"a big basis of friendship is commonality and today the different sexes have more in common as they go through the life cycle, which becomes a catalyst and incentive to cross-sex friendships."



"the benefits of platonic friendship are multifold, if a bit different for each sex. male friendships tend to be founded on companionship; men typically define their best friend as someone with whom they can do things. women usually count a close friend as someone with whom they can talk and share feelings."



i do this for my culture. hey look, time magazine says it's okay to have platonic friends. they have solved the ever twisted riddle of "can guys and girls be friends?" they've done it by bringing us examples of some guy/girl friendships that have lasted the test of time and have stayed platonic. whew. what a sense of relief. now i can be at peace with my inner motivations and shady ass self. we need to make an updated harry met sally by the way. i don't even have a catchy title in mind but the movie needs to be updated for the times, you know?



so time says that one out of ten people aged twenty five to thirty four have an opposite sex best friend. wow. only one out of ten? i thought that the figure would be much higher. what does this say about our society? what does this say about me? the soon to be twenty five year old? am i only one of ten? are my peers part of that one in ten or are they a part of that nine? i need to know these things. i will be conducting a totally informal, yet essential, survey in order to find the answers to these questions my damn self. using the scientific method, i will begin with a hypothesis: "my friends are above the national average for opposite sex best friends." some people are saving the world, curing aids, curing cancer, feeding folk, i'm gonna poll my friends. even napolean and einstein started small.



this platonic friends thing touches into an area that is of great concern with me. what happens to your opposite sex friends when they get married? do things have to change? can things remain the same? so far all indications have led me to believe that yes, opposite sex friends change after they get married. not alot maybe, but there is change. i'm against this of course but since i'm not married i can't put my theories into practice. and if i put my theories into practice i might not stay married for too long. catch twenty two. stay true to yourself and kick your own ass. but apparently these time researchers have proven me wrong. thank goodness. i was waiting for a national publication to explore this issue and finally shed some light on the issue.



and now that i am armed with statistics and an article i can carry on my torch and continue to scream to the world: "girls and guys can be friends! platonomy rocks!" hum, potentially a t-shirt idea in there somewhere.



here's something else of interest. "if a friendship is going to become romantic, studies show it usually does so in the beginning, the longer the friendship lasts, the more likely each person is to see the other as a friend." (one study, however, suggests that at around the two-year mark, platonic friends often reconsider their romantic options.) friends reconsider their romantic interest in friends at the two year mark? wow. what does that mean? how did they figure out the two year number? it reminds me of a friend from college who declared that two years of no sex makes you a born again virgin. how he came to two years as his number i have no idea. but i believe him, don't you?