Friendship between man and woman. A chimera fruit of unreal fantasies or a possible option?
It all depends on what we mean by the term "friendship". If something in our heads suggests that in Serie A they play words like "husband", "boyfriend", "partner", while "friend" would play in lower leagues, we should go to the heart of the words and find out their meaning. Do we all know that "friendship" has the same root as the verb "to love"? The friend is simply the one you love.
The problem that calls into question our consciences, useless to go around it, is all included in the relationship between bodies.
Borges wrote that "the friendship between a man and a woman is always a little erotic, even if unconsciously". But anyone who has experienced it knows that if the friendship leads to a physical habit ("friendship with benefit" one would say with a horrible Anglicism) it ends up being very short: one of the two (usually the woman) falls in love, begins to demand an exclusive relationship and skip the friendship implant. Therefore, to know if this friendship is sustainable, it is therefore necessary to enter into the functioning of the mechanism of eros, considering both the male and female points of view.
The mechanism of attraction
Man desires. That damned mechanism that has been installed in his skull to guarantee the perpetuation of the species causes that - married or not - as soon as a man sees something attributable to a woman, desire is triggered. Physical desire, drive to conquer.
Under what conditions can this problem be solved?
Putting aside physical attraction.
This happens if the man is not attracted to women but to other men: "gays are the best friends of women" is in fact now a consolidated phrase.
But the same happens if the man is not particularly physically attracted to the girl. It can happen.
The woman, on the other hand, looks for emotions. Whoever satisfies this desire opens the doors of the other mechanism.
That of romanticism, of dreams, of the desire for possession and control.
Under what conditions can this problem between man and woman be resolved?
The man must undertake not to lead his friend on paths where he could lose control. It doesn't have to give her too many emotions.
Is there a way to tell if friendship is working? Yes. And it revolves around the dynamics of jealousy. If you are jealous of the girlfriends, lovers, wives and husbands of the other or the other something is not working. It means that the mechanism of desire, whether male or female, has been triggered. If you are not, you are heading in the right direction.
So, summing up, friendship between man and is possible womens? Yes. But only in the presence of two conditions: the man must not be particularly attracted physically to the woman and the woman must not see in the man a source of strong emotions.
Otherwise get married.