The Pains of Platonicism

I came across this comic via Tumblr a few months ago, and I catch myself thinking about it from time to time.  As a young woman, I have my share of male friends.  However, I am only really close with three of them, and by "close," I mean we text each other back and forth, have solo hangouts, etc.  Normal friendship things.  Here is the comic (original post can be found here):

To me, the idea of being in "friend love" with someone is tragically beautiful.  Do/can purely platonic relationships exist between those with the same sexual orientation?  In my experience, they can't.  There's always one party who has feelings that are slightly stronger than the other's.  When it is the guy who has had more-than-friend-feelings for me, I tend to feel slightly awkward when it comes to hanging out with the person one-on-one once I find out how they feel.  It makes things a bit uncomfortable, as I feel like the guy is getting the wrong impression.  Plus, is that truly fair?  The crush is not going to vanish if you continue to remain close friends and continue to do all the things that are illustrated above.  I've been on both ends of the spectrum, and both sides equally suck, since the friendship tends to lose a certain something about it.

But what does one do when he or she has had "history," so-to-speak, with a friend?  Say, you hooked up a few times or talked about having feelings for each other, but it never really got to the level of being a romantic relationship.  In turn, this led to a "friendship hiatus" until one person decided it was time to give the platonic relationship another go.

So, the question is: In this situation, is it truly possible to be in friend love with someone?  Perhaps it's my lack of experience, or my naivety, or my skewed view of romantic relationships due to watching so many romantic comedies where everything always works out, but I can't fully believe in this "friend love" idea.  All those activities in the comic sound romantic to me; they are special and beautiful moments you share with another person.  It is a relationship without the physical activity.  And how could you not eventually find the person attractive in that physical sense?  How could you possibly not want to kiss that person?   How could both people possibly never want to be with each other romantically (ignoring that they have already found the romantic love of their life of course; but hey-- anything can happen!)??

Maybe the guy who drew that comic was the guy who experienced unrequited love, and decided that losing his friend all together would be more painful than settling for friend love.  Maybe when he says when he and his friend hang out, "swapping saliva... would be weird" because he knows she (or he-- no  judgement!!) wouldn't be cool with that.  Maybe I am thinking much too far into this!

If anyone reads this blog... what are your thoughts/opinions of platonic friendships?  Did anything I said make any sense at all, or did it sound like the diary entry of a 7th grader??? I want to hear from YOU!!!