I am a female having a wonderful 2-year friendship with a male. Lately I've noticed that our friendship has had sexual overtones. I am aware of the popular belief that once sexuality enters the picture, men and women cannot remain friends. Answer A purely sexual relationship is different from a friendship, as a friendship is different than a sexual relationship. When you bring the two together and have a friendship to which you have added sexuality, you have made a significant change in the nature of the relationship.
Some people seem to be able to dissociate sexuality from relatedness.
They are also able to separate friendship from sexuality. And these relationships have different expectations. We tend to feel more proprietary, jealous, and possessive. We tend to think more like a couple. One of the major problems in trying to introduce sexuality into a friendship is that as the intimacy develops one person may become more involved than the other.