of insight that we will never know and really understand.

Before this post, I wrote a whole article on all the components between guy and girl friendships, but could not coherently put it together. So I found a better way to explain this love/hate phenomenon. I constructed a wonderful graph depicting the time and the progression of a guy/girl relationship as they become best friends. Please enjoy it because all that statistic graphing I did in college did not stick and the graph was harder to construct than I thought. This post is just guy/girl basics, just in written form. Things you already know, but like to see it on paper. Other posts will be followed with its afterthoughts and reactions.

Boy/Girl Friendship Graph

So from the beginning, we have 1. The Meet and Greet. Starting with zero friends, you meet new people in college/camp/work/groups.  You scan people who you think could be your friends, then scan the people who you think are attractive.  Shallow, but we all do it.  So you meet a few people, start making those friend groups and maybe reaching out a little to more intriguing people aka the opposite sex and start chatting it up, but strictly keeping it within the friend group.

Then you hit 2. Friends, actual friends.  At this point you are good being friends with this other gendered person.  Keep in the work place, your classes, your friend group.  Every now and then you do a couple of things together, just you two, but you are really not at the point to start hanging by yourselves yet.  You can safely say out loud that you are legitimate friends and you like each other’s normal platonic company.  You keep hanging out because you find each other cool.

But as you start progressing upward on the chart, you enter stage, 3. One-on-ones (OOO). This is a longer stage because you start to hang out more with each other, but just one on one, veering outside the group, outside the confines that brought you together in the first place.  Not dates, but studying together, grabbing meals together, taking a coffee together, long talks together…you know it and how good does this feel?  This all means nothing other than more good company; he/she just happens to not be your gender and typically you only have one of these persons. You may have multiple opposite sex good friends, which I would not consider you a best friend harlot (a more soft term for what that term means) just because you can have lot of friends whose paths do not cross, but usually you only have one.

You finally reach the stage of 4. Besties! where all your friends know that you two are hanging out a lot and probably know where each other are during the day (writing that down makes it sound like a relationship, but do not be fooled, you are not in one).  You are hanging out all the time, loving every minute of it.  This period could last for a long time or for a very short time because enter feelings [here].  Someone is feeling something.  Someone probably felt something back on the OOO.  It does not have to be both people feeling something at the same time, but for at least for a few minutes and maybe some more, someone felt something to be thinking about that something may be happening between you two.

And for some people, this is where you hit point 5. Oh Shoot or you stay in a plateau version of besties or even OOO.  But if you are an Oh Shoot person, this is where everything starts to become fuzzy and weird.  Not everyone experiences this and may stay in plateau besties for a while.  Between points 5-8, you start feeling something for that other person, wondering if that other person is feeling the same thing.  You batter yourself asking yourself if you like this person, hence the fluctuations in the graph.  You change your mind from liking him, no we are just good friends to wait, maybe we could be more than just friends.  You may struggle with this for a long time, but what will you do now?

This is where the myth ends, how guys and girls cannot be friends. But yes it is possible for a little while.

End of part one.

Searching for boy/girl cartoon and discovered this instead. I know its jumping the gun from friendships, but I still could not help it and laugh.

Preview of next post:
Can guys and girls be friends? Yes.
But 1. they can never be close friends aka best friend status, like the man groups and the gal pals that we keep within our circles; 2. whoever you have now as close opposite sex friends, will be, will be lost in the end.