rivercrow

I was saddened by a conversation I had with a friend a few days ago when we were comparing notes on mixed gender relationships.

Why does spousal/SO jealousy have to interfere with mixed sex friendships? Isn’t it possible for men and women to have friendships without a sexual component? Office-based relationships are acceptable because they are inescapable; non-office-based relationships seem always suspect.

Ironically, what starts out, and should remain, a simple friendship gets tainted by the perceived need to hide it. Forbidden fruit, which makes the casual exotic and enticing. Rather than keep it simple and neutral, it becomes complex and weighted.

I’ve watched similar things happen for the last few years. I am in a predominantly male field; I guess 80-90% of my coworkers are male, depending on which specialty I consider. So I’m used to a multitude of underlying tensions–the usual “mystery of the opposite sex” tension, “how to function in a mixed-gender workplace” tension, “preconceptions of the opposite sex” tension, and so forth.

Part of the “mixed-sex friendship” tension emerges from objectification, as though we are all one-dimensional sex objects. If we can only see each other through that lens, then we’re never going to see any depth to the relationship. We’ll never see beyond the animal surface.

Relationships become exciting because people grow new ideas together in the course of collaborating on various problems. Creativity can be almost aphrodisiac–not generating erotic energy, but mental and spiritual arousal, two areas we easily overlook, especially if we are viewing only through the lens of objectification. Given two same-sex individuals collaborating on a project–assuming they are heterosexual to begin with–spouses and SOs may carp at the time commitments but won’t assume other illicit involvement. Let the individuals be mixed sex, and the misperceptions begin.

To be fair, we ourselves confuse the issue. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when a relationship is simple and when we are falling in love. We hardly know what love is half the time–is it just the giddiness of a new friend? is it the fondness for another person? or are we confusing infatuation with someone with infatuation with an idea, a new project?

Given all that, do we run and hide behind the simplifying lens of objectification? Or do we blunder on, knowing that the way is treacherous, while trying to keep the path well-lit?

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