It’s a question that people have been asking for decades, if not longer. Some will say it’s possible, while others disagree. Does it depend on the person? Is it easier for girls to stay friendly with guys or vice versa? What about staying in touch with exes? Is it unreasonable to refuse to let our significant others have close friends of the opposite sex, or is that being too controlling? Unfortunately, I don’t know the answers to these questions. I can only speak from my own personal experiences in considering the possibilities.

In looking at myself, I tend to be someone who falls for the person, not for their looks. This is not to say I don’t find guys attractive based on looks alone all the time. But I also recognize there’s a lot more to a person than just their looks, and it’s usually these things that are most important. It’s because of this that I’m more likely to fall for a guy the better I get to know him. This would seem dangerous in a setting where I’m in a long-term relationship, but I disagree with the danger. I will not lie. I had plenty of crushes on guys while I was in my 12 year relationship with my ex. But I was happy in my relationship and would never consider being unfaithful. In fact, I felt the crushes added a little bit of innocent excitement to the relationship.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only experience I had with this topic. My ex was always someone who had female friends. He can be a good listener and sensitive, and that made girls feel comfortable confiding in him. I never had any problem with this. In fact, I like to tell the story of my last semester in grad school before we got married. My ex had already paved the way for our move to Manhattan. He started a job for a company affiliated with the company he’d worked for in San Diego and found us a studio apartment on the Upper West Side. I would join him in May after I graduated. One weekend before I came out, two of the girls he’d become friends with on the job in San Diego flew out to New York on his new company’s dime. They spent the weekend hanging out, going to bars, etc. One night, he called me from a limo with them, asking me to look up the phone number for a strip club someone had suggested they check out. “Ask for Tiny, and tell him I sent you,” he’d said. So I found the number and gave it to him. I trusted him completely.

It was less than four years later before I learned it was time to start worrying. It was an October evening when he came to me and told me he had met a girl for coffee twice behind my back. Just coffee, and just as friends. He explained that he’d needed someone to talk to about the depression he was feeling and didn’t want to see a professional. He’d posted an ad on craigslist under the platonic section. He’d told her all about me. At the age of 25, she’d had enough problems to make my ex feel better about his own situation, and they felt comfortable talking to each other. He asked for my permission to be friends with her, and I said yes with certain conditions. And now, a year and a half later, we are divorced as a result. Friendship, as it turned out in this scenario, was not enough.

Was it a stupid move to say yes? Maybe. But I don’t regret making it. The way I see it, if I’d said no, he either would’ve continued to see her behind my back, held it against me, or found someone else at some other time down the road. When we met at nineteen, I had been his first serious girlfriend, and the time I’d always wondered about had finally come… the time when he’d wonder what it would be like to be with someone else. She had given him the opportunity. He had taken it. It probably wouldn’t have happened this way if it wasn’t already something he was considering.

So, what do you think? What are your experiences? Can we trust our significant others with friends of the opposite sex? It’s a question I’m asking myself these days as I return to the dating world. I’m interested in your insights.

Originally posted for Examiner.com at http://www.examiner.com/article/can-men-and-women-just-be-friends-2