Friends without benefits . . . Mission impossible?

"Men and women can never be friends because the sex part always gets in the way."

Nearly fifteen years ago, Harry met Sally. Harry came on to Sally. Sally rebuffed Harry. Since then the battle has waged between men and women: Friends or foes?

But is it true? It's long been said that men and women can never be friends, yet friendships are born and thrive on this campus everyday. Or so I thought.

"Absolutely not," said Evan Baehr '05, "a friendship between a man and a woman is headed for trouble. Inevitably, one falls for the other and then there is no hope for restoring the friendship. All that's left are two companions privately reminiscing about the good old days when a romantic relationship was not discredited by reality."

And here I had no idea that rose-colored glasses filtered out so much of the world. The night began with a simple email asking a simple question, "Can men and women be friends?" The night ended in a pile of confusion, contradictory thoughts, and emotional baggage.

"Impossible." "Yes." "No comment." "Nearly impossible . . . Why? Men and women were put on this earth to torment each other and to always have a topic to bitch about . . . uh, can this by anonymous?"

Why the turmoil? Could it be that our university, and in reality, our world, is so oversexed that the innocence between a man and a woman is forever lost? I asked a personal guy friend his opinion and upon observing his hesitation reminded him of his friendship with several of my roommates and myself. "But Ashley, you know those relationships are wrought with sexual tension." Hmm. It began to get interesting.

"Sure they can," said one anonymous '05 man, "It's tough to separate those feelings from friendship, and every guy definitely has some feelings for a girl if he's friends with her, but it can be done. It's just based on an understanding that it's better that way."

One '05 clung to what is now noted as the "footstool" theory, "Basically, the friendship either starts on the basis of the guy liking the girl or the guy liking the girl's friend. If it's not there, there's no way the guy wants the friendship — the guy wants her or her friend, simple as that."

One alumnus replied, "Men and women as friends? That'll be a short column . . . NO. Wait, do you need a longer answer? Hell NO."

So let's consider the reasoning. Can the problem be found in the underlying attraction?

Sally rebuffed Harry. Harry terminates the friendship.

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"No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive, he always wants to have sex with her."

"So you're saying a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive."

"Nah, you pretty much want to nail them, too."

Harry's premature, and ironically college-aged, train of thought centers around the idea that men can never handle a friendship with a woman because, since a man "always wants to have sex with her, the friendship is doomed from the beginning. End of story."

Four years later, Harry meets Sally again. Harry and Sally are friends. They talk about love, art and pecan pie. They go to dinner, watch movies and are each other's standing date on national holidays. Harry changes, "It's great, I get the woman's point of view on everything. And the best part is I don't have to lie because I'm not always thinking of how to get her into bed." Harry and Sally are friends.

"If men and women can't be friends, then that would make half the population my enemy." Said one female undergrad, "No, they can be friends . . . just to a point."

"It's possible to be friends with a guy, however it is impossible to be best friends with a guy."

"Yeah, they can, but I don't think a guy would develop that extensive of a relationship with a girl unless he was interested."

"Every friendship I've ever had has at some point reached a line where it could potentially cross over. Those that do, die. Those that don't, live to fight another day."

While the nays may be adamant, even those in favor of guy-girl friendships have their doubts, or at least their limitations. Is it situational? Easier if one or both is involved? Maybe at this point just easier to forget the whole thing. Doesn't Princeton have a Nunnery?

My research began as a quest to prove that my guy friends are just that: Friends. I almost made it. Then I remembered that even Harry and Sally couldn't make it passed the platonic pitfall.

"We were friends for a long time. And then we weren't. And then we fell in love."

My freshman year, a particular gentleman from the suite downstairs spent the fall semester engaging me in midnight chats, AIM wars and playful fighting. That spring, everything changed. No longer did we spend time together, just hanging out, talking. Curious, I finally asked, "I don't get it. First semester you were all nice and friendly and in the room and now I see you what, once a week?"

He turned to me with a smile and in a moment solidified my feelings on the issue at hand, "Well Ashley, last semester I was just trying to get ass. Now that I realize we're just going to be friends, it's cool — just different."

So maybe Shakespeare had it nailed 400 years ago — "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Ashley Johnson is from Florence, Ala. She can be reached at ajohnson@princeton.edu.