I will say with no shame that When Harry Met Sally is one of my all time favorite movies. I mean it is even on my never been updated blogger profile. One of the standard theories of that movie is that men and women can't be friends, the reason being my title. While WHMS is the seminal exponent of this theory, almost every single Hollywood movie in existence operates on this central premise.

I came across a Slate series on platonic friends that shows that most of the readers of the site also believe the Hollywood theory. The platonic friends debate is one that I was sure I had opined on before and a quick look through my back issues proved me right.

Sadly I have realized that I did a damn good job writing on it the last time, and that I probably couldn't do better this time around. Clearly I'm a worse writer. Anyway, based on an old 2008 post, I can categorically state that I believe that men and women can be friends subject to a pretty significant caveat. The post is called The Age Old Question and the caveat (for those of you too lazy to click through) was that men and women can only be friends once the sex stuff has been dealt with.

To my slight shame, checking also revealed that I also expressed an opinion on platonic friends in an early piece written in 2007 called These Girls Sef. Now this piece also proves that I pretty much believed the same thing, though the less said about my beliefs about the role of female friends the better. I can positively say that those views have changed...somewhat.

I suppose it is kinda annoying to be prompted by an article to write something, only to realize that this has happened before, but I guess I can't really turn away any promptings to blog in these blogging starved days. The only thing I would add to the posts, is that there is also an ethical component to dealing with the sex thing. Basically I'm saying that sometimes you deal with the sex thing by realizing that there are sensible reasons why you can't be together: other relationships, close exes, work, religion, etc... The older you get, the more important these other reasons become.

So what do my last two readers think? Can platonic friends happen without dealing with the sex stuff?