He's my guy friend. Emphasis on FRIEND

So I'm at school trying to study. [No success on the studying front. FML] EC comes up to me and we're chit-chatting and she says "You and Frank should date." I laugh. I remind her that Frank has a girl friend. A girl friend I think is well-suited for him and as I've mentioned before, no one likes a homewrecker. Plus, I can honestly say, I don't even remotely look at Frank in that way. Frank got put in the "friend box" the day I met him. Period. End of Story.

I bring this up because the running joke in the law school is that Frank has slept with ALL THE GIRLS. This rumor [and its DEFINITELY a rumor, people] basically got started because Frank is friends with a lot of the girls in our class, me included. Frank and I spend a lot of time together. We're pretty good friends [I'm sure he will post some sarcastic comment like, "I don't really like you" or something equally lame]. It kind of bothers me that men and women can't be friends without people assuming there's a sexual or romantic element to the relationship.

Frank is my friend. Bottom line. He talks to me. I talk to him. Listen to him. He listens to me. He teases me much as I imagine an older brother would tease his younger sister. Watches TV with me. And contributes to the disease known as procrastination. I can give the same description to AJL, CPT, or even EC. We're all friends. That's it. Simply because I'm an XX and Frank is an XY there has to be sex involved?? Uh. Nope. My sister Noni doesn't think men and women can ever just be friends. She says someone ALWAYS likes someone else. In my past, that has been largely true. The mistake known as Heartbreaker started as purely a friendship and I was the one who developed more-than-friend feelings. I've crushed on a lot of my guy friends actually. But then there are some I've NEVER looked at that way...

...Honestly, a friendship is a great way to develop a relationship IF both parties want to go there. But I don't believe that male/female friendships are automatically about sex. I refuse to believe that. If that's true, I don't know. That just makes me sad. I Goggled "Can Men and Women be Friends" and found a bunch of websites that essentially all said, NO.

When I was in high school I had a ton of male friends and once my father said to me, "Every guy who is your 'friend' has thought about what it would be like to sleep with you and either decided he didn't want to or that it wouldn't be worth risking the friendship".  Now THAT I believe is true. I think that's the nature of human beings. When I meet guys, I size them up and place them in appropriate categories: friend. dateable. wifey-material. When I met Frank he sat in the back of Civil Procedure and kind of kept to himself. Honestly, I thought he was kind of lame [sorry, Frank]. By the time I realized he was awesome, we were beyond a place where I could like him romantically. We'd hung out as friends numerous times. I knew about his girlfriend and I really admired the affection he had for her.

Frank is one of my dearest friends @ law school. I feel really blessed to have him in my life. But we SHOULDN'T date. LOL. Honestly, I am a firm believer that men and women CAN be just friends. As a matter of fact, I think EVERY girl needs a good guy friend to put it all into perspective...