My best friend is my wife. I don't believe men and women can have friendships. There will always be temptation and scandal. I am not talking about being friends with couples. I mean doing something exclusively with a women friend.

Not believing it's likely or a good idea is not the same as not believing it's even possible.

You have a very limited view of human capacity if you think it's impossible.

Okay Tele. Your right. It's highly unlikely.

Have you ever had a close female friend?

I suppose I should have clarified.

I guess you could be friends with an elderly women or a child. What I meant was if you could make a friend who is in your age group and is a women? Especially, if you were married.

You can have female friends but not "close friends" when you're married or courting.

It's more of a safety precaution than anything. St. Alphonsus told his priests that the devil can make a beast of woman look tempting to you if he wants to break your chastity.

And let's not forget that your spouse would become jealous and paranoid. It doesn't matter how much you trust your partner, if they're gonna be "hanging out" with their friend of the opposite sex, your "adultery alarm" is gonna go off.

It's best to cut ties with old female friends once you're married, unless they're married, then you and your wife can have dinner with them or something.

The modern world pushes the whole "platonic friendship" thing, but really, all taken together, the phenomenon just leads to a lot of fornication and adultery that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Nowadays you have terms like "work spouse" and "friends with benefits".

But even if there are no "benefits" (I'm using their term here), it serves to give both men AND women that "spouse's mind" that they're lacking. Men and women both need a helper of the opposite sex -- it's how God designed things. So by a woman having plenty of male friends (or vice-versa), she won't feel anything lacking in her life, and might delay marriage longer than usual.

I'm surprised Tele isn't more against this -- it certainly delays marriage for women as much as any college education.

Is it just me, or today (in the "modern world") are women more likely to do the "just friends" thing than guys? As a guy who was single for quite a while after reaching adulthood, I can attest that I never looked at a non-relative female (close to my age) as anything other than a potential marriage partner. There might have been a small % of women that were so repulsive to me that I wasn't attracted to them, but they were the exception.

If any of the girls in my class in (public) high school would have shown interest in me, I certainly would have been interested.

I think that's pretty normal for a single guy.

Every "friendship" with a woman you hope becomes "more". With sleezy modern guys, they hope to "get lucky". With traditional Catholic guys they hope it will turn into love and eventual marriage.

But men and women should never be alone, unless they are related or married. This applies to courtship, but it also applies to friendships. You can't play around with God's design and have no consequences. God made that attraction, it's very powerful, and it shouldn't be toyed with.

"Pride goeth before the fall." If you think "I'm strong enough" you've already half-lost.

Are friendships with the opposite sex possible? Sure. Though in my experience they are generally not plutonic. One or the other generally has stronger feelings, or they both do. God made us man and woman, I think it's easy enough to know what follows.

I tend to agree.

I think you hit the nail on the head -- one side or the other is going to be the more needy one, who is more interested in the friendship becoming "more". One side might be fine with the "friends" arrangement, but it's not likely that both are.

And, in the end, it's still playing with fire.

A woman who wants to be married is going to want that.

With dating/courting I think what you sometimes find with nice girls is they are committed o a man they are dating like they are married and he does not commit. That definitely delays marriage for them.