Should You Want To Bone Your Friends? A Treatise

Behold! I have had a thought.

Hi!

Hello. Hi.

A column

It’s time for me to come clean.

Some months ago, Charlotte Ivers wrote in the paper of record about a concept invented by a pal of hers - the “bellwether friend”. The pal did not want to be named then but she wants to be named now, because she believes she ought to explain herself.

There is a man in my life I call the bellwether friend, because I only ever find him attractive when I have been celibate for too long. It is a very useful friend to have: like a walking, talking early warning system.

If I am doing fine then he is just someone who exists in the world, and whom I enjoy having drinks with on occasion. If, however, I see him and feel my eyes gently popping from their sockets and my tongue slowly unfurling down my chin, I know something must be done. Does this lessen our friendship in any way? I don’t believe it does. In fact: let me go further. Do I believe it makes our friendship in some way unique? I don’t believe so either.

Here are, by way of proof, a series of short anecdotes, all of which happened recently enough that they still feel relevant, but not so recently that anyone should be able to identify any of the people in them. 

One: I went shopping for party dresses with a friend once and she wanted to look very good, because she was single and didn’t want to be. She went to try something on and came out of the changing room, and I was hit by such a wave of desire that I thought I may fall over. Once I’d recovered, it made me think of all those teenage movies where the ugly duckling gets a nice frock, walks down the stairs and is suddenly found to be gorgeous. I’d always made fun of those movies. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I have not fancied this woman before or since. She did not buy the dress, which I found to be both a relief and a disappointment.

Two: there was a man I fancied for a while then didn’t, because sometimes that’s how life goes. There was one day, however, when we saw each other in the summer and it was warm and everyone was covered in a thin layer of sweat and he wore a t-shirt which for some reason looked absurdly flattering on him, and I found it all very overwhelming. I spent the afternoon gently vibrating with lust. I couldn’t look at his face and I couldn’t look at his body either so instead I looked at the bit where his hair met the top of his forehead. I don’t think he noticed.

Three: I went dancing with some friends one evening and one man was there, who I’d always found attractive but in a wholly manageable way. It was one of those club nights where the music is silly and loud and people are snogging in the corner like teenagers and shots suddenly start sounding like a good idea. I spent the night avoiding the man I thought I didn’t really fancy because for some reason, under those low ceilings, surrounded by those sticky strangers, I suddenly fancied him more than I’d ever fancied anyone in my life. I hid around corners of the dancefloor because I thought my eyes and my entire face would betray me. I had, for the avoidance of doubt, and to the best of my knowledge, not taken any drugs.

Did I, at any point since these events took place, sleep with one or several of those people? I did not. If I were to go for a pint or six with them tomorrow and they launched themselves at me, would I go along with it? I had to stop typing for a moment to think about it but the answer is actually very straightforward. I would not. There are a number of reasons why I wouldn’t, some easy and some more complicated, but the short version is: these three people are my friends. I do not want to have sex with them.

Now, for a different question. Do I think that these friendships were in any way ruined or tainted by my outbursts of physical and emotional attraction? I do not have to stop typing to think about it. Obviously not. 

I have mentioned all this not simply to share slightly too much of myself online, which is admittedly one of my favourite hobbies, but to offer a riposte to the riposte. A few days ago, someone wrote an opinion column arguing that it can be tough for men and women to be friends, because some form of tension tends to often get in the way. I will not link to it because there is no point. I’m not especially interested in that piece.

What I found more compelling was the response, which was the same it always is. Of course, people rushed in to say, men and women can be friends with each other, as can various queers with people whose gender identity matches their preferences. It is sad to assume that lust will always get in the way, and it is perfectly possible for those friendships to exist without even a hint of tension. That is where I wanted to come in.

The debate on mixed gender friendships has been going on for long enough that it ought to have been sorted out for good ages ago but here we are, still talking about it. I believe that is because both sides are wrong. Of course, any two people can be friends. It is both ridiculous and thoroughly depressing to suggest otherwise. Similarly, it is incredibly disheartening to watch people pretend that “friendship” and “romance” - or “friendship” and “sex” - are such different things that they can be put in big boxes, entirely separate from one another.

Really, if I were to be facetious, I’d argue that the puritanical camp is the one closest to the truth, as it is entirely correct that any two people of compatible sexualities who happen to get along tremendously may one day end up wanting more. They may not, but they may yet. That is the most realistic view of human relationships between the two. 

Still, the belief that underpins both sides of the argument is the same one, namely that physical attraction will only ever soil non-romantic relationships. One camp consequently wants those non-romantic relationships to be avoided; the other believes that they can only really happen when there is no lust to be concerned about. To which I say: pah, a horny, horny pox on both your houses.

It is good and normal to have friends you occasionally want to sleep with because we’re bits of meat controlled by hormones, and sometimes if we spend a lot of time around people who make us laugh then we may want to see them naked, just out of curiosity. Some friendships would be nothing without a bit of flirting because everyone involved knows that nothing should ever happen, and if we can’t add a bit of friction to our day-to-day lives then we might as well be dead.

Feelings are more complicated but that doesn’t mean they cannot be dealt with. A lot of growing up involves understanding that timing is everything, and matters more than who you are and who they are and the extent to which you’d like to jump into bed with each other. Sometimes friendship was, realistically, the second best option for one or the two of you but that doesn’t mean it’s a lousy one. You do not need to build a life with someone in order to reap the rewards of deep, genuine human connection.

Feelings also can - and often do - wax and wane. You may have a perfectly serviceable friendship with someone for some time then find yourself down a pit of loneliness, and start wondering if perhaps they could be the person to dig you out of it. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not: giving it a shot is a big swing but, if you don’t, it is incredibly likely that you will end up crawling out of that pit yourself, and those weeks or months will feel like an uncomfortable memory. Friendships are sturdy and can withstand a lot, as long as you tend to them properly.

They are also, if we’re being honest here, not always miles away from romantic entanglement. Why did you fall in love with your current or former partner? What do you look for in a close friend? Can you not see that both lists have a lot of things in common? We live in a society that wants to treat romantic love as a unique form of bond, entirely separated from the other ways in which we relate to one another, but that just seems entirely alien to me.

I have friends who, in my head, I refer to as my AUBs - my alternate universe boyfriends. There is no bitterness attached to the title, and rarely any bittersweetness. It is merely an acknowledgement of the fact that, had this or that turned out differently, we could have maybe ended up together. It’s nothing more than an interesting detail, or a philosophical experiment. Who would I be if the dice had fallen differently? Who would they be? Would we make each other happy?

“What if?” is a question that is often treated as a taboo and I don’t always understand why. The internet will take your side if you frown at the thought of a partner still being close to someone they clearly share a connection with. The rule is that you shouldn’t truly be friends with your exes, because it isn’t the done thing. We shouldn’t befriend people who, in a different world, we’d want to spend a whole weekend in bed with. That way madness lies, we’re told.

I think it’s good to wonder “what if?”. It’s a brilliant question! Our entire lives are made of choices, past, present and future, and it’s good to be reminded of that. It’s always hard to know if we’re making the right decisions at any given point but that’s part of the game. Ambivalence and uncertainty shouldn’t be feared or avoided. They’re reminders of the possibilities that still lie ahead of us. 

By surrounding ourselves with people whose role in our lives could have been different, we also get to repeatedly tell ourselves that there is rarely a single correct answer. A one night stand could be a mate could be a fling could be a soulmate could be an acquaintance could be a lifelong friend. The only thing that truly matters is finding your people; figuring out exactly what shape they should take up in your life should only ever come second.

That’s why I hate dating apps and keep going on about why I hate them. They encourage you to identify a very specific shape in your life then try to find a person who matches it, like a baby playing with one of those sensory games. You want a triangle and so you swipe and swipe until you find one and if it doesn’t quite fit you throw it back on the ground, unable or unwilling to wonder whether it may have fit somewhere else.

Singling out romance as unique does everyone a disservice because it gets rid of the grey areas, and they’re often where people thrive. If you view a need for a relationship as so specific that it deserves its very own app, then of course you’ll find it easier to discount friendships always threatening to fall into an odd, sticky limbo. Friends are friends and partners are partners and everything else is messy, or French.

Luckily not everything is French but a lot of what we do and how we live is messy, and denying that won’t get you really far. At best, it’ll make you miss out on connections you could have found enriching, if sometimes tough to disentangle. That’s probably the crux of it, right? People don’t want to get hurt and so they create rules that, they imagine, will stop them from getting caught in situations where they may look and feel stupid.

I suppose I’m quite lucky in that regard, because I’ve spent so much of my life looking and feeling stupid that I’ll happily keep going. I’ve wanted to fuck more of my friends than I could count and sometimes it did end up happening but most of the time it didn’t, and that’s fine. I’m sure there are friends who, at various points, ended up wondering what I’d look like from various athletic angles and I’m also comfortable with that. Idle fantasies are free, and they can always keep you warm when your life feels uncomfortably cold.

The only way for us to build a world in which those lines can happily be blurred is by admitting that the emperor has been naked this whole time. There are often miles between friendship and romance, but sometimes the line is paper thin. We just have to like the people we like and love the people we love, in whatever shape or form life has given us. It may get complicated at times, but it will nearly always be worth it. 

A palate cleanser

A review that’s actually more of a rant

I started watching Brothers Sun, Netflix’s big fancy new show, a couple of days after it came out. I’d not heard of it before because every day there are millions of new shows released by millions of different platforms, but for once the algorithm had got it right. It did seem up my street.

A Taiwanese student and his mum, Michelle Yeoh, are living a nice, regular, normal life in LA. Halfway across the world, the dad, a triad boss, gets shot and ends up in a coma. His son and right-hand man decides to fly to the US to protect his family, due to vague plot noises. The younger brother had no idea that he came from a big crime family, having left Taiwan as a child. Events ensue - some funny, some violent.

I watched the first few episodes and started drafting a few paragraphs in my head, as I was essentially certain I’d want to recommend it to you by the end. As the show went on, though, the review I had in my head started getting less and less glowing.

To be clear, having now finished it, I still think The Brothers Sun is a good show. It has eight episodes, is tightly plotted, has some fun characters, some decent twists, and a main actor so handsome I kept wanting to sigh and mutter “now there’s a handsome man”, like someone’s aunt. It’s just quite frustrating.

In a way, it made me think of those fast fashion clothes you see in H&M and Zara and everywhere else. You walk into the shop and everything looks good but then you pick up a garment and realise that the fabric is cheaper than it seemed, and the lining is too thin, and the stitches are definitely going to come loose after a couple of washes. It’s very nearly great, but not quite.

The Brothers Sun is the same: it’s so close to being a great show but it was obviously a bit half-arsed. Some lines are terribly hammy; there are a few plot holes guaranteed to make your teeth itch; some shots just look clumsy. I don’t know enough about filmmaking to confidently make this argument but even as a rube, I do wonder: surely these things couldn’t have been that hard to fix?

Then again, maybe that’s where we’re at these days. Everything’s a bit half-arsed - clothes, shows, food, all of it. Things are rarely awful but rarely brilliant. Long live the pleasant beige! I give The Brothers Sun a 7.5/10, knowing full well it could have been a 9 if it’d tried just a bit harder, which, you know, same.

That’s it! Bye!