A man and a woman being friends?! Nah, never heard of it, mate.
Love Island ended many months ago.
A lot has happened since that time.
Winners Greg and Amber have called it quits. India and Ovie ended their relationship due to work commitments. Chris continued to wear a towel on his head.
And while this summer’s instalment of the reality series came with splits and breakups galore, there’s another unlikely (and un-happening) couple that people are still talking about.
Amber and Ovie – who are, for the record, mates.
That’s according to both of them anyway, who have taken it upon themselves to repeatedly deny that there is anything but a solid and wholesome friendship blossoming between them.
Because, y’know, as above, they’re friends.
Ovie dropped the most recent denial a couple of days ago when he told The Mirror: “Amber’s a friend. It’s gonna stay that way. 100 percent.”
Before this, Amber also stated that she and Ovie were mates and nothing more, while seemingly exhibiting much frustration that people kept presuming something else was going on.
She told OK! Online: “It is a weird thing for me because he’s like my brother. I would prefer to have him as a friend. We have never really thought of each other like that – it’s a bit strange that everybody comments on it all the time.”
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, no, stop.'”
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5I2ILOH-iu/
There are a couple of reasons as to why people seem to think that Amber and Ovie are more than friends.
The first is that they have a strong relationship. The second is that they took a trip to Winter Wonderland together.
And that’s pretty much it, yeah.
There’s also the fact that living in a vastly heteronormative society has conditioned us into believing that every single time a man and a woman are in the same room together, there simply must be sexual chemistry.
Escalate that into actually having a platonic relationship (which is, eh, just a relationship, by the way), and you’ve got swarms of people who cannot comprehend that a man and a woman could hang out and not want to have sex.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0nbtQqhr6M/
It’s not just irritating, but it can also be fairly damaging to relationships based on trust and amicability rather than whether someone finds another person attractive or not.
Which, no, doesn’t have to be a given when it comes to male/female relationships, somehow.
And listen, even if Amber and Ovie do end up getting together, literally so what? It’ll be because they developed a relationship that was wholesome, considerate, and based on something other than looks.
But as they’ve said, for the 10th time, they’re just friends.
