William Costello

And, you know, the age-old question of can men and women ever just be friends, we've just got a new paper accepted that shows that we call it courtship and cross-sex friendship, where men provision financially to their cross-sex friendships that they're interested in mating with.

50% of people say they have romantic interest in a cross-sex friend.

The same number have had sex with at least one, particularly young people.

So I do think it's a good pathway to relationships.

And if you formed more cross-sex friendships, it would be a direct route to relationships because...

Attraction grows over time.

Proximity breeds intimacy, but also you get to display a lot of the same qualities that make for a good mate, make for a good friend too.

And men and women select friends who have the same qualities that they want in a mate.

So protection, physical attractiveness, resources.

So it's a good pathway, but the secondary route is it broadens your networks and it also helps you learn about cross-sex mind reading.

So it's very hard to actually, you know, come to the boneheaded beliefs of some of the red pill, black pill world online if you actually have in real life

female friends that you know kind of disprove a lot of what you hear.

So I think women hear that and they sometimes get very upset to learn that their male friends see them as... That nearly half of your guy friends are trying to sleep with you.

Well, not necessarily.

It's just that they kind of would.

And this is kind of the misconception that women maybe hear that and they think, oh, so he only wants to sleep with me.

And it's not quite the case.

He just would.

He probably would.

When people hear about this for the first time and they doubt it, I always say, just try it.