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My answer to this question is a resounding YES! I know that, for many people, it is inconceivable that men and women can really be "just friends", but I have had many men friends who were no more than friends. And to them, that is all I was. Those friendships were based not on the fact that we were different sexes, but on mutual interests.

For instance, one of my dearest men friends was a fellow teacher. My first husband and I had known him and his first wife before he moved several hundred miles away to get his PhD. When he moved back, he was single again; his wife had found a new man and divorced him. Later, he and I worked in the same department on campus. Any time I stopped by his office to visit, he would kid me about "hounding" him or about "wasting his precious time". However, he would always cheerfully sit and visit until one of us had to get up and go to class or a student would stop to see one of us. We were friends, and the "give and take" of our relationship was still there the last time I saw him. Even after he got married again, we still continued our friendship, and both of our spouses would laugh about the kidding we both did.

Another male friend was a much younger man. I got to know him at the theater, where we both worked on sets, on stage, etc. We could sit and talk for hours, about our lives and hopes and dreams. Neither of us ever did anything other than give the other a short hug goodnight, because we wanted to keep our friendship as just that. Had he been a little older, or I a little younger, we might both have been tempted to carry the friendship to the next level; as it was, we are still just friends.

And I had a male friend who was much older than I. He was a widower, and I had first met him when I joined the church he and his wife attended, when I was a freshman in college. When my first husband and I rejoined the same church, they were among the ones who welcomed us into the fellowship of the church. When his wife died, we were there to help him through the time, just as many of the people in the church were. Just before I met my present husband, he took me to lunch one Sunday after church and, as we were talking, he told me that if I had been a little older or he a little younger, he would have tried to date me. However, the age difference kept us just as friends, and we were both comfortable with that.

Several other men have been good friends of mine; some have been closer friends than even my women friends. One was a man that I had known when we were both freshmen in college. Years later, he and his second wife joined the church my first husband and I were members of. Darrell and I were members of the choir and spent a lot of time just visiting, sometimes with his wife or my husband, sometimes just the two of us. Both knew that we visited with each other; neither seemed to mind that we were friends. When I turned 50, my children had Darrell bring his trumpet to my office to play the birthday song to me. Later that year, when he turned 50, his wife invited us, along with many of their other friends, to their house to surprise him. When he died before turning 60, I think I was almost as devastated as most of his friends were. I still miss him and his trumpet.

Yes, men and women can definitely be "just friends"! These are only a few of the men I have been close friends with during my life, but not all. Friends are friends, whether male or female. I take my friends as they come; I don't make them be who they aren't. That is something I learned when my brothers became my friends, while we were growing up. It's something I hope never to forget.

Learn more about this author, Barbara A. Black.
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