Can men and women have platonic relationships? This is the question people have been asking since Adam and Eve stood together under the apple tree. Fortunately for continuity of the human race, the answer for the first male and female was a resounding ‘no’.

However, for those of us who live in less biblical times, the question is extremely complicated. Not for me, of course – I’ve never had a lascivious thought directed at anyone other than my husband (and certainly not towards that cute waiter with the tattoos and the nice arms at the café around the corner) – however I know it’s an issue for other, less morally upright people.

I do have experience in the area of male/female friendships, though, having had a platonic relationship for many years with a man I’d been friends with since university days.

The friend – let’s call him ‘Libidus’ – and I used to talk on the phone, go out for lunch, and support and advise each other, just as any two female friends would. I felt totally comfortable with him, and absolutely secure in the nonsexual nature of the relationship. That is, until several years later, when I discovered he had been wanting to sleep with me all along. This wasn’t, I stress, because I am so fantastically desirable, but simply because I have certain qualities that men are irresistibly drawn to: breasts, hips, and that body part my daughter so endearingly calls a ‘shiny’. You see, straight men who have friends with those particular qualities tend to want to have sex with them. Just ask Adam and Eve.

And this is the difference between women and men. Women require many criteria to be met before we are willing to sleep with a man – even a man we like. There needs to be mutual respect, a certain meeting of minds, charisma, magnetism. He needs to make us laugh, or make us think, or have tattoos and nice arms. Ultimately, there needs to be that je ne sais quoi – a spark of attraction that is either present or not, regardless of the appearance of the guy.

Men, on the other hand, don’t worry too much about those things. Unless the women is unspeakably hideous, breasts, hips and a shiny will pretty much do it any time. In other words, if a man likes a woman he does not find unspeakably repugnant, he will want to sleep with her. Just ask the nearest man. He’ll tell you.

Of course, not everyone agrees with my example. A friend of mine – let’s call her ‘Deludus’ - disagrees. She believes strongly that not all relationships between men and women involve sexual tension. “I’ve had several male friends that I’ve been close with for over 20 years without there ever being a problem,” she says. “And the benefit is that you can get opinions about the opposite sex that you just can’t get from your girlfriends!”

Cynic that I am, though, I must pose the question: how does she know it’s genuinely platonic? Okay, so Deludus isn’t lusting after her male friends, but who says they’re not privately lusting after her? Perhaps they are secretly visualising her without her clothes as they (resentfully) offer advice on her relationship. And if they’re not visualising her without her clothes, well, what does that imply? Deludus has breasts, hips and a shiny like every other women, so why aren’t her male friends lusting after her? Are they saying that she’s repugnant???

Well, not necessarily. There do seem to be some circumstances in which a genuinely platonic relationship can flourish between a man and a woman who do not find each other repugnant. The one that most readily springs to mind is if one or both friends are gay. However, when both friends are straight, there are still a few examples. If a couple spends a lot of time together as children – say, because their parents are close friends – then they may grow up to think of each other more like siblings than potential lovers or partners.

Furthermore, if a man and woman meet when they are both happily in love with other people, a purely platonic relationship can develop. However, if the friendship is one that ‘may’ have held an attraction and ‘could’ have been more than just platonic, ‘if’ they hadn’t been involved with other people, then things start to get complicated. What happens if one friend becomes dissatisfied in their romantic relationship and starts looking to their cute, opposite sex friend for support? Or what happens if one friend breaks up with their romantic partner and is suddenly available (and still cute)?

Which is what it ultimately boils down to. True platonic relationships can only exist if there is no sexual attraction on either side. Think about it. If Adam and Eve hadn’t been attracted to each other they would have become platonic friends. They would have sat under that apple tree complaining about the dearth of other single Biblical figures and consoling each other that eventually the right person would come along. But Eve wasn’t repugnant, and Adam had that certain je ne sais quoi, and so the chain of human history was begun.

That’s not to say we can’t have friends we’re attracted to. Nor does it mean that we’ll eventually end up having sex with them. Plenty of male-female relationships exist in which there is a sexual attraction on one or both sides that is never acted upon, or even acknowledged. We are constantly being thrown together with members of the opposite sex - through work, our in-laws, our friends’ spouses, our children’s friends’ parents – and chances are, there’s going to be a spark in there somewhere. That doesn’t mean we’re going to blow it into a fire (so to speak). But nor does it mean the relationship is strictly platonic.

Of course, many people consider themselves to have a truly platonic friendship with someone of the opposite sex, and a few of them actually do. However, it is my (completely non-professional) opinion that many of us delude ourselves as to the true nature of our friendships with opposite-sex friends. L suspects that her friend wants to sleep with her, but she doesn’t want to lose his friendship, so she ignores it. M pretends that she doesn’t secretly lust after P, so that she doesn’t have to let go of the relationship that means so much to her. J and C convince themselves that they’re not flirting, because it’s way too much fun, even though both have partners and work in the same office.

Oh, and K tells herself she only wants to be platonic friends with the cute waiter, because she’s happily married and tattoos and nice arms don’t do that much for her anyway.

Hmm….. As I said, platonic relationships can be extremely complicated.

Kerri Sackville is a Sydney based writer and mother of  3. Follow her on twitter.com.