Why Your Male Friends have Crushes on You.

"Do I know her?" I ask, half-joking, hopping for a piece of gossip to make my boring day a little less so.

"Actually you know her very, very well." My friend says, his eyes trying to catch mine in some meaningful way to pass the unspoken words.

My eyes roll with a half-hearted laugh as I quickly change the topic, letting any thought pass my lips to get the conversation to shift out of this direction, because I am all too aware of the destination. I do want to hurt my friend, simply because that is all he is to me. Yet again, the simple act of expressing my friendship and love in a purely platonic manner has manifested into a delusion of romantics in the mind of my male friend, and I cannot help to think there must be some reason as to why. Perhaps I smiled too hard, hugged him where I shouldn't or bantered a little too long. But I'm friends with many queer women and people and they have never developed crushes, or at least ones they felt the need to express however more oftne than not my male friends develop some sort of romantic feelings for me. This is not an uncommon experience, its definitely a well utilised troupe in rom-coms, however outside of the silver screen the feelings are much less likely to be mutual.

A study conducted by researchers April L. Bleske-Rechek and David M. Buss revealed many important things about male and female friendships, including that men are more likely to harbour attraction towards their female friends and and a loss of attraction as a 'more important reason for ending their friendship than did women'. (Bleske-Rechek, Buss, 2001).

I endeavour to provide reasoning to why this is such a common occurrence and also how to combat this, because I am sick of losing friends, admittedly delusional friends but friends nonetheless.

Expressions of Love in Male and Female Friendships

The first reason I believe leads to men perceiving romantic connections between himself and his female friends are the different ways love is expressed by men when compared to women.

Through observation made throughout my life, it is easy to say that men's friendships undervalue the importance of affirmations of said friendship. The patriarchy has had undeniable effects of men's mental health, and this is directly linked with the stigma surrounding men expressing their feelings. Some men even shame each other whenever one expresses his feelings, they are meant to remain unspoken. When you compare these rituals to female friendships there is an incredible difference within these interactions. Just as the patriarchy quashes mens' emotions it does with womens' self worth, enacting the need for positive reinforcements from the community she has built. This can come in the form of a hyped instagram comment, an offhand compliment, or a squeals of joy, all designed to make the friend feel better about one's self and value not only her own presence but the also the people surround her.

I believe that men enter friendships with women, and experience platonic love in a way that is open and expressed, an experience they have linked with past romantic relationships and a sort of pavlovian response develops. They automatically associate these acts of platonic, which are perfectly normal amongst female friendships, however they associate it with romantic love due to the lack of expressed love in their other friendships.

To some depressing extent, perhaps this is also due to the fact that women have and are consistently viewed as objects and our existence is portrayed in modern media as an extension of men's needs. Many men are not inherently misogynistic and consciously understand women are muti-faceted people rather than cast-away objects of desire, however with the new wave of Andrew Tates and Ben Shapiros of the world, I fear that to completely abolish these institutionalised beliefs that one must actively unlearning behaviours and ingrains methods of thinking constantly. However I also believe that some reality check must be endowed and this is simply unlikely to happen, no matter how much I rant and rave, unfortunately.

I believe the only way to stop the torrent of friends developing crushes on friends is to spread healthy expressions of emotions in male friendships. Not only will it associate these behaviours with platonic parters over romantic parters it will also encourage healthy friendships to thrive. It would help mental health in men, particularly adolescents. Encouraging men to build upon their own platonic relationships with positive affirmations and outward displays of love with other men, has no visible downside in my view.

At the end of the day I could just be a cynic, here to quash any romantics, but maybe I'm sick of friendships falling apart after I don't reciprocate feelings and honestly don't even want to try. Maybe I'm sick of showing small acts of kindness and people understanding that to be some strange way of flirting. Maybe I'm sick of all my male friendships ending when I don't become the idea of myself they have imagined. Maybe all I want in this world is friends, and to understand why that in itself is so hard to understand.