Can someone be just a friend?

No! Just a friend is a deception. Many people say he is just a friend. I have not had sex with him. But they do not know, sex never starts with the body, sex starts with the mind. Even if we do not give our body to just friends, our mind is open to them. We all have just friends. But when we share our private information with someone and receive praise, dopamine and oxytocin are released from our brain, and we secretly create an emotional connection with them. The body does not betray; the brain does, and the brain pulls our body to it. Shirley P. Glass wrote in her book “Not Just Friends, “I didn’t intend anything” is the first lie.

She said, Cheating is never intentional; cheating is always unintentional. And so I have no intention of having sex with him; this is the biggest deception. In a relationship, there are various micro misunderstandings between two people, from which dopamine decreases in your brain, and the stress hormone cortisol is produced. Your friend does not live with you; he will never understand the complexity of your relationship, and he has no stress and pain. If you share private information with him, he will sympathize with you, he will relieve your stress and pain, and he will produce dopamine and oxytocin in your brain. Day after day, the just friend will create a chemical loop in your brain, and you will become addicted to him. By repeatedly being emotionally exposed to him, your boundaries will disappear. You will connect with him. At some point, you will not be able to imagine your life without this just friend of yours. Your just friend will become your sex partner through a neurobiological process, not by your free will. Shirley P. Glass said, “Cheating is a process, not a decision.

To us, our just friend is an innocent person. That is why our brain tells us, let’s talk to him/her. When we see that we can freely share a lot with this person, our brain gets a social reward. We do not feel any regret or remorse; we consider the just friend safe. After a while, you start to feel that this person is the only person in the world who understands you. The content of our conversations changes with him/her; the things we cannot share with our partner, we share with a just friend. At some point, I realize that this person is the only one I have emotional validation from. How light it feels to talk to him/her. And this is where the most dangerous thing happens: you realize that this person is relieving your stress, tension, and frustration, and you keep using him as your emotion regulation tool. At this time, the brain no longer thinks about right. Whenever I feel annoyed or stressed, it feels like I have to go to him right now, and this is the only trajectory or path for me. Why is sex with just friends inevitable? Because you are no longer making any conscious decisions, your nervous system is responding to him automatically. It is like nicotine or drugs; once the brain gets addicted, it can never get out of this loop.

I'm not saying you don't want to get out of here, but you've gone to a place where you're neurobiologically weak; you can't get out. Your boundaries don't merge overnight. You've slowly taught your brain that this wrong place is safe for you. Cheating never starts in the bedroom; cheating starts when the boundaries of two minds merge together, and they become one.

Secret love with just friends is more fun than a partner. The reason for that is not because they have sex _ the main reason behind this addiction is that they have secrets between the two of them. Remember, secrecy accelerates dopamine. You hide his messages, delete chats, turn your phone upside down, and mute notifications. Here, the brain gets three things together: risk, control, and private reward. When risk and reward are together, the dopamine spike is the highest; it's a lot like gambling or drugs. Sex is not needed here; secrecy is enough.

Whenever you tell your just friend, you understand me, right then you cut off emotional regulation from your primary partner and give it to a third person. Sex is irrelevant here; you have broken the attachment with your partner. And what does your partner get from this relationship with you, just a friend? You are giving this person emotional emptiness, confusion, and inexplicable distance. He understands that something has happened; he has gut feelings. But he cannot prove it; his “self-doubt” increases. And from here, the trauma of betrayal is born. This is where the countdown of his life begins.

You may now think, My boundary is my morality. But this idea is wrong. Boundaries are not self-control; boundaries are “brain-level access control. Your bonding will be automatic with the person to whom your brain regularly reveals its sensitivity, validity, and privacy, whether you want it or not. Morality is irrelevant here; brain chemistry does not understand moral language. Your boundary would have been created only if you had not shared your emotions, sensitivity, and personal story with him. What boundary are you talking about by sharing everything? You have taken dopamine from the wrong people, created bonds with the wrong people, and formed alliances with the wrong people. This is called “Neural bonding misfire.

Remember, transparency is not a control; it is the stability of the system. The person you love will know everything about your ID, password, and schedule. This is not a violation of privacy. In a relationship, we share a common reality. You hiding your ID and password means that you have a secret reality. And whenever a secret reality is created, the system becomes mathematically unstable. Trust is not a feeling; trust is predictive math, a probability function. If a partner commits micro-cheating and emotional outsourcing, the relationship loses its future predictability. Alienation literally leaves the equation of trust unfinished. It is not a sin—it is a destruction of the system. I am not saying that you will not have just friends, but you cannot share your private reality with them, and you cannot ask them for personal validation. Once a person learns to create a secret reality, their “attachment capacity” decreases in the future. He cannot tolerate any secure bonding with anyone in his life.