Search Results: platonic friends romantic relationship

After seeing another question about the "friendzone" recently, it got me to think about my past experiences with women, be it friendship or romance. Can a man and a woman truly be friends? I'm off the opinion that in a lot if cases, the answer is no. The reason? We are different from each other, but that difference often prevents a truly mutual platonic friendship. This difference may help facilitate a romantic relationship, because each complements the other. Someone will often be in the "friendzone", or taken advantage of.

Here is an example of an article that discusses this: www.psychologytoday.com/.../can-men-and-women-be-just-friends

I might be wrong. I do not claim to be an expert. In my argument, I don't claim that men and women cannot be friendly, cordial it professional, but from my experience, men are buddies with other guys, and women (regardless of sexual orientation) have girl friends.

Suppose that a close friend, about 15-20 years older than you, and of the opposite gender, were to one day tell you that they are completely in love with you; but because of the age gap, they didn't feel a relationship was appropriate, so they chose to focus all of that love into a platonic friendship with you.

Imagine that they were quite serious about this, such that if you wanted a romantic relationship with them, that they would attempt to talk you out of it, not because they didn't want you, but because they felt you deserved someone your own age.

How would you react? Would this affect how much you trusted them? (Assume that, up to this point, you can look back and they've clearly been giving you good, non-selfish advice.) Would you trust them more or less? Could you continue being platonic friends with them? Would you try and press them for a relationship? (Assume you're at least somewhat attracted to them, since you are close friends, and that happened for a reason.)