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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site hao.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!hao!woods
From: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg "Bucket" Woods)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: friends and intimacy
Message-ID: <1202@hao.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Oct-84 16:35:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: hao.1202
Posted: Wed Oct 10 16:35:58 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Oct-84 05:21:11 EDT
References: <584@pucc-i> <183@tellab2.UUCP>
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 34


   This recent discussion of platonic relationships with MOTOS's hits very 
close to home with me. I find that, for me at least (and several of my 
friends that I have brought the subject up with), platonic relationships with
women are very difficult to maintain when my sexual needs are not being met
elsewhere. This is because those women that I am very friendly and close
with are *exactly* the ones I want to become sexual with. When the sexual
feeling is not returned, the relationship becomes frustrating and a negative
experience.  I've been told that I'm somewhat 
abnormal in this regard, because for me sexual attraction has almost nothing 
to do with *physical* attractiveness; for me it is primarily emotional. Most
people talk with vague and meaningless phrases like "chemistry" when they
speak of sexual attraction; for me there's no big mystery. I always know
why I am attracted to a particular woman; for the same reasons that attract
me to her as a friend, the same reasons that make me "like" her also make
me "lust" for her.
  This causes me lots and lots of problems, for it is precisely when I *don't*
have a lover that I *need* my close friends the most. It is a vicious circle.
It is almost impossible for me to "cry on her shoulder" without feeling sexually
attracted. This is a "bad thing", I can see, because a certain class of
relationships is totally out of my reach, unless I have a current lover.
Right now, for example, after having apparently been dumped for the second
time this year (but that's another story), I could really use a shoulder
to cry on.
    Are my friends and I weird, or do some of you other guys feel this too? How
about the women? I've always believed that platonic relationships are desired
more often by women than by men, but clearly I am prejudiced.

--Greg
-- 
{ucbvax!hplabs | allegra!nbires | decvax!stcvax | harpo!seismo | ihnp4!stcvax}
       		        !hao!woods
   
     "Will we leave this place an empty stone?"