Hi, my name is Reka Marvay. I'm a psychologist and I'm going to talk to you about understanding
friendships between men and women. Now there is this longstanding cultural agreement that
real friendship between men and women cannot exist because of the sexual tension between
the sexes. This is a view that actually comes from an earlier ere when men and women's roles
were far more restricted and the only opportunity for them to meet was for romantic purposes.
Under those circumstances of course it was very very difficult for men and women to develop
real friendships based on their interests because women were stuck at home tending the
babies and tending the household while men were out working. However, today's society
is very different from this and there's plenty of opportunity for men and women to come together
based on mutual interests, maybe in sports, maybe in arts, maybe in politics, maybe as
a friend or a co-worker from your workplace or somebody that you met at school. There's
no such limitation anymore about the roles of men and women. So there is far more opportunity
for men and women to get together and share interests and develop genuine friendships.
There will always be the possibility of sexual tension between any two people who might be
sexually attracted to each other. But it need not cause an issue case of real friendship
between men and women.