Marriage & Opposite Sex Friendships

[Adumbra]

I was wondering about what everyone's opinion here is about a married person having a friendship with a member of the opposite sex --Assuming that neither is attracted to the other in the least. My opinion on the matter is that it just isn't possible. Ideally we should all trust the person we have chosen to share the rest of our lives with enough to allow them to be alone with a friend of the opposite sex; but it seems that marriages, unlike friendships, are NOT based on trust.

Answers from people who are married would be especially valued.

[treehuggingoctopus]

I was wondering about what everyone's opinion here is about a married person having a friendship with a member of the opposite sex --Assuming that neither is attracted to the other in the least. My opinion on the matter is that it just isn't possible.

Life trumps your opinion. 100% perfectly possible in my case. Also, being attracted to one's friend really need not be a problem at all.

Btw, your premise is that marriage must and should mean perfect monogamy. It works for some; for others it doesn't.
You're also assuming everyone married is heterosexual . . .

[Simon E.]

What a truly extraordinary question. Of course its perfectly OK and widespread.

[Konchog1]

Other

Depends on the husband, depends on the wife, depends on the friend, depends on the strength of the marriage etc.

It's not okay if it harms the marriage and okay if it does not.

[wisdom]

Being attracted to other people is natural. Following that attraction with thoughts and fantasies of lust is where you would begin to create problems for yourself.

As a Buddhist we must face reality. The reality is that attraction to other people will happen, to you and to them. The reality is that most people have had sex with other people before you. The reality is that most people (in the polls that have been taken) admit to cheating at least once. But attraction is magnetism at its purest level. Its just a magnetic pull. Using methods of internal transformation we can turn that magnetic energy into compassionate energy, into joy, into brotherly/sisterly love. That energy becomes charged with sexuality when we begin to direct it at the other person with thoughts of desire for them.

Jealousy is also one of the five poisons that can be transformed into one of the five wisdoms if we allow the feelings of jealousy to self liberate.

In short, yes, people should be free to have whatever friends they choose.

[Virgo]

Well the generation that is getting married now mostly is the Pluto in Libra genearation, and soon (and yes, even now) it is the Pluto in Scorpio generation, so what does that tell you?


Kevin

[underthetree]

Many if not most of my close friends throughout my life have been women. It's perfectly possible, perfectly ordinary, for a man to be friends with a woman without the sexual element arising. I would even stick my neck out and say that people can be in love without there necessarily being a sexual element. Just as one can be in a sexual relationship that doesn't have many - or any - other dimensions of attraction.

It's incredibly limiting to see all male/female relationships though the fisheye lens of sex. We fundamentally need the balance, the yin/yang, the emptiness/skillful means that our opposite gender brings to us. And then, of course, there's the Dakini.

I've been married for almost 20 years, incidentally.

[AlexanderS]

I don't understand if there is a different meaning to the word friend here.

I don't see why there would be any problems in having friends of the opposite sex just because you are married.