I stopped to get a coffee this morning at a different coffee shop than usual. The cafe was narrow and humming with businesspeople standing and reading newspapers while waiting for their coffees to go. Steam poured from the bar where a slender man with thinning hair scooped froth and poured milk with the delicate hands of a musician.
A few of the guys from the office at the end of the hall were waiting for their coffees as well. They are all aspiring musicians, and to fund their creativity they've created online kits to teach people to play the guitar, piano, and other instruments. Their office has bare brick walls, framed prints of the Beatles, black leather sofas, towers of coffee cups, a jumble of instruments in the corner, and a sound studio behind a discrete door. It's the feeling of geniuses at work.
I chatted with the guys as they waited for their coffees, then three of them left, leaving the last guy behind to wait for an extra order. He brushed his hair out of his face and asked, "So, any exciting weekend plans?"
"Not much. Having a barbecue this Friday with at a friend's house. Then we're going out on the town."
"A female friend?"
"Nope, a guy friend."
"Right…" He laughed. "Not just a friend, then."
I didn't understand. "Why do you think he wouldn't just be a friend?"
"Because you don't hang out at a guy's house and go partying with him unless there's something going on there."
It was the old Harry Met Sally conundrum.
Women find it easy to think of a man as "just a friend." We can hang out with a guy, share our thoughts and feelings, enjoy activities together, and take pleasure in his company without ever thinking of him in a sexual way. Similarly, we can even find joy in a merely platonic friendship with a man that we're sexually interested, if that's the best we can get.
Men, on the other hand, find that sexual desire often gets in the way of a platonic friendship with a female. If they are sexually interested in a woman, it can be painful for them to continue a merely platonic friendship with her. Some men even cut off friendships with women to whom they're attracted, because they don't want to torture themselves with sexual frustration.
One popular folk theory that explains this phenomenon is Ladder Theory [1]. Developed by Dallas Lynn, Ladder Theory is a crude, unscientific concept that purports to explain how male-female sexual attraction actually works.
According to Ladder Theory, when a woman meets a man, she subconsciously puts him on one of two "ladders." On the first ladder, she ranks men that she would potentially be interested in as a sexual partner. On the second ladder, she puts men that she considers friends.
The theory states that men can never jump from the "friends" ladder to the "real" ladder. In other words, if a man is a woman's friend, she won't think of him sexually. If he tries to upgrade his status from friend to lover, she'll spurn his advances with, "But I don't think of you that way!", causing him to fall into the abyss.
This concept makes sense on a certain level. We all know lovely men who will make a great catch for a woman someday but, for whatever reason, don't turn us on. You know the kind of guy I'm talking about, the kind that–no matter how hard you try–you can't think romantically about. The kind that makes you say, "He's a nice guy, but he's my friend."
Most nice guys have had to deal with the fallout from Ladder Theory time and time again, when they become friends with a girl in hopes of eventually developing a relationship with her. They don't realize that by placing themselves on the "friends" ladder, they've ensured that she will find it difficult to think of him "like that."
Now, I'm not saying that Ladder Theory is true! I'm simply saying that this is one way that men explain women to themselves.
What is even more revealing is how Ladder Theory explains male attraction.
Ladder Theory states that unlike women, men just have one ladder, and it's not the friends ladder. In other words, men will consider sleeping with anyone, including women they consider "just friends."
This can be hard for some women to accept. I'm one of them. I like to believe that my male friends see me as friends and nothing else.
But others believe Ladder Theory. As I talked with the young musician at the coffee shop, I realized that even though he probably didn't know what Ladder Theory was, everything he was saying supported it.
He told me, "If you ask any guy what he would do if one of his female friends walked into the room completely naked and said, 'I want you,' I don't doubt that he would have sex with her. If there's an opportunity for sex, a guy is going to take it."
So is impossible for a man and a woman to just be friends? According to Ladder Theory, it is easy for a woman to be friends with a man, but a man will always hold out some possibility of sleeping with a female friend.
Whether or not you believe this theory, it is interesting to consider. For me, I believe that Ladder Theory-style thinking is characteristic of less mature men. As men mature, they are less driven by their hormones and more driven by a need to find meaning and satisfaction in their relationships.
What do you think?