Best friends- everyone has or had one. Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands and wives- wake up- these are the roles that a lot you hold or will pursue in the future. Sure, the thought of who you will marry and where you will live, meet, dance, play, has not hit you, or maybe it has, but please do not be among the crowd who is stuck in the most dredged of all places. This crowd would be the ones who believe in platonic relationships- the biggest scams to ever hit the earth.
Don’t shake your head, it is the truth. There is no normal opposite sex closest of the close `friend.’ Do not believe that as you are talking back and forth on the phone that the other one is not mentally undressing you as you speak. Well no, that probably is not correct but have you ever seen “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “My So-called Life”? Your platonic best friend is no different then Jules’ obsession to keep her best friend single and Angela’s obsessive across-the-street neighbor who writes her secret love letters through another boy. Though all of these characters are sincere and really do truly and whole heatedly love their best friend. the ending was never a happy one for them.
Look at poor Laurie in “Little Women” who gets harshly burned for his profession of love to his best friend Jo. How much do you hate it when the platonic relationships never work out? The worst part about platonic friendships is that they are portrayed a hundred times better and faker in the movies and books. In real life, platonic friendships are on their way to extinction, and the ones left are far and few. I will give you the argument that the survival of a platonic relationship is longer than some marriages, but in the end the closeness that is shared between the two people is going to eventually cross that line of friendship or just quietly fade away when the line is crossed with someone else.
There is no way for a boy and girl to have a serious, hands down, solid friendship without crossing that line eventually or fading away completely. The platonic friendship is just the beginning stage of what I will call the friendship love. It is the most evil and torturous love of all for the one who is cursed with this desire to become more than friends with a friend.
For the unaffected friend, the rejecter or shall I say the one that is la-day-dee-la-day-da, who has no idea that there is a serious love affair going on in the head of the other, this is no big deal whether you have had your nightly chat before he or she goes to bed at night. But then that day comes and arrives like a bomb full of confusion– the tortured one has given in to his strongest instinct– the instinct to revel the new grown love.
“The strongest human instinct is to impart information, the second strongest is to resist it.” Kenneth Grahame is all on the money with that quote except he left out a part. Humans not only have to impart their information, new findings or feelings, but also have to stand by them so stubbornly that even after the person is told numerous times that the relationship is strictly only platonic, these words fall on deaf ears. The person, as if he was not present for the discussing of the impossibilities of the relationship, will continually insist with all the stubbornness of his body, that he knows better. He believes he will eventually win over the other’s love by waiting… and waiting and waiting until, oh, the next year when he sees another moment fit for the disclosure of his love, again.
This instinct to convey love and feelings to the other person in a platonic relationship is an instinct of both man and woman that can be described humorously by this quote by Russell Green about fate and destiny: “Heaven is the place where the donkey finally catches up with his carrot; hell is the eternity while he waits for it.” Platonic relationships are the hell here. Once in a blue moon the road of the platonic relationship will eventually lead to the donkey catching his carrot.
