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What Drives Friendship Between Women and Men?
Research looks at how personal values shape cross-sex friendship.
Friendship is highly important for most people. While the research on friendship has lagged behind that on romantic and parent-child relationships, and developmental research, we know that having good friends from a young age-experiencing lifelong friendships-is of tremendous value. Enduring friendship is a source of stability and growth, pleasure and remembrance-a way to enrich one’s life and be fuller as an individual.
In many ways, friends are closer than spouses, equally intimate if not more so, perhaps by virtue of spending less time together and generally avoiding romantic complications. While many assume that cross-sex friendship is really about sex, or having a side- or back-up beau, those may not be the only reasons. Sex may complicate some friendships, but for people of all sexes and gender identities, friends simply are compatible. What is that compatibility about?
Friends with Benefits
The existing research on friendship, according to Tobias Altmann in the Journal of Individual Differences (2022), suggests that friendship is associated with resilience, well-being, life satisfaction and perhaps even enhanced longevity. Friendship comes in a few different types, based on…
