Can Men and Women Be Friends?

The age old queston.

I think most people would agree that it's possible. The harder question is if it's possible for men and women to be very close friends.

April has been convincing me that it is because of the Blog Guy. Even though for the whole of last week she's been telling me that he doesn't exist, turned out she spoke to him almost every day.

I told her she didn't need to convince me. Even though I don't have close guy friends (or any guy friends for that matter), I know it's possible to just be friends.

I actually learnt this from David. He told me how it's annoying when people think you like them just because you're very friendly with them. It's especially difficult with introverted people because they analyse every detail of the conversation (like April did with Blog Guy) and a 'look' or a 'word' would mean everything. In reality, the other person doesn't reciprocate any of the feelings that his/her face expressions and body language show.

Makes it very confusing to know what anyone really thinks of you, unless they tell you specifically. I guess that was one of the things that attracted me to David. He was just so straight forward. Although I guess that's easy for me to say because he liked me enough to tell me.

He told me how one girl at a salsa class asked him out and when he said no, she asked him why not because he was always so friendly and joking with her. He said after that he tried to be less friendly. I know that it's just his personality. Even when we meet some girl from his class or work or something, he'd be so warm and nice and just has this ability to make the other person feel really good. No wonder these girls might think they're special.

Wonder why I didn't think he liked me more than a friend. It was pretty obvious to me from the start that he was just a very outgoing person. (Could've been because he chatted me up at a bus stop.)

Funny now, I know his outgoing side is not all of him. He can get shy and insecure too. He does a really good show of not showing that side to people he doesn't know.

Then there's me. Before David, as you might remember, if I liked a guy, I would ignore him but if I didn't, I would become the most talkative and friendly person. (David's the obvious exception.)

So what I'm trying to say is that some people assume too much from things that don't mean anything. A person can be wonderful to you yet not see you as anyone special. And if they're even a bit like me, they might be extra nice because they couldn't care less what you think of them and are therefore not scared to say anything.