The Matt Walsh Show - Can Men And Women REALLY Be Friends？

00:00:00.000 Investing is all about the future.

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00:00:30.000 So, we're going to spend time on the show talking about, you know,

00:00:35.000 the things that matter in life, as we so often do.

00:00:38.000 Marriage, children, relationships.

00:00:40.000 And that's going to be a special focus of the show this year.

00:00:45.000 Earlier this week on X, we were talking about some of this,

00:00:50.000 and I made this point.

00:00:52.000 I said, a married person simply should not have an opposite-sex friend 1.00

00:00:55.000 who is not also a friend of their spouse.

00:00:57.000 And even then, there's no scenario where the spouse and the friend should be hanging out alone.

00:01:01.000 These are the most basic boundaries.

00:01:04.000 If you aren't prepared to put them in place and respect them, you shouldn't get married.

00:01:07.000 That's obviously true.

00:01:09.000 I've also said that kind of thing many times.

00:01:12.000 Plenty of people did not agree.

00:01:13.000 There are a lot of comments, a lot of people responding to it.

00:01:15.000 So, we're going to go through and read some of them now.

00:01:17.000 In fact, I'm going to read a few responses, a few comments,

00:01:20.000 and then I'll offer a general response to all of them together.

00:01:24.000 So, Real Klopek writes,

00:01:27.000 To prove Matt's point in just about every example of this,

00:01:30.000 the spouse finds this friend physically attractive, and that is not a coincidence.

00:01:34.000 Show me an example of a married guy who has a cross-eyed female friend 1.00

00:01:38.000 who weighs 300 pounds and vice versa.

00:01:43.000 Christina writes,

00:01:44.000 Matt doesn't trust himself to be alone with any of his female co-workers, 0.99

00:01:48.000 or does he not hire women?

00:01:49.000 Either way, he needs to learn to grow up and not ogle other women. 0.96

00:01:54.000 Climate Warrior 7 says,

00:01:56.000 What are you supposed to do with your opposite-sex friends when you get married?

00:01:59.000 Dump them?

00:02:01.000 Yes, that's what you're supposed to do, but we'll get back to that.

00:02:04.000 Timothy Gordon says,

00:02:05.000 This is a good post, but having female co-workers is as bad or worse than having voluntary female friends. 1.00

00:02:12.000 Both situations are terrible.

00:02:14.000 Arguably, the workplace is worse because you're a captive team member

00:02:17.000 forced by equality in the workplace to spend 40 hours weekly on a project with some broad not-your-wife. 0.96

00:02:24.000 Paul Bullard says,

00:02:25.000 The more likely someone is to cheat, the more vehemently they'll disagree with this.

00:02:29.000 There's emotional cheating too, which impacts intimacy, respect, honor, and relational experiences.

00:02:33.000 And the notorious KCK strongly disagrees with me and says,

00:02:39.000 I have female friends that I've known since long before I met my wife, 0.96

00:02:44.000 and will still have lunch with them occasionally.

00:02:46.000 My wife doesn't care because there's trust. 1.00

00:02:49.000 Same applies to her and her male friends.

00:02:51.000 Matt is clearly insecure.

00:02:53.000 And there are many more comments along those lines.

00:02:55.000 Some in agreement, some in disagreement.

00:02:59.000 And here's what I'll say to all of them.

00:03:04.000 That yes, you should not have opposite sex friends if you are married. 0.76

00:03:10.000 That should not exist.

00:03:11.000 Now, it's one thing, as I think I acknowledge, if you're friends with a couple,

00:03:17.000 if you as a couple are friends with another couple,

00:03:20.000 and so then in that sense you're friends with the opposite sex member of that couple as well,

00:03:25.000 then that's fine.

00:03:27.000 And that's what...

00:03:28.000 So when people say,

00:03:30.000 Oh, I've had these opposite sex friends since before I got married and now I'm married, 1.00

00:03:34.000 am I supposed to just dump them?

00:03:36.000 Well, yeah.

00:03:37.000 Actually, see, when you get married and you grow up, you're going to end up...

00:03:41.000 You're going to end up drifting apart from a lot of your friends.

00:03:44.000 And especially if you have any opposite sex friends.

00:03:46.000 That's the way that's going to go.

00:03:48.000 But if you want to keep being friends with them, well, now you are...

00:03:51.000 You know, you have dinner.

00:03:52.000 Like, you have another couple and you have dinner with them.

00:03:55.000 You invite them over to your house as a couple.

00:03:59.000 And you sit and you drink wine and you eat, you know, dinner.

00:04:02.000 Like, that's... Grow up, okay?

00:04:03.000 You're an adult now.

00:04:04.000 I mean, so now those relationships are supposed to mature.

00:04:07.000 And so you can be friends in that sense, but you should not be friends individually

00:04:11.000 with a member of the opposite sex.

00:04:13.000 And like this guy who says that...

00:04:19.000 Well, you know, he has friends.

00:04:21.000 He goes out on lunch dates with women.

00:04:25.000 Like, that's crazy.

00:04:27.000 That is a crazy thing to do if you're married.

00:04:30.000 And to let your wife do it. 0.54

00:04:33.000 So you're telling me...

00:04:34.000 Who is this?

00:04:35.000 The notorious KCK.

00:04:38.000 You're telling me your wife... 0.82

00:04:41.000 Sometimes goes and hangs out with her male friends without you.

00:04:45.000 You're telling me you're okay if your wife says,

00:04:48.000 Hey, I'm going to go grab lunch with, you know, Jake.

00:04:52.000 Okay, have fun.

00:04:54.000 Have fun, you two.

00:04:56.000 And you're okay.

00:04:57.000 What are you some kind of... 1.00

00:04:58.000 You're a cuckold. 0.99

00:04:59.000 That is pure cuckold behavior. 1.00

00:05:02.000 That's what that is.

00:05:03.000 And you should be embarrassed. 0.98

00:05:07.000 Okay, you should be humiliated.

00:05:09.000 And she's probably... 0.90

00:05:11.000 There's a high chance that she's cheating on you. 1.00

00:05:13.000 There's a high chance that's already happening.

00:05:16.000 So you can say all you want.

00:05:17.000 I trust you.

00:05:18.000 I...

00:05:19.000 Don't worry.

00:05:20.000 I trust you. 1.00

00:05:22.000 Here's the thing, you moron. 1.00

00:05:24.000 If your wife wants to have one-on-one time with another man in the first place. 1.00

00:05:33.000 If she wants to have that companionship with a man in the first place. 0.99

00:05:38.000 You're already screwed. 0.99

00:05:41.000 Or she is in this case. 0.99

00:05:44.000 Like that's already happening.

00:05:45.000 And as a man, why do you want...

00:05:49.000 It's the other thing.

00:05:50.000 Some of these comments from men say,

00:05:53.000 Well, I have all these female friends. 1.00

00:05:54.000 What am I supposed to do?

00:05:56.000 First of all, why do you have so many female friends as a man?

00:05:59.000 Like why do you want platonic companionship with a bunch of women? 1.00

00:06:06.000 That's either you having inappropriate levels of intimacy with other women or you're gay. 0.99

00:06:13.000 That's the other thing. 1.00

00:06:14.000 It could be that you're gay. 0.99

00:06:16.000 A married man who wants to hang out with a woman who's not his wife is either on his way to an affair or having an affair or is gay. 0.99

00:06:25.000 Like those are your options. 0.94

00:06:28.000 You're married.

00:06:29.000 You already have a wife.

00:06:30.000 I mean, you're around a woman all the time.

00:06:32.000 You have companionship with a female every day.

00:06:37.000 So if you want to go out and have friendships, have a fraternal bond, have like male friendships, that's very healthy.

00:06:47.000 You should have that.

00:06:48.000 But going out and seeking more female companionship as a married grown man when you already have a wife tells me you're either having an affair or you're going to have one or you're feminine. 0.86

00:07:01.000 So here's the problem.

00:07:06.000 What is a friendship?

00:07:08.000 What is a friend?

00:07:09.000 What is a friend?

00:07:10.000 Well, a friend is someone with whom you have mutual affection and some level of emotional intimacy.

00:07:18.000 That's what a friend is.

00:07:20.000 That's what a friendship is.

00:07:22.000 If you don't have that with someone, then they're not your friend.

00:07:26.000 Now, granted, among men, we would never put it like that.

00:07:31.000 I feel even kind of weird saying it.

00:07:34.000 But if if because I have a friend of mine says, you know.

00:07:38.000 I love this emotional intimacy we have.

00:07:40.000 I love this shared mutual affection.

00:07:42.000 If I'm if I'm going to a cigar bar having a cigar with a guy and he were to say that I really, you know, I really appreciate this emotional intimacy.

00:07:52.000 I really appreciate our mutual affection.

00:07:54.000 Well, I'm never I'm never going to talk to you again.

00:07:56.000 I would.

00:07:57.000 This is we can't.

00:07:58.000 I got to do it.

00:07:59.000 I can't be around you now.

00:08:01.000 But but even so, that's what a friendship is.

00:08:05.000 If we define intimacy in this case as, you know, not a physical or sexual thing, but as a sense of closeness.

00:08:12.000 You know, basically a little familiarity closeness, then then that's what friendship is.

00:08:19.000 Right.

00:08:20.000 So if your wife has a male friend.

00:08:25.000 Well, that is someone that she has emotional intimacy with.

00:08:31.000 That's just what it means.

00:08:34.000 And if she doesn't, then that's not a friend.

00:08:38.000 That's just an acquaintance.

00:08:39.000 Like no one is saying that you can't have acquaintances that are of the opposite sex.

00:08:42.000 You could have you could even have friendly acquaintances.

00:08:45.000 Some of this is maybe a misunderstanding of what a friend is.

00:08:50.000 Right.

00:08:51.000 But you could be friendly with someone.

00:08:54.000 You could be cordial with them.

00:08:56.000 You can work with them in that capacity, a friendly and cordial way.

00:09:01.000 You can make pleasant small talk when you see them and that sort of thing.

00:09:05.000 That's an acquaintance.

00:09:06.000 That's not a friend.

00:09:07.000 Ash Wednesday is just two weeks away.

00:09:09.000 So you're probably starting to think about what you're giving up for Lent.

00:09:14.000 It's chocolate, social media, usual suspects.

00:09:17.000 But here's the real question.

00:09:18.000 How do you plan to approach the season so you see real lasting spiritual change?

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00:10:19.000 A friend is someone that there's an emotional intimacy with. There's a, there's a closeness, a familiarity, a bond with.

00:10:26.000 Like somebody that you would sit down and have a meal with.

00:10:29.000 Someone who you call and you talk on the phone.

00:10:34.000 Uh, and, uh, and so if you're, if you're what, you know, if you're married and you have a wife and your wife has an actual friend, a male friend, then that is by definition, someone that she has emotional intimacy with.

00:10:47.000 It's a man for whom she has affection.

00:10:50.000 That's what it means.

00:10:51.000 Now that doesn't have to translate into anything sexual necessarily.

00:10:55.000 If you're a straight person, it doesn't, it doesn't mean, you know, you have, if you're a straight person, you have friends of the same sex.

00:11:01.000 There's nothing sexual or romantic there.

00:11:03.000 Um, so the, the closeness, the affection doesn't have to translate into that, but that's, that's the rub here.

00:11:10.000 If you're a straight person, that means that you do experience sexual attraction to members of the opposite sex. 0.89

00:11:16.000 So if your wife has a male friend and hopefully your wife is a, is a heterosexual and she has a male friend, well, she already has emotional intimacy.

00:11:30.000 Then what if she also happens to develop physical attraction?

00:11:35.000 I mean, you can't help that, right?

00:11:37.000 Like if you find someone attractive, you find them attractive.

00:11:40.000 That's, that's a, that's an observation.

00:11:41.000 That's just a kind of an objective observation that that person's physically attractive or they're not.

00:11:50.000 But when you have opposite sex friendships, there's automatically emotional intimacy because that's what comes with the friendship.

00:11:57.000 And there's a high likelihood of physical attraction.

00:12:02.000 And especially for women, because the other thing for women, men are much more visual than women.

00:12:07.000 Women with women, uh, they, as the emotional intimacy grows, physical attraction also grows. 0.99

00:12:14.000 Their physical attraction is dependent on the emotional intimacy.

00:12:18.000 So the longer that they're friends with another man, the more likely it is that they're going to find that man physically attractive.

00:12:24.000 And then, and then one day, what do you end up with?

00:12:27.000 Well, you end up with, ah, my wife has a friend who she's emotionally intimate with and finds physically attractive.

00:12:33.000 Okay.

00:12:34.000 Now you're in the danger zone.

00:12:36.000 Now you're in the danger zone.

00:12:37.000 Now you're in the zone where nothing good can possibly happen.

00:12:41.000 Now you're in the zone where everything can be destroyed.

00:12:44.000 Was it worth it?

00:12:47.000 Is it worth it?

00:12:48.000 Is it worth it to even get anywhere near this zone?

00:12:52.000 And that's why when people, and I talk about this and we've heard in some of the comments that, oh, well, what are you saying?

00:12:57.000 You don't have self-control, but you got to have self-control. 1.00

00:13:02.000 No, listen, you morons. 1.00

00:13:03.000 Okay. 1.00

00:13:05.000 Uh, when I say morons, I don't mean everyone watching right now. 0.99

00:13:08.000 I just mean the people that disagree. 1.00

00:13:10.000 They're morons. 1.00

00:13:13.000 Self-control should not even factor into it. 1.00

00:13:18.000 Okay.

00:13:19.000 You shouldn't put yourself in a position where the thing that is stopping you from having an affair is your self-control.

00:13:26.000 That, that shouldn't even factor in.

00:13:31.000 If you're in a position where the thing preventing you from having an affair is your self-control, you've, you're, there's already a problem.

00:13:40.000 Like it shouldn't even factor.

00:13:43.000 It's like, it's like if someone asked me, why have you never murdered anybody, Matt?

00:13:49.000 Why have you never killed anybody?

00:13:50.000 I would not say, well, it's cause I have self-control.

00:13:53.000 Like I do have self-control, but that's not why I've never murdered someone.

00:13:57.000 I've never murdered.

00:13:58.000 I've never even got, I have never gotten to the point where my self-control against murder needs to be activated.

00:14:05.000 I've never been in a situation where there's a temptation to commit murder.

00:14:11.000 If I said that self-control is what stopped me from killing someone, it means that I was in a situation where I was really tempted to commit murder and I had the opportunity to do it.

00:14:21.000 And I had the knife in my hand and I had to like, I shouldn't do it.

00:14:25.000 I shouldn't do it.

00:14:26.000 Right. 0.99

00:14:27.000 It means I'm holding the gun and I have the opportunity and I really want to kill someone. 0.61

00:14:34.000 And the thing that it's like, ah, I got, I have to have self-control.

00:14:37.000 I have to have self-control.

00:14:39.000 Well, that's a bad sign.

00:14:41.000 There's already a problem.

00:14:43.000 The thing that's stopping you from kills, killing someone should be that like, there's never, you don't want to at all.

00:14:48.000 And there's no occasion.

00:14:50.000 And it's just never been, you've never come anywhere close to that where that's even been a factor.

00:14:55.000 Uh, and the same thing goes for an affair. 1.00

00:15:02.000 Right.

00:15:04.000 Um, why have I never cheated on my wife?

00:15:08.000 Well, I do have self-control, but that's not even the primary reason.

00:15:14.000 If I said, well, the thing stopping me from cheating on my wife is self-control.

00:15:18.000 Well, what that signals is that I'm constantly in situations where the temptation and opportunity are there.

00:15:26.000 And it's my heroic self-control that stops it.

00:15:30.000 That's bad.

00:15:31.000 That means I am putting myself in these kinds of positions.

00:15:34.000 And guess what?

00:15:35.000 If you're constantly putting yourself in those positions, your self-control, that final dam is not going to hold for everyone forever.

00:15:44.000 Um, if you, if your self-control is activated, it should be self-control and not even putting yourself in the position where that's, where that's a, where that's a possibility.

00:15:52.000 Okay.

00:15:53.000 You could be married for 15 years as I have.

00:15:57.000 And it's like, I've never even been tempted to have an affair.

00:16:00.000 It's like, it's never even, I've never experienced the temptation to have an affair.

00:16:05.000 It's never even been in the realm of possibility.

00:16:10.000 It is as thinkable to me as committing murder.

00:16:14.000 And that's not me, you know, uh, being, uh, self-aggrandizing at all.

00:16:21.000 I'm saying that this is just, it's very possible to have a marriage like that.

00:16:25.000 It just requires boundaries, respect for those boundaries and not putting yourself in compromising positions.

00:16:36.000 And you can easily do that.

00:16:38.000 You can very easily do it.

00:16:45.000 And it's the same thing for your spouse.

00:16:48.000 I mean, how would you feel like really think about this?

00:16:50.000 Not, not, I mean, I'm harping on the point, but if, if you were, um, if your wife was going to hang out, if you're a man and your, your wife was going to hang out with a male friend and you said to her, Hey, you express some concern about there being something else going on.

00:17:07.000 And she were to say, Oh no, I would never do that.

00:17:09.000 I have self-control.

00:17:11.000 What is she telling you genius?

00:17:14.000 What is she telling you?

00:17:15.000 She's telling you she's greatly tempted to do it, but it's her.

00:17:19.000 But it's her self-control that's stopping it.

00:17:24.000 Um, and again, the problem is that if you're putting yourself in those positions, you've already signaled that you don't have self-control.

00:17:34.000 Like if, if temp, if, if actual temptation to commit, to commit adultery is here, your self-control needs to be all the way over here.

00:17:44.000 Self-control comes into, it comes into play way before you even get to the temptation.

00:17:48.000 The self-control is what stops you from ever getting there.

00:17:53.000 And what does that mean?

00:17:54.000 It's actually really simple.

00:17:56.000 It's actually really simple.

00:17:59.000 Put up boundaries.

00:18:00.000 You don't have friends of the opposite sex.

00:18:02.000 You don't hang out with them.

00:18:03.000 You don't, you don't form really any kinds of real bonds with them at all.

00:18:07.000 Not hard to do.

00:18:08.000 Not hard to do at all.

00:18:10.000 And at the same time, you keep your marriage, uh, alive.

00:18:15.000 You know, you keep, you, you tend to your marriage and to your spouse.

00:18:20.000 But you do, you do those two things and, uh, the risk isn't there.

00:18:24.000 You start, you start messing around with this, surrounding yourself with friends of the opposite sex and all these kinds of things.

00:18:35.000 Um, relying on your, on your Herculean self-control to save you.

00:18:40.000 You start doing that, well, you're setting yourself up for failure.

00:18:45.000 Guess what?

00:18:46.000 Every single person who's ever had an affair, every single one of them always told themselves it would never be them.

00:18:54.000 Well, every single one always said, I got self-control.

00:18:56.000 I would never do it.

00:18:57.000 And then it happens.

00:18:59.000 It's happened millions of times.

00:19:03.000 And, um, having respect for that, that acknowledging that does not mean that you don't have self-control.

00:19:09.000 It actually means that you have an understanding of human nature.

00:19:15.000 That's, that's, that's what that means.

00:19:16.000 The basic understanding of human nature.

00:19:18.000 So that is why if you, uh, have opposite sex friends and you're married, should you dump them all? 1.00

00:19:25.000 Yeah.

00:19:26.000 You need to dump them.

00:19:27.000 Just stop talking to them, which is really easy to do most of the time and move on with your life.

00:19:31.000 That's it.

00:19:33.000 And we'll leave it there.

00:19:39.000 From the moment I met you at that restaurant, it was love at first sight, but now you're sour to me.

00:19:44.000 You've lost your touch, but I don't want to lose you.

00:19:47.000 Don't let your steak leave you.

00:19:49.000 Ziploc brand freezer bags help prevent freezer burn for the love of food.

00:19:52.000 Ziploc.

00:19:53.000 SC Johnson.

The Matt Walsh Show - February 07, 2026

Can Men And Women REALLY Be Friends？

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