In this Love Life podcast episode, host Matthew Hussey tackles the recurring question of whether men and women can maintain purely platonic friendships. He argues that true friendship—defined as two people who have no desire to sleep together—is rare, especially when attraction is present. Hussey shares personal anecdotes about his own experiences with opposite‑sex friends and notes that many friendships begin with mutual attraction that later fades. He emphasizes that attraction is a natural human instinct and that loyalty in a romantic relationship should be judged by a partner’s ability to remain faithful despite being attracted to others. To assess whether a cross‑gender friendship can stay platonic, he proposes a simple test: spend time together drinking ten shots of Jameson; if neither party attempts to become intimate, the friendship is viable. He concludes that if the test fails, the friendship may be unsafe for someone in a committed relationship. The episode ends with typical promotional reminders to subscribe, review, and follow his coaching services.
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Welcome to another episode of Love Life. I'm your host, Matthew Hussey. Every few days I'll be bringing you a new episode filled with practical advice you can use right away to improve all of your relationships romantic, family, friends, career and most importantly the relationship you have with yourself. If you've been listening to me for a while, please do me a favor and leave me a five star review in iTunes. In the iTunes app or on your desktop, just look up the show, click on ratings and reviews, and then click write a review. I'm not asking for the ego boost. It's simply because the highest rated programs get the most visibility in iTunes, and together we can help reach more women by helping them find the show. Thank you so much for your help. Let's start the show.
Matthew Hussey here from Love Life, and we are talking today about male-female friendships. In short, can men and women just be friends? This comes up time and time and again in my company, Get the Guy, people are always emailing me asking if they can, you know, can my boyfriend really just be friends with another woman? Can a guy just be friends with me? Plenty of women have guy friends and they wonder, is it really possible? In fact, many women make the claim that it is possible based on their experiences of having lots of guy friends. I would argue, however, that doesn't necessarily mean it's possible. It might be highly likely that many of those guys would sleep with them at a moment's notice. So let's be careful what we term friendship. If friendship is defined as two people that don't want to sleep with each other, I would say there aren't an awful lot of them. I know that growing up, I didn't have women as friends that I wasn't interested in for something more. In fact, usually if I was the friend of a girl growing up, it was because I got relegated to the status of friendship when I really wanted something more with that person. I just didn't know how to ask for I was too afraid to ask for it. So I settled for friendship where I didn't think relationship or intimacy was possible. I'm sure you have done the same in the past. I'm sure even that some of the friendships you have today that you hold dear are people that in the beginning you were interested in or vice versa. They were interested in you. And eventually one of you just simmered down and said, okay, I'll take this. I'm not, we're not, we're never gonna be something more. We'll just take the friendship instead. That's okay, by the way, but let's start to get a little more honest about the whole question of friendships. Firstly, I think that in life we surround ourselves with people that we find attractive. Subconsciously we do this. That doesn't mean always that we're looking for something more with that person. Many times you'll be in a relationship where you still surround yourself with other people you're attracted to, even though there's no intention of sleeping with those people, being with those people, you still choose to remain faithful to your partner, but you go after or you spend time with people that you find attractive. That is human nature. That's a basic instinct. And I always cringe a little bit when people in couples are just completely horrified by the idea that their partner would find anyone else attractive but them, because that to me isn't loyalty. Someone's loyalty shouldn't be measured by how many people they're not attracted to. Their loyalty should be measured by how many people they can be attracted to and still be faithful to you, their partner. That to me is the test of a real relationship. And by the way, that's how you know you've got someone that will be faithful to you, is when they can be around people they find attractive and still not feel the need to go any further. So the question to me is not, can men and women be friends? Because if we start factoring in attraction, there are many men and women who are just friends, who are attracted to each other on some level, or at least one is attracted to the other. The real question isn't, can we be friends? question is, are we willing to just be friends? That's what it's all about to me. Are we willing? And let me give you a very simple test to figure this out. Go out with that friend, go drink 10 shots of Jameson together. And if by the end of those 10 shots, neither of you have tried to sleep with the other person, you can just be friends. That's the test. If you pass, Great. If you don't, probably you shouldn't be hanging around that person if you're in a relationship with someone else. That's it from me today. I feel like we've really just drove the nail in on that one. I feel like we answered it. We've done it for all time. No one ever needs to ask that question again. I will see you next time in the next episode of Love Life. Make sure to go and follow me on Facebook.
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