I still don't get the whole guys with girls who are their friends shtick. I don't see anything positive a guy can get out of that sort of relationship. It's a win situation for the girl and a lose situation for the guy IMO. The only serious female friends I've had are wives/girlfriends of my guy friends. In a guy/girl friend relationship the girl has all the "hand"
OK, I'll be the

here...what do girls get out of these friendships that guys don't? Why are they winning and guys are losing, by having an additional friend?
Because weather you want to believe it or not all a woman's guy friends(except the gay ones and most married ones) want the relationship to be physical on some level. The guy himself may not even realize it but deep down in a mans primal soul that's what he wants. Woman on the other hand don't, made clear in Early's post above. A woman can string a guy along as a friend, boosting her ego, mock flirting, knowing that she isn't interested in the physical part. But all along she's giving the guy just enough of a taste to keep him hungry and wanting. That's not a good situation for a guy to be in IMO.
Wow, so much bitterness today. I'm sorry that you have not had good friendships with women. But your experience is not the same as every guy's, just as mine is not the same as every woman's. And truly, your viewpoint sounds to me awfully 1950s-ish. I realize there was a time when women and men looked at each other solely as potential mates, whether long-term or as a one-night-stand, but I think those days are long gone. God knows I don't need a guy to "string along as a friend" to boost my ego or mock flirt or any such thing. But it does so happen that a lot of my interests - such as football and other sports, as well as most of the music I listen to - are interests that I share with a lot more guys than women. Also so happens that by virtue of my work, I meet a whole lot more guys than I do women, and as a result over the course of my life I'd count more guys as good friends than women. Maybe my guy friends want to sleep with me. As long as we both know that it's not going to happen, which we clearly do, and they obviously value having me as a friend anyway, how is that bad for either of us? We're both getting what we want, which is another fun companion for doing the things we like to do.Again, sounds like you've had an experience or two where a woman led you to think there was more - "used" you perhaps. If that's the case, that sucks, but it doesn't mean that your experience is the norm or the only way women and men interact. You're painting a picture of guys as helpless beings, or women as manipulative beings, when such broad generalizations seem completely unreasonable in 2007.

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