There is no such thing as a free meal, and, as a woman, I feel there is no such thing as ‘just dinner’ or a man that ‘just wants to get to know [you]’. When a man asks a woman for dinner or her phone number, 99% of the time it means he is sexually interested in her.

Make no mistake, ladies, men rarely want to be ‘just friends’. They can be a friend alright, just as long as at some point the woman lets down her guard and allows special access usually reserved for a sexual mate.

Don’t get me wrong, male-female friendships do exist, but they are usually of seven types:

1 He harbours the occasional lustful thought but is passive about making something happen and values your friendship.

2 He became friends with you in an attempt to sleep with you, failed, but has resigned himself to friendship.

3 He became friends with you with the aim of sleeping with you but failed and is waiting for his next opportunity.

4 He’s married or in a relationship, but could possibly be any of numbers 1, 2 and 3.

5 He’s friends with a guy who’s already interested in you and doesn’t want to have a conflict of interest and step on his mate’s toes. He’ll probably get over the conflict of interest and chance his arm at some point.

6 He’s gay.

7 Very occasionally, you get the guy that really, truly, just wants to be a woman’s friend. Enjoy this man’s friendship!

Now, it doesn’t mean he’s not your friend but there is an element to your friendship that has past, forgotten or intended sexual overtones.

I’ve always played with boys, and as I’ve grown older, I have a few male friends and plenty of male acquaintances. I love talking to men, and feel perfectly comfortable being the only woman in a crowd of them, although I am not a ‘ladette’. I retain my feminine charms, without having to be a footie fan or lager swilling, beer gut heaving mate to the boys.

Nonetheless, I have fallen out with, or drifted away from quite a few guys who I’ve considered to be friends. There is a root cause at the heart of these friendships ending: sex. And it’s generally a lack of sex, as I don’t believe in sleeping with my friends.

In my teenage years, I forged friendships with varying males that eventually fell foul because they either confessed interest in me and I rejected it, or they confessed it, we snogged, and then belatedly realised we were better off as friends.

In my so-called ‘adult years’, I’ve had, and still have, a number of male friends, but I have sat in the heat of their girlfriends glares to know that the majority of us don’t believe that platonic male/female friendships exist.

I am wary of men that ask for my number under the pretext of wanting to be ‘just friends’. In all of my adult years, I am yet to have a male friend that I acquired from a nightclub/party/or some other chat-up scenario.

My male friends are university and work colleagues, or guys I’ve gotten to know from various social circles. I’ve genuinely gotten to know them over time and am fortunate I’ve not had sexual dalliances with any of them.

It’s these male friends who’ve told me what guys motives really are.

There are many times that I’ve heard the tale of a woman falling out with a male friend because he tried it on and, when she rebuffed him, things were never the same again. Then there are the women that go out with or marry the guy they’ve been friends with for ages. And most women I know have a gay male friend.

It’s hard to bounce back to easy friendship after your friend has tried it on. I’ve found that one of two things can happen on this occasion. The first is, following the proposition, you smile tightly, while secretly feeling angry, and then tell him how wonderful he is but you’d rather be friends. Why ruin such a beautiful friendship?

Or, horror of horrors, he propositions you and you wake up to the morning sunshine and your mate beside you, stark naked with your clothes hanging from the lampshade recalling the previous nights events with horror and a sickening feeling in your tummy.

Both sexes have their own way of assessing whether they think a friendship is platonic or not. I know many women who judge how much of a threat a woman is by comparing them to themselves. Is she a femme fatale? Does she make him laugh more? Does she seem to know every little last thing about him? Worse still, if she’s a knock-out in the looks department, and you’re the type to get insecure, you’ll be sharpening your claws and taking off your earrings so you can square up

Men, on the other hand, judge other men on the basis of what they would do under the same circumstances, or what they know other men would do.

99% of the time, the conclusion is that the man in question has ulterior motives. They’re trying to get you into bed. Done and dusted.

Men don’t generally spend much time worrying whether their girlfriend’s male friend is better looking, better built, etc. If they do, it’s secondary to the fundamental belief that, regardless of these other factors, these men want to sleep with their women.

So where does that leave women? Nowhere really. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

If we refuse every offer of new friendship from a guy, we’re ‘cocky’ for assuming all guys want to get in our knickers. Still, if we take everything at so-called face value, we’re probably going to have lots of uncomfortable conversations.

I think the moral of this story is to be upfront about your intentions. If a man has no intention of being friends with a woman and wants to woo her, making out that he ‘just wants to be friends’ is more than a little silly. Very often, women will take a man at his word and it makes things very awkward when it turns out that he never wanted to be ‘just friends’.

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