Boys and girls can be Friends WITHOUT Benefits.

There’s this boy that I’ve known since 2001. He and I have been friends since the sixth grade – and yes, we had a thing back in eighth grade. We’re cool towards each other now, and tend to act more like family than exes. We were friends on Myspace, where he was my fourth and I was his eighth. Yeah, that is semi-important.

It’s senior year, and the third was our Prom. I made a comment about “I expect a dance from you”, which was no big deal, I’ve been telling him that since he first started going to formals (ironically, I’ve never danced with him). I reminded him about this as I was walking past him one time.

I didn’t know this, but he’d hooked up with a girl while at the dance. They had originally gone as a sort-of blind thing, because neither one had a date… So a friend introduced them. Anyway, at that time, I guess they were “together”, she heard me make the comment, and she didn’t like it.

All of the sudden, she’s with him constantly when I’m nearby. I was deleted and blocked from his Myspace, he won’t smile at me in the hall anymore when I’m going to my locker and he’s going to Band… Because of a misconstrued comment, this kid’s basically cut me out of his life.

This isn’t the first time that it’s happened to me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had at least one guy best friend. Chris, Eddie, Kevin, Tim, Josh, Evan, Johnny, James, Brady… And yeah, while these guys haven’t always been totally platonic (one of them is actually my current boyfriend), the fact is that if I’m not dating them, I don’t see them like that. Besides, like I said, I have a boyfriend, and he and I have been dating for almost 2 years. Call me crazy, but if I wanted a new boyfriend, I’d get one – made easier by the fact that I’m not sticking around here!

I think it’s ridiculous that guys and girls are still not supposed to be friends, unless it’s friends with benefits. Back in eighth grade, my best friend was in the special education program, and therefore had an aide to follow him around (he had the tendency to react to everything violently, unless someone was there to calm him down)… And the aide pulled me aside and told me that she didn’t think it would be a good idea for my friend to have a girlfriend, because his episodes were getting more frequent, and she didn’t think that a child could handle them. I wasn’t his girlfriend at the time, and when I told her that, she just smiled and said that it was okay for me to deny it, but that I really should give some consideration to his feelings.

I have a temper: I told her to mind her own business. It ended up “getting out” that my friend and I were dating, and that was the end of it. We both knew we weren’t, and that’s all that mattered.

Now, though, I’m seen as a freak because I don’t care that my boyfriend’s best friend is a girl, and that he does hug other girls. There’s stuff I care about more than that, why should I pick his friends?