A few months ago, my friend and I were walking in the hallway together talking about math class, and how we felt about the upcoming test. This friend of mine happened to be a girl. Even though we are both straight, there is no attraction to each other involved in our friendship. 

Another friend of mine, who is a male, saw me having this conversation and came up to me immediately after we left. “So when are you putting a move on her?” 

As frustrating as comments like these are, this was nothing you. I have plenty of friendships with girls from school, sports, work, etc. that are really nothing more than friendships. But seemingly every time I have a conversation with one of them someone comes along and implies that I want to date her, she wants to date me, or both. This just isn’t true.

Maybe due to the popular TV and movie trend of “best-friends to lovers,” seen in sitcoms like Brooklyn-99 with Jake and Amy, and New Girl with Jess and Nick, people seem to doubt that a straight man and a straight woman can be friends without having feelings for each other.

It does make sense that people make these conclusions. There are certainly a lot of couples who are close friends first, as a phase of ‘getting closer,’ before they fall into a relationship.

Another reason some boys may have doubts about friendships between males and females is that it’s difficult to understand that the other boy’s friendship with some girls may be closer than that of two guys. One time I gave pizza from my work to a friend that was a girl instead of a different friend that happened to be a boy, and the friend that didn’t get pizza was mad, saying I only gave it to her because I had feelings for her. It gets tiring.

There is also a strong stigma -seemingly mainly towards males- that a man who is friends with a girl is ‘trapped’ in the ‘friend-zone.’ Is it really unfathomable that a man just wants to be friends with a girl?

This stigma comes from a lot of different places. It makes sense that there are a lot of boys who are attracted to girls they hang out with, and vice versa. But there are countless friendships between boys and girls that are okay the way they are. And that’s something that people (especially high school students) need to realize.