Pillars of Cross-Gender Friendship
From Ladder Wiki
Note that a man has one ladder while a female has two. The man is lacking a Friends Ladder. The man's ladder reflects the conventional wisdom that a man generally only wants one thing. This leads us to a basic axiom of the theory, a point made famous in the movie When Harry Met Sally:
If a man finds a woman attractive, they cannot be friends. or Men and women can never be just friends.
Most objectors to the theory name this rule as a specific counter-point to the "truth" of LT. Many women make the claim, "I have plenty of guy friends." But LT enthusiasts have agreed on exactly 3 cases when men and women can be friends, or more appropriately, 3 cases why men and women become friends. These cases are identified as the Pillars of Cross-Gender Friendship.
[edit] The Three Pillars
- 1. The man is gay
- 2. The man does not find the woman attractive
- 3. The man already has a woman much higher than her on his ladder
Most men have an instinct that this is somewhat true. Most women vehemently deny it. There is a cliched challenge among LT adherents, a running gag if you will, however a good demonstration of this axiom. The woman in doubt is encouraged to choose a male friend of hers who in her mind does not meet any of the criterion in the Pillars, and who she thinks is her friend. Then imagine what would happen - or actually execute this test...
If she one day just came out of the bathroom naked and asked him to have sex with her... Which is more likely? That he would:
- A) Tell her he doesn't want to risk losing the beautiful friendship they have created with messy physical entanglements?
or
- B) Comply?
This only works when being truly honest with oneself, and being fully informed of the other's inner-most feelings, which no one ever is. In fact the reality that one is never informed of another's deepest feelings is why the LT was conceived in the first place.
Option "A" is something that men, and in particular intellectual whores, hear all the time. This statement is also known as the "kiss of death" or "Let's Just Be Friends (or LJBF)". It is more likely that the man would go ahead with option "B" without much hesitation, because in all likelihood, this woman is not aware that in her male friend's case, in actuality Pillars 2 or 3 apply to their relationship. If Pillars 2 or 3 apply, then they clearly demonstrate the original LT's effects. As,
- In the instance where the man does not find her attractive, she is low on his only ladder.
- In the 3rd Pillar, it is described in Ladder terms already and is self-explanatory. In fact, Pillar 3 actually reinforces Pillar 2.
Note that in neither case does this make the woman completely out of the question to have sex with, it still has her on the man's Good(Only) Ladder. So in a scenario such as this where a female friend of a man suddenly came on to him, it's not likely that he would turn that down. He simply wouldn't make conscious, deliberate efforts to have sex with her on his part.
When a woman asks an LT scholar, "How do I know if this guy friend of mine is actually my Intellectual Whore?", her answer is usually "Go up to him bluntly, and as believably as possible, offer sex with him and see how he reacts."
