Harry and Sally were wrong. Liz Hodgkinson has lots of male friends
Thirty-five years ago, When Harry Met Sally asked a question: can men and women be good friends without sex getting in the way?
The answer, after a lot of funny lines, appears to be no. The film couple do eventually have sex and, after 12 years of bumping into each other from time to time, get married.
My own experience, minus the witty one-liners, is quite different. I am lucky enough to have a number of close, even intimate, men friends, but sex doesn’t get in the way and never has. We are content for our relationships to remain platonic, even though we can enjoy close physical affection with each other.
My earliest such man friend is Ivan, whom I have known since I was three, when we lived opposite each other. Our paths diverged when I passed the 11-plus, and Ivan was left behind. He left school at 14 without any qualifications, to become a builder’s apprentice.
Not much was expected of him, yet from my earliest years I sensed there was something special and unusually focused about him – and I was right. Within a decade, Ivan was a millionaire, and rose to become the second-biggest housebuilder in the country. He was also a county tennis, table tennis and badminton champion. Now in his 80s and on his third marriage, he has asked me to write his life story.
Although we have been friends for all these years and even played tennis together as teenagers, we were never childhood sweethearts. It just would not have felt right. Perhaps we knew too much about each other’s difficult home backgrounds for that.
My next male friend is Grahame. We met aged 11 on the school bus and now, in our ninth decade, write to each other almost every day. The relationship is long-distance, because Grahame has lived in Australia since the 1970s, although he does occasionally come to the UK, and usually stays with me.
Once again, our friendship is too close and too long-standing to be complicated by sex. Grahame is also married, to his second wife.
Third on the list is Alex Williams, now a well-known artist but a rebellious art student when we first met. Alex’s artistic talent was apparent from an early age and, at 81, he is still as productive as ever. He is married to his second wife and now lives on the Isle of Wight – and whenever he is on the mainland, we meet up.
We have a professional relationship as well, since I write press releases for his exhibitions and he has designed covers for my books. We exchange big hugs when we meet but that’s as far as it goes. Once again, there has never been any prospect of Alex and me getting together.
Fourth is Pete, whom I met when we were in our 20s and near neighbours in Richmond. At the time, we were both married and for many years we all enjoyed a foursome, going on holiday together and giving joint parties. We were so attuned that we even had the same kind of car: a Morgan.
When our respective marriages broke up at around the same time, there was no thought of Pete and me becoming a couple. Why spoil a beautiful friendship?
After his first divorce, Pete married twice more and he is now happily partnered with a classical violinist.
Pete and I are ‘twins’, born in the same year. We even share a birthday and so a star sign. We are very alike in many ways – perhaps too much alike to want to be hitched. As it is, the level of connection, which has remained stable for more than four decades, suits us both perfectly.
Something I have in common with all my close men friends is that we can talk about anything at all. We can share secrets, joke and laugh and then happily part company until the next time.
We are not lovers and never will be. I present no threat whatever to their current wives; we go back too far for that. If I wouldn’t want to be married to any of them, they can say the same: they certainly would not want to be married to me!
When Harry Met Sally argues that men and women can never be ‘friends’ because if there is growing sexual attraction between them, it disrupts the friendship. And if there is no intimacy, the friendship can only ever be distant and casual.
I disagree strongly. When two people are sexually attracted to each other, it is instant – a blinding flash; a spark that ignites at once. It does not grow gradually over the years, as in Harry and Sally’s (fictional) case. My long-standing men friends are extremely precious to me and provide a welcome ‘bass note’ – a touch of masculinity in my life – as they are very different from my female friends.
But it would be a grave mistake to spill over into sex.
