Today, we're going to talk about one of

the internet's favorite questions, can

men and women actually be friends? Now,

I'm of the mind that the answer is

absolutely yes. People can be friends,

but it requires a skill set that not all

of us were taught. And on the other

side, there's people who believe that

men and women can't be friends, and

there's always going to be some kind of

attraction that carries a risk. Because

you guys may have heard of this

scenario, right? You're dating someone

who is your romantic partner, and they

have a friend, and you're kind of

worried about their friend. You can sort

of tell that their friend is into them,

but they're like, "Oh, no, they're

friends. We've been friends for years.

There's nothing going on." And then

after y'all break up, 3 months later, 6

months later, lo and behold, they're

actually in a relationship. And the

scary thing is there's a lot of truth to

that as well. So, in order to navigate

this question of can men and women be

friends or not, we're actually going to

explore both of those paths. What is a

friendship? What does a platonic

friendship look like? And what's the

deal with all these people in the friend

zone who end up dating later on. Let's

start with the side of men and women can

be friends. But this requires a skill

set that is different that not everyone

has. Now, some people grew up with

parents who had a good template for

cross-sex relationships. We're assuming

a heteronormative perspective here,

okay? So, if you grew up with your mom

having male friends that she was close

to, or your dad having female friends

that he was close to, there's a good

chance that you internalized

a lot of the skills that they utilized.

And this may be subtle things, right?

So, you notice that your mom, while she

may have had female friends and male

friends, she was way more touchy with

her female friends than she may have

been with her male friends. There are

all kinds of subtle boundaries that are

a part of this template of a cross-sex

relationship, which explains why it's so

easy for some people and so difficult

for others. Because a lot of this stuff

gets baked in when we're growing up. So,

what kinds of skills do these entail?

The first thing that I think is really

important is actually emotional

regulation. I'm a psychiatrist and on

this mental health channel, we always

talk about emotional regulation. But,

let's understand what we mean by this,

okay? So, why can't men and women be

friends? Well, because at some point,

someone's going to catch feelings,

right? That's the main argument. At some

point, you're going to start getting

attracted to this person, you'll start

maybe falling in love with them. And

this is a key thing to understand. If

you fall in love with someone, what are

your options? So, this is what I mean by

emotional regulation. Love is an

emotion, right? At its core, for the

most part, there's at least an emotional

component to it. And so, if you can

manage your anger and not give in to

your anger. So, I'm pissed at someone,

but I'm going to go ahead and hold my

head up high and not sink to their

level. If I'm feeling sad or depressed

and I don't feel like getting out of

bed, but I'm able to regulate that

emotion and be able to get out of bed

anyway, then those emotions do not

dictate my life. And this is [snorts]

where love is no different, right? So,

if we kind of think about it, everyone's

all for emotional regulation of sadness.

If I feel ashamed, Dr. K, how do I hold

my head up high? If I feel like I've got

low self-confidence, how do I build that

self-esteem? What are the techniques of

emotional regulation to deal with these

emotions? But, when it comes to love, we

don't think about this as something that

needs to be emotionally regulated. And

in the same way that I can regulate my

anger, it no longer controls me, I can

also regulate my love and it no longer

controls me. So, a huge deciding factor

is when you catch feelings, what is the

way that you deal with those feelings,

right? Some people will pull away, which

can be a healthy thing to do cuz we

don't want to foster those feelings.

Another important skill that you can

have is having a conversation about it,

right? So, can you go to this friend of

yours and have a mature conversation as

friends and say, "Hey, I noticed that

like I'm starting to have some romantic

feelings towards you." And this is

important to understand. If you're truly

friends, this does not have to be like a

confession, right? Which is what a lot

of people default to. I think it's a

terrible move. Just going to your friend

and saying like, "Hey, I'm catching some

weird feelings. Wondering if you're

experiencing anything similar. We as

friends, how are we going to navigate

this, right?" And you're not trying to

tell them, "Hey, I want a relationship

with you." Which by the way is another

really basic skill. If you catch

feelings, do you need to follow them? If

you feel lust, is that something that

you're defaulting to gratifying? And

what I find in a lot of people who

struggle to have cross-sex relationships

is that they're not able to have

conversations. They're not able to

regulate their emotions. And if they

catch feelings, that means they need to

act on them. But then we have another

problem, which is that we sort of think

that, "Okay, once I'm in love, then I

will stay in love, right?" Like this

feeling will grow and grow and grow and

this will be torture, so I need to pull

out of this relationship. Totally fine

to do that. But this is where we also

have to understand something else about

emotions, which is that they tend to

equilibriate over time. One of the

biggest problems with relationships is

that we fall in love and then we fall

out of love. The spark from the

relationship disappears. And in fact,

that is more common than the spark

staying, right? So the average person

will date several people that they feel

some degree of chemistry, some degree of

attraction, but then over time that

attraction will kind of potter out, will

wane. I work with a lot of married

couples who've been together for 10

years, 15 years, 20 years, and they've

started the process of falling out of

love. About 50% 40 to 45% of

relationships end in marriages end in

divorce, and a big part of that is that

people fall out of love. So just because

you are catching feelings doesn't mean

that those feelings will continue to

grow. You can talk about it, you can

manage those feelings, you can do some

meditation, you can spend some

meaningful time with your significant

other over here. There are a lot of

things that you can actually do to

manage those feelings. Second thing to

keep in mind is that over time,

generally speaking, if you catch

feelings for someone, the research on

love shows that it usually requires

investment on your part to maintain that

feeling of love. The first stage of love

is governed a lot by dopamine, right?

So, their presence is, "Oh my god, the

[snorts] thought of them, I'm so like

you just get this dopamine trickle in

your brain when you're in their

presence. Just being in their presence

feels amazing. Oh my god, I can't the

the touch to just brush against them is

electricity in my skin. Oh my god." That

feeling is dopamine. But, when people

are in a relationship for 20 or 30

years, that feeling usually does not

persist. What we know about long-term

relationships is that you need to add

other kinds of love, oxytocin love,

which is a sense of bonding, a sense of

connectedness. There's also types of

love that involve sacrifice, planning

together, living together, having

nurturing things that kind of tie you

together, like having kids or starting a

business or whatever. So, we know from

the science of love, which you guys can

see more about in Dr. K's Guide to Love,

Sex, and Relationships, is that there

are several different kinds of love,

several different phases of attraction.

And actually, the most common thing is

for us to catch feelings for someone,

and then over time, those feelings will

wane just like any other emotion will.

So, if you're able to regulate your

emotions, if you're able to have

conversations with your friend, if

you're able to observe boundaries. So,

this is also something that I'm kind of

careful about, which is that if I'm

attracted to a friend of mine, I'm very

careful about the kind of time I spend

with them. And I'm not going to engage

in behaviors that foster the growth of

that attraction. So, if I have a friend

that I'm attracted to, I'll go to lunch

instead of dinner. If we go to dinner,

we'll have maybe one or two drinks, but

generally speaking, I try not to drink

around people that I'm attracted to. And

the other really important part is that

when I have friends that I could be

attracted to or we feel some kind of

connection, I've noticed they do this

too, we'll also include our partners in

our relationship. So, we'll do like a

double date or something. We'll hang out

with our kids or whatever. So, we sort

of encourage sort of a more platonic

energy by bringing other factors into

it. And so, it may not be surprising

that actually if you poll people who

have friends of the opposite sex, both

men and women, people actually consider

physical attractiveness between friends

to be a cost or burden of the

relationship, not an advantage. So, if

you ask, is this a benefit or a cost to

be attracted to your platonic friends,

would you consider that a benefit? 6% of

people say, yes, it's a benefit to have

an attractive friend. 32% of people,

five times as many people will say that

being attracted to your friends is a

cost or burden on the relationship. So,

it does get complicated if you're into

them, but generally speaking, a lot of

people are capable of having platonic

relationships without any romantic

involvement. But, what's the flip side

of the argument, right? Because there

are all are a lot of people who say men

and women can't be friends and there's

the one that your boyfriend or

girlfriend told you not to worry about,

which you know you should worry about.

So, this is what's really fascinating.

If you look at the way that most

relationships form, this is kind of not

counting online dating because that's a

different kind of environment, but if

you look at the organic way that

relationships form, in one study of

1,857

people, 70.3%

of these people said that they were

friends first before they engaged in a

romantic relationship. So, over

two-thirds of people, over two-thirds of

relationships start as friendships,

okay? Other interesting thing is that

the average duration of friendship is

21.9

months. So, these people are usually

friends for about two years before they

start dating. So, it kind of tracks with

your experience of your dating your

let's say your girlfriend and then you

guys date for a year, there's a friend

that you're worried about, they break up

or y'all break up and then 8 months

later they are dating the friend that

you were worried about. The data behind

this stuff actually absolutely tracks

with that. But, if we want to

understand, you know, how does this

happen? What's the deal with the friend

zone? The moment that we say that there

is a pathway and by the way, in the

literature this is called the

friends-to-lovers pathway, which is the

most common way to enter into a romantic

relationship. Now, we've triggered all

the friend zone people, right? So, like

not in a bad way, but like there are a

lot of us who have romantic feelings for

a friend or maybe they have romantic

feelings for us and we've been told, "Oh

my god, the friend zone is a terrible

place to be." We've been told that you

should express your romantic interest

early. Like, don't get slotted into the

friend zone. Don't get friend zoned.

Stay in the girlfriend zone or the

boyfriend zone. Like, that's the zone we

want to stay in. And so, then people are

going to be wondering like, "Okay, how

do we navigate this, right?" So, what

determines whether someone winds up as a

friend, whether you maintain a platonic

relationship, or you sort of board the

on-ramp onto the romantic relationship.

And this is where we've got to dig into

a little bit of biological research,

okay? So, big disclaimer here. We're

going to talk about basic science

research around mating, but a a big

thing that I want to point out here,

there's some really interesting stuff

here, but there is biological research

about mating and mate selection and

things like that. But, what key thing

that I want y'all to understand is just

because there is biological research

about dating does not mean that all men

or all women are this way. So, biology

is about the observation of whole

[snorts] scale trends within

populations. What I've noticed as a

psychiatrist is that the individual

variability within people is incredibly

high. Right? So, if we look at things

like mating behaviors of snow leopards,

snow leopards to my knowledge don't have

a very complex mind. They're solo

creatures that when a female is in heat,

a male will seek her out. Their total

engagement will be 1 hour every 365

days. So, with a primitive biological

organism, they may be driven by their

biological factors. But, if we look at

humans, humans have this thing called a

mind. They have a very complex

psychology. We're shaped by adverse

childhood experiences. We're shaped by

our templates. We're shaped by traumatic

experiences. We're shaped by media and

literature, in society. We're shaped by

our prior relationships. We have a lot

of genetic variability. So, even though

we're going to dig into the biology,

because I think it's important to

understand, please don't take this as

deterministic for all women will behave

this way, because that's not even what

the study shows. We're going to look at

studies that show trends within genders,

okay? This is a paper that's looking at

ancestral men and ancestral women. So,

let's kind of adopt their viewpoint,

okay? So, let's say I'm an ancestral

man, and I'm attracted to an ancestral

woman. Now, that woman is sending me

signals. Those signals could be

pro-attraction or anti-attraction. And

the ancestral man has an interesting

mathematical kind of approach to this,

which is that if the woman is interested

in me, and I [clears throat]

underestimate that, then I lose an

opportunity to mate. If I lose that

opportunity to mate, my genes aren't

passed on, so the cost to me to

under-interpret a signal, if I missed a

signal, that cost to me is really high.

So, the prime mating strategy for an

ancestral man is to amplify whatever

signals the woman is sending my way. So,

if she's kind of in the middle, and I

interpret that as, "Oh, she's so into

me," then it encourages me to try to

engage in mating behavior. And so, even

if I make a mistake, and she's not that

into me, my cost is not super high,

right? This also explains why we're

talking about ancestral men, because in

today's world, the cost of rejection is

very high, right? You can mess up your

situation at work. You can feel terrible

about yourself, but none of those things

matter in the end for the ancestral man.

So, if they expressed interest and they

get rejected, really no big big harm.

Whereas, if I underestimate their

interest in me, I'm missing out on a

mating opportunity, which is a huge

cost. So, if you take this error

management theory approach, you would

predict that men are more likely to

overinflate

a woman's interest, okay? Because

biologically from an error management

theory perspective, that is favorable to

them. Now, for the female perspective,

it's actually the opposite. So, I'm a

woman, there's a dude who appears to be

into me. If I amplify that signal, he's

not actually that into me, but I think

he's really into me. If I make a

mistake, this is called a false positive

error, where I'm believe he's into me,

but he's not that into me. And then we

end up engaging in mating and he's not

committed to me and then moves on, then

I'm left with a huge problem, because

now I'm a solo mother, very hard to

survive. Whereas, if I underestimate

their interest, "Oh, he's not really

that into me." What that actually

encourages the male to do is demonstrate

their commitment in an amplified way.

So, there are 10 dudes who are all into

me, I don't think any of them are really

that into me, and the signal that I'm

actually going to receive is the guy who

goes the furthest. The guy who gets me

flowers, gets me a box of chocolates,

really demonstrates their commitment in

a hyper-elevated

way, okay? So, error management theory

would predict that women will

underestimate attractiveness and men

will overestimate attractiveness. And

they actually did a study to test this

hypothesis and they found exactly what

error management theory would predict.

When we're looking at a man, we are

likely to underestimate their commitment

to hypothetically induce amplified

signals of commitment. And when we are

looking at a woman, men are likely to

overestimate her interest, even where

there is none, right? And there's some

really creepy videos about, you know,

men approaching women in weird places.

I'm not suggesting that that behavior is

justified or fair or should continue,

but it sort of tracks with the biology,

okay? And I think this study sort of

gives us some insight into a common

thing that I see with my patients, which

is my female patients complain about

getting girlfriend zoned, right? They're

like the default is to be friends. I

don't know why I keep on getting

girlfriend zoned. And the male patients

that I have will complain about being

friend zoned. Their default goal is to

be with this person, but they end up

getting shunted over to the friend zone.

And so then that leads us to the other

study that I talked about at the

beginning, which is that if you there's

a study of 1,800 people that found that

2/3 of them, over of them started their

romantic relationship as a friendship.

So how does that interface with this

idea of can men and women be friends? If

the majority of relationships that are

romantic start out as friendships. And

the answer is I think that we can

absolutely be friends because of the

skill set that we said, but I think it's

important to consider this pathway. So

how does this work, right? Even if we're

friends, what determines whether we

graduate to a romantic relationship or

not? So these are not like we've been

friends for 6 months. This is usually

someone I've gotten to know over the

course of years. And then it kind of

makes sense that we have an opportunity

to kind of date, right? Because now I

know this person. And if we look at the

main challenge of, you know, starting to

date without knowing someone, it's like

I don't know if this person is right for

me. I don't know what their values are.

I don't know what their finances are. I

don't know how ambitious they are. I

don't know what their religion is. I

don't know what their kids are like. And

then dating creates a huge problem

because now we're trying to assess all

of this stuff with people right at the

beginning, right? How much money do you

make? How tall are you? Do you want to

have kids? What's your religion? And so

dating is starting to feel a little bit

more like an interview process for a

job. And when we have that interview

process, because we're trying to assess

whether this person is right for us or

not, it doesn't really foster a spark or

a connection. And then we have this

other problem where like if we feel a

spark or a connection with someone, but

they're not right in some of these

dimensions, then we're kind of stuck,

right? So both of these situations are

bad. I am interviewing them for a job

process, therefore there's no spark, or

I feel a spark and they may not be right

in some of these dimensions. Both of

these are problematic situations, which

is why the friendship to lovers pathway

is so appealing because I actually know

this person for a couple of years. How

likely are they to cheat on me? I may

have observed that with their prior

girlfriend, their prior boyfriend. I

know what their values are, I know how

we get along. We're clearly able to

maintain a friendship. We have a healthy

amount of trust and connection. So we're

actually checking a lot of those boxes

ahead of time, and then we graduate to a

romantic relationship. And then the

question becomes what determines whether

we graduate to a romantic relationship.

And this is where I think a lot of the

people in the friend zone get really

frustrated because they're missing one

or two really important points. If you

look at studies on the friendship to

lovers pathway, what we tend to find is

that both parties consider each other

quite datable from the get-go. So there

is attraction from the get-go, right?

Which is kind of scary. But one of the

things that's really important as we

look into the research is that if this

person would not consider you as a

potential partner, then it seems like

there's very little that you can do to

change their mind, right? So if you are

not the right religion for them, if you

maybe don't have the right aesthetic for

them, if you don't have the right kind

of humor for them, if you do not qualify

as a partner, then the likelihood of

converting from friend to romantic

partner is lower. And this is what I see

a lot of frustration with, which is like

if I'm into you and you're not into me,

I may emotionally invest or even

financially invest in the relationship

to try to get you to like me. I'm sort

of intentionally trying to get you to

like me, whereas what we see from the

friends-to-lovers pathway is that a lot

of those boxes are inherently checked.

So, the scary thing is it's not clear

that you can invest in the relationship

to get this person to like you, which is

a lot of the advice that we kind of

hear. The other interesting thing is we

see the merit of a lot of the advice

that we hear as well, which is kind of

work on yourself. So, the right move for

the friends-to-lovers pathway is not to

try to get this person to like you, but

to try to become something that people

find attractive. So, I started having

this friend, we've been friends for 3

years, and over the course of that 3

years, how am I investing my time? Am I

investing it in getting you flowers,

picking you up from the airport, being

there for you all the time? Am I Am I

investing in the relationship or am I

investing into becoming something that

people find attractive? Am I spending my

time at the gym? Am I becoming

ambitious? Am I becoming career-driven?

Am I developing as a human being? Am I

doing some looks maxing, fixing my hair,

upgrading my fashion, cleaning my

apartment, you know, wiping down the

countertops, wiping up all the hair in

my bathroom? Am I becoming someone who

is datable? And basically, when people

do that, when they have a relationship

where someone feels safe with us, they

know us, and I work on becoming someone

attractive, that's what really crosses

the bridge. It turns out that men and

women can be friends, and also that men

and women who are friends frequently end

up in relationships. To understand more

about chemistry, attraction, the stages

of a relationship, check out Dr. K's

Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships.

>> [music]

>> Mhm.