The Platonic Ideal?

I'm not a man who believes in the existence of the ideal, metaphysical or otherwise. I don't think it's something we can accomplish on Earth and I'm there with Feuerbach that we should focus on the human aspect instead-what can we accomplish as men if we push ourselves to the limit? Nothing can ever reach perfection, but it's a worthy goal to see how much better you can become. As an extreme extrovert, I'm also someone who reflects a fair amount on his social relationships, thinking and overthinking these things.

So when my friend asked me if men and women could ever be Platonic best friends, I doubt she knew what she was getting into. It's an extremely interesting question and an impossible one to discuss without weaving in your own metanarrative, very difficult to stay impartial and leave out personal examples. Of course we didn't anyway, which certainly made it more colorful.

Personal gossip aside (yes, I learned from the whole LiveJournal thing in 8th grade), we came to some conclusions. Best friends are an interesting sort-it implies a ton of solo time together, a fair amount of family interaction, and a kind of devotion that is difficult to keep up with more than one person at a time. How can a man have a female best friend and a girlfriend at the same time? Other issues aside, it's an enormous time commitment that could really only be kept up in the utopian euphoria of high school or college where you might actually have enough leisure for that. One really can't develop both at the same time in the real world, unless there is the close coworker relationship. Like same project close.

Anyways, we aren't dealing with the common relationships of male and female best friends, we're looking at the fringes, the very possibility of the Platonic ideal. And, let's be honest with ourselves anyway, the vast majority of those friendships have at least one party (if not both) hopelessly in love with and serving the other anyway.

I think the very notion of the Platonic friendship stems from the idea that we can learn to sublimate our sensual side in favor of the spiritual, which in and of itself admits the way that nature really works here. I think that we can learn to sublimate certain things and trick ourselves, but eventually human nature prevails. Similar to the way that our most animal instincts will rear their ugly head in crisis and our tribal affiliations in times of war, the basic sexual attraction of men and women is difficult to permanently eliminate or "civilize."

Men and women constantly reevaluate those around them as potential partners, consciously or subconsciously, and best friends who really get to know each other often cross that line because they find they love the person as they get to know them. Those who manage to control this urge usually have a huge opportunity cost or deterrent to getting together-they're together with someone they love more, etc. Often times, the best friends I've seen as male/female pairings are those who've been together and realize they love each other but don't work romantically.

Still, I think it's ultimately impossible to do more than sublimate in these situations, it's an ideal we like to convince ourselves of because it's not really an option to be together, for whatever reason. As we age and pair off with life partners, it becomes extremely difficult to be friends with people that aren't also paired off into couples and it can spark huge issues when you hang out 1 on 1 with someone. It's painful to consider, but most of these relationships trail off into the sunset as we begin a life as a family, dedicating what used to be friend time to family time. Friendships are maintained through yearly trips, Fourth of July rituals, and Christmas cards, but they're never afforded the time you could give when you were single and your network of friends is powerless to avoid its inevitable decline.

A friend of mine once told me that you can never really be friends with the opposite sex, at least long term anyway. I think he's wrong, but there's some truth to the idea that those relationships are much more difficult to maintain. Like most things in life, we've got a fundamental inability to alter our circumstances; if we're lucky enough to understand them a little bit before they dramatically change, that's all you can ask for. Armed with foresight, you can at least set expectations. Even for the prematurely sagacious, life is full of surprises, wonder, and bemusement.