Bieber
sang “can we still be friends, when it ends”, and the answer to most of the
people would be a big fat “NO”. If you were romantically involved with a person
can you be friends with them or more fancy can you have platonic relationship
with the person?
“Platonic”,
not following of plato but the “relationship” between two people devoid of
sexual feelings or sex has been more often described as a rare possibility
especially among “ex’s” .
Let us
understand this possibility in a broader social context. Most of us interact
with many people in our lives and sustain a platonic relationship with them.
Sons, brothers, sisters, mothers, friends, relatives, some acquaintances and
majority of the world population that we may or may not interact with. Even when you
interact with people “getting in their pants” is not so much on the agenda most
of the time I presume.
If we
look at the animal kingdom, microorganisms whose primary goal is “perpetuation”
of species, even there we don’t see the evidence of perpetual sex. Many
microorganisms just divide and proliferate without involving anything which is
sexual. With evolution to more complex organisms there is starting to involve male and female gametes but even
in many instances we find something called as “asexual reproduction”(Look it
up).
Even
animals which have evolved some form of social structures have special periods
where they involve themselves in sex, mostly called being in “heat”. So in
general the theme in the animal kingdom is sex is not required to stay together
most of the time.
I am not
a social anthropologist but I would assume the evolution of human societies
people wold have been just happy seeing each other rather than happy that there
are more people to procreate. That is kind of evident with only huge growth in
populations very later in human history or we would have billions of people
leaving on this earth forever. Of course with the advances in science and
technology there is better chances of survival now than ever before.
So how
did we as human beings get to this stage of a society of overtly sexual
overtones where objectification of human beings as sex objects and chiefly so has become so accepted and
engrained in our mindsets. I would presume with the evolution of brain and the
understanding that we could have more power over some others within our ranks
would have played an important role. Living in an era where you spoiled be
focussed on survival and food, you would have no time left to think about sex.
I think with the advent of agriculture and having surplus food and safety of
life people might have turned their attention to sex. As sex for human beings
is not just about survival or procreation, we have evolved to purely enjoy the
phenomena and attach emotions to it.
Being
visual animals this thing has been multiplied manifold with the enhancement in
human capacity to outreach through visual mediums, both writings and pictures.
So have we ushered this overtly sexual era on ourselves?
Let’s
define an “Ex” for the sake of this conversation and try to understand the
inability or impossibility of having a “platonic” relationship. A person that
you were romantically involved with, who, by choice (mutual or one sided) you
are not involved with anymore. More often than others it is described as due to
“cheating” or just being in relationship with an overtly “selfish” person. I
have experienced the latter much more than the former. Being “Selfish” remember
is a remnant of the “survival” instincts that we developed when we use to live
in caves. But even in this modern world people chose to retain this instinct
and has lead to so many “heart-breaks”.
Let’s
understand the desire/ need to be friends with your ex. More than often people
would do that to kinda keep a tab on the person but the argument is that if you
spent so much time to getting to know
someone and making beautiful memories with, most of the time without any sex
involved, why would not be able to do the same without sex?
Two
things jump into my head, “Jealousy” and “ego” of course the “Selfishness” of
not having the person to you would play a big role. We are emotionally complex
beings who can rationalize breaking up but not staying together. In many
instances we do chose to stay together, then there would be another
“selfishness” involved, a friend under the pretext of looking out for you ,
would encourage you to break off and cut all the ties and yes this is the
friend who has been complaining that you don’t have time for them anymore, so
you can see the selfishness.
To
conclude, although a Herculean task nonetheless, being in a platonic
relationship with an ex in my opinion is not so impossible but at this point in
human history most of are unable to do it.
Three
cheers to all the “Ex’s” aND THEIR LOSS !
..)
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