Acquaintances

If you have watched 'When Harry Met Sally' you would be familiar with the argument of Harry and the plot itself that men and women can't really be friends.

It's the whole idea that men can't be friends with women because they would always want to have sex with them regardless if they are attractive or not which would ultimately send the friendship to doom especially when their female friends are a.) not interested b.) are interested and if they would agree to it, their friendship would usually end there more than it blossoms into something else which isn't exactly friendship anymore.

Now bringing the topic to my age group and the Philippine setting I would agree to the idea that men and women can't be friends with proper contextualization.

Firstly, let's remove the sex issue and bring it down to 'liking or loving', taking into consideration that we are not as liberated as the Westerners.

Now, I would say that there are two types of male friends, the jerks and the decent ones and based on my experience, befriending any of the two and developing a very close relationship with either produces a problematic scenario on the female friend's part.

If there would be any striking differentiating factor within the way these two types of males profess their liking (explicitly and implicitly) to their female friend, it would be the timing. Nothing more and nothing less.

Jerks, being jerks and let's admit it, a little less on the thinking area hence the term jerks, (There are smart jerks, but the fact that they are jerks makes them stupid) would be the first to hit on their female friends and due of course to the their lack in gentlemanly and romantic technique combined would promptly cost their friendship with their female friend.

The decent ones, who are usually over thinkers or cowards or sometimes both are those that survive the friendship a little longer, (thanks to their overly-thinking brains that surpasses the shallow relationship with the female friend which makes them slightly more mature and would thus be considered as an asset) tend to implicitly profess their feelings. There really isn't anything wrong with this picture except if the female friend is not in the least bit interested of taking the friendship up a notch.

So really, men and women can't really be friends. They can superficially be friends though, which is a lot better than nothing at all or call them acquaintances to be precise.