There is no such thing as a free meal, and as a woman I feel that there is no such thing as ‘just dinner’ or a man that just wants to get to know you. When a man asks a woman for dinner or for her telephone number, 99% of the time it means that he is sexually interested in her.

Make no mistake ladies: Men very rarely want to be ‘just friends’. They can be your friend alright, just as long as at some point the woman lets down her guard and allows special access that is usually reserved for a sexual mate. Don’t get me wrong. There are male and female friendships that do exist, but they are usually of 7 types:

1 He harbors the occasional lustful thought, but is passive about making something happen, and values your friendship.

2 He became friends with you in an attempt to try to sleep with you, failed, but has resigned himself to friendship.

3 He became friends with you in attempt to sleep with you, but failed, and is waiting for his next opportunity.

4 He’s married or in a relationship, but could possibly be part of any of #’s 1,2,3.

5 He’s friends with a guy that is already interested in you and doesn’t want to have a conflict of interest and step on his mates toes. He’ll probably get over the conflict of interest and chance his arm at some point.

6 He’s gay.

7 Very occasionally, you do get the guy that really, truly just wants to be a woman’s friend. Enjoy this man’s friendship!

Now it doesn’t mean that he’s not your friend, on some levels, but there is an element to your friendship that has past, forgotten or intended sexual overtones.

I’ve always played with boys, and as I’ve grown older, I have a few male friends, and plenty of male acquaintances. I love talking to men, and feel perfectly comfortable being the only woman in a crowd of men, although I am not a ‘ladette’. I retain my feminine charms, without having to be a footie fan or lager swilling, beer gut heaving mate to the boys.

Nonetheless, I have fallen out with, or drifted away from quite a few guys who I’ve considered to be friends, and there is a root cause at the heart of it. Sex -and it’s generally a lack of it, as I don’t believe in sleeping with my mates. In my teenage years I forged friendships with varying males which eventually fell foul because he either confessed his interest in me and I rejected it, or he confessed it, I snogged him, and belatedly realised that we were better off as friends. In my so-called ‘adult years’, I have had, and still have a number of male friends, but I have sat in the heat of their girlfriends glares to know that the majority of us don’t believe that platonic male/female friendships exist.

I am wary of men that ask for my number under the pretext of wanting to be ‘just friends’. In all of my adult years, I am yet to have a male friend that I acquired from a nightclub/party/or some other chat up scenario. My male friends are university and work colleagues, or guys that I have gotten to know from the various circles that I hang out with. They are guys that I have genuinely gotten to know over time and I am fortunate that I have not had any sexual dalliances with any of them.

It’s these male friends who’ve told me what guys motives really are.

There are many times that I’ve heard the tale of a woman falling out with a male friend because he tried it on and when she rebuffed him things were never the same again. Then there are the women that go out with or marry the guy that they have been friends with for ages. And most women I know have a gay friend.

It’s hard to bounce back to easy friendship after your friend has tried it on. I’ve found that one of two things can happen on this occasion. The first is that following the proposition you smile tightly, while secretly feeling angry, and then tell him how wonderful he is, but you really would rather be friends. Why ruin such a beautiful friendship?

Or, horror of horrors, he propositions you and you wake up to the morning sunshine and your mate beside you, stark naked with your clothes hanging from the lampshade recalling the previous nights events with horror and a sickening feeling in your tummy.

Both sexes have their own way of assessing whether they think that a friendship is platonic or not. I know many women that judge how much of a threat a woman is by comparing them to themselves. Is she a femme fatale? Does she make him laugh more? Does she seem to know every little last thing about him? Worse still, if she’s a knock out in the looks department, and you’re the type to get insecure, you’ll be sharpening your claws, and taking off the earrings so you can square up!

Men on the other hand judge other men on the basis of what they would do under the same circumstances, or what they know other men would do.

99% of the time, the conclusion is that the man in question has ulterior motives and is trying to get you into bed. Done and dusted. Men don’t generally spend much time worrying whether their girlfriends male friend is better looking, better built, etc, and if they do it’s secondary to the fundamental belief that regardless of these other factors, these men want to sleep with their women.

So where does that leave women? Nowhere really. We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t.

If we refuse every offer of new friendship from a guy then we can be perceived as cocky for assuming that all guys want to get in our knickers, but if we take everything at so-called face value, we’re probably going to be having a lot of uncomfortable conversations.

I think the moral of this story is to be upfront about your intentions. If a man has no intention of being friends with a woman and wants to woo her, making out that he ‘just wants to be friends’ is more than a little silly. Very often, women will take a man at his word and it makes things very awkward when it turns out that he never wanted to be ‘just friends’.

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