Psychological facts about human behavior

So Can Men and Women Be Friends or Not?
So it seems the answer that emerged from the research is one confirmed by most everyone’s real-life experience: it simply depends.
Every person’s situation is different, and the number of opinions on this subject are numerous (and often heatedly held!). But I will nonetheless humbly submit that the best way to gauge the viability of cross-sex friendships is by using a sliding scale, girded by two general guidelines.
The first is that having cross-sex friendships becomes progressively harder from middle school through college and finally into adulthood. The less people are thinking of getting into serious relationships, the easier and more carefree male/female friendships are to navigate. Cross-sex friendships in elementary school? No problem. In high school? Usually pretty natural and easy. In college? Still pretty easy, though more misunderstandings arise about whether or not you’re really “just friends.” Cross-sex friendships when you’re older and more and more folks in your circle are married or getting married? Then things start to get sticky. And that brings me to my second guideline: Cross-sex friendships become increasingly difficult the greater the commitments one or both of the friends have with their romantic partners.
So if you’re a young, single guy, have all the lady friends you want. As mentioned above, opposite-sex friendships give you insight into how the female mind works, which can help you successfully navigate the dating scene and just make you an all-around more perceptive guy.
And of course another benefit of opposite-sex friendships is that they sometimes lead to fulfilling romantic relationships. Many solid marriages began from solid friendships. But keep in mind what the research says about the likelihood of your cross-sex friendship taking this course: it’s far more likely that you’ll develop feelings for her that she doesn’t reciprocate. This can often lead to anger and frustration about being friend-zoned. But it doesn’t have to, if you manage your expectations and realize that this mismatch is a very common thing that’s been demonstrated in the lab. As to the nuances of when/if you should tell a female friend about your feelings in order to see if they’re mutual? We’ll have to dive into that in another post.
Now if you’re older and/or married/in a committed relationship, tread much more carefully with opposite-sex friendships. I personally would say that after you get hitched, you shouldn’t have an opposite-sex friend you spend time with without your spouse. I realize this is an unpopular opinion with some. “I’ve got a great female friend I hang out with all the time. My wife doesn’t mind and we both know nothing will ever happen!” they proclaim. The problem with such proclamations is that they are typically made when one’s marriage is rock solid and going great — your love is so strong that the idea of having romantic feelings for your friend seems utterly outside the realm of possibility, as does the prospect of adultery. Yet you simply never know what the future will bring. Marriages hit rough spots. When they do, people often turn to their friends for emotional support. If those friends happen to be of the opposite sex, there’s a chance a nurturing hug can turn into something more physical without either party intending it to.
Sadly, Kate and I know a few people — both men and women — who ended up cheating on their spouse with a close opposite-sex friend when the above scenario played out. They were ardent proponents of the idea that men and women can just be friends, even while married…right up until those friendships contributed to the break up of their union.
That’s why I believe in only hanging out with same-sex friends once you get hitched, or with opposite-sex friends along with your spouse (outside the work setting, naturally). I certainly don’t think that every cross-sex friendship a married person has will lead to an affair, but I don’t think it’s wise to take that chance. Instead, stack the deck as much as possible towards having a happy, long-lasting marriage.
So, can men and women be friends? Sure. With caveats. The caveats, after all, are what make this complicated issue so interesting and ensure we’ll still be discussing the question for another hundred years!
Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends"
Researchers asked women and men "friends" what they really think—and got very different answers

Credi
Can heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”? Few other questions have provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid, or movies as memorable. Still, the question remains unanswered. Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.

New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment.
In order to investigate the viability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships—a topic that has been explored more on the silver screen than in the science lab—researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a science lab. Privacy was paramount—for example, imagine the fallout if two friends learned that one—and only one—had unspoken romantic feelings for the other throughout their relationship. In order to ensure honest responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to agree—verbally, and in front of each other—to refrain from discussing the study, even after they had left the testing facility. These friendship pairs were then separated, and each member of each pair was asked a series of questions related to his or her romantic feelings (or lack thereof) toward the friend with whom they were taking the study.
The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.
Men were also more willing to act on this mistakenly perceived mutual attraction. Both men and women were equally attracted to romantically involved opposite-sex friends and those who were single; “hot” friends were hot and “not” friends were not, regardless of their relationship status. However, men and women differed in the extent to which they saw attached friends as potential romantic partners. Although men were equally as likely to desire “romantic dates” with “taken” friends as with single ones, women were sensitive to their male friends’ relationship status and uninterested in pursuing those who were already involved with someone else.
These results suggest that men, relative to women, have a particularly hard time being “just friends.” What makes these results particularly interesting is that they were found within particular friendships (remember, each participant was only asked about the specific, platonic, friend with whom they entered the lab). This is not just a bit of confirmation for stereotypes about sex-hungry males and naïve females; it is direct proof that two people can experience the exact same relationship in radically different ways. Men seem to see myriad opportunities for romance in their supposedly platonic opposite-sex friendships. The women in these friendships, however, seem to have a completely different orientation—one that is actually platonic.
To the outside observer, it seems clear that these vastly different views about the potential for romance in opposite-sex friendships could cause serious complications—and people within opposite-sex relationships agree. In a follow-up study, 249 adults (many of whom were married) were asked to list the positive and negative aspects of being friends with a specific member of the opposite sex. Variables related to romantic attraction (e.g., “our relationship could lead to romantic feelings”) were five times more likely to be listed as negative aspects of the friendship than as positive ones. However, the differences between men and women appeared here as well. Males were significantly more likely than females to list romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, and this discrepancy increased as men aged—males on the younger end of the spectrum were four times more likely than females to report romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, whereas those on the older end of the spectrum were ten times more likely to do the same.
Taken together, these studies suggest that men and women have vastly different views of what it means to be “just friends”—and that these differing views have the potential to lead to trouble. Although women seem to be genuine in their belief that opposite-sex friendships are platonic, men seem unable to turn off their desire for something more. And even though both genders agree overall that attraction between platonic friends is more negative than positive, males are less likely than females to hold this view.
So, can men and women be “just friends?” If we all thought like women, almost certainly. But if we all thought like men, we’d probably be facing a serious overpopulation crisis.