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Can Men And Women Be Platonic Friends?

Yes, but there are some complications within all that — and many of them are geographic, honestly.

Ted Bauer
6 min readJul 3, 2023

I have been watching the AppleTV show Platonic of late, and while sometimes Seth Rogen can be tedious and annoying, I am a huge Rose Byrne fan, so I think that’s why I got into it. If you cannot tell from the title, it’s about two friends who reconnect after the guy gets divorced (from a woman that the female friend didn’t like, hence their friendship split). Everyone wants to rush and say it tries to deal with the When Harry Met Sally question of whether a male/female friendship can exist sans sexual tension, but it’s really a different show than that. If anything, it’s about how odd friendship arcs are as you move through your life, and how tied they are to where you are, what you do for work, and who you tend to see more of as a result of those first two things.

Before we get into this, I just think it’s important to note that Americans don’t fully value friendship that much:

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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