Developing Friendships in Adulthood - Men and Women

             Several studies provide evidence of sexual attraction between opposite-sex friends. Sixty-eight percent of men and forty-six percent of women responded yes to the statement "Friends can become my sexual partners" (Sapadin pg 921). With sexual attraction being such a strong factor in heterosexual friendships between the opposite-sex, it makes sense why platonic friendship may not be able to work as well as in same-sex friendships.
             For many of the resources that I looked at, socialization was a big theme throughout all of them. Everyone is socialized through media to understand his or her gender role, and how to behave while in that role. The other theory that I thought applied to this research came from the book "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life," by Erving Goffman (1959). His theory is based on social performances" that nearly everyone participates in. Goffman discusses in detail that performance in a particular role is very important. .
             When one goes into a conversation or an interaction, there are certain social norms that they need to follow to make their performance believable, or in Goffman's words validated. I couldn't help but compare my research to this book, because men and women are given social roles based off of their gender. Society creates the norms that are supposed to be followed while being a man or a woman. My question here is if there are roles for men and women to play during a heterosexual interaction, does this influence the platonic friendship to become more than platonic? .
             Men are expected to be strong and masculine, so to fulfill this requirement, they often build friendships based upon common factors such as sports, drinking, or even their love of women. On the other hand, women are socialized to want to be emotionally connected to their friendships, trust and reliability is going to be the main goal when creating a new friendship with a woman.
             There seems to be a no win proposition with having men and women be friends because it makes them look like they are not playing their social roles properly by being closer to the opposite sex.