'At this point in my life, I’ve realized that I’m not that interested in having a serious romantic relationship with a guy. She has even noticed that she’s been dating less and less. 'Pretty much every time I’ve formed a bond with a straight guy, he ended up being attracted to me, and I would wind up hurting him when he found out I didn’t feel the same way.' 'It’s nice because I don’t have to stress about Kevin* developing feelings for me,' she says. Maggie,* a seventeen-year-old Bostonian, found that since becoming so close to her GBF, she spends less time with her straight guy friends. 'It can also be hard to have a friend relationship at that age without one person developing some kind of feelings for the other.' 'A lot of teenagers don’t feel comfortable around members of the opposite sex, and the friendships can get complicated,' she says. 'But there is little underlying competition between young women and gay guys, which can often make for a stronger, more trusting relationship.' Gray says it can also be hard for many girls, particularly ones in high school, to have platonic relationships with heterosexual guys.
