Platonic Friendships

I read a book, What We Are, by Lonnie Aarssen. Aarssen is a Canadian plant ecologist, roughly contemporaneous with me. He has made the transition from plant ecologist to evolutionary psychologist—that is, studying the effects of our human evolutionary history on the way our brains work. I have made the transition from plant ecologist to a general science writer, so I know about evolutionary psychology, but do not know as much as Aarssen.

I’m not sure platonic friendship can be defined, but most of us have a general understanding of it. Aarssen makes the assertion that it is very difficult for men and women to form platonic relationships. Why? Rather than attempting a detailed summary of his reasons, I will just say that it is because men are jerks. They want to conquer women, not befriend them. That sort of captures the meaning.

I immediately recognized that this is not true of me. As I think over my life, I have had lots of platonic relationships with women. I recently made a list of people—men and women; all ages; most of them still alive—who have been important in my life, just so I could remember them. The list had 111 names, and the list keeps growing. Of these, 55 are women of a reasonably similar age with myself and with whom I had a close friendship, and with none of which I had sex. What is wrong with me?

In many cases, it would have been professionally unethical—for example, students and colleagues. But in at least 30 cases, there was no such difficulty (they were single and not, at least at the time, my students). So, I ask again, what is wrong with me?

What is wrong with me is love. In earlier decades, it was religious conviction. Later, it was that I did not want to endanger or stress my marriage. Neither of these is known, on a societal level, as a reason why a man does not have sex. But I loved all of these women, and did not want to mess up the trust they were placing in my friendship. I know for a fact that at least a few of them would have welcomed sexual intimacy from me. But a life is something you build, and as I look back on mine, I am satisfied with the choices I have made.

I knew that I was unusual, but I did not realize how unusual.