Friends with opposite sex: difficult but possible

By Yoon Sung-won, Park Jin-hai, Kwon Ji-youn

In a romantic relationship, people want their partners to accept them the way they are. That's why many people have affection for years-long friends who understand their thoughts and intentions.

In Korea, the conventional thought was that friendships formed with the opposite sex in one's youth become naturally fragile and fade away as people grow older, get married and have children.

But not all Koreans want their life-time friends to come along one day and say, "I like you as a potential lover." Some believe friendship between opposite sexes is possible, while others, at least in Korea, think that men and women cannot be true friends because opposite sexes are meant to be romantically involved with each other.

In 2012, Gayeon, one of the largest marriage consulting companies in Korea, conducted a survey among 300 single men and women to see if they believe in such friendships.

In the survey, 41 percent of male respondents and 45 percent of females said that they believed it was possible.

Friend-friend, not girl-friend

According to Lee Sang-hoon, a 25-year-old male, it is possible to be friends with a member of the opposite sex.

"People don't just fall in love whenever they meet a person who is of a different gender," he said. "For instance, there are women, or rather, types of women, that I don't like being around."

To Lee, some women are just people.

"Especially when I'm in a romantic relationship, most women I encounter are just people — nothing more, nothing less," he said.

Lee's best friend is a young woman of the same age. They went to high school together. Lee does admit, however, that the relationship began with interest and curiosity about what kind of person she was.

But after some time, he said, it developed into a friendship, a special one that he could not sustain with a man.

"For men, women also have great qualities that make them great friends," he said. "They're more sensitive, compassionate and witty."

Lee asserted that his friendships with women — "friend-friend" not "girl-friend" — differ from his relationships in that they don't touch more than they should.

"I don't hold hands with a friend but I do hug them once in a while," he said. "We don't kiss or caress one another but we do playfully push each other. I pat her on the head a lot."

According to Lee, as long as a couple has overcome that phase when they're sexual objects to one another, it is definitely possible to keep up a friendship with a member of the opposite gender.

Harsh reality for friendship

Kim Hee-young, a 28-year-old female graduate school student, said she became reluctant to make friends with men after she received a marriage proposal from a man two weeks ago. Kim said the two had been friends for the past eight years, since they were freshmen in university.

"He was one of my best friends to whom I could openly reveal what I thought," she said. "But one day he called me out and confessed that he wanted me as a lover, not as a friend anymore."

Kim said she felt miserable when he refused to remain as her friend after she didn't accept his proposal.

"He said he just couldn't see me anymore. It might be resentment or embarrassment. Maybe I'll never know," Kim said. "But it really broke my heart and now I'm having a hard time overcoming the loss of a friendship which had significance for me."

Kim Ji-young, a 38-year-old office worker in Seoul, said she has an old male friend of over 20 years. She thinks that the friendship between opposite sexes is possible, though it has its limits.

"We have been friends for the last two decades since we were in middle school. We have been so close, even when each of us had our own separate dates," said Kim. "I thought that our friendship would last even after we got married. Even though, to be frank, it wasn't easy at all."

As a starter, it became much harder to meet each other in person once they were married. Out of concern that their meeting might ruffle their partners' feathers, she said she was uneasy about the idea of actually seeing him.

"I was worried if my action with a purely friendly intention, for instance, sending a text message calling him fondly by his nickname, could derail his marital life," she said. "In Korea, people are still hesitant in accepting the idea of male-female friendship after marriage and see it as foreign and strange."

The solution Kim has found is friendship in the virtual world or friendship without actual physical contact.

"We frequently exchange text messages asking how we are. But, that is all. I don't see my male friend in person," said Kim.

She also mentioned that different circumstances of their marital status became the thing that gets in the way of a prolonged friendship with her old friend.

"Now that I have parents-in-law and a whole set of new relatives from my husband's side, I have all sorts of family gatherings and businesses I have to tend to. In terms of priority, meeting with my male friend often has to be put on the back burner," she confessed.

"If you have children, the situation gets worse. We can hardly spare time to meet anyone, not to mention male friends. Therefore, by the time we realize the importance of friendship from our youth, which is often after our children are grown up, it is hard to make up for the years of void," said Kim.

On her male friend's side, it is definitely not an easy task to keep the friendship intact.

"My dear friend now has his own family to support, the onus as the breadwinner and getting stress from his work and bosses. Even when we talk on the phone, the conversation hovers around those difficulties. It is not the kind of chat we used to have a long time ago," she added.

Avoid physical contact

Lee Myung-gil, a manager at Duo, a professional match-making firm in Korea, said that there is a difference between men and women in the way they see friendship with the opposite sex.

"More women believe that friendship between a man and a woman is possible," he said in an interview with The Korea Times. "But men know instinctively that they could cross that line under extenuating circumstances."

Lee emphasized that there is a fine line between friendship and a relationship and those who want a lasting friendship with the opposite sex should be extra careful in treating their friends. Lee added that one of the best ways to maintain such a close friendship is to avoid excessive physical contact.

"All issues that arise in a relationship begin with physical contact," he said. "Like all other relationships, treating your friend with respect will be helpful in avoiding awkward circumstances that can hamper a sincere friendship."