Unrequited love between friends is something Owen Case knows firsthand.

He met a girl three years ago during his freshman year.

It was love at first sight. 

For him, at least.

“I just felt this immediate connection,” said Case, a senior. “So, I got to know her. I liked this girl, and her personality just added to it.”

He felt for her in a way she could not reciprocate.

For Case, it raised that age-old question: can boys and girls be friends?

Few other questions have provoked such debate. While some students we interviewed said a genuine male-female friendship is not only possible but quite common, others felt that platonic relationships are a facade and often cover up romantic impulses that lie just beneath the surface.

Friendship has always been a touchy subject for some. Especially opposite-sex friendships. They can be considered inappropriate or a beard hiding the truth underneath coarse lies and secret glances.

Something that can never truly be just platonic.

But why do people think that way? Why is it so unfathomable or unbelievable that it can be considered frowned upon?

“I find it kind of harder to be friends with a girl if I find them attractive,” said Case. “I just feel like if I have chemistry with someone, it’s hard for me to stay at bay. I’m not aggressive or anything. It’s just not as natural.”

While some people may feel a connection or a spark with their opposite-sex friends, that doesn’t mean everyone does.

Freshman Lillie Slimp has a boy who is a friend. She also has a boyfriend. She’s known them both for around the same amount of time.

She can spend time with both of them with no issue.

“He went to my middle school for one year, in sixth grade,” Slimp said of her friend. “I saw him and said, ‘You look really familiar.’ And we ended up becoming friends.”

While they don’t hang out at the movies or spend much time together outside of school,  they often stop to talk when they run into one another.

She does consider him a friend. And her boyfriend knows it.

“We always have a conversation,” Slimp said of the male friend. “I don’t like him at all. My boyfriend has a friend who is a girl he has known, like, forever, and they’re just friends. We don’t see it as a big deal at all.”

While that may be the case for some, junior Makinnah Hollie said it’s fine as long as there are boundaries.

“I feel like whenever you’re in a relationship, you shouldn’t be talking to the opposite sex,”  Hollie said. “When you are committed to someone, you shouldn’t feel the need to speak to someone else of the opposite sex.” 

Is that something only a girl would think? An unfair boundary created due to a lack of trust in a relationship? A relationship ruined and smeared with insecurities? 

Or is that argument completely justified, showing there are reasons that lack of trust exists and proof that girls and boys cannot possibly be friends?

According to research conducted by the science and technology magazine Scientific America, boys typically have more difficulty being friends with those of the opposite sex. 

“Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa,” Adrian F. Ward wrote in the article, ‘Men and Women Can’t Be “Just Friends”’, 

“Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief.” 

While some people are quite obvious and open about their emotions and feelings, others can be reserved and oblivious.

Sometimes, people don’t realize they have feelings for someone until it is too late. They can think that their feelings for someone are entirely platonic. Or that a friend’s feelings are friendly without indicating romantic feelings.

For senior Genevieve Briones, her current boyfriend liked her, and she had no idea. 

“I still thought he was just my best friend,” Briones said.

Luckily for her ‘best friend,’ Jason Warren, she also had feelings for him. She just hadn’t come to that realization yet. 

They had gone from knowing of each other to understanding each other to being best friends in two months. In that time, Warren grew to like her more than a friend. But he thought she wanted someone else.

That didn’t stop him from telling her anyway.

“I was going on and on about this guy and how, over the summer, it turned out that guy didn’t like me the way I liked him,” Briones said. “And Jason was like, ‘Well, I like you.’”

After his confession, Briones admitted that she had feelings for him, too.

You can never know exactly what will happen in friendship. There is no way to tell whether or not two people of the opposite sex can stay friends without romantic feelings getting in the way. Yet, sometimes, there’s nothing better for friends than having romantic feelings creep in. Some consider it fate.

Seniors Asher Feriend and Jenna Karcher attended every class together at Tison Middle School (except athletics) and became friends because of that.

“I thought he was cute,” Karcher said. “It was very superficial for me, but we ended up just becoming friends, and slowly, after that, we just started to become more.”

Feriend noticed they had similar views and beliefs about life, which helped the romantic feelings to grow.

 “It’s really about looking for the best in those around you, and you can find somebody,” Feriend said.

Now, Feriend said of the girl who was once his best friend, “She’s someone I’d be willing to spend the rest of my life with.”