Can men and women be friends? Ah, a question for the ages: one that men and women have wrestled with and debated until TOTALLY JUMPING EACH OTHER’S BONES.  I kid.  In fact, I have always been a firm believer that those of opposing genders should have no issue getting beyond those barriers — people are people, after all. Why should gender have such a big impact on who we hold near and dear?

Well, yeah, OK, I guess isn’t always that simple. Erin Scottberg at Lemondrop doesn’t think so either. Yes, she says, it is perfectly normal and possible for men and women to  maintain friendships. But as we orbit around the sun, each year adds an extra challenge to bringing new opposite-sex friends into the mix.

According to Erin, there are two basic guy-friend categories. The seriously dear pal who you’re Just Not Into (otherwise known as Boy BFF, or BBFF), and the seriously dear pal whom you’ve hooked up with but it’s so not a thing. (No, really.) But!

“Now that I’m older,” she writes, “it seems that — unless the men in your life have been grandfathered into your post-college world — these two categories no longer exist. From a guy’s point of view, every stranger is either a potential screw … or nothing. But the thing is, as a single lady, when I meet a guy who I think is cool, but I’m not physically attracted to, I want to be his Just Friend.

I’ve discussed this with friends and think maybe my recent platonic dry spell comes down to geography. People who live their adult lives near where they grew up or attended college have plenty of friends, male and female, and are set with their circle. They don’t need anyone new. As one friend said, “When a guy tells me he wants to be just friends, I think ‘You’re in your late 20s. Don’t you already have enough?'” But when you’re new to a city, the answer to that question is usually, “No.”

Or maybe it’s just that as we get older, relationships get more serious, and, sadly, a good friend of the opposite sex is almost always a threat — while your high school BBFF’s girlfriend may realize you’ve “been around forever,” the girlfriends of newer BBFFs might not be so understanding.

I have been in both situations. I have two very close male companions (we eloquently describe ourselves as “The Holy Trinity”). I’ve known them since the ripe old age of eleven and have been close as could be with them ever since. One I  dated briefly in my youth in that “aw it’s so cute they just kissed” sort of way, but we always fell into that category of being ‘Just Friends’. The other has since gotten married and as a side note, his wife and I get along swimmingly. Gender has never been a barrier here.

In fact, I’d have to say that a vast majority of my friends are men. Some I have know for what seems like forever and some I met just a short while ago. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but sometimes it REALLY works. Ya see, the boy who I was “best friends” with turned out to be the love of my life. Does it prove the “When Harry Met Sally” theory? Not really. If that were the case I’d probably be a bigamist.

As a woman working in the video game industry about 95% of my coworkers are men. I’m sure one or two may have had more than friendly feelings for me, she says modestly, but for the most part gender has never had a role in how we communicate. I think most friendships are rooted in common ground, and if you can relate to this person (male or female), everything else becomes less of an issue. Does it become more challenging? Yeah. But then again, everything gets harder as we get older  standing up, seeing small print, etc.). I think making new friends as we get older is complicated enough on its own without throwing male and female parts into the mix.

Can we be friends? Well, I hope so. It’s lovely to meet you.

Neenah Pickett set herself this goal: find a husband in 52 weeks.  And no, as Lemondrop reports, she didn’t find the proverbial ONE — yet! — but to say she spent a whole year looking for love and not finding it negates all that she did find.

From the sound of it, Neenah actually did find love in many places -– in the support of a community that rallied behind her efforts, and in a new-found knowledge of herself. Love, after all, doesn’t just come in one form.  Non-romantic love can be as significant as the romantic kind.  While marriage and family are worthy endeavors that do require effort to establish and sustain, to look to each as a goal or something to be achieved in X amount of time doesn’t leave room for spontaneity or for the unexpected joys along the way.

What next? “Pickett has actually vowed to take a break from dating in 2010,” Lemondrop notes. “But she still believes love is out there.” With all of her new knowledge, let’s hope Neenah doesn’t pursue non-dating in 2010 as rigorously as she pursued a husband in 2009.  If love is out there, you might not need to pursue it daily, or even weekly, but you’ve got to at least be open to it.

Yang Ya-Ching, a Taiwanese music student living in Paris, is attempting to kiss 100 strangers and take a photo of each one for her blog. The blog is in Chinese, but Divine Caroline gives us the jist:

The desire for a lasting memory of Paris is what inspired Yang. According to her blog, the first kiss was from a worker installing outdoor advertising and was like “an autumn leaf falling into my pocket by accident.”

Some think her project may be just an excuse to kiss handsome young men. Whether it is or not, she’s hit on a great excuse for the rest of us to go out and kiss handsome young men!

Check out her blog for an album of her photos (taken by Xiang,zhen-hua), or you can see a slideshow here.