Can Men And Women Be Just Friends? Nope, Says Study

Don't get your hopes up, dude. It was over before it even started.

Opposite-Sex Friendships Can Also Harm Your Other Relationships

Are you stuck in the friend zone? Well, just be happy you're in any zone at all. A new study says men and women who find each other attractive are likely to believe the friendship is a burden.

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Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have found that many men and women feel that friendship with a member of the opposite sex can be a negative thing when attraction is involved.

32 percent said attraction in a friendship is a bad thing, while just six percent said it's beneficial. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women were twice as likely as men to list it as a negative part of a friendship.

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Opposite-sex friendships can also harm your romantic relationships, researchers found. 38 percent of women and 25 percent of men said there were feelings of jealousy when their partner maintained friendships with people of the opposite sex.

The study's authors believe our interactions with the opposite sex, even if there is no romance involved, is in part dictated by how our mating strategies have evolved over thousands of years.

"Mating strategies," they wrote, "may influence people's involvement in cross-sex friendships to begin with, as well as unintentionally color people's feelings toward members of the opposite sex with whom their conscious intent is platonic."

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