Platonic Friendships~ personal note~

On a personal note, I am a bit "skeeved out", frankly, by people who don't make "platonic" friendships with people who are not the same sex as themselves. They are also often the same people who assume that every male/female friendship or interaction has some kind of "agenda" behind it. Hold on a minute while I gag on the ice cream I ate a couple of hours ago...

Do they literally think about sex ALL THE TIME?

Can they not speak to a member of the other sex WITHOUT thinking about sex? How about a member of their OWN sex?

Do they filter the entire world through their genitalia?

Seriously grosses me out.

If a person can't be "friends" with a person who has different genitalia than themselves because they can't stop THINKING about it, they often ASSUME that everyone else has the same issue. 

Guess what? THEY DON'T!!! SOME people do, of course, but MANY people DO NOT, thank the Good Lord above for that! How creepy that must be to think "SEX" every time you see another human. How does one get through the day? Seriously? HOW?!?

So when you go to work, every other human is filtered through your "sex" scanner? You can't have normal conversations with someone if they're private parts aren't like yours?
So when you go to church, you think of sex when you're looking at the pastor, the deacon, the greeter, all the other parishioners??? GROOOOOSSSSSSSS!!!!
What do you do when you go to school? When you see your teachers or classmates? When you see your children's teachers? How about other parents? What do you do when you hang out with other couples? You think about their sex life?!?Their body parts? WHAT?!? WHY?!!

Is that why you're BORED with more complex subjects like physics, psychology, or archeology?

Do you run ANIMALS through the "sex scanner" in your brain too?

HOW does a person like that get through the day???

Sorry but this is past the edge of my usually high "tolerance-for-others'-pov" threshold. Maybe someone could explain it to me in a way that doesn't make me throw up.

While you're thinking about that, ponder this: PROJECTION is the term used to describe putting one's own issues, thoughts and feelings on someone else. So let's say you have a fear of bees; if you PROJECTED, you would put your fear of bees on ME, and say that I had a fear of bees, when in fact I do not have a fear of bees. So, if you think someone ELSE can't have genuinely platonic friendships with people of the opposite sex, that's more likely than not YOUR PROJECTION of your OWN issues onto that other person. THEY are probably not thinking about sex AT ALL regarding their friends, but YOU ARE, so what does that tell you?

Communication

The way we learn to communicate while we're growing up is the way we communicate as adults. If we learn several methods of communication, and several modes of communication, then we can connect with other human beings easily. We have a greater chance of being able to connect with different individuals in the mode of communication THEY can relate to.
But if we only learn one or two modes of communication, we may not be communicating our wants and needs to others effectively, and we may not be understanding the communications of others either.

If we only know how to communicate in language and expression that sounds extremely "sweet" and "heartfelt", then we may not be understood by those who communicate without injecting EXTRA "sweetness". We also may not understand them either, and we may interpret their more informational tone as "abrasive", when it's actually just neutral.

If we only learned how to communicate by making announcements at others, we may not know how to reciprocate effectively; we may ignore what others are saying unless they are also "making announcements".

If we were taught that communication is more of a social status display than about actual sharing of information, we will probably see the communications of others toward us as attempts at domination and control over us, or as displays of submission and concession toward us. We may not comprehend that many others are simply sharing neutral information, and are waiting for us to reciprocate.

If we learned to communicate using aggressive tones and hostile expression, we might see that as our "normal" baseline, and anyone who does not communicate that way we may misinterpret as "shy", or "too quiet", "fearful", or even "controlling" or "arrogant". We may not realize that we come off sounding demanding and hostile, we just think we're "talking normally".

We may realize that we are going in circles with communication with someone else because they are speaking a different "language" than we are. Sometimes that other "language" is more of a game than actual communication, which the other person may not want to stop playing in order to hear what you're trying to communicate.

It is possible and not difficult to learn more about communicating, it just takes a desire to find out about it, and the ability to listen and hear without judgment and bias.