Bestof
Texts, E-mails and the Internet: More Ways to Flirt Than Ever
When Harry met Sally, he told her men and women can't be friends. Sex always gets in the way, so the friendship is doomed.
"What if they don't want to have sex with you?" Sally demanded, when he admitted men pretty much want to sleep with every woman they meet.
"Doesn't matter," he shrugged. "The sex thing is already out there." We've all seen the movie. We know that, in the end, Harry and Sally couldn't just be friends. But his philosophy isn't always true, we find ourselves thinking.
After all, I'm friends with a member of the opposite sex. And there's absolutely nothing going on between us.
That long, leisurely lunch last week was perfectly innocent -- though, of course, I haven't quite got around to telling my spouse. But I've nothing to hide.
Naturally, we flirt a bit, tease each other and share the odd friendly hug and pat on the back. But it doesn't mean anything. It just brightens the day.
After all -- and here's the crucial, get-off-the-hook bit -- we haven't even kissed, much less slept together. So what harm can it possibly do? Actually, quite a lot. According to countless Web sites on marital problems, having an emotional affair is the new infidelity.
It seems sharing secrets, dreams and fears with another person can be as dangerous to your marriage as the old-fashioned exchange of bodily fluids.
Women shouldn't be surprised by the news. The sexes have markedly differing attitudes towards relationships.
Despite the rise of casual sex and ladies who are as generous with their bedroom favors as the boys, women tend to equate sex with love.
A woman who bares her soul to a man feels intensely attached to him, even if she doesn't actually sleep with him: You have only to look at the tendency for women to fall in love with their psychiatrists and priests to see this in action.
Men are able to distinguish between the two more easily. Women give sex to get love; men give love to get sex.
A man will see absolutely nothing wrong in developing a relationship with a woman, as long as it doesn't become physical.
By and large, it takes the cement of sex to bind a man to a woman.
Without it, the relationship, however intense it seems, remains casual.
That doesn't mean he isn't planning to get sex out of it. He's just learned, in this day and age of the caring, sharing, listening New Man, to play a longer game. As Harry observed in the movie: "No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her." The number of men and women indulging in emotional affairs is on the increase, and with it, the heartache that all too often follows.
According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, 15 percent of women and a quarter of men have extramarital sex. Add in the nonphysical relationships -- emotional affairs -- and those figures rise by more than 20 percent.
And it's easy to understand why. As women have flooded the workplace, the opportunity for friendships, platonic and otherwise, has increased.
